 Welcome to Mind Pump, the top fitness and health and entertainment podcast in the world. This is a Q&A episode. This is where we answer fitness and health questions asked by listeners like you. But in the intro portion of this episode, we talk about current events. Right now, you know what's going on. So we talk a little bit about that. We talk about our lives. We mentioned some of our sponsors. So here's the breakdown. Here's what went down in today's episode. We started by talking about arm measurements, measuring our arms and how big they are, you know, because we got to be a little bit macho with that. You found a way to talk about it. Then Adam sneezed. And so that reminded me that Everly Well actually has an indoor-outdoor allergy test. So Everly Well is this company that has all of these medical tests that don't require prescription or a doctor that you can order and that will get delivered to your door. So they have everything. They have the allergy tests. They have hormone tests. So you could test your testosterone. If you're a woman, you could test your estrogen and progesterone ratios. You could test fertility. They have STD tests. So privacy in your own home. You could test for the seven most common STD tests. This company, by the way, is legit. In fact, they're one of the few private companies to actually have a COVID-19 test. Now it's not for everybody. You have to qualify for that test. They're giving it to certain organizations. But that way you know, look, Everly Well is a legit testing company. And of course we love them because it goes directly to your door for very, very low investment. And because you're a mind pump listener, you get 25% off any of their tests. And again, they have a lot of tests. So go to everlywell.com. That's E-V-E-R-L-Y-W-E-L-L.com. Use the code Mind Pump. Look at all of their tests. See which one works great for you. And again, you get 25% off with that code. Then we talked about Gold's Gym and how they're closing like 30 locations permanently. It really hurts my heart to hear that. Permanently in the U.S. I'm sure there's a lot of other gyms closing down. That got us to talk about virtual training because there are a lot of trainers and stuff that work in those gyms. I think we think that pivoting to a virtual model is going to be imperative in the coming months. By the way, Adam actually taught a virtual mobility class that you can watch for free. So if you want to take the class, it's a whole hour class. If you want to take it, follow Adam's instructions on how to work on mobility on your whole body. If you're a trainer, you definitely should be watching this class because he's the best that we know of in teaching these types of group classes virtually. So it'll give you some great ideas. Here's how you get into that class for free. Just go to MindPumpWebinar.com and sign up. Then we talked about OnFido. This is a company that's got $100 million in funding. This is a company that is thinking about creating or trying to create these virtual digital passports for people who have antibodies from the coronavirus. So that may be valuable in the future. Then I talked about exercise and its ability to prevent the severe forms or the severe side effects of the coronavirus. There was a researcher who talked about how exercise actually may have a huge impact. So it's a good time to stay in shape and get in shape that will help reduce your potential severity of infection. Then we talked about alcohol sales. We talked in a previous episode how alcohol sales have gone through the roof. And then we wondered why liquor stores are considered essential businesses. We figured it out. We talked about it in that part of the episode. I talked about how churches in Southern California are suing the state of California because they are saying they are essential businesses. We talked about how the Holy Bible is the sales have gone through the roof. Apparently 25% increase in sales of the Bible. I talked about a study that talked about how people who connect money to self-worth have really, really bad outcomes. And then Justin talked about a new smoke alarm for the deaf. Then we got into the fitness questions. The first question, this person says, look, I'm stuck at home doing body weight training. What's better doing straight sets, you know, like three sets of 10 reps or circuit training? So we talk about both of those in that part of the episode. The next question, this person wants to know how much weight is too much weight to gain when you're doing a bulk? So bulking is when you're eating more calories and you're training in particular way to gain muscle and size. So they want to know when you should stop that process, when you've gone too far. The next question, this person wants to know if refeed days or diet breaks are beneficial when you're on a diet. So is it better just to stay on a diet consistently or is it better to have breaks in between which one has better outcomes? And the final question, this person wants to know if it's safe to start working out as a pregnant woman. In other words, she wasn't working out before, now she's pregnant, she wants to start a fitness program. Is that safe? And if it is safe, what do we recommend? Also, this month, all month long, MAPS Prime and MAPS Prime Pro are both 50% off, okay? They're both half off. So both the programs require no equipment and both of them are mobility focused. They're both correctional exercise focused. So let me tell you the difference between the two. MAPS Prime takes you through a self-assessment, allows you to figure out how to do your personal warm-up sessions. So warm-up sessions are what you do right before your workout for about 10 minutes. And believe it or not, that 10 minute warm-up or priming session can have a significant impact on how effective your, whatever your workout is, it makes it much more effective. Okay, so that's MAPS Prime. Now MAPS Prime Pro, that's 100% correctional. You go in the program, you find areas of your body that hurt, follow the correctional exercise workouts, movements in the program, and you will find that you'll get better mobility. And if your chronic pain is due to muscle imbalances and movement issues, you'll find that you have far less pain. Again, both programs, 50% off. Here's how you get the discount. Go to mapsfitnessproducts.com, again, mapsfitnessproducts.com, and use the code Prime50, that's P-R-I-M-E-5-0, no space for the discount. When's the last time you guys measured your arm? You thought I was going to say something else. When's the last time you guys measured your arm? Like the whole arm from like the finger to the shoulder? No, not the length of your arm. You mean your biceps. That's what I do. Yeah, dude. Who the hell measures the length of the arm? Go gadget arm, it might be adjusted. This workout's not that effective. My bench press would have 50 pounds, but my arm is still the same. Dude, look at my arm length, though. Yeah, still 35 inches or whatever. No, when's the last time you measured your bicep? Wow, a long time ago. It's been at least 10 years. 10 years? Yeah, at least 10 years. What's the biggest? I know it's not, because you know why? Because I don't mind, I stopped focusing on my biceps over six, seven years ago. I mean, remember I talked about how that's all I did for like the first 10 years? Yeah. You know, and then I quickly realized too that like all that wasted time in the gym could have been doing the other parts of my body that are probably far more beneficial to making me more symmetrical. So laid off on that. And then I also realized too from all of that training, you know, and I'm sure you guys have this, how you talk about with your legs. If I go touch like arms for a week, they go like, they go right back to like the size that I worked so hard to get to forever. That's like my quads. So I know they're weak. So I know my arms are weak in comparison with what they were in my mid-20s, because that's all I did. But what was the, do you remember the biggest measurement you measure your arms at? Flaccid? No, no, pumped. You gotta be flaccid. Pumped and flaccid. Who does a flaccid? Is there anything that anybody ever measures flaccid? I mean, never. Technically, when you do your arms, you're supposed to do like just circumference. Why would you do that? You're supposed to do it. No, I'm talking about pumped, flaccid, biggest arm measurement. God, you know what, dude? I wonder. I can't tell you what. I can't think of anything bigger than 18 and a half. Yeah, I can't think of anything bigger. That's a pretty good number. Yeah, that's a pretty good number. I can't think of anything, but that's the biggest I could think of, so I have measured. That's a lot, dude. I mean, you said pumped and aired up. It's not that crazy to me. 18 and a half? Yeah. That's a big arm. I mean, completely aired up. No? I don't think so. What about your adjustments? I think it's all tricep for me. I was like 17 something. I don't think I was 18. That's pretty good. That's not bad. It's all tricep. No bicep. I got up to just over 18 pumped and everything. Right now I'm like 17 and a quarter. So you measure still? I guess I do. I just admitted it. You know why? This is why he's trying to see where he stands. Yeah, I'm like, how can I talk about how big my arms are? Yeah, how can I throw this in conversation? That's not what happened. No, for reals, because this whole quarantine thing, I've been eating bad or whatever. So I'm like, God, I need to sort of help motivate myself. I'm like, let me see my arms wrap. Get them back to their old glory or whatever. I don't know if I ever will though. You know, after you hit 40, it's almost like, I don't know. Can you ever reach your old glory? I think that the measurement that nobody throws in with that one that should, because I think this matters, is your waist, how small your waist is while your arm is so big. Sure. I'm not that impressed when someone... I thought you were going to say calves. I almost turned off the microphone. But I mean, if you're... What's the average neck size? I feel like my neck and my arm were the same size at one point. So you want to know what the old standard for symmetry was? What? So this is old body, not symmetry, but balance. Old bodybuilding formula. This is back in Steve Reeves and those guys back in the 1940s and 30s. Your arm measurement, your neck measurement, and your calf measurement. If those were all the same, then you supposedly had good balance. Isn't that weird? That's what they did. The neck one is weird. No, I remember that though. I had like, yeah, like 17 and a half inch neck, something like that. It was like the same as my arm and it tripped me out. Yeah. Is this normal? I think like what Adam's saying, it's not just your neck size, but you have to correlate it to your head size. It's so for you. Yeah. That's a big-ass dome. You do. So... My solar system flying around. I have a really small head too. When I was all jacked, it just looked weird. Bro. I have a little pen head. Yeah. It looks terrible. My neck does a lot of heavy lifting. It does. You do a lot of the chicken head. Oh, yeah. Stop. No, me too. I used to shave my head back in the day and it just didn't look right. I look like a little... What is that guy, the characters from... What's that video game? King Koopa and his little characters or whatever. Is it Mario Brothers? Yeah, Mario Brothers. Small heads or whatever. Did you ever watch the video, the movie rendition of Mario? Yeah. Of course I did. And they had the guys with the small heads? Yes. That's what I felt like. Goombas. Yeah, that's what I look like. Yeah, a little goombas. Anyway, dude, speaking of sneezing and grossness, Adam... That was Justin who brought it up. I was sneezing. My allergies are kicking up like crazy right now. That was bronchitis. Just to be clear. I'm sure a lot of people here around here because it got... What was it? Was it almost 80 degrees yesterday? Yeah, no, it kicked up my allergies big time. It got hot. It was really nice. Did you know Everlywell has an allergy test now for indoor and outdoor allergies? No shit. Yes. So they have... They have a lot of tests actually. I'm going to look them up right now because there's a lot more than I realize that they have. Someone was telling me, too, they have like an STD test. They have STD tests for men and women that test the seven most common STDs. I don't know there were more than that, but whatever. The seven... Let me look up the seven. There's chlamydia, gonorrhea, syphilis, hepatitis C, HIV. One and two, herpes type two, and trichomoniasis. I don't even know what that is. So what did you get? 90% on that, Adam? That test? Yeah, yeah. Flying colors. You guys got a lot of antibodies in that direction. So they have STD tests that you could buy and do at home so nobody knows what's going on. It's nice and private. They have a test for heavy metals. So if you feel like you were exposed to heavy... Not the kind of heavy metal that you... You're fucking rocking. Not you, Justin. They did the COVID too, didn't they? And they have a COVID-19 test, but in order to get that, you have to qualify. Because they don't have enough to just give to whoever wants to buy one. And then of course, testosterone tests, hormone tests. They have tests for HPV for women. A lot. They have a lot of stuff. B vitamin tests, if you want to see your B vitamins are cholesterol. I knew they had that one. Cholesterol. Oh, fertility tests. I'm scrolling through it now. Lyme disease, if you want to know if you test positive for Lyme disease. Speaking of that, dude. Yeah, so there's been a lot of ticks. My kids had ticks. We went on all these trails and everything just to get out of the house. And I caught one just on the back of Everett's neck and got it. It bit him. But then they said... And so we called the doctor and everything because I think you have to... You have to take it in and get it tested and see if it has it. But if you get it within, I think it's 48 hours. If you take it, if you get his head out and everything. And I guess you don't need antibiotics right away. Did he get the bullseye mark? No. Okay, good. No, he just got a little scab. Okay. What used to be. Because apparently from what I've read, the bullseye like welt or whatever is... That's like one of the telltale signs that you might be getting. Okay. Yeah, you got bit by a Lyme tick. And it freaks them out. Ethan, this happened to him too with ticks. I've found ticks on them and taken them off. But it's just like they freak out because it's like you don't know. Well, Lyme disease produces a lot of weird symptoms. But now you can get tested at home with someone like Everly well. I had no idea they had so many tests. The ones that I always do the testosterone. Because I like to see my testosterone every quarter. So I can see what's changed, my activity, my stress, whatever. And I can see fluctuations in my testosterone and figure out what's working the best for my body. But I had no idea they had all that stuff. Super valuable. Anyway, I saw a post today that... Okay, I want to warn the audience here. I get kind of a dark sense of humor and I laugh at things that shouldn't be laughed at. Not because I necessarily think that there should be funny, but I think it's a way that I let off steam or stress or whatever. And I read this meme that someone made which was kind of terrible. It's about millennials. And it said... Yeah, it said that... So it was a meme. It said that millennials are living through their second once in a lifetime economic calamity. Which is kind of fucked up. You know what I'm saying? It does because 2008, right? We were told was like a once in a lifetime. Like, oh, listen, you went through it. You made it. You'll never have to go through something like that again. And that was like what, 12 years ago? Yeah. What is this thing going on? Oh, man. Well, you could throw in certainty of everything. Well, you could throw a 9-11 in that too. Think about that. There's a guy that had all three of those in the lot. What is that? So what was the year? So it was... 2001. 2008. And now, 2020. Yeah. Yeah, but 2001 didn't cause... It was an economic calamity. You saw a short drop. I mean, we were... We took a dip. We took a different... A little bit. Yeah, we took a dip for not as much as we did in 08. No. 08 was crazy. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, obviously, there's so many theories out there right now of what is going to happen. And this is what I brought up on that Peter episode, that it was... More people are relating this to what happened in 9-11 than what happened in 08. I know. They think it'll be more like that. Because they think that the reason why you're seeing this dip is purely because of... Because of the crisis. Right. And then when it's over, things will just bounce back. Go back to normal. But it's not that simple. It's a long period of time, man. And it's not just as simple as bouncing back. Because once things are in motion, once you start to miss payments and things have to shut down, like, you guys heard about the gold gyms? Yeah. Oh, yeah, crazy. 30 locations permanently shut down. Just like that. Yeah. And that's a big name. So there's so... You know, there has to be so many, like, ma and pa facilities that are for sure, too. I mean, imagine... And then how many trainers in each one of those facilities? The list of the locations... So there's 30 locations across the U.S. And they include locations in Alabama, Colorado, Missouri, Texas, Oklahoma, North Carolina, and South Carolina. So they're permanently shut. You know, I mean, here's the... Now, this is the side of me, right? There's a side of me that looks at this and says... Because at one point, you know... And I know all of us at one point considered buying a gym. I'm sure we all have been in the fitness space forever. Right. It might be an opportunity at some point to buy a gym or equipment for... You know, real cheap. Well, I'll tell you something that I share in person when we do live events. So when we do live events, I would say... What would you guys say? 30 to 50% of the audience are trainers, right? Yeah. That's a good chunk. And I always get the opportunity to share this with people. And because I got a chance to talk at length, like how I feel about group training. And I know on the show everybody thinks that I'm, like, so anti-group training. And I'm like, no, it's just... I think the way it's done, I'm not a big fan of it. And they always ask me, like, you know how I'm gonna start this, you know, group class and if you were to do it, what would it look like? And I share this with everybody. And, you know, very few people I see doing it. But I think that there is an opportunity to compliment the things that I see wrong with the F-45s, the orange theories and all these circuit-based class. So the thing that I like the least about all these big companies that are exploding that are group classes is the over-application of intensity on the majority of the people that are taking the class that ends up causing or exaggerating the chronic pain that they are already dealing with. It attracts the middle-aged mom or dad that has upper-cross syndrome or has ankle, knee, hip, something issue. And they get on these treadmills or they do these circuit-based type of workouts with high intensity and it ends up making that worse. And they don't really address it because it's hard because it's in a group class. So I've been telling trainers for a very long time and I think that the reason why maybe not so many know because I think it can be confusing the way we wrote these and we talk about this a lot actually off air. When we wrote Maps Prime Pro, we thought of, you know, the average client that we had to help a majority of time which was dealing with chronic pain. Almost every client that I ever had, regardless of your goal to lose body fat or build muscle, were trying to battle chronic pain. And so what were the things that we did? All the corrective movements, the mobility drills, most of that was a lot of our training. It really was. It was a very small percentage of it was like trying to add another five pounds of muscle or burn, you know, 10 more pounds of body fat. That's actually your value. Your value was in that. Right. Where people wanted to hire you. And so, you know, with things that have come around like Aldoah and Ken Stretch and FRC, I think, you know, we've seen some really cool type of mobility drills that you can teach in a group setting that will really help a large portion of those people that are taking the class. So, you know, we did this webinar that's going live this week and I teach what I have told these trainers, this is what I would teach people. I would take a class and I used to do this and it started when I was working at Orange Theory to compliment what they weren't addressing. And it was always filled. I got, and I wasn't charging, I was doing this for free, which is kind of like my way of giving back on Saturdays and I've mentioned it a few times before. And I think there's a huge opportunity there to teach a group class just all mobility. And I'm going to take you guys through that. It's absolutely for free. So, we created that to share that. And if you're a trainer and you're listening and you don't go through this free webinar, you're an idiot. Flat out. You're an idiot. Like this is a simple thing that you can go through. You can learn. It's perfect to do virtually too. Especially right now. Yeah. That's why I'm saying it's if right now you're an idiot if you don't. If you're training clients virtually or working with people virtually through fitness, mobility is your bet. That's where you want to go. That's where you're going to get your most value. That's where your clients are going to see the most return and you don't need equipment. That's the best part about it is that good mobility work doesn't require exercise equipment. So if your clients are at home and aren't going to the gym but you're still working with them, make this the focus. And by the way, it's a workout too. It's not like it's not a workout. It's still a workout. Oh yeah. Doug got lit up. And I'm sweating teaching it. And I talk about it during the webinar that if you're going through this and this isn't work for you, you're not doing it right. I was telling Doug after we had shot it and he was talking about, wow man that was crazy having you take me through it because Doug obviously knows all the movements. Not like I taught him anything new. But me queuing him through it and forcing him to work harder through it is what kind of blew his mind. I said this is my biggest knock on the mobility movement is it's becoming this trendy word that everybody throws around. And when I see people doing it in the gym what they've done is they've seen some YouTube video. Maybe it's one of ours. Maybe it's somebody else's. And then they go in the gym and they kind of just emulate the movement. And when you do it, if it's going to really improve your mobility, you need to be challenging the end range as a motion. There needs to be an intent the way you do it. It's not like oh monkey see monkey do. I see they just kind of do this lizard with rotation thing and they swing the arm around. If you do that, the body has these natural regulators on it. It'll just stop where it feels comfortable. But you should be uncomfortable when you're doing this. You're taking it to end ranges of motion and you're trying to get reconnected to dormant muscles that you've stopped using over time. It's like any other exercise. If you want to get good at it, you've got to train it and practice it and you have to do it with intention. You can't just do it relaxed or whatever because it's not going to work. You're not going to connect to anything if you do it that way. What's the site? Where do the people get it? Oh, mindpumpwebinar.com. So that's where you could go sign up with something like that. But back to the gyms, I have to imagine that because at some point gyms are going to be... There's a lot of people that rely on gyms. They rely on gyms to work out. They feel good when they go. They like the environment. I'm one of those people. I love going to the gym. So you have to imagine at some point gyms are going to reopen. And it may be an opportunity for people who always wanted to get in the gym business to find places that... Maybe they were too leveraged. They couldn't survive the shutdown and now they're for sale. And in the past, this was kind of the strategy. If you wanted to buy a gym, you'd find one that was like that and you would just walk in and offer to take over the bills. And a lot of these guys would be like, take them and you take their equipment and everything. And you go in and you just take over their lease and get them out of debt. Well, I mean, it's going to be interesting. I don't know how much I would advise right now for someone to do that just because when I think... What we're hearing right now is that the country is going to eventually, obviously, is going to start back to opening up and hopefully soon. But when it does, it's not going to be everything's closed now. Everything's wide open. Like you were saying earlier, what Gavin Newsom was saying about restaurants potentially having less tables and the waiter having gloves on and throw away menus. And so there's going to be a lot of things that they're going to have to think about. Like, okay, we have to be smart about how we reopen. And I have to think that gyms have to be one of the most vulnerable places and we'll have to have probably the strictest guidelines or a lot of behavioral changes. Yes, if I owned a gym and we're allowed to reopen, I would want to show the new people coming in, show the members that we're making a lot of efforts. I 100% foresee staff permanently. This is their job. They're going to have staff. That's all they do. They walk around people and sanitize equipment. That would be the first thing I'd do. The first thing I'd do is I go hire somebody who's jobless right now, which there's a lot of people that are jobless right now and minimum wage and it's just like around the clock. Your job is to walk around. As soon as someone's done, you disinfect that piece of equipment and that's all your job is, is to walk around. So I could see that. I could see group training classes change. I don't think you're going to see the packed rooms anymore. You'll probably be a lot smaller, which will make the cost of it more expensive. I don't think you're going to be paying the low price that you normally do for being in a class with 30 people. Now you're in there with 10 and you're six feet apart from each other. You're going to have to pay more. Yeah, I got to think how funny, well, not funny, but how crazy is this that we were in the middle of like, I don't know, what are we on right now? Probably year eight or so of the explosion of small group training classes. Would you say that about eight years? Oh yeah. I think we're around give or take. And it's been an explosion. When you look at, we talked about this with Mark Mastroff, what we all think is one of the most brilliant people in the space. And he was alluding to that, that the small mom paw type of little private, yeah, boutique type of 3000 square foot gyms are what are crushing right now because of the low overhead and they can smash a lot of people into it and bump. But I also think those are going to be the ones that are probably affected the most by this right now. What are you going to do with those classes? You're addressing right now a 10,000, 20,000 square foot facility that would walk around and wipe machines down. What do you do to the model that is designed to cram 30, 40 people into a small, tiny 2,000 square foot building? Forget laws, because let's say that they don't pass any laws that ban that. But although I think that might happen. Just fear. Yes. I think that might happen though. I think that might say you can't have this many people in a square footage. Right. But even if they don't do that, they're going to still have to pivot because people aren't going to want to do that. Fear. 100%. Because that's the thing, right? Even if they open it up, like there's going to be this, we're not going to all go from like not being scared and not being cautious. Going into a room packed with people. Yeah. Like they go, I mean, concerts are going to be effect for a long time, sporting events. There's going to be a lot of people that even when they open it back up, that I don't know, I'll wait till next season. I think we're going to see infrared temperature scanners at most businesses. So you're going to walk in, they're going to scan your temperature. If you're running a slight temperature, sorry, you can't come into the store right now. I think you're going to see a lot of that. So I was reading this, what company was it? It was a name, Doug. I told you the name of the company. Did you write it down? I was telling you what it was called. Oh, on Fido or on Fido, O-N-F-I-D-O. It's a tech company. And they just got a hundred million in funding. And what they're working toward, they're like a, like an ID type of verification company. And they're working on, you know, COVID-19 pass passports. How do you get one? Okay. So their theory is along the lines of what you're kind of saying right now, Sal. There's going to be a value in being able to show, prove to people that I have the antibodies that I'm, you know, imagine that, like you get, you know, what if when they open the businesses up that anybody who has the antibodies or have already had it and you have a certified ID that says that you already have, you automatically, all those people can come together. We're okay. We feel safe about that. If you don't, then there'll probably be stricter regulations for the other people. They'll have two segments in the restaurant. Yes. All the immune people or everybody else. They would set seat every other, you know, I don't know what it will look like, but it's along the lines of where you're thinking and that's why I think they got all the funding is because they, that I think they are. Have they shown you can catch it again, though, even with the antibodies? They don't know yet. Yeah. We don't know yet, but they think that it's protective. They speculate about that. Yeah. They think it might be productive. Did you guys see that the, it was a researcher that came out and said that exercise is very, it should be very protective when it comes to developing, what's it called, acute respiratory distress syndrome. So ARDS is the, what happens to people who get COVID and the people that get it really, really bad, they'll get acute respiratory distress syndrome. These are the people that need to get on ventilators and whatever. And so there was a review done by the University of Virginia School of Medicine and they, the findings strongly support that exercise can prevent or at least reduce the severity of ARDS, which affects between 3 and 17% of all patients. And so this is related to something called, it's an antioxidant that's produced in the body called extracellular superoxide dismutase. Now this is secreted into the bloodstream by your, by muscles. Your muscles produce a lot of them, but cardiovascular exercise also produces this in large amounts. And so they're saying that exercise and exercising regularly is maybe one of the best natural ways of lowering your risk of getting acute respiratory distress syndrome if you get COVID. And this has nothing to do with like just the fact by you exercising is also, you know, is lowers your chances of having things like diabetes, which I know that they did a study and of the COVID patients that that's the highest percentage I saw, I think it was. Well, it was New York that said that obesity was the number one co-morbidity that caused death with, with COVID. So that's aside from that, is what you're saying. Yeah, besides the normal health effects of exercise, you know, you're leaner, you're stronger, more functional. Generally you have a better immune system because you're healthy and all that stuff. Exercise itself produces more of this antioxidant called extracellular superoxide dismutase. And that should cause a reduction in your risk of getting ARDS from COVID, which is, you know, that's cool. Cool information. Hopefully gets people more people. More incentive, more reason. Totally. You want to know about some other interesting information. You remember we brought up, I think it was a week or two ago, we brought up the spike in alcohol sales. Yeah. And then I, I think like a week after that, I was like, you know, I was thinking about the whole alcohol sales thing. Why the fuck are alcohol liquor stores? Essential business. Yes. Essential businesses. And then people, the original feedback I got was, oh, that's because they sell water and toilet paper and the essential things. That's what I thought. Right. I think that's what you said too. And I'm like, and so I got a ton of DMS after that. And you want to know what I'm being told, why it is. I got the same DMS. It's crazy. I didn't, and it makes a lot of sense, but they are more fearful that if we were to cut off all alcohol sales, that it would flood the hospitals because so many people are dependent on alcoholics out there. Yes. Yeah. Because if you, if you're an alcoholic and you go cold turkey, the withdrawal can kill you. Yeah. It can cause some, no, it can cause some serious problems. That just, I mean, it was like, I just did not even factor that in. I didn't even factor that in, but that makes so much sense that, you know, they did the math like, listen, we've got this many millions of people that are alcoholics. And if we shut down, they're one source, main source to be able to get it. Well, that's the interesting part too. Like I told you guys about the robbery that happened at CVS and I'm like, what is somebody going in there for petty cash? Like, like what are they really like in there for? And I'm, they're speculating now he was in there for methadone and it was holding up the pharmacy. So I'm like, oh, that makes way more sense. Oh, that makes, the intensity behind it. You know, why else would you, you know, like really come in there, you know, with guns and everything else that makes perfect sense. Well, speaking of essential businesses. So there's churches in Southern California that are suing the state of California, suing the governor and the state of California. Over what? Wow. So churches have been deemed non-essential businesses. And so these churches are working with a civil liberties group to say that they are essential business and that if the, if they practice safe practices, if, let's say they do parking lot services where people stay in their cars or they practice safe social distances and they do all of the things that you're supposed to do that they should be able to remain open. So there's a big lawsuit actually going on right now. Wow. Yeah. And it's, you know, it's in the bill of rights, right? Freedom of religion. And that's the argument that they're using. The argument that they're using is that we have a freedom, we have the guaranteed right to come together to worship and so long as we practice and follow the rules, like we're not going to all get together into one room. Well, this is like sort of the perfect thing, right? It bans anybody from meeting in assembly or like, you know, people from having free speech in a sense. Like you could snub a lot of our rights because of this virus. You're right. Protest. Yeah. You're 100% right. They've deemed protest non-essential and so protesting right now at the moment is illegal. Yeah. Isn't that crazy? They found a way around it. Yeah. Isn't that crazy? That is scary. But you know, I think I can see their point and here's my argument. I don't know. I'm going back and forth right now in my head while we're talking about this. I don't know where I stand on this. Well, so I could see both sides, but here's the way that I could see it for the people who are pro letting us go to church. That may be of, I mean, you know, spiritual health for a lot of people is paramount to total health. Yeah. But here's my counter to that. I was, for Easter, I watched service and I congregated with my family. We got on Zoom and I had all of them on there, on the TV, the pastor that my mom would go see live anyways was streaming it. There's not a single pastor that is out there right now that does not have the capabilities to Zoom and it's congregation either. Everybody has a fucking cell phone. Bums have cell phones now, right? So we have the ability to still, they're not... They don't have good plans though. Yeah. What's the... Cricket. Cricket, I was just gonna say. Stop. Metro. We're never getting sponsored by cricket. Yeah. No, so that would be my argument to what you're going right now, because... No, listen. You could still do that. By the way too, Bible Cells are up 25 to 30% right now. Of course. Bible Cells are like skyrocketing now. Bible and alcohol, dude. No, good. I bet you guns sales, I bet guns are through the roof too. Of course they are. Yeah. So here's... You're right. I agree with that, what you just said, Adam. But here's the other side of me, because you guys know I'm like, very against, you know, government force when it's not, when it seems a little bit like overstepping. If people are in their cars, and they're like, okay, what if I want to get together with my family? And we just park in a parking lot and stay inside our cars. And we're far away. Are they gonna give us tickets? You know what I'm saying? Like that's where I start to get a little bit... I know. They're pushing it a little too hard. By the way, meanwhile, California just released a bunch of inmates. You guys know this, right? A bunch of inmates and prisons, they're letting them out to try and keep the crowding down. So you get all these criminals now, walking around, you know, ex-criminals or whatever, walking the streets, and then they're telling people, hey, if you park in parking lots in your cars and don't get out of your cars, we're gonna ticket you and fine you. Yeah. That's where I get a little bit, like a little angry. I like the pushback though, I'll be honest. I like it. I like the back and charge system. Yes, because maybe Gavin Newsom is right, and the state of California is right, and you know, you're right, and what you just said, Adam was an excellent point. You could do all this stuff virtually. You could watch your pastor through Zoom. You could still worship in that way. So maybe that's all, you know, that's on the right side, but I like that there's some pushback because at least it prevents it from going too freaking far. You know what I mean? Or maybe going too crazy. Yeah, I think that obviously the... And this is why I'm glad you went this direction because sometimes people think that we're like pro-Trump. This is the issue I have with the far right, you know, is we all are in this fear that we're going to all of a sudden become a socialist country, and they're going to try and take our... Listen, we are the most armed country in the world. If this really started to go martial law, it would be no way. No. No fucking way. We'd all have to be cool with it. Yeah, exactly. There's no fucking... Half of us, you know, just trying to revolt. So we're not going to have a civil war. The government, even though they're doing all these things, everybody says this is where it starts and then it leads to this and then it's martial law. I think it keeps it balanced. Of course, yeah. But it's like that's the radical right. You need to push back always. The radical right says that and thinks it's going to go that way. It's like, come on. And there's certain things that we're taking good precautions. And you know, here's the deal. And the real truth, and what I liked about the Peter Schiff, I know he's scared a lot of people, and what I talked about with Dave Ramsey is this is, it's kind of a wake-up call for all of us. You know that we have been living way different today than the way our parents and our grandparents for sure were living. Our grandparents were living extremely conservatively and this would be a blip on the radar if we were living like that. If this happened to our grandparents' generation and all shutdown happened, they'd all just be chilling at home right now. It wouldn't be that. They'd all have their savings that they've... Oh, you know about financially? Yeah, financially. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, all of them. And most of the businesses and stuff like that, we've just, we're so over-leveraged as a country and as individuals that this, this turned this... It exposed all the cracks. Yeah, it turned this crisis into something even more massive than what it could have been. You know, it just, I really think that's the lesson that I think everybody should learn. Yeah, I'm just always looking at the next, you know, where we're going in the future in terms of like what kind of laws are going to be passed, what kind of regulations are going to be established everywhere, you know, that they're never going to get rid of. Yeah. It's not like when they institute these, it's temporary. When they start like passing laws and regulations like that, it's all damn near impossible to get rid of. Yeah, they're permanent, dude. Yeah. There was a bill right now in Congress, unlikely to be passed, but you know, it is an election year, so both sides are going to play the who can give more free stuff, you know, game. And the bill says to give Americans $2,000 a month until the pandemic's over. Yeah. Which if they did that, that would never go away. No. They would never stop because. Be expected. Who's the politician that's, that would be willing to take that away. You know, who's the politicians come out and go, okay guys, we're cool now. I'm going to cut your $2,000. And then when does it, when is it no longer a pandemic? I mean, if it's going to, is it going to continue to kill as much as the influenza? And if at that point, are we still giving stimulus? Yeah. Where's the, where's the cutoff? I don't know, it's interesting. I look, I've made peace with the fact that it's going to be weird for a couple of years. That's, that's the mind in my mind. I'm thinking, okay, for the next two years, right. Things are not going to be like they've been, and we're going to have to deal with it until mass, you know, got to be flexible. Yeah. And immunity, you know, and people get immunity. So it's just going to be a little weird for a couple of years. That's okay. This is our, our moment as a generation to, to, you know, to rise above and, and, you know, you know, stuff like this does change things. And sometimes the changes, many times the changes are good. You know, we've talked about so many different times, people seem to be friendlier outside than they've ever been before. Again, I did, yesterday I was walking again, had conversations with neighbors while we're across the street from each other. I never talked to these people, you know what I'm saying? It's great. It's, you know, it's good stuff. Anyway, read an interesting article on, I'm going to take it off subject now, on money and self-worth. This was a scientific study. I thought it was really interesting. They found that people who connect their self-worth to money have some of the lowest outcomes in terms of, you know, how they feel about themselves in terms of depression and all that stuff. And the researcher said, a lot of it has to do with the fact that people who connect their money to their self-worth consistently and constantly cut out or don't pay attention to the relationships in their life in search of money because it requires more and more and more of your time. And that is the opposite of, you know, making yourself feel good or whatever. Really interesting study. Not only that, but then we've, I know I've read studies on, I forget what the number is, but they've shown that once you get to a certain place financially that anything that exceeds that doesn't increase happiness whatsoever. There's a big difference between someone who makes 20 grand a year and 80 grand a year, like the happiness meter of like what that, but the difference between 80 and like 200 is like little to nothing. And then a bond beyond. Once you have your essentials, like everything that you need to thrive and survive, like accounted for, the stress levels go way down. And then after that, it's like, you know, anything and that's excess to that. Yeah. It's less happiness. So that, that research would prove that even more reason why that it would cause, because imagine if you, you tied yourself to, and I thought a lot about this topic. It was a fun talk about for me because again, I was driven this way for a very long part of my life, like focused on a dollar amount or getting to a place like that. You know, and if, if I didn't snap out of that at one point, that could be really fucking heartbreaking. You work your whole life. You burn bridges. You don't focus on relationships. You don't connect with family often. You're driven, driven, driven, driven. And then you reach that milestone and that kind of did happen to me. Like there, I had this kind of number in my head that I always wanted to make or have. And when I got there and I really evaluated my life, it was during one of the times where I was the most unhealthy my relationships were at the poorest. I had just recently broken up with a girlfriend, my connection to my best friends who I was seeing all the time. I wasn't seeing very well. And like, and when I really evaluated the rest of my life besides my bank account, I was like, holy shit, I'm actually way unhappier in comparison everywhere else. That was a very, you know, major point in my life. And the scary part is, you know, I got kind of blessed that I reached that number as young as I did because I made a really smart pivot in business around that time and it paid off financially. But I mean, I could have ended up spending my 30s and into my 40s potentially chasing that number and not realizing it till even later in life. And that's even more depressing especially if you've had a wife and kids and you've kind of let their lives go and happen. And then all of a sudden you get this number you hit and you're like, oh shit, like I'm not any happier. And then you come depressed because you fucking blew everybody off. Everybody resents you around you. Oh, yeah. It's like when people tie their fitness to their self-worth, you know, you get the extreme fitness fanatics who, you know, their self-worth is all revolves around how ripped they are, how strong they are, how hot they look. But because they're so obsessed with that, they, you know, don't pay attention to the relationships around them. They don't go to family events because the diet, you know, the food, I can't eat that food and not leg day. I'm not going to miss the leg day, you know, because there's no gym in that area or whatever. And they end up, you know, very unhappy. They end up very, very unhappy. And the thing is, no amount of what you think you want will satisfy you. So they think there's no, there is no dollar amount for somebody who connects money to their self-worth. There is no dollar amount where you'll finally be like, oh, this is it. I'm so fulfilled. I'm so happy. It's just, then there's another number. There's, you know, numbers that was infinite, right? You can go infinite up in terms of wealth of wealth and it'll never satisfy that within you. Anyway, Justin, I wanna ask you because for the last, I don't know, month, you've been saying you were gonna bring up something called a smoke alarm for the death and you never bring it up. Dude, there's like no way to insert it in conversation. I've been trying to think about an appropriate time to bring us up. Maybe like tech, like some cool new tech out there that I didn't know about. Okay, well, I'm telling you now. I wanna know about this. Well, so in Japan, some scientists came up with this brilliant way to, which is actually a little bit comical on a certain level, right? Just because of what they use. So if you think about like the death community, obviously, in terms of like alarms and things, you gotta get a little bit more tactile. Like, yeah, you gotta get something that's gonna be able to get to their attention without an audible noise. Can I guess? Can I guess? Okay, I mean, yeah, you guys, do you have a guess? Or do you know already? Or do you know it already? I don't know, I don't know. Oh, you don't know? I have no idea. I have no idea about this. Yeah, yeah, yeah. My guess would be like a rancid smell. That would be a guess. I mean, that's not far off. Oh, okay, yeah, that's right. I would have thought of watch that vibrates or something like that. Oh yeah, like a vibrates. Well, you gotta have that on. What happens when your house catches on fire and you're in the shower? Just fucking scrub a dub dub. You're not even paying attention. No, so they've vaporized wasabi. Oh, okay. So yeah, it burns your nose. Yeah, so yeah, you get the spicy burning sensation by inhaling that, yeah. Anybody who's eating sushi knows what that's like. Oh yeah, I'll clear your nostril real quick, yeah. Yeah, yeah, you'll be cleaned out real good. Yeah, I would say like a fucking, the worst fart smell ever, you know what I'm saying? Or like the worst like skunk smell in your house, I don't know. I just imagine waking up just like, whoa. Everything's just like my eyes are crying. Like my nose is just all snotty. We have a smoke alarm that produces smoke and it blows it around your face like a fire. What's going on? Anyway. I thought that was, you know, that's ingenious on a certain level. That is, it'll definitely shock you into action. Yeah, yeah, brilliant. Okay, our first question is from Lamar second. When stuck at home doing body weight training, is it better to do straight sets like three sets of 10 or just to do it circuit style? Both have value. Both of those actually have value. Straight sets are where you're going to build more strength, more control, more muscle, circuit style. Circuit style is where you'll take, you know, three or more exercises and do them back to back. So maybe 10 sets of pushups, you know, 15 squats, you know, a set of pull ups or band rows and something else. And then, then you'll take a break and then you'll do the whole circuit again. That burns more calories and it's a more conditioning. You're getting more stamina and endurance from a workout like that. I like combining both strategies in a program where maybe, you know, three days a week I'm doing more straight sets and two days a week I'm doing the circuits for the conditioning. That's kind of how I would, I would, you know, pack it together. Yeah, and I think you're going to get a lot more of the circuit-based training out there right now. Everybody's trying to get you to kind of move as much as possible and like jump from one exercise to the next to the next. And to really consider doing, you know, sticking with like a strength protocol, I think is something to really, you know, make sure that you keep incorporating that in this time. Even with body weight, you can still progress, you know, with that methodology and like using the, you know, three to four sets of 10 or 12 and really like perfect the form and sharpen it that way. Well, it makes the most sense for me when it's movements that are like really challenging. For example, like if it's something that you can do, you know, 30 to 50 of them with ease, then it's tough to do a straight set with that, right? If that makes sense. Like so body weight squats, for example, body weight squats as straight sets is for the most part depends on this, and this is where this question is it depends because there's clients that, you know, 10 body weight squats could be very challenging, but for the most part, that's pretty easy to do. But like a pull-up is hard for most all people, even advanced fitness people pull-ups are very challenging. That's a straight set type of exercise that I like to rest in between before I go do something else because pull-ups are so demanding. If I was doing a single leg squat, extremely demanding, even like a single leg toe touch or deadlift, you do 10 single leg toe touches. In fact, I don't know if I told you guys this to the day, but you know, I said my workouts they've been more play, like there's not a real rhyme or reason or structure. But I did do our Maps Anywhere program the other day just because I hadn't done it in such a long time. Like, you know, I'm just do all body weight stuff. I haven't done that in a long time. And stupid ass single leg toe touches with no weight, you know? Did you fry your hammies? Yeah, just, I mean, it did because I haven't done that where I'm like stabilizing on one leg. I mean, I tried to balance through the entire time and we were training it to failure. So doing single leg toe touches like that was, I mean, my ass and hamstrings were lit, you know, from that. So. Yeah, so here's, so I've gotten this question a lot with the straight set stuff with, you know, body weight. So I'll get a message and someone will say, God, I could do so many body weight squats or lunges or I could do a lot of pushups. Like, what do I do? So there are ways to intensify the exercise to where you're not, you're not relying so much on tons and tons of reps. So like pushups, for example, you know, I'm gonna, I don't know, I don't know how many pushups I can do, but maybe 50, right? Let's say I could do 50 straight pushups all in a row and that for me is like the most reps I could do. I could take 15 reps of pushups and make them feel just as hard. And the way I'm doing it is I'm slowing down. I'm creating tension throughout my whole body. I'm concentrating on the chest, squeezing at the top, coming down at the bottom and staying tense, gripping the floor, screwing my arms into the floor, tensing my core. Like I could do things that will make the exercise feel more difficult with lower repetitions. Yeah, I had that same question and it was like, you know, for lunges and to be able to then add more tension throughout that entire rep makes a massive difference but also to the tempo. So, you know, holding at that, you know, impressionable position at the very bottom makes it like extremely difficult. And so to do things like that, we're now gonna hold it in the toughest part of the range of motion where I have to dig my way out and focus more on that, really slowing the tempo down is gonna change that entire experience. And so to do that, you're not gonna have to do as many reps. Like you're gonna spend more time on, you know, really connecting to your muscles and firing as many muscles as possible in your body and if that's the goal of that, it's gonna transform and completely change what the exercise is doing for you. Totally. Don't underestimate the ability of intrinsic tension to make an exercise feel really hard. Like, I could do one rep of a body weight squat and I could do it in a weight where I am really tensing up my body and I'm going really slow and I'm pushing my form down to its limit in terms of my range of motion and staying intense and pausing at the bottom for three to five seconds, coming up halfway, pausing there three to five seconds, squeezing everything, coming up to the top. Don't let off the tension. Now squeeze this shit out of my quads and my glutes at the top for another 20 seconds. Like, that's one rep. And I just did one really intense rep where I really feel it. So rather, because this is the thing, when you work out with weights, and by the way, this is not a bad thing, this is a good thing, but one of the, when you work out with weights, how do you progress yourself? You add weight. It's easy, you just, oh, I'm gonna add five pounds. I could do, you know, too many reps now. I'm gonna add another five pounds. And that's great, that's progressive resistance and that produces great results. Well, when you're with your body, you can't do that. I mean, I'm sure you could ask your kids to sit in your back or maybe use a resistance band or something like that. But, you know, what you can do is just get creative with your technique, with your intention, with your tension, with the squeeze, really connect to the exercise. And if you can do 50 body weight squats, no problem, see if you can make yourself do 20, but make them feel just as hard or harder. And I bet you can, I bet you can totally do that and you'll get phenomenal results. And then with circuits, here's the thing with circuits. I'm gonna comment on that. Don't let your form go out the window. I think when people do circuits, they tend to think that they're just gonna do as many as they possibly can as fast as they can. And so form is not as important. Form is just as important. You'll get better results if you still have really, really good form, even though it's, you know, a no rest, you know, form of exercise. I would argue you get way more out of slowing your tempo down. For sure. And really doing everything that you're mentioning because, you know, the alternative to that is what? You're gonna get all these reps in, which is gonna build up your cardiovascular endurance, but you're gonna be reinforcing bad patterns you're gonna take with you to apply to heavy weights once, you know, you get back into heavy lifting. And so this way it actually like promotes more of actual muscle recruitment and really solid intentional movement that you can really build, you know, and load a lot more effectively. Well, the single leg deadlift that I was talking about or the single leg toe touch that I was, and I was only doing 10 and 10 on each side. I mean, that I can make that really easy or I can make that really hard, you know? And because I don't, I'm not using any weight and I'm doing body weight, my desired outcome is that I make it challenging. So yes, like you're saying, slowing down, pausing at the bottom and then squeezing at the top and really trying to really focus on having perfect form all the way through the entire movement, slowing the tempo down. Oh my God, you can make single leg toe touches tough for the- Super challenging. The guy who can deadlift- Crazy workout. Four or 500 pounds, you can make that kick his ass. Totally. If you really put emphasis on the form, the technique, the control, the squeezing. I mean, so there's a great time to do stuff like that. Next question is from C. Kratzly, five. How much weight do you think is too much weight to put on when you're bulking? How do you know when to stop? Yeah, so- You never know till you try. Yeah, this is a good- I mean, you know, back in the day, man, I would bulk and it really, only thing that mattered to me was the scale, you know? In fact, I would even fool myself and weigh myself at the end of the day knowing that I had food in my system and all that stuff, and so I could be as heavy as possible. Never weighed myself during the day, you know, in the morning, and it was just all about the scale. And at one point, I, you know, woke up. I remember I did this long bulk and I got my body weight up to, I don't remember what, it was 230-something pounds. And I got my body fat tested and I saw that my, I had gained, I think it was 20 pounds, but the majority of it was fat. I gained like a little bit of muscle, I'm mostly fat and I was like, wait a minute. This was a waste of time. Now I got to remove all this body fat and who knows if I'm gonna keep that few pounds of muscle, you know, that I gained. So this is a very, very good question. So I would say one of the best things you could do is monitor your body fat percentage. If your gaining weight and your body fat percentage is creeping up very slowly or not at all, I think you're doing a great job. If you start to see that your body fat percentage is what's going up when the scale goes up, then it's probably time to reverse. Now also consider this, okay, building muscle, even in somebody who's genetically gifted and doing everything right, this is a slow process. Like if you're gaining a pound of lean body mass a week, it's insane. You're crushing. Like you are destroying it at one pound a week. That's four pounds a month. Most people I know that bulk gain more than four pounds in a month. They're more like 10 pounds in a month and so maybe they gain three pounds of muscle, but they gain seven pounds of body fat. I really like this question because like you saw, this has completely changed for me and I was in the camp of doing the winter bulks and putting 20, 30 pounds on and then later on finding out that it was all mostly body fat and then once I cut down on the body fat to get lean again, I ended up losing all three pounds of muscle that I built along the way. So my strategy now, and I really refined this when I was competing because obviously it was the most important time ever in my life for me to be good at this, I would actually not want the scale to move. So the way I would look at it is I know if I am creating a new stimulus, so I'd be changing my programming up. So the programming is very important and this is where it gets really important, right? I know if I am doing a new program or I'm changing stimulus up, okay? I'm gonna send a new signal of the body to change, to grow, to adapt because it's new, okay? So that's the first strategy when I'm going into bulk is to change the routine up big time. So I'm changing the routine up and I'm also, I already knew where kind of my calorie maintenance is, I'm going to increase calorie, but I actually wanna increase as little as I can to not lose weight. So as long as I'm week over week, not losing weight, I kind of wanna stay about the same because what I know, if I'm sending a new signal to the body, a new adaptation, right, a different program, I'm training differently and I'm giving myself a surplus of calories, change is happening. And in fact, if I stay really close to where about where my weight is, I'm hitting what I think is the sweetest spot to be, which is a nice, beautiful exchange. I probably lost about a half a pound or a quarter, it's probably more realistically, like a 10th, I probably lost a 10th of body fat, you know, a 10th of a pound of body fat and I built a 10th of a pound of muscle in that week. I've built and that just keeps adding up and then at the end of four to five weeks, I've exchanged, you know, I've lost about four or five pounds of fat, but I've also added about four or five pounds of muscle and my scale is about the same. When I started doing that, it made it a lot easier when I would decide to like really shred down or lean out because I wouldn't have to go very far. In fact, what would happen a lot is I'd actually get leaner. So my body fat percentage will be going down while I'm bulking, that is possible. It is possible to see your body fat percentage go down while you're on a bulk. If you were just adding enough calories to build muscle and you build mostly muscle and less body fat, the body fat percentage will go down. So I don't want to just stay, you know, the same or let my body fat percentage even go up a little bit. I actually want to try and not let my body fat percentage go up at all and kind of see my weight hover on same. Now why this is really hard for most people and most fitness professionals or people don't advocate for this and they say it's just easier to focus on bulking, bulk harder than cut is because it's the mental fuck. It's very challenging if you tie weight gain or muscle gain to the scale and you're getting on week over week and you know you're training hard and you're staying strict to your calories and you get on that scale every week and it says the same weight it said last week and then the same weight as it said two weeks ago, that can really mess with people's head but it's no different than my fat loss client. My fat loss client, I don't want to see huge fluctuation on the scale either. I want to have this nice even exchange. That's where I'm really trying to shoot for so. It just takes more skill, a little bit more planning. Absolutely. You gotta know where things are at. Let's talk about the true skinny hard gainer. Let's talk about the person who really has a roaring metabolism, has difficulty putting on muscle and seems to be eating a lot but just isn't gaining any size. Well, number one, have a good workout program. If you're not sending the right muscle building signal then it's gonna be very difficult to add muscle if not impossible. So at that point, make sure you have a really good workout. Now, if the workouts working well and you're getting stronger, add calories and keep adding calories until you start to see your weight go up on the scale. And I would say you probably don't want to add more than a pound of on the scale per week. That's what I'd say to stop. Now, for the average person trying to bulk, look, if you're a guy, I typically don't like it for you to get above maybe 17, 18% body. That's about as high as you want your body fat to get. If you're already 17, 18% body fat and you think you want to bulk, you probably need to cut first. I don't think that, because then when you're gonna go above 20%, that's when your health starts to decline and you start to get the negative effects of eating too many calories. For a woman, you're probably looking, you probably don't want to bulk if your body fat percentage is at 28%, right? You probably want to start bulking when you're in the 20% or maybe below. And for a guy when you're around maybe 10% or 11% is maybe when you want to bulk or lean her. So those are just some numbers to work with. As far as calories are concerned, I would bump your calories. Usually for a man, I'll bump their calories about 300 to 500 and for a woman, it's typically around 150 to 250 and start there above where you were eating before and kind of monitor and see what's going on. Next question is from Anthony Vellos. Are refeed days beneficial to a cutting diet if done properly? Oh, I like this question too. Studies prove it, studies actually show that people who have diet breaks, they'll call them, actually burn more body fat and preserve more muscle. So, and this is when everything's controlled. So if they take groups of people and one group is always at a 500 calorie deficit and the other group is at a higher deficit but then in between the period of time on the diet, they take a break and go back up to maintenance. So total calorie deficits are the same. The group that allowed themselves to go back up to maintenance, actually burn more body fat and preserve more muscle. So, and this is an old school bodybuilding technique. Bodybuilders for decades have, you know, talked about how this, you know, helps them preserve muscle and get leaner rather than always dieting to actually give themselves a break for a short period of time before they get back on the diet. So studies show this works and it definitely does work. Some drawbacks, the drawbacks I see with refeeds or cheat days is people treat it like a binge and then you're starting to develop bad relationships to food where I restrict, restrict, restrict and then, oh, here's my refeed, you know, four days and then they just eat like crazy and then they do that four days a week. So what does the perfect refeed kind of look like? Because that is the propensity I see for people to really just like add in the junk food. Well, so I really like this question because I like the ones that we say depends and then we go into it because who I'm talking to, I'm gonna say completely different things to. For example, rarely ever did I have to ever tell average Jane or Joe they need a refeed day or schedule them. Like it was a struggle. It was automatic. Right, it was a struggle for me to get them to string two weeks consistently of like staying to the diet, right? Staying at their 1800 calorie intake or whatever the hell that I had them on at that time, that was a challenge. So the refeed days naturally happen. You know, in fact, they happen more often than I would have liked as a trainer and probably slowed our progress down more often than not. So if I'm talking to the general population, I'm very careful about sharing the science behind this because, and our good friend Lane has done a lot of really good information that Sal and I did a great YouTube on underlating your calories on this also that it does. And yes, all the science supports that. Now, why that's dangerous to say that to the general pop because then that just justifies they're like, well, I ate really good for the last three days and today's my day where I kind of let go and I eat good again for about two or three days and this is my day I let go. And they kind of just, they start to justify that but they're not really paying really close attention to the calorie intake. Now, if I'm talking to a competitor, right? I'm talking to somebody who was weighing and measuring and tracking and they can tell me, you know, last week I averaged this many calories, they know that type of stuff. This is a great person to share this science with. Like, okay, listen, there's a lot of benefit for us to not just stay at this consistent 1800 calorie every day. In fact, what I'd like to do with you tomorrow is I'm gonna feed you 2200 calories. And then the next day after that, I'm gonna only feed you 1000 calorie and to mess with it, but the average comes out to be the same at the end of the week. So that person, I see a lot of value of sharing this science with and teaching them how to do that. And when you do a refeed, you don't need to go that much over maintenance. So it's not a, it's not a free day, you know, where you just go get whatever you want. You go into it and you bump your calories enough. What I like to do is put people below maintenance for five days or two weeks. And then I'll just bring them up to slightly above maintenance or maintenance. That's their refeed. It's not, you know, 500 calorie below maintenance. Oh, it's a refeed day, 1000 over maintenance. That's what people end up doing, is it? And by the way, I know this, through tracking this with clients, you'll see them be on a 500 calorie deficit Monday through Friday. So that's 2,500 calorie deficit, meaning their body is having to tap into their own body fat for that additional 2,500 calories that they didn't eat, right? Then Saturday and Sunday are, you know, 2,000 calories above maintenance on both days. So they actually end the week gaining body fat. Well, this was me for most of my early 20s. And that's why I couldn't figure out. Again, I thought it was because I wasn't taking steroids and all the guys on the magazines were. But the reality was this was kind of how I trained so hard, so consistently, and dieted so perfect Monday through Friday. And I wasn't like I was horrible on Saturday, but for sure one of the two days, I would definitely cut loose and I potentially might not work out on one of those days. But that was enough to cancel out all the perfect dieting and training that I was doing during the week. I mean, last question we just talked about, how slow the body works, how slow it builds muscle, how slow it burns body fat. It takes a lot of a calorie surplus to build and consistency to build. It takes a lot of a calorie deficit for a long, consistent amount of time to burn a lot of. So it's a slow process. And if you can over consume in one day or one weekend, you easily could cancel out all that great work for five days of dieting. So you gotta be really careful on who you share this science because it really is spitting hairs. Because again, what trumps all of this is consistency. The person who eats consistently good and stays sticks to their diet or their plan for 30 days straight is gonna be better off than the person who's guesstimating that, oh, I think today's a good day to refeed and they don't know exactly precisely the calorie intake that they're going over. They're probably not gonna see as good results to the person who's just purely consistent. Next question is from Morgan Blake 33. Is it safe for pregnant women who are not exercising prior to becoming pregnant to begin a workout routine while pregnant? If so, then what type of program do you recommend? Oh, yes, it is very safe for a pregnant woman to start training when she figures out she's pregnant. I had many clients like this. Actually, I would have oftentimes a woman would come in to inquire about personal training and the motivating factor, which you always find out anytime somebody asks about training, you always wanna know why, why are you coming in here? And they'd tell me, oh, me and my husband are trying for a baby or I just got pregnant and I wanna be healthy and I wanna be healthy for the baby and all that stuff. So they would actually start working out. Now the problem with starting your workout when you're pregnant or starting to work out when you're pregnant is if you start your workout and then your goal is to hit like crazy physical accomplishments, not the time to do that. The time, what you should do when you start is just take care of yourself. Take your time, slowly get stronger, slowly feel better, work on mobility and just the normal precautions that I would take with the average person, it's just amplified with the pregnant woman. That's all it is. I'm just more careful and I'm progressing her slower. So if I know we're doing an exercise and last week we did squats with 80 pounds on her back and this week I think she could go to 100 pounds on her back with good form. I'm gonna have her go up to 85. I'm gonna keep it very, very, I'm gonna progress her very, very slow but you can definitely progress while you're pregnant. I've had several clients who got great strength and fitness during their pregnancy. The best form of exercise while you're pregnant is resistance training, hands down. It helps build muscle, great insurance policy when you can't move, that muscle helps your metabolism burn more calories. It's great for giving you good insulin sensitivity and managing blood sugar, which can sometimes be an issue when you're pregnant. And it gives you the strength to endure labor, which can actually take a lot out of you. Now this is map starter for me. I mean, now map starter isn't like specific to pregnant women, but it's definitely specific to people that are just getting started to lifting weights. And so if you're pregnant and so we take that into consideration when we wrote that program. We think about somebody who potentially could be very deconditioned and just getting into fitness. This is where they should start. That category would also include somebody who wasn't working out before, just got pregnant and now wants to start working out. That would be a great place for you to start. And a lot of the exercises in there, they're challenging enough that you should see progression with your body, but they're not so challenging that it puts you at high risk. And that's the thing that you want to be cautious of when you're... Especially if you haven't been, you know, in a consistent workout program before. It's just about learning these movements, mastering the movements, getting your body, you know, the correct amount of stimulus, not overdoing it. Cause again, this is not about like intensity and trying to like hit PRs or anything. You know, this is about really benefiting your body and it's overall sound strength and all your joints functioning properly, the way you need to function. So that way, you know, you can rebound and come back in terms of like, you know, improvement upon the body, you know, after the entire process. Yeah, I remember when I, let's see, I was probably when maybe 19 as a trainer or I might have even been a manager, I think I was a manager at this point. And we had our group exercise classes and we had, of course, trainers, right? And I had, there were two staff members that were pregnant at the same time. One taught the Taibo class, which is like cardio kickboxing. And she also taught the spin cycling classes, which were just kind of new back in those days. So she did lots and lots of that kind of cardiovascular type training. And she was very healthy. She was fit and healthy. Then I had a, there was a trainer that her predominant form of exercise was resistance training. She liked to lift weights. She had that sculpted kind of, you know, feminine muscular body that comes with resistance training. So both were very fit, similar age. And I remember them going through their pregnancy and then afterwards, wow, was that enlightening? The trainer who had done the resistance training, she bounced back much faster and much stronger, the cardio based employee that I had, she did well, don't get me wrong, but it took her much longer. And I remember her complaining about how stubborn her body was, you know, post pregnancy. Now this was something that I saw that was echoed throughout my entire career. Every time I would see, you know, I would have clients or I'd say have people work for me who did a lot of resistance training, they bounced back so much faster and so much better from pregnancy than the people who relied on tons and tons of cardiovascular activity. So resistance training, your best form of exercise while you're pregnant, do it appropriately. And I would say this, like if you're just getting started, map starter, great program, if you don't want to invest in a program, I would suggest resistance training to start with once a week, after a couple of weeks, go to two days a week of resistance training and then stay active every single day. Make sure you do lots of walking and stuff every single day. I also think there's a lot of value for this person to look up like pelvic floor muscles and you can just Google that and exercises for pelvic floor. So this was a big focus with Katrina when she was pregnant for me and- Did you guys get the pelvic dumbbell? You ever seen that? No, we didn't have something. You know what I'm talking about? No, I don't. It's like a weight. It's a weight that, so like Kegel exercises, right? Helps right in the pelvic floor. And they'll put it in their vagina and they'll hold it with their Kegel muscles. Oh, it actually is. And it's a weight. Wow. And so you buy the first one is very, very light and you hold it and then you add resistance to it so that you can continue. We tried that with ping pong balls. That you did it wrong. I'm just kidding. No, so it actually is got study, this type of exercise got lots of study support. Well, even simple stuff like back presses and floor bridges and focus on that whole, pelvic control, so much value to that because those are all the muscles that you use to push with. And the stronger and more control you have of those when it comes time for delivery, the more likely that you could probably have this thing naturally versus someone. And I think that's why some people that have a really hard time that like maybe went into it with the intention of having it natural and then they're like, fuck this, give me the drugs, is because what ends up happening is they don't have really good control there, it hurts like crazy, labor extends longer. Then you give them the drugs, it numbs that even more so it makes it even harder to control which is also why all the studies show how long it extends it once you've taken any of the drugs, extends the labor even longer. So training that right now, talk about getting you really ready for delivery day, tons of value in spending some time on that. Well, if you've ever seen a woman go through that process and you're there the whole time, it is an arduous, physically exerting process. And there's a saying in boxing, which is that when you're exhausted, then you lose your heart. So in boxing, the heart is your willingness to fight, just keep willing to fight. Well, if you've ever played a sport or ever trained yourself to the point where you're just done, you're spent, your willingness to fight and keep going is gone. You lost your heart. And so if you're going through this process and you're going into it and you're not strong, you're not fit, it's gonna be very hard to make through this very, very challenging, physically arduous process. But if you're strong and you're fit, I'm not saying it's still gonna, it's gonna be easy, but you're gonna have the strength or you're more likely to have the strength to carry you through. What you can say is it would be easier if you had not, right? You may not say, I won't come out there and say it will be easy, but I will say that it will be easier than had you not done all those things for sure. But you can, look, I'll tell you what, pretty much anybody can start an exercise program as long as it's done appropriately. I don't care how old you are or how young you are or whatever. Now the key term here is appropriate. So if you're pregnant and you wanna start working out, so long as it's an appropriate way to work out for your body, your fitness level and your situation, you are going to have tremendous benefit from it. If a workout program is applied inappropriately, that becomes a problem regardless of your condition or who you are, then it becomes an issue. So do it right for you and your body and you're gonna be perfectly fine. And with that, go to mindpumpfree.com and download our guides and resources. They're all totally free. You can also find the three of us on Instagram. You can find Justin at Mind Pump Justin. You can find me at Mind Pump Sal and Adam at Mind Pump Adam.