 Welcome to Mind Pump. We are one of the top fitness and health podcasts in the world. We're here for you. And you're listening to our Q&A episode. This is where we take questions from our audience and we ask them on the, excuse me, we answer them on the podcast, but we start out this episode with introductory conversation. This is where we talk about like current events, what's happening with our lives. Sometimes we mention our sponsors. So let me give you a breakdown of what happened in today's episode. The episode opens up. I talked about a diet breaks study. So this study showed that taking breaks in your diet can help preserve muscle. One of the biggest challenges whenever you're cutting your calories is, are you losing muscle? Now, why is that a bad thing? Your metabolism slows down. So make sure you pay attention to that part of the episode. Many cuts, many bulks. Then we talk about the coronavirus. Everybody's talking about it. So we thought, hey, let's just jump in. We speculated what's going to be happening to gyms. They're probably going to be hit very, very hard. We thought, hey, look, that's going to suck. People aren't going to go to gyms. They're going to lose their fitness, which will make them more susceptible. Work out at home. It's one of the best things you could do. And if you want to do what we did, have a home gym. Get a gym delivered to your door. There's a company we work with called PRX that allows you to finance your purchase. You can pay monthly like you're going to the gym. They have the best equipment you can buy online for your home because it folds into the wall. It allows for lots of space. It's super sturdy. A great, great company. And of course you get a discount because you listen to Mind Pump. Here's what you do if you want to check out their stuff and get a discount. Go to prxperformance.com forward slash Mind Pump. Use the promo code Mind Pump. Get 5% off your purchase and get a free Maps Prime program if you purchase anything over $500. Then we talked about ways to boost the immune system. Of course, get good sleep, make sure you're active, have good relationships in your life. Go out in the sun. And then what about supplements? Are there supplements you can take to boost your immune system? We talk about things like elderberry. And then there's a product from a company we work with called Organifi. The product is called Immunity. It's designed to boost your immune system and it's something you can take every single day. It's inexpensive. It tastes really good. It's got an orange flavor. And because you listen to Mind Pump, you get 20% off. Here's how you get that discount. Go to organifi.com that's O-R-G-A-N-I-F-I.com forward slash Mind Pump. Use the code Mind Pump, get 20% off. Then I talk about how kids in Iran are dying from drinking toxic alcohol. Apparently they thought this would help prevent them from getting sick. Be careful of bad information. Misinformation is terrible. On the internet. And then Justin brought up Otzi, the Iceman. That's an interesting story. Then we talked about Onit. Onit has made some big changes. It's a big supplement company in our space. Their CEO just stepped down, so we speculated about that. Then we got into answering the fitness questions. Here's what we talked about. The first question, this person mentally struggles with taking rest days. So we give our advice. If you're somebody that finds that you're addicted to working out and taking a day off is very difficult for you. Listen to that part of the episode. The next question, this person says, if I'm on a budget, what are some good high quality protein sources? So we talk about protein powders, but we also talk about whole food sources of protein that won't break the bank. In fact, many of the ones we talk about will actually save you money. The next question, this person wants to know the difference between hit cardio and list cardio. There's two different ways you can perform cardio. So we talked about the benefits and detriments of each. And then we talk about how to put them into your workout for maximum results. And the final question, this person wants to know what foods we think are wrongfully demonized and then what foods do we think are overhyped? So that was an interesting part of this episode. Also, this month, MAPS PowerLift is 50% off. Now here's the cool thing about MAPS PowerLift. If you have a relatively well-equipped home gym, so if you have barbells, dumbbells, adjustable bench, you're having a place that you could do squats off of like a rack, you can perform MAPS PowerLift at home. Now what's MAPS PowerLift good for? It's great to get your bench press, your deadlift and your squat to go through the roof. It's great for building muscle and speeding up your metabolism. It's especially great for those of you who wanna compete in a powerlifting competition. This program is totally complete. It's our newest MAPS program, and we've put it 50% off. Here's how you get that discount. Just go to MAPSPowerLift.com. That's M-A-P-S-P-O-W-E-R-L-I-F-T.com and use the code POWER50, that's P-O-W-E-R-FIVEZERO, no space for the discount. I wanna bring up a very interesting study that was just published on dieting that I think is a revolutionary study of its kind. It doesn't prove anything that we haven't speculated or seen ourselves with clients. In fact, we've talked about this in the past, but this is one of the first studies to actually prove the legitimacy of something that we tend to promote and talk about a lot. So here's how the study was designed. It took individuals, they split them into two groups, they put them both on a calorie restricted diet. They matched the macros, they matched the calorie restriction, identical between the two groups, except for one difference. By the way, they were both high protein diets. Everything was done well with this. They were all eating 0.8 grams of protein per pound of body weight, they were all working out, lifting weights, doing the whole thing, same calorie deficit, but here's the difference. One group was at a consistent calorie deficit for the whole week, the other group was at a larger calorie deficit for five days, but then ate more two days. So they did kind of the refeed model, but at the end of the week, the calories were controlled. It equaled that. All the same. The only difference is this group over here, big calorie deficit all week, this group over here, larger calorie deficit, but then two days of eating even more food, and the refeed was in the form of carbohydrates. Okay, but at the end of the week, everything else was the same. Here's what they found. So this part, not so remarkable, same similar fat loss, both groups lost similar fat loss. Here's where things get interesting. The group that had the diet break or the refeed or the change in calories for two days a week lost far less muscle. Oh wow. So everything else being the same, but the fact that one group fluctuated their calories with five low days, two refeed days. Again, if this is something that you're doing yourself, you have to control for all this, because what people tend to screw up is they go five low days, then the two high days are so damn high it just erases the five days. They were still at a calorie deficit at the end of the week. So all things being controlled, they actually had more muscle at the end, which if this study continued long-term, what we would find is better fat loss in that group at a faster metabolism. So the more extreme cut and then refeed was the one that maintained the most muscle? Yes. Which makes sense to me, right? Because if you are- This is how I've been training people. Right, we diet like this, right? Imagine if you were on a consistent caloric deficit for, let's say six weeks of a 500 calorie deficit every single day, consistently like that. Part of the process, and this is where it's not just calories in, calories out, in law through dynamics. It's also the idea that the body is going to adapt to that- Yeah, you're programming the body a specific way that way. Right, you're telling the body it's not gonna get fed any more calories, whereas if you go, okay, every once in a while I'm gonna throw in a higher calorie day. It goes, oh, okay, good, I got fed again. Let me take those nutrients. Let's put it to places that it needs it. Oh, let's keep some of this muscle. So let's throw it there and hang on to it. Oh, we're back down into a deficit again. Let's burn and use some of that fat. And then before it gets fully adapted to that, oh, here's some more calories again. And even though over the course of a month, the total deficit or the average deficit is the same, it would be more advantageous to do the undulating caloric, which we did a YouTube video on this. Absolutely, we've been talking about many cuts, many bulks, how to undulate your calories. When I coach people, this is how I recommend that they use their macros. And it's exactly what, I mean, and this is our theory. So I'm sure this will get proven in some way, but like the study did, but our theory is you're sending a couple of different signals. And if the signal stays too long, because here's a deal, you're at a deficit for too long, the body starts to adapt by it. And the way it adapts is by paring muscle down. It tries to slow the metabolism down. Even if you're lifting weights, this may tend to happen. Of course, lifting weights mitigates it significantly. But if you have a couple of days where the calories are higher, you're not only sending the signal to the body to maintain or build muscle through the weight training, but now you're combining it with another signal, which is higher calories, which tells the body, it's okay, we don't need to become so damn efficient. And this study proves what we've experienced with clients and ourselves time and time again. And the other part I love about this is that, although this has been used, I think oftentimes incorrectly, by doing the binge restrict model, bodybuilders have been doing this forever. Bodybuilders have been throwing in what they call reefy days. And remember, bodybuilders do it oftentimes well because they count macros, but they've been doing this for a long time and speculating the same thing. And I love it when stuff that's been done for a long time that people have kind of scoffed at starts to get proven. Correct. And this is just one of those things that we've observed for a long time. So if you're in a deficit, or you're trying to get leaner, do this instead of figuring out the deficit every single day, figure it out for the whole week. So if your weekly deficit is 3,000 calories, rather than dividing it evenly up over seven days, do it so that two of those days are higher calorie or and four or five of those days or whatever, four of those days or five of those days is lower. But at the end of the week, the deficit turns out to be 3,000 calories versus every single day, it's an equal amount of calorie deficit. So great. Cause again, this reiterates the whole meal plan thing of being so rigidly structured, you know, like having my everyday plan, like I have to be at this deficit, like is less effective than what you're talking about where it actually provides a little more flexibility. You can go up high, but then you're going to go down low. It emulates a regular life more, you know, I don't know. Realistically. Realistically. I got you. This is why I've always loved carb cycling. And I mean. Yes, this is like what carb cycling does. I love carb cycling for this reason. And it's just because I've had a lot of success myself with it. I've had a lot of success with clients teaching it. It just, it emulates more real life to me. And the fact that you get these days that are a higher calorie day, it tends to promote holding on to muscle more than if I were to just keep somebody in a 500 to 700 calorie deficit for weeks on end. So yeah, that's, you know what? I want to talk to you about Sal because this is getting out of control right now is the coronavirus. Oh dude. And as of right now, when we're recording. Shit's starting to get real. As of recording this episode, it's now been declared a pandemic, which pandemic means it's worldwide, it's going to spread more. And when the World Health Organization declares that, it frees up governments or gives them authority in a way to start enacting certain procedures and protocols to try to prevent further damage and spread. It's interesting, right? I mean, I heard Dr. Drew talk about this the other day and he said, look, as of right now, there's already been 18,000 deaths in the US from the flu. As of right now, we're still in the hundreds of deaths. I think it's like 200 deaths in the US from coronavirus and we're really freaking out and stuff like that. And so people are kind of, there's this panic. Now, the way he explains it is he says, look, we should definitely take precautions because the way a virus explodes and spreads, there's a certain time that you can mitigate it. And then there's a time that you can't anymore. Once it gets past a certain point, then it's like, whatever, we can't do anything about it. So that's why they're reacting so strongly, but he cautioned everybody to, you know, what's that saying? We don't have anything to fear, but fear itself. People do a lot of crazy shit when they start to panic. You're also hearing that it's like the tip of the iceberg, right? Well, that's what the infectious disease guy on Joe Rogan was saying was that it's not a matter of if. It's just wind at this point. According to him, we're already beyond that. We're already beyond really doing much about it. Like it's coming, we're going to see it continue to increase in the United States week over week and month over month. And so the only thing we really can do is, you know, try and be healthy because we know that the people that are most susceptible are advanced age, people that are obese, long issues. Obese smokers, yeah. Yeah, that kind of stuff. Yeah, the best things you could possibly do for yourself, aside from the standard, wash your hands, you know, don't touch your face. Maybe don't go to big public gathering so much, which is already happening, by the way. You know, San Jose typically has a shit ton of traffic every single day. I flew over here this morning. I know, dude, it is nobody out on this. All the Google, Facebook, all the big companies, everyone's refusing to go into work. Yeah, they're working from home. Yeah, everyone's working from home. Yeah, yeah. So that's why you see that. I mean, some of your largest companies that we have in the Silicon Valley are already pivoting right now. You know what I wonder about that? Like if this whole thing, because it's not going to go away or whatever, but like how many people will then kind of convert from what they used to do to just homework? Cause like there's so much, we could be so effective at our own house. So like we don't really need to show up to work for a lot of these, you know, like tech jobs that we have available now, but it'll be interesting to see how the economy sort of responds to this whole thing. Yeah, well, it's going to, there's definitely going to be a response because people's behaviors are going to change. So I'll give you some good news, right? Companies that may take off, companies like Amazon that delivers shit to your door or Uber eats, maybe they'll take some steps to deliver food to people's door. You're probably going to see- As long as they're in a hazmat uniform, you know what I mean? You may see a boost in, you know, medical stocks and those types of companies. Companies, cleaning supplies, toilet paper, that's going to go through the roof. You're going to see a decline in places like restaurants, big public gatherings. Oh yeah, travel industry. You know what's going to take a big hit that I was thinking about this morning? Gems. Gems are going to take a hit. Gems are going to take, they already- They already are. I'm sure they already are. No, no, I've got clients and people that work out at gyms and they're like, holy crap, the gyms are like 50% full right now. Oh dude, because you're, I mean, that's already been a place where there's been a lot of germs and that kind of stuff. I think it's good. But I mean, on the flip side- That's your only protection, right? Is to maintain health and work out and eat healthy, get sleep. Like all those things are so much more, even more important right now. Work out at home is what I would say. If you're afraid of going to the gym, that doesn't mean, fine, don't go to the gym. That's your choice. Yeah, it'll be really interesting when companies like PRX to see how they do have at home gyms. I bet they're going to crush. I bet you if this goes on long enough because you have a lot of people who are like, okay, I've been not working out for two months. I can't do this anymore. Yeah, you speculated this could get pushed for almost two years. Well, the last big pandemic was the Spanish flu and that kind of lasted two years. So from 1918 to 1920. So it could potentially last a year, two years. Work out at home. I have a garage gym. I do my workouts at home. I'm not going to be going to the gym. I don't really do it much anyway. So I just lift it there. You could do lots of exercises on your own at home. And look, without this thing going on, I love home gyms because they're super convenient. You wake up in the morning, you go in the garage, do your thing. You don't got to worry about parking and travel time. And then companies like PRX. Let's be quite honest. 10, 15 years ago, if you wanted a gym equipment, you either spent a shit ton of money on commercial equipment, you got home equipment that was garbage and it took up a lot of space. Company like PRX literally was designed to be as sturdy and valuable as commercial equipment but they took into account space. So your squat rack folds into your wall. Equipment hangs on the wall. You could park your car in your garage. You could put it in the house. You fold your bench up. Everything's vertical. This is out of the way. It's super convenient. We just built at the Tahoe house. We could still fit my big old long truck in the garage and fit the PRX against the wall. And the big objection is always cost because gyms allow you to pay monthly. But PRX does too. You do your finance option. You're paying monthly and you have an amazing. And then there's an end to it. It's not the every year. Once you pay it off like at a gym for instance, you're always paying that monthly fee. I would not be surprised if that company sees a spike in sales as people start to be afraid to go out to work out in a public place like a gym. But they wanna keep working. I'm gonna tell you something right now. Here's my fear. My fear is that it goes, you know, US quarantine, everybody freaks out. And sure there's people getting sick and all that stuff. But I'm afraid of the effects of isolation. The effects of the psychological effects of the fear. And then the health effects of all that because you're at home. You're not moving. You're isolated from other people. We're social creatures. So what's that gonna be? You're not active. Maybe you're not going to the gym, fine. You're not exercising now. That, and maybe you never get the coronavirus. So you were effective against that. But now your health is worse mentally and physically because you were isolated and exercised. I'm most worried about the economic repercussions from all this. I mean, there's no doubt. I mean, you're talking about companies like SAP completely shutting down concerts, the sharks hockey season. You know, we're gonna see people in this situation. This is not when people wanna spend money. And we just came off of like one of the biggest bull markets we've ever had in our history. So the fact that we're at like the peak of that. And then the fact that this is happening right now. I mean, hang on to your cash right now. I really think that. Yeah, don't just be smart with your money. Yeah, right now is the time to kind of hang on to stuff and see how this all plays out over the next six months at least. So it's gonna be interesting to see what happens to the economy after all this. Yeah, well, I will say this again, I'm gonna be a little hopeful. We are positioned better than we ever have been for a situation like this. Like in the past. Are we though really? Yes. We're not actually. Yes, we are. No, if you look at what's, if you listen to the infectious disease specialist, you'll tell you right now that the biggest scare right now is that we get I think over 60% of our drugs for the advanced age from China. And when they locked down there and we locked down over here, you have people that rely on those drugs to live that won't be able to get that. So there's a lot of things at the hospitals. I'm not saying that it's perfect. I'm comparing it to previous pandemics, previous situations. Yes, there's gonna be struggles, 100%. But here's why I think we're far better equipped today than ever before. Number one, as challenging it's gonna be, healthcare is far better. So that's, regardless of the challenges, way better than it was in 1918 during the Spanish flu. Here's the other big one. Economically speaking, in 1918, when your ass was staying home, nobody could work. You couldn't do shit. You couldn't be productive. Luckily today, there are a lot of jobs where business can continue to operate and run because of Zoom, FaceTime, the internet. Before, man, if people couldn't leave, they were fucked. Look for those companies to surge too. Look for Zoom to go explode. Look for Netflix to explode right now. Look for those companies. In time, when you are holed up, what are you doing? If you're working still, you're using platforms like Zoom. And if you're just trying to let time pass by, you probably just can't- Yeah, you catch up on podcasts, that's for sure. Oh, see, that's what I'm saying. Some industries are gonna suffer. Some are gonna blow up. Service industries will probably crash, right? So, restaurants and service industries like that, they're probably not gonna do very well. But companies that are remote online, entertainment online, that's gonna explode, man, because you're at home, you got nothing to do. Listen to podcasts, watch Netflix, and go on the internet. Now, what about things that we can do? Like, obviously, you wash your hands, avoid highly-trafficked areas, public places with lots of people. What about supplements that we can take to just trying to add a precaution? Are the things that we can do for like immunity boost type stuff, elder bear? Like, what are the things that you would recommend people to- So, just like when it comes to fitness, so like when we talk about fitness and there's supplements that help with building muscle and fat loss and all that stuff, what do we always say? Nothing comes close, not even the same universe as proper exercise, good sleep, and a good lifestyle, right? When it comes to avoiding getting sick, or if you do get sick, not getting hit super hard, nothing, nothing will replace good sleep, good activity in sunshine, a lifestyle, washing your hands, that kind of stuff. That is 99% of all of it. Now, that being said, are there things you can do to boost your immune system or help your body deal with some of the stuff? Yes, there are. So, Organifi makes a good product called immunity. I like it quite a bit. It's mild enough to be taken every day. Of course, it's high in vitamin C. Vitamin C potentially can help if you take high doses of it. There are other compounds in immunity, in Organifi's immunity that help. The other thing is elderberry. Here's why I like elderberry. In elderberry, I don't have a particular brand to advise. We don't have any sponsors that provide elderberry. So, you're gonna have to find your own, but I would suggest going with pure elderberry syrup. Here's a deal with elderberry. It's one of the few things that's been proven to prevent or block the proteins that contribute to the virus's ability to adhere to your cells and replicate. So, it's one of the very few things that's been shown. And so, here's how I would recommend taking elderberry and Organifi's immunity. Just take them prophylactically, meaning take them on a daily basis every single day. Oh, immunity's high in vitamin D. By the way, if your vitamin D levels are low in your body, your immune system is not good. You always wanna have good levels of vitamin D. Zinc is another important thing. I was just gonna say, is zinc something? Cause I know they've comboed elderberry and zinc together, or we're just gonna look primarily for the elderberry by itself. Elderberry by itself, you've got the zinc and the vitamin D inside the Organifi immunity. Yeah, immunity's got the C, the D, the zinc. They've also had, you know, things like turmeric. You know, they have a certain beta-glucan in there, olive leaf, these are all compounds shown to help boost immune system. It's mild enough to take every day. So, what I mean by that is like, okay, so zinc lozenges. I like zinc lozenges. The only reason why I don't recommend taking zinc lozenges every day, if you're not sick, is if you have too much zinc in your system, you could cause like copper deficiencies or whatever. So, immunity from Organifi doesn't have tons of zinc that'll cause that, lozenges tend to. So, I wouldn't take a zinc lozenge unless I felt, oh, I'm starting to get sick. But if you're not sick, take one serving maybe of elderberry every day, one immunity packet every day. They will not replace good sleep. They will not replace being active, being healthy, eating a good diet, avoiding stressful situations. This is not the time to party and stay out late and that kind of shit. Lack of sleep is the worst possible thing you could do for immunity. And, oh, here's another thing, saunas. Saunas seem to have an antiviral effect on the body. So do cold showers. I don't think it's a good idea why you're sick. I think it's a good idea why you're healthy. Cause it's got that, what's that term you use where you give yourself a little dose of something harsh and it strengthens your- Hormetic effect. It's got a hormetic effect. Thank you, Justin. So I would say, do those things and then see what happens. But it's gonna be interesting, dude. It's gonna be interesting to see if this is, we won't know in a year or two if it was an overreaction. You know what I'm saying? We may look back. Cause look at Italy, Italy full lockdown. Still not the damage that the flu has already caused over there. I'm not saying that they're the same illness, but I don't know, man. I don't know if we'll look back and be like, oh, that might've been a little bit of a- Well, yeah, the side that I still keep hearing that is, you know, pointing that we are freaking out too much is that there is still a very highly likely chance that all of us have already had it and didn't even know it. Yeah. Like that this is like, so we're counting, what we're looking at is all the extreme cases and then we're measuring the percentage of that. What we don't know, we may be potentially not counting the thousands or potentially millions of people that got it, thought it was just a normal cold or thought it was just a basic flu, never went to the hospital, never got anything tested to find out, already recovered from it and moved on from it. And if that's the case, if there's already been millions of people that have already gone through- They just didn't have strong enough symptoms to get? Right, they didn't have strong enough systems and then in addition to that, it's also killed less people than the average flu, than it really is a huge overreaction. Yeah, the big fear is the combination of the two, right? Now you got the flu and you got coronavirus and then is it going to overwhelm the healthcare systems? That's the big problem, because in Italy and Northern Italy and a lot of these towns, it was like, you know, 10 people came in and needed hospital care, 20 people, 50 people and it just- Now all the hallways are flooded with people trying to get them care and they can't really, yeah, tackle it. It just overwhelmed the system. So that's, you know, that's one of the big fear. I don't know, man, we're gonna see what happens. Information travels really fast right now. We do have a tendency to freak out. Right. So I'm- And it could be a good thing that the awareness is at least there, you know, so people are like at least taking some measures to try and, you know, wash their hands and like be a little more mindful about the whole thing. Dude, I'm gonna give you an example of how our fear can really fuck us. So in Iran, there's been something like 100 people who've died of alcohol poisoning, toxic alcohol because social media there was promoting a false, you know, virus cure, which was to drink alcohol. What? Now alcohol in Iran is illegal. So the way that they were getting their alcohol was they were getting ethanol and they were mixing it with other things to make it something that you could consume. So strong though that it killed like 100 people. So here you are, 100 people who believed in some bullshit drank toxic alcohol and died and killed themselves because of that, of the fear. Here's the other thing that I'm worried about. I didn't even mention this. You have parts of the country, especially San Francisco and LA, huge homeless populations, huge. LA's got like 70,000 homeless people. San Francisco's got, I don't know how many tens of thousands. If it gets into that population, no healthcare, they're already unhealthy. They don't have, they're mentally ill. Oh my gosh, that could cause, the death toll could be way higher there because they're already all unhealthy. We'll see what happens, dude, but you know, hey listen, listen to Mind Pump, we'll keep you posted. Yeah, and stay healthy, we got you. We're gonna be doing episodes no matter what. So if we're doing it from our bunker, we gotta go on. We'll shift in gears a little bit. I was actually reading this article the other day and like I'm always curious with, you know, some discoveries and things I wasn't aware of. Have you guys ever heard of Otzi, the Ice Man? No, no. Okay, so I guess in the French Alps, these guys were hiking and they came across like this frozen, I don't know if it's like a frozen lake or like this, basically like they found this preserved body, the skeleton of somebody trying to kind of come out of this frozen lake and they thought it was like a pretty recent, you know, event. Yeah, where like somebody died just recently there. Turns out he was like a 5,300 year old. What? Yeah, person that they suspect had been murdered from some sacrificial thing. What? It was so well preserved that they thought it was recent. Yeah, because it was all up in the Alps and it's always been like, you know, freezing temperature. Oh, very cool. Did you see a picture of this? Yeah, there's a picture of it that was in the article and it was just fascinating to me because like you imagine like you're hiking and you're, you know, taking in all the sights and everything and then you see this body and you're like, oh my God, I got to call the authorities. Oh yeah, it's 5,300 years old. Wow. Wow, that's crazy. Wow, that's crazy. That has to be like one of the oldest bodies that are still intact that we've ever found, I would think. Oh wow, look at the picture. Now that's a rendition. Oh, that's the rendition. So there's an actual picture of his skeleton. Yeah, yeah, oh wow, look how well that's preserved. Isn't that crazy? It's like mummified. That is really interesting. The one on the top, right? Yeah, that's the picture of him right there. Looks like they fold him up kind of uncomfortably though. Little bit, yeah. And you said they speculated that he was tortured? He was murdered, yeah. Like he had like, I think there was something indication that he had been hit with something or stabbed or whatever. Dude, people were murdered a lot back in the day, weren't they? Yeah. You know what's another interesting place where they find these really petrified bodies kind of frozen in time, Pompeii. You know Pompeii in Italy where the volcano blew up and just fucking incinerated or mummified half the population. There was a dude that was caught by the ash and mummified or whatever, basically preserved and he was jerking off. No, he was. That is not a true story. 100%. This is not a true story. Yes, he is dude. Dude, that beats Elvis shitting on the toilet. Yeah, dude. Imagine if you get caught, just, ugh. Now here's the deal. They fucking knew the volcano exploded. It wasn't like it. That's why I don't believe this. You can't get caught with your pants down. I don't believe this. Listen dude, listen to me. It's true. Look it, look it, look it. I hope this is true. Look right there, right there. Look at him. I told him dude. He's got his hand right there. He was jerking off. So here's the deal. He knew, they knew the fucking volcano exploded. They had like- Hey, he's gotta rub one out. That's what I'm saying dude. Yeah man, like let's go out with a bang. That's what I'm saying. What are you reading to come across articles like this? What are you reading to come across articles like this? That's even better. I Googled, yeah, dude, yeah, dude died while masturbating. I just wanna make sure that I'll save it. Hey, but what do you think's going through this fucking dude's mind? They were like, oh my God, we're all gonna die. Everybody's just scrambling, running for it. He's like, you know what, we're all dead. Anyway, I mean, for it to calcify him right in the mid stroke like that, like he'd have to be like dying and still doing it. I know, they died so fast. Once it hit them, they weren't just gone. Is it like that? Yeah, but they knew, dude, they had enough time to people were running, they're covering their head. Even that, I also think that's something like Justin would come up with this. You know what I'm gonna do? I'm dying anyway, so I'm gonna grab my dick and just let everybody speculate on it for fucking first centuries, you know what I'm saying? I tell you what, dude. Study my body. That's the most fearless fucking gangster dude I can pick up right now. I think he's got a sense of humor, that's what I think. Because I mean, not only is he jerking off, the dude got a heart on and he's about to die. So he's like, oh my God, everybody run. He's like, all right, whatever, here we go. Yeah, fuck you, volcano. Yeah, exactly, that's gangster. Hey, so what's up with all the controversy on your, was it your story, Adam? What did you post about? Controversy, what are you talking about? Some about Onyck, Nobri, and. Oh, I don't think that's, I don't think it's controversial. I don't know. That just happened today. What, okay, so. So he stepped down as CEO of Onyck. And he announced it publicly? Yeah, he announced it in like Men's Health, did an article about it and everything, so. Oh, really? What did the article say? It just basically said he was moving on his interests in being an author and allowing the COO of the Onyck lab side of it to kind of take over his CEO role. So I think it's, again, this is kind of, when we were there and we talked to him a bit, we got that feeling that he would rather write and vest most of his efforts in that direction and kind of do that. He wasn't really stoked about being CEO. Exactly, he was kind of hinting towards that. How long ago was that that we were there? Well, it was over three years ago. Yeah, and he was hinting that that's what he wanted to do. Yeah, and again, we've had this discussion, Adam put it out there a while ago, I think. So you're following up with that. Yeah, I've been saying it for a long time. I just, you know, and I've done, we have relationships with a lot of the guys over there. So it's part of it's like a friendly job. It's not me trying to be an asshole about things. We went over there almost four years ago now, the first time. And just from the very first day that we went in there, I was like, this just doesn't add up to me. Like there's 170 employees. I remember going around, I remember like talking to like the staff and asking them what they did. And everybody was like really like, nobody could give me like a definition of like their job. And then I remember like paying attention to their ads, looking at their email marketing, what they were doing with classes, the gym facility. And this was all before we had even interviewed Aubrey. And then I remember the first time that we interviewed Aubrey, I was asking a lot of like CEO questions and just not getting the answers that I would expect from somebody who's running a multi-million dollar business. And so from that moment on, I was suspicious of, you know, how well is it being ran over there. And, you know, when I found out the amount of money that the company is making and I know how profitable supplement companies are, most people don't know this, but, you know, a very well-ran supplement company is only profiting about 15 to 20%. That's the margins. Those are good margins. Yeah, those are very good margins. That's a business that's ran very tight. So, you know, when you hear numbers like, oh, they do $40 million a year or whatever, well, you got to divide that by 15%. And now you're looking at like $6 million. And then when you look at 170 employees, you got to break that up and divide that. And then when you see things like investments and partnerships with like Marvel and, you know, creating kettlebells with, you know, animal faces on it. So it's like, those aren't cheap expenses. And then on top of that, when you see how the Facebook ads were ran, when you look at the email marketing on the back end, so all those things I subscribed to and I've watched. And so I've watched this for, you know, the last four years. And, you know, this is an example. And we've had people that, you know, we've talked about hiring on our, with our company that, you know, are big like brand people. You know, oh, it's all about brand. It's all about brand and how you look. And, you know, this is an example in my opinion of when you put so much time, effort, money and looking cool, the person that buys into that, they're bought it. Oh my God, they're so cool. They're so successful, it's so awesome. But when you look under the hood, you realize that it's not being ran that well. And I think the final confirmation for me on that was, you know, we had heard rumors, but what a year and a half, two years ago that they were shopping. And Aubrey also alluded to this, I think the second time that we interviewed him, he alluded to, you know, companies coming in potentially trying to buy. And, you know, I had heard, I think Axos was looking at them. Axos. Axos was looking at them, which is a massive company. And in fact, I think one of the times that we were visiting there, that was like, there was like a serious discussion that was going on. In fact, we were supposed to have dinner, I believe with Aubrey that night. And then something happened with him and Joe. He had to cancel last minute. So there was obviously like a bunch of stuff going on. And this is all me speculating, but it's all starting to add up to me now. Like when they look back at like how everything is unfolded, that, you know, these companies that we're looking at and probably looked under the hood and saw that 90% of the revenue they were generating is from podcasts. And when you look at the podcast, you're talking about, you know, Joe Rogan's podcast, which is the most powerful podcast in podcasting right now. Like it's literally like owning Fox News and CNN. I would even argue it's up there with one of the most powerful media outlet, you know, at all. Right, and so, and what I know, I, you know, pay very close attention to our own analytics and numbers. And I know what kind of business that we have scaled and built off of our audience. And our audience is a fraction of what Joe's is, you know, and Fighter and the Kid. You know, Fighter and the Kid and Joe Rogan are astronomically bigger than we are as far as a podcast. And those two podcasts have been pumping on-it products for over five years now. And so, you know, as a default, you're gonna make money. It reminds me of when you hear me talk about these kids that get really popular on Instagram. They blow up, they do cool stuff on Instagram or they've got great bodies. And so people fall in, they have millions of people and they've got all the fancy cars and they're flashed around and they have a, you know, a lifestyle brand which is basically a peril with their name on it and they buy it from China, they flip it and they double up and sell it. Well, by default, an idiot can build a business that is, you know, making $300,000 a year when you have millions of people, which, so as kids are looking at this in the average person, they go, oh my God, this guy is so successful. Well, no, he found a way to get a ton of attention and as a default, you can pretty much make that much. But it's not a sustainable business. And, you know, what we saw was, you know, almost two years now people have been shopping, I think, on it and there's been no purchase at all and I think that's the reason why. And so this news that he announced stepping down, I don't know, I just, if you're the CEO of a company for this long and you were shopping to sell it, my theory would be you would want to be in that position to sell, to cash out before you move on to other endeavors and- Well, he probably still has the same amount of shares. I don't know if stepping down means he's giving up his shares. I mean, look, I'm gonna give you- Yeah, but what are the shares really worth if no one's willing to pay for them? That's true. So I'm gonna give you push back from what I think some people may be thinking because there may be some people listening saying, hey, on it, Aubrey is the head of on it since the beginning and they're, you know, the company's tens of millions of dollars if they haven't reached a hundred million dollars in revenue, that seems to be pretty successful. Well, not when you divide that by 15% and then the 170 employees like I told you. So, and I knew something was up like about- And you're saying most of that success is just because they're connected to- A podcast. To Rogan. And all the revenues come from the supplements. Yeah. Which was very surprise. Well, I guess it's not very surprising to me because obviously like the margins there are like, you know, superior. We know what the equipment business looks like. That's a tough, tough nut to crack. Yeah, that's another thing that you gotta understand. Is like, we understand all these models, right? So I understand what, and we have like close friends. Kettlebell Kings are really close friends of ours enough to where they open books and share margins with us when it comes to shipping products. And they solved the shipping issue which was the biggest hurdle for something heavy as a kettlebell, right? And so like their model is only successful basically because they've addressed that one thing. And even then, they're not as far as massive and as popular as Kettlebell Kings are. You know, they're not making tons and tons of profit because the margins are so thin. And so, you know, I know that that side of the business doesn't make a lot, especially when you go out and you spend money on doing things like Marvel, you know, to do something like that had to cost probably minimum tens of thousands. I would even. You have to sell just to pay for the licensing. Right, to license that. So you don't think it was just a revenue share thing? You think there was also an outright, we're gonna pay Marvel a massive fee just to even. Yeah, that's exactly it. Of course, do you think if we went to Marvel right now and we wanted to partner with them, they would say, sure, we'll let you throw. Probably not. No, of course, you'd have to pay a licensing fee. And then in addition to that, you may also have to give a rev share. Now, maybe they paid a fee that just allowed them to use it, but anyways, the point of me sharing that is that there's minimal to no profits on that side of the house, right? We've seen how much activity happens inside the gym and classes and things like that. For the facility and what's going on in the facility, we know what it's like to operate a 10 to 30,000 square foot building and the type of traffic that you need just to break even, much less be profitable. It's very obvious when you go there that that's not also profitable. And then you look at what we've seen kick up in the last six weeks, which now it makes sense because I see the post come out that he stepped down, the new CEO, the new CEO has already been being integrated over the last month and a half. Do you think layoffs are gonna follow? Yeah, for sure. Yeah, no, definitely. I mean, I would think that if you've got 170 employees, well, no, we know that. Well, they have more than that because you're not even counting the warehouse and all that stuff. I mean, our boy is no longer the podcast host. Oh, oh, yeah, yeah. I mean, Kyle has already been let go. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He's doing his own thing. So yeah, the layoffs are already beginning. You know, the layoffs are happening now and so. This is pure speculation. Oh yeah, 100% I mean, I haven't said anything that's a, I can't guarantee you anything. I've just, I've been speculating on this for like four years now. And whenever somebody comes up to me and talks about how massive or how impressive they are, I'm like the first one to be like, well, you know, looks can be deceiving, you know? Don't judge a book by its cover just because it looks hella cool. Doesn't mean it's ran really efficiently. My impression, and again, this is my speculation is that one thing that might have been happening and this is a mistake that I think that some people make when they have a company is they like somebody a lot. So they'll make friends with someone, they'll like them, maybe the person's talented, cool, they connect, whatever. And then they try to fit them into their business. They try to figure out a position for them versus having a need and then finding the right person to fill. Let's see. 100%, here's the thing that I, like, where I felt like that, right? I felt like these are friends. Where I have empathy for, like, somebody like Aubrey in this situation, I mean, I remember us challenging ourselves this way. Okay, so if you don't know the backstory, backstory on the birth of, on it is really Alpha Brain. It was a product that Aubrey and Joe pretty much created. Aubrey originally went to Joe with a different idea, like a hangover type of pill. Joe said, no, let's do something related to Neutropics. That was when that was popping. And then they went and they created Alpha Brain. Alpha Brain gets released on Joe Rogan's podcast, absolutely explodes. I think they sold, like, 75,000 bottles or something. Yeah, some ridiculous number. I can't remember the exact... They also funded a study that was actually pretty good for them, which was actually a good step. No, no, this was the most brilliant move of it, was doing this, and then it exploded overnight. Now, when you get, when you sell 75,000 bottles of Alpha Brain, you are instantly infused with, you know, hundreds of thousands of dollars into a business. And, you know, I used to challenge us all the time when we first started and we were growing and we used to say, like, oh, man, if we could be making this much more money or if we had this much money, and I'd say, if someone handed us $10 million right now, we would probably fuck it up. And the reason why we'd fuck it up is because we would also have $10 million and we'd be like, oh my God, we have all this revenue coming in. We need a person for this position. We need a person for this position. We need it. And then you just start hiring all these people who you think or assume you definitely need if you're gonna be a 10 million plus company. And so you start doing that. Now, I think we were blessed that we grew slowly over the five years so we could learn by trial and error and, you know, grow a position and then, okay, now hire or contract that position out, then grow it. That means the mistakes that we potentially make are smaller, they cost less. Right. And so I think, you know, again, in defense of Aubrey and on it, I mean, when you explode overnight over that, it's really tough. Oh, shit, I mean, it all hands on deck. Right. And what does that look like? You didn't really have, yeah, that slow period where you could really farm the right people and, you know, you just need to fill that need. Look at what we did, right? We slowly looked, I mean, our marketing side, our customer service side, our administrative side that we have, everybody was looked at very carefully and we all looked for somebody who was extremely talented at that position before. And then we also made sure that the position was there before we brought them on, where when you're in their shoes, when you grow that fast overnight, it's like scrambling. You're just like, oh, what, you do design? Cool, you're on here. Oh, what, you know about marketing? Okay, you're here. Oh, okay, you book, okay, you're here and you just start putting all these people in place and boy, is that a hell of a task for a CEO who's never been in that situation before to have to try and navigate. And so I understand like, you know, and then also if you have other passions, like you're chasing ayahuasca and plant medicine and you're into that fucking shit way more than you are scaling a business then. And that was the initial feeling I got when we first met. I was like, dude, this dude's not, I'm asking like, I love when I get to meet like a CEO of a big company. It's because I'm aspiring CEO of a big company. And so I look at them and I wanna ask questions like so I can learn. And I remember firing questions and going, man, I'm not getting any of the answers that I want or I feel like I can learn from it. And it was very obvious to me early on that. His interests were sort of elsewhere, totally. Yeah, well, we'll see what happens. But that scene, that was our impression anyway. Well, we'll see, you know, exactly what happens. All right, our first question is from Jay M. Key. What's your advice for someone who mentally struggles with taking rest days? Oh yeah, this is a good one because now, this is the kind of person that really obsesses over exercise. They're afraid if they miss a workout, they're going to get fat. They're gonna lose their progress. They're gonna lose muscle or exercise for them is an escape and they need to work out because otherwise they feel sad or depressed or too stressed out. So I can relate to this. I was for a long time, extremely, I'd say addicted to exercise in some of those senses. It wasn't so much of an escape to me as it was more of I'm afraid I'm gonna lose my gains. I'm afraid my body's not gonna respond well. There's a couple of points I wanna make with that. One, rest days, if they're done properly, actually contribute to better fat loss and better muscle gain. Giving your body the ability to rest, not overtraining, accelerates and amplifies results. So if you're afraid of the loss of gains or the loss of progress and you're just working out every day, every day, every day, the opposite is likely true. The second part, this one's a little harder, just telling someone to not work out and because it makes them feel good and then what do they replace it with? Here's my advice to those people, you can still work out, just modify. Modify the intensity. Yeah, I actually, so I like, I like if you're going to the gym every day, if you have that as a routine, and I find still to this day, like I have much better success when I've just decided that, hey, an hour a day is dedicated to fitness for me. It's like, and you have a certain time that you do it at and if I do it every single day, every day, I tend to get much better results than if I say, oh, I'm going to train intensely three days a week and that's it. I actually tend to put it off, like, oh, I just need to get another day lifting and I can't do it today, I'll do it tomorrow or whatever. So I actually love the idea of every day doing something. It's just, you learn to scale it and change it. So. Yeah, you can't go hard every day. Yeah, no, you definitely don't go hard every day, but you go to the gym every day and sometimes the gym workout that day is like all mobility and list cardio. That's all you're doing. You're doing cardio, you're doing mobility work and or stretching or meditation or sauna or trigger sessions or mobility sessions or focus days. So I like to have three to five, depending on where I am in my volume of training, like kind of intenser days and then two to four days, depending on where I'm at of these free days. Maybe I swim one day. So I like the idea of someone struggles with taking days off, don't take a day off. Just change the intensity of what you're doing. You don't have to take a day off. And again, this reflects a lot of the most successful programs out there. Like even if it's a, you know, any Olympic lifting, you know, program or like some serious programs, they still, they train consistently almost on a daily basis, but it's a matter of fluctuating the intensity and the volume. And so it, you know, like, I know even one, you know, some of the strength conditioning coaches is called micro dosing. So it's like a matter of like managing the dose of stress continuously to where, you know, some days you press it, but even then the follow-up day, you're just like reducing a lot of that stress that you're introducing to yourself, but you're still moving, you're still active. There's a lot of ways to express your body where it's not as damaging. And so that, that just has to be top of mind. I like, you know, I like that because if you're mentally struggling with taking rest days, you know, one of the best strategies is kind of a step ladder approach. It's a lot easier to rather than having a rest day if you're mentally struggling with it, to rather than doing that, still going to the gym, but just doing something different. And then the next step from there, if appropriate, would be to have a rest day. Just going from seven days a week to taking rest days might be too much. And what you end up finding with situations like that is people replace it with something that's maybe not as healthy. So, you know, for example, if I'm working with someone with nutrition, I like to replace behaviors with other behaviors rather than just cutting behaviors out. So if you're just like, oh my gosh, I can't even comprehend taking a day off. Okay, you don't have to necessarily still go to the gym, go a lot easier, go a lot lighter, maybe try doing something that you don't normally do. Yoga is a great example of that. You know, if you're somebody who likes to work out, work out hard all the time, why not go to the gym? And don't do a power yoga class that's cheating. Do like a yin yoga, a relaxing mobility workout, sauna, steam, see how that works. Then once you're consistent with that, you might find that then the next step might be not going to the gym, but maybe going on a walk or a hike or staying at home and doing stretching and that kind of stuff. But definitely, definitely, definitely, if you over apply intensity and combine it with a lot of frequency, in other words, work out hard too often, you're going to progress slower, you may even halt your progress and in some cases, reverse your progress. All right, our next question is from Andrew Beth. If on a budget, what are some of the higher quality protein sources you recommend buying? I put this question. Sheep protein. I put this question in here because I get asked it a lot. Yeah, but be careful with that statement. When you, you typically pay for what you get with protein. The biggest difference in price, when you go look at a jug of protein that's being sold for maybe $24 versus one that's being sold for 50 or 70, it's the amount of protein per serving that's in there. That's the biggest difference. The margins with supplement companies, there isn't really this like massive difference where like, oh, this company's just way cheaper and it's great quality than this company. It's like the discrepancy in the $20 to $50 or $70 bottles, like why are they so different but they're shaped about the same size is when you flip the label around and you actually measure out how many grams of protein and how many servings you're actually getting. That's the biggest difference. The difference between a protein powder that is claiming that it's extremely cheap, a lot of the times what they're doing is they have 14 grams of protein in their serving. So of course it's cheaper. You're the most expensive part of the protein powder is the protein. So you got to be careful of that. Then you have other companies that aren't paying for third party testing which is expensive to do. So that's why they have to normally pay for or charge a little more for it. So if you go for the cheapest protein all the time, you got to be careful that you're not getting somebody who's won just making it look like it's a great deal but when you actually measure out all the grams of protein per serving, it's really not. And then in addition to that, they're also not third party tested and so they don't have to spend that money on it. So I caution people that are just trying to save, you know, five bucks on a protein powder because of this. When you look at it per serving, it's not that big of a difference. Yeah, and then they've had in the past companies that have done what's called amino acid spiking. So what they'll do is they'll, so proteins are made up of it or chains of amino acids. And one way, and I'm gonna simplify this a little more complicated but a company will get tested on their grams of protein by testing certain amino acids and then because there's so much of, you know, leucine or whatever, they can estimate, oh, this is how many grams of protein. So what some companies did is instead of having 30 grams of protein, they had 30 grams of a particular amino acid that would show up. So then they'd get tested, it would get verified they had that much protein. But then when other testing came out that got even more specific in detail, they found, uh-oh, there's half as much protein as they said. Now I'm gonna go the whole food route. So the whole food route, what foods can you get? That'll give you, you know, good protein at good prices. You can actually do pretty well with this. Tuna fish is a very inexpensive source of protein. You can buy chicken breasts and chicken thighs. Chicken thighs. And bulk. All day. Really, really good prices where you're having, you know, a couple dollars a serving of 30 grams of protein if you buy bags of, you know, bulk of chicken breasts and chicken thighs. Here's another great, great source of protein that's really, really good, well priced. Grobes and crickets. Yeah, go outside. Nobody will do it, you know, it's a really high source of protein. Look into it. It is, but if you don't want to eat bugs, if you can tolerate dairy, cottage cheese. Cottage cheese is cheap, high protein source. You could go the full fat route if you want higher calories. You could go the lower non-fat route if you want to go low calories. This was a staple when I was growing up trying to increase my protein intake, increase my calories. I would go to the store. I'd buy a big jug of cottage cheese and have 100 grams of protein for the whole day and it wouldn't cost me more than six bucks or something like that. So you can get really, you can get inexpensive with all kinds of food if you're smart. Now here's where it gets expensive, eating out. If you're trying to get 30 to 40 grams of protein in a serving and you're eating at Chipotle or the burger place or wherever, yeah, you're gonna be spending 1,000 bucks or more a month on getting that kind of stuff. But if you buy in bulk, especially if it's frozen, you can go to the grocery store and buy a big bag of frozen chicken thighs or frozen chicken breasts. Oh my gosh, man, it's really inexpensive. You could do really well. And to that point, if you're cooking your food that is by far the best advice, if you're looking for something fast and you're either eating out or you're having a protein shake, your protein shake is gonna be way cheaper when you measure out what it is. Yeah, it's still cheaper. Yeah, if you were to, like to your point, so if you go to your favorite restaurant and you get a 40 gram of protein meal, which is normally steak or a chicken type of meal. It's like minimum eight bucks. Yeah, minimum. Minimum. Most likely you're paying like 15 to 25 bucks or what about that? I mean, the shake per serving, you're probably breaking it down to like $2. Yeah, a couple bucks. Yeah, so you're still, when you're talking about getting proteins expensive, no matter where you get it, right? And unless you get it in bulk, like you're saying and you're just buying chicken thigh and I love to recommend chicken thighs, like I wish somebody would have turned me on to that. I fell into the like, oh, we need to eat chicken breast all the time when I was younger. And so I was wasting all this money on chicken breast when I was trying to grow and get bigger. Anyways, I should have been doing thighs that had more fat, they taste better and they have almost as damn much protein as the chicken breast does. So that's a great piece of advice, but be careful on trying to save, you know, 10 dollars. The difference between a bottle that is like literally 10, $20, $30 difference, it's not the brand, it's like what they're getting. Like turn the label around and actually count out how many servings are in it and how many grams of protein per serving. And most likely the difference of that $20 more expensive bottle, that's the main reason. The second main reason is because they probably do third-party testing and then the other company doesn't. So yeah. You know, for fish, you know it's relatively inexpensive tilapia. You can buy tilapia also. And then I said tuna fish. I mean, eggs, eggs are relatively inexpensive. Like you could totally do this and save a lot of money. You just have to cook your food at home. That's the biggest piece of advice that I have. Even with steak or, excuse me, red meat. Get yourself a George Foreman grill. Oh dude, that was the key. Life saver. Yeah, same thing. Oh, ground beef. Ground beef, you can buy big ass packs of bulk ground beef and it's relatively inexpensive, totally, totally. Next question is from Andrew Beth. What is the ideal role that hit and list cardio play in a workout to maximize fat loss and retain muscle? Can you give an idea what a week would look like if incorporating those two forms of cardio? All right, so first is break those two down. So hit and list are acronyms. Hit stands for high intensity interval training. This type of cardiovascular activity is characterized by a short sprint followed by a slow, relaxed portion and then a repeated attempt at the sprint. So if you're on a bike, you would go all out for 20 seconds and then maybe a minute and a half, kind of slow, get your heart rate back down and then repeat it. List cardio or list stands for low intensity, steady state. This is the traditional form of cardio that most of us are familiar with where you just get on a elliptical, a bike, or a treadmill and you just cruise for 30 minutes. Now, what are their values? What are their detriments? Hit cardio, you're gonna get better performance. You might retain more muscle from doing it. You could do less of it and burn just as many calories so it's more time efficient. List cardio's benefits, it's easier on the joints, less likely to hurt yourself, less stressful for the body overall. So which one do you do and how much? Depends on who you are. If you are a cortisol junky stress person with low bad sleep, high stress, that job, you're already pushing your body to the limit with resistance training. Go to list route. Yeah, go list. It's calming, it's relaxing, it's rejuvenating, go for a long walk, something like that. Do it that route. If you're super well recovered, if you're an athlete, you've got good biomechanics so you can sprint without running like an idiot and hurting yourself, hit cardio. It's, oh, and if you're very timed, if you don't have much time, hit cardio can work very, very well but it really depends on who you are because if you apply hit on the wrong person or list on the wrong person, you're gonna get terrible results. Yeah, I think to, you know, there's benefits and detriments. So it will put a little more wear and tear on your joints. Like if you're doing hit cardio quite a bit but you are stimulating that fast twitch muscle fiber response which is, you know, something you're not necessarily gonna get with list cardio. So, you know, just considering that in terms of like performance and overall function, like it's a good caddy to, that's why you see a lot more athletes utilizing hit training but it is, if you get a low impact type of equipment, like I use like an assault bike or something like that or I can actually sprint where it's pretty relatively low impact on my joints. You know, you can actually like max sprint and you can sprint without actually getting that type of detrimental stress on the joints and, you know, it could be something that you can incorporate but for the most part it is something to consider like how well are my joints, you know, reinforced and do I have that kind of stability to do it? You know, versus list will, you know, be another option again for somebody who's like always doing high intensity activities. So I'll give you an example, a generic example of how I use hit and list for somebody who's getting, trying to get shredded, right? So this is different than the recommendation for just general health, how I would utilize hit or list. Normally if I'm utilizing both hit and list with a client and we have a specific goal we're trying to shred down for a show and this is how I would use this. And again, this is generic but give you an idea. So it's eight weeks left until showtime with a client we have to present the best physique we possibly can. I've done my due diligence, I've built my client's metabolism up, they're eating a healthy amount of calories. They're stepping or walking moderately which is probably six to 8,000 steps, maybe 10,000 steps depending on what kind of job they have is what was keeping them at this point. Now we have eight weeks left and we get to get ready for show and up into this point I have not used any cardio whatsoever. In fact, while I'm building a client's metabolism I have them shut down all types of cardio. I don't want them going out of their way to move any extra. I'm trying to build muscle, get their calorie intake up as high as I can before I reverse them down. So now we get ready for the cut. So the very first thing that I'm going to do at that eight week mark is I'm actually gonna increase their steps. And I typically increase about 2,000 steps a day every day for the week. So if you're at averaging 8,000 a day I tell that client eight weeks out, okay now I want you to average 10,000 every day. Now what that looks like is kind of like lists. I mean lists is low intensity, steady state cardio is pretty much walking around or hiking. It's pretty close to that, right? It's somewhere walking around or hiking outside is right between neat and probably lists. And so I'm gonna try and get them to just create more activity. I tell them, hey, go for an extra walk with a dog or walk with your spouse to try and get those steps. Now I'm gonna keep increasing their steps week over week until they start getting to places like 12,000, 16,000 steps. Now they're starting to, now their clients normally around this point are telling me, okay Adam, I am getting up an extra hour early and kind of walking. I walk the dog an extra time. My spouse and I walk after dinner this time and I'm barely hitting my 14 to 16,000 steps you want me at. I go okay, now let's introduce hit. So now what I want you to do is every day that you work out, post work out, I want you to do a 12 minute hit session. So after the theory and the idea behind that is that roughly 80% of their glycogen stores has been depleted when they've worked out. Now I'm gonna completely deplete that for sure by doing 12 minutes of hit post. And so then they get this great fat burning effect over the course of the next half hour, hour, two hours until they re-consume and digest. And glycogen is the energy that your body utilizes from carbohydrates. And once you run out of that, then your body burns fat. Right, and so the theory and the idea here is that I make sure I deplete that completely from somebody. So now when they are driving home and preparing their next meal and then even consuming their next meal before that starts to get digested and then converted to glucose, their body's like metabolizing fat to get them there. So that's the idea. So then I introduce, and this is normally, hit doesn't come into play until about weeks four or five, like say we have four or five weeks. So the first three weeks I'm just increasing steps. Then I use hit post workout. I do that for probably two weeks. That's normally enough to kick up the how many calories a day they're burning because we've now included in that. And now I'm gonna start to add like hour bouts of like list cardio where I'd say, okay, this is our final four to five weeks before the show. Now you're doing your 12 minutes of hit post workout. So we deplete the glycogen stores. Now, in addition to that, every other day on week, you know, four weeks out, I'm having you do an hour of list. And then when it gets to three weeks out, I'm having you do it every day. And then that's kind of what it looks like leading up. You're ramping up to hit is the peak. Yes. So, and I start with hit before I do anything else because it's the less time demanding. It's only 12 minutes. I'm asking him to do that. And then I start to, the very last thing I start to recommend to client when trying to get shredded is the hour long sessions on the treadmill. And that's just because when I reverse them out the other direction, that's the first thing that goes, it's the most time consuming thing. And the rest is more lifestyle and short 12 minute bouts for me to reverse out of. It just seems to be the best strategy that I have found for competing clients and getting shredded. And that's kind of the model that I've used. Yeah. Now, here's how I like to look at cardio. I look at resistance training, lifting weights as the workout. That's when I'm training and pushing my body and working out. I look at cardio as a way to rejuvenate my body as an act, as a form of active recovery. Okay. And this is for the average person that I would train. Now, when I would look at him that way, I almost never did hit because hit is more of a workout. It's more like resistance training than the list is than the steady state stuff. So if I have the, if the person has the energy and the ability to push in a workout, I'm not gonna do hit with them. I'll just do more resistance training. When I have them do the, you know, let's get recovery, let's do active recovery, let's rejuvenate the body. I just have them do less. And I like to have it in the form of walking outside or things that seem to feel rejuvenating. Now, if I do combine the two, because the last part of the question is what would a week look like? I tend to do a two to one ratio. Two list workouts for everyone, hit workout. Now, I'm not talking about every single day. Usually what it looks like for the average person who's already fit and doing everything else right is two days of list cardio, one day of hit cardio. So that two to one ratio. Because again, I wanna minimize that high intensity push because I wanna save that for the resistance training. No, and I think you're right to point that. I would totally not like do a regular workout and then hit even with athletes. Like it was something that we would focus on. Now we're in metabolic conditioning. We're conditioning the athlete now to then build up their endurance and then like emulate it somewhat towards their sport. So if it's like a few seconds of like high intensity bursts and then slow kind of movement right after that, that's what it looked like. So it wasn't a combination of both. Next question is from Trevor Way, 16. What foods do you think are most wrongfully demonized and what foods do you think are overhyped? Oh, wrongfully demonized is easy, red meat. That's a very easy one for me to point out. Oh, I was gonna say butter. Not well, it used to be, but not maybe not as much. That's a good one though. Eggs, yeah. Red meat for sure, here's a deal with red meat. It's the most nutrient dense meat, animal protein. It's extremely nutrient dense. You could actually get away with just eating red meat for a very, very long time. It's got a very high source of creatine, which creatine has been shown to not just benefit athletic performance, that's obvious, but it's also been shown to benefit heart health. It's been shown to benefit brain health. In my opinion, in the next 10 to 15 years, they're gonna recommend creatine to everybody, including kids, because it's been shown to have so many amazing benefits. Red meat has been shown, some people say the study show red meat contributes to some colon cancer, this and that. First off, the increases are tiny and they tend to not control for processed red meat. Salamis and sausages and those types of meats, which processed meats are like other processed foods. They're not nearly as healthy. And they tend to not cut out burgers and shit like that. So if somebody says, if you look at the average American and you say, oh, all these people tend to eat a lot of red meat and you don't control for what kind of red meat, where do you think most Americans get their red meat from? Yeah, burgers. Burgers, burgers tend to come with sodas and bread and other shit and fries and all that stuff. Most people are not getting their red meat from healthy quality sources. Grass-fed, grass-finished. Yeah, or steaks or whatever. Exactly, so red meat for sure, overly. Yeah, no, I'll keep in the red meat, because I do see that a lot. That's the new target number one, and because there's so much interest in being able to sort of solve these massive global issues with whether it's environment, whether it's space on the planet, whatever it is, there's a lot of interest there. And so they're already creating these fake meats besides the Beyond Burger and all these types of things. They're actually have these 3D printed steaks now, which I saw the other day somebody pointed out to me. And it's gonna keep being a thing. And what's gonna make that relevant is to demonize red meat, right? It's this massive push to push us off of consuming red meat so that way we can adopt this new franken meat. Yeah, and again, the problem with controlling for these studies is most people who eat a lot of red meat are eating a lot of burgers, a lot of sausage, a lot of not as good sources. But when you look at the better sources, God, you break down red meat, man. Again, it's the most nutrient dense common meat that you can find. It's got almost everything that your body needs, so completely wrongfully demonized. I agree, I think that, I mean, I like the butter and oil thing too though, because I feel like it hasn't even been that long in my own personal diet, did I begin really using a lot of butter and oil because I come from the generation of low fat and oil. You think of me like heart attack if you see somebody slathering butter on everything. Right, but if you're somebody who eats primarily whole foods and you use oil or butter to make your vegetables taste better, God, it's amazing. What a great example too, because here's what happened with the hysteria around butter. People stopped eating butter and they replaced it with margarine. Vegetable sourced fat oils that tasted like butter, because people like butter. So the demonization of butter resulted in worse health because then people started consuming these partially hydrogenated oils like margarine, which we were told is better because it's not butter. I can't believe it. And now we know for a fact that those were bad. They're not just worse, they're bad. And so that's the problem. Same thing with red meat. The demonization of red meat is gonna cause people to eat foods that are bad for them. So yeah, wrongfully, totally wrongfully. Now, what do you guys think are some overhyped foods? Like super foods or foods that people today that are like, oh my God, cure all type shit. Like what do you think? I got a good one. And it's overhyped does not mean that this food is bad. It just means it's overhyped. Fruit, I think fruit is totally overhyped. Anytime you see somebody study talk about a healthy diet, they talk about lots of fruits, vegetables and nuts. But when you control for just fruit and you cut out the vegetables and other stuff, it's not, yes, there's some nutrients and fruit that are good and it's not bad for you. But I wouldn't put them up there with the healthiest foods that you could possibly consume. They tend to contain a lot of sugar. We've modified fruit to become these calorie sugar bars. I'm gonna agree with you if it's anything except for berries. Because if it's blackberries, blueberries, strawberries, raspberries, it falls in the berry group. The bang for your buck nutrient-wise is phenomenal. Fiber, antioxidants and the calories that you consume and that, I still would consider it. But everything else, pears, bananas, grapes, I mean, all the other. They got cotton candy flavored grapes, bananas to have no seeds in them. I know, it's like they turn it into candy. And look, you just wait to the point where if they could breed blueberries to become the size of apples, you'd start to see that too. And then it would lose its total value. I have no idea. I think like, is whole grains still a thing? Oh gosh. Because I remember that was so pushed on everybody that's like, oh, it's ancient grains or it's like whole grains. And let's be honest, what are you really getting from that? Like nutrient-wise and then also like how much you have to process it just to be able to digest it. So I just, I don't see a whole lot of value in that I find other carb sources a lot more valuable if I'm like looking for that type of nutrient. I would throw sugar-free substitutes in here also as far as overhyped. When we look at the research on does it help people actually technically lose weight even though it's zero calories everything points to that it doesn't. People eat more. Right. So if, why go through this whole idea of eating this artificial sweetener in pursuit of not consuming more calories when all the research is showing that it's not really helping. You wanna hear an interesting study around that? So the vast majority of people who consume sugar-free products are consuming a beverage. It's typically soda by far, right? Soda artificially sweetened zero calorie sodas by far make up the vast bulk of the zero calorie artificially sweetened products, right? Wouldn't you guys agree? Yeah. Those products are almost never consumed by themselves. It's almost typically people are not consuming a diet soda and not having anything else with it. They're typically consuming the diet soda along with french fries, burger, pizza or some other, you know, higher calorie food. Well they just showed a study that showed that consuming artificially sweetened zero calorie beverages and then following up with a high carbohydrate whatever whether it be french fries or popcorn or something else actually changes the way the body processes the carbohydrates and could encourage the study said could potentially encourage insulin resistance. So it actually is a bad combination. So if you're drinking your, if you're at the movies and you got your candy and your popcorn and then your diet soda, that might not be a good thing. You might actually combining the two because what happens is you're sending a very powerful sweet signal to the brain. Artificially sweetened products are far sweeter than sugar sweetened products. That signal goes to the brain, the body anticipates X amount of carbohydrates or sugar doesn't get them but it operates as if it's going to get them and that's the theory behind what's going on. Now I have a food group that I think is underrated which I think that, you know, not till recently and we do address this. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. No, this is not going to sound right coming out of my mouth but no mushrooms. I feel like I've listened to so many different podcasts and like watch documentaries and just like we are just not utilizing the benefits of mushrooms enough. Like you talk, you listen to somebody like Paul Stamets or Tarot who's like the head of Four Segmentic and that's kind of what led us into that. There's medicinal value but there's also like digestive value. There's lots of like values nutrient-wise that we get like solely from mushrooms. What a great, great point you just brought up. Yes, and you know why? Because people consider mushrooms to be part of vegetable family. That's a zone category. Yeah, it's not. It's not, it's totally different. It's a fungus. It's a fungus. So what ends up happening is somebody's like oh, I'm eating healthy. I am eating a couple servings of vegetables every day and they don't consider that mushrooms are separate. If you look at all the ancient health practices, Chinese medicine, Ayurvedic medicine, mushrooms are always a part of them. They have lots and lots of health properties that are unique to mushrooms when you compare them to other food groups. So I love that you brought that up. I think that's a very big one. And with that, go to mindpumpfree.com and download all of our guides, resources, and books. They're all totally free. You can also find us all on Instagram. You can find Justin at Mind Pump Justin. You can find me at Mind Pump Sal and Adam at Mind Pump Adam.