 Look, strength isn't just your muscles contracting. Strength is also a skill. What does that mean? The more you can practice an exercise, the better you can get at your biomechanics and your control, the stronger you're going to be. Now what does that mean? That means you'll get more out of the exercise. So the skill of the lift is just as important as the size of your muscle fibers or how hard your muscles can contract. This one, strength athletes know very well. Yeah, we have a great example when we look at, when we compare like a, say like a bodybuilder's physique to like an Olympic lifter's physique. There's a perfect example of like, you've got these Olympic lifters that look like they're half the human that some of these bodybuilders are, yet they have the capability to lift sometimes two times more than what they are. Do you know, are you familiar with any studies that actually break down the math behind that like, you know, technique and central nervous system and form and practicing is, is represents what percentage of strength versus just overall volume and size of muscle fibers? Like, you know what the ratio is. I know we can, we can speculate. That's a really good question. I would use power lifters as a better example, not because Olympic lifters don't have skill. They have tremendous skill in what they're doing, but because the lifts are so explosive and it lacks the eccentric, right? It lacks the like lowering of the weight. Olympic lifters are not going to get as much hypertrophy as let's say a power lifter. Now power lifters, they lift more like bodybuilders than Olympic lifters do. Now are power lifters not muscular? No, they're very muscular. Oh, I think, I think that Olympic lifters are a better example of your analogy you're giving though. You don't, you think power lifters is a better example. Just to compare to bodybuilders, because bodybuilders bench deadlift and squat, bodybuilders don't clean and snatch and they don't drop the weight. They typically lower the weight with control, whereas power lifters lower with control. So when you want to look at like the hypertrophy differences, the muscle growth differences, I think it's a little better. Like a, like a power lifters can squat a tremendous amount of weight. It typically has big thighs as well, but power lifters focus a lot on technique. Everything is about the perfect positioning of the bar. You'll watch them place their feet a certain way. They go down slowly to stay perfectly in alignment so they can exert the force in the right direction. Whereas, you know, bodybuilders more are, by the way, bodybuilders, you know, people get, get this misconstrued. They're also very focused on technique. Now their technique focus is more about the feel of the muscle versus moving the weight. Yeah, they'd rather, they'd rather feel the muscle burn and fatigue and get a pump over leveraging the most amount of weight. Yes, yes, yes. But like, okay, so like, there was a study recently that, you know, just came out, Lane Norton actually covered it. I think I talked a little bit about this on a previous podcast, but they compared lifters who trained at sub intensity level. So they didn't train to failure, but they practiced the exercises a bit more often versus another group that trained at very high intensities and the group that didn't go to failure built more muscle. Now, to be clear, there's studies that show that intensity will build more muscle than what I just said. So there's always contradicting studies and we can get into why, but the reason I think those people built more muscle is because practicing technique is better when you're not training at super high intensities. Like the second you go super hard, your technique goes out the window, you're fatigued. So like you'll see this with power lifters, they rarely will train with their max, they'll train at sub max levels and you'll watch them like try to really perfect the technique and skill of the lift. Now for the average person, this matters because the better you can do a squat, the more you'll get out of it, right? The better you could bench, the more you'll get out of it. Yes, it's the hard wiring sort of process to that. And that's why, you know, technique does matter so much, you know, regardless of what you're doing, even if you go through a stint of it, just to get your body to use that is like it's operating system. This is how we move the weight, this is how we perform the exercise. So it's not when you're under a state of fatigue, you're not just reverting to by any means necessary posture elite to be able to muscle it up. There's a bit of a caveat to that though, because when I do an exercise like a bench press, squatters like this, even deadlift to an extent is like this, um, I need enough weight that it helps me have to focus on bracing all over that it's like, so like when I warm up for a squat, I just, just doing the bar is a waste of time almost because it's such lightweight that I, it doesn't force me to intrinsically brace my core and be rigid. And, and so it just feels flimsy when you're warming up. So there is like a, you want to have enough intensity that it forces you to, to brace really well, stay rigid, stay tight, but not so much weight that it fatigues the muscle and you didn't get good practice, good practice from it. No, I understand a hundred percent. And again, if we go back to studies on strength training, you can find studies that show that low reps build more muscle than high reps. And you'll find other studies that show high reps builds more muscle. You'll find some that show multiple sets does better than single sets. Then you'll find other studies that show single sets to failure do better. You'll see time under tension, but it works better. But then you'll see, like, you know, studies that show that explosive movements or faster pace builds. And so it's like all these contradicting studies. The point I want to make with this is all the, there isn't a single strength training controlled study that's three years long or even a year long. They're all 12, eight weeks, 12 weeks, 16 weeks at most. And the body adapts very quickly. All these things have value. So like for the average person listening, I think it's important that you go and you train to just feel the muscle, but I also think it's important you go and practice the exercise itself and master the skill. It all has value unless you plan on working out for 12 weeks and then stopping, right? But if you want to keep going and keep progressing, that's why these debates over studies just sounds like you're talking circles because it's like, there's so many methods that have value. And I mean, it gets frustrating because it's, um, dogmatic on one end versus the other. And, and, you know, people are trying to pull you into their camp. And it's like, look, there's value to this because obviously it's going to build muscle, you know, if I'm focused on the hypertrophy, you visibly see that, uh, you know, if I'm just working on my central nervous system, I'm going to build strength, which in fact also builds muscle, uh, and it's, there's so many methods in between acute variables you can mess and tweak with. And so it just becomes this like, uh, what are we doing? Like always going to sit here and debate, like, all these like valing and nothing works at the same time. Yeah, you just have to rotate them around now. It's all within reason, right? Cause there's things outside the realm of what's, what's going to help. But like, it would be like, you know, and this is much more clear, but it would be like a study showing like, Hey, if you improve airflow on an engine, it gets more horsepower and someone else is like, well, actually, if you change the gear ratios, that makes it go faster. And then the other person was like, well, you know, if you make just the engine bigger, everybody competing, right? And when everybody needs to say like, actually it's all works together and there's a way to piece this all together, which is the most important thing. Well, and then, okay, great analogy. Cause then there's the other thing too that has to be factored in is like, what is going to give you the greatest beg for your buck? Because then there's the other part of what we do in our space, which is we split hairs over some things that don't matter much. We tend to get hung up on, Oh, this is what really, this is also kind of how I feel. And I know I'm going to get some flak for this because I know there's a camp around the intensity thing of like having to go training to failure all the time. Like because we've had studies that have come out to show the benefits of training to failure that I don't disagree with, they're there that that is something that you should do all the time. And in fact, it's like, yeah, there's tremendous value for building muscle with utilizing a tool like training to failure. But more often than not, if people abuse it and my analogy, staying in the same vein as you or with the car, it's like, it's like nitrous for your car. It's like, yes, it does give you extra horsepower. But if you run around fucking blasting that all the time like that, you're going to blow the engine or you don't have a good suspension or yes, they can't handle that. You can't handle it exactly. You're just going to spend in the dirt. So it's literally like training to failure is nitrous for your car. It can be used. It can be valuable. Can help you win a race. It's going to give you this. If you took a bunch of people that trained traditionally that never lifted to failure and you put them on a four week cycle of cutting their volume down by a down to a third and going to failure, they will all see rapid results. On the flip side, you take a bunch of people who have been lifting to failure at low volume for a long time, you put them in a four week study where you increase the volume by three times and drop everybody down three, four reps from failure, you will also see gains in those people. Yeah, that's the thing that we don't see in studies. What we never see in studies, what do they always say? College aged males trained or untrained. That's it. Yeah. You never see college aged males who train and have been training for six months this way. Let's see how they respond now to this. Yeah. If we saw that, I could predict, unless something's like outlandish and crazy, I could predict with really good accuracy, whether or not they're going to respond well. Like if you sent me a study and you said, here's 12 college aged males, they've all been training like power lifters for the last six months. We're going to put them on a bodybuilding style routine. What do you think will happen? Or we're going to get great gains. Or we never carry the study out beyond 12 weeks. We do it in 12 weeks and basically a mezzo cycle. And that's it. We don't go, what happens when they train this way for a year and show the graph of, oh, here's the results. And then this is what happened after about four to six weeks. And then at the end of the year, here they are again. It's like that we don't show it that far. We use a study to prove a point that, oh, this way of training or this modality or this thing is valuable. I'll use us as an example. We actually had a caller recently who called and we have people obviously call and we answer questions. And this woman had followed maps and a ball and she had cycled through it over and over again for about a year. Okay. We have a lot of people who listen to the show who start with maps and a ball who find it to be extremely effective. It blows their mind and then they make the mistake of repeatedly running it over and over and over again and never moving outside of it. Okay. And so she was running into the problems that'll happen when you do that specifically with that program. And there's other problems that'll happen with other programs, but specifically with maps and a ball like it's a very that the movements are bilateral. You're working primarily on one plane of movement. And if you follow this program over because what'll happen is you'll follow it. If you don't work out that way, you're going to be like, oh my God, this is the craziest thing. I'm getting all these amazing gains. This is all the reports we get. Then you do it over and over again. Here's what happens. You start to hurt. You start to get tight. You start to notice joint pain. The gains slow down. The gains not only slow down, they start to go backwards because my hip hurts. My knee hurts. Like what's going on? Because no program is perfect. Strong where you're at a balance. Yes. No program is perfect. You have to move into something else if you want to continue this progress. So when these studies come out and I fell for this man all the time, a study would come out. I'd be like, that's the new way I got to train. Then I'd do it and I'd be convinced because for the next three, four weeks, gains would explode on my body. And then I'd be like, what's going on? It stopped again. I'd have to find the next study. Oh, it's that one. That's the way to do it. And it's just now doesn't work that way. The body respond. By the way, even what I'm saying now is going to mess up a lot of people because I know there's people listening are like, oh, it's novelty. Change everything all the time. No, that's wrong too. Yeah, muscle confusion. No, no, you got to stick to something long enough to start to reap its benefits and maximize what it does before you switch over changing everything all the time is also not the answer. Today's YouTube giveaway is the RGB bundle. That's three workout programs in one bundle. You can get it for free, but you have to enter to win. If you want to do this, leave a comment below this video in the first 24 hours that we drop it. Subscribe to this channel and turn on notifications if you do all those things that enters you to win. Also, we got a program sale going on right now. We put together four workout program bundles and we discounted them 300 to $350 off. That means they're very, very low priced. So check this out. We have the new to weight lifting bundle, the body transformation bundle, the new year extreme intensity bundle and the body transformation bundle 2.0. If you're interested in any of them, just click on the link at the top of the description below. All right, back to the show. Speaking of reaping benefits. So I saw when I was when I was a kid, one of my favorite supplements to use was no explode. I forgot about the BSN was the brand that made it. And I just I used super pump. It was like, I believe if I remember correctly, it was a vasodilator. Plus it had caffeine in there too. And so you felt the energy from the caffeine. You felt the pump from all the nitric oxide stuff that it had going on in there. I just it was a product that one of the most like, you know, consistently used product I ever use as a kid. And I liked it, right? I saw that Legion, our buddy Mike sent over a product that looks like something similar to that. I didn't get a chance to try it and I didn't get a chance to even look at everything that's in it. I saw you took one. Did you get a chance to try it and what what is in it in comparison to something like OK, so pre-workout when they first started that whole market, the reason why they got so popular, there's two reasons. One, the marketing around some of the first pre-workouts was brilliant. Super pump to I think it was 250 or super pump it was called by Gaspari was one of the first ones to use this brilliant. It's just and we had Gaspari on the show a long time ago and I told him brilliant marketing and literally what it was and I remember the mag the magazines is it would show a dude with a shirt off who's kind of Jack before and after his workout so you can see the pump and the I mean look if I get pumped, I look like I gained 15 pounds of muscle right if you have some muscle and you get a pump and you're well hydrated, it looks dramatic. But it was such an effective act because you look at it and you're like I want to do that and everybody likes the feeling of a pump and what they had in them was a lot of caffeine and Argonine Argonine is an amino acid. It's a precursor or a building block to something called nitric oxide, nitric oxide is a very quickly released gas that dilates the blood vessels. So literally what it does is it relaxes. So think of your blood vessels as either being like constricted like when you're stressed out and stuff like that or like totally relaxed when they're totally relaxed, there's more blood flow. So the theory is well more blood flow, you're going to get a better pump. Now we know that Argonine does something but citrulline is probably more effective. There's other compounds out there that give you more blood flow and the majority of the reason why pump like pre-workout supplements are so popular has less to do with the pump ingredients and more to do with the stimulant. Like it's the most popular ones tend to have the best combinations of stimulants because that's really what you what you tend to feel. OK, the problem with that is if you want to take a supplement that does have some effects on blood flow, you're kind of limited because everything's got 200 to 300 sometimes 400 or more milligrams of caffeine. So you're like, what do I do? Yeah, like what do I take? Yeah, I mean, I want to take something that give me a better pump, but I don't want to take all these stimulants. Anyway, long story short, there are compounds out there that do effectively raise nitric oxide to the point where some of them are being recommended now to people to take to lower blood pressure. So there are now medical journal studies that show there are certain compounds that you can take that will show a measurable reduction in blood pressure because of the vasodilating effect. Wasn't that like the Viagra story? Viagra is a PDE five inhibitor very strong at increasing nitric. Yes, that raises that because PDE five destroys an extra oxide. So when you inhibit that, you get more nitric oxide and you get a crazy crazy blood flow. So you get a bone. In fact, if you want to take something that's going to give you the best blood flow for a pump, then yeah, Viagra would be like nothing would be that little Viagra and caffeine. Let's go. So let's talk about that for a second. Does increasing blood flow through the use of things that help increase nitric oxide contribute to better performance and better gains? There are studies that that show that maybe probably there's nothing like conclusive, right? So there's no study that's like, oh, yeah, you do this, you're going to get these big gains. What you tend to see is the subjects got like a couple more reps or they weren't a sore. Muscle damage seems to be a little bit better. The perceived you know, the perceived experience of the workout seemed to be a little bit better for some reason at altitude. It makes a big difference. So and they did this with Viagra. They gave athletes Viagra and it didn't show a difference. But if they were at altitude, it showed a difference, which kind of makes sense because, you know, you need the red blood cells at altitude. You need more of them, you know, type of deal. Anyway, so long story short, what Legion does and this is what I like about Mike so much, he doesn't play the hype game. Like there's a lot of hype around stuff and people will jump on all these different he'll he'll cherry pick the things that have got the studies behind the support. He doesn't put a bunch of fluff in things. None of his supplements are like that. So you'll see like this latest everybody's talking about this thing and he'll be like, I don't see anything supporting it. I'm not going to waste my time on it. So all of his supplements are like, yeah, like, highlights the efficacious does not nothing like exceeding that. Yeah, not it, not just that, but he doesn't put like because a lot of supplements will do this. They'll put a lot of everything in there, not a little bit of everything. Yeah. So you read the ingredients and it's always stuff that like is new that people heard that oh, this might be working for this. And the people will rush to catch the wave. That's right. People interested in it, throw it all in a supplement. Forget, does it work well together? Forget, is that a good enough dose for that? Forget if it's even been proven yet where Mike will wait and go like, OK, there's enough research supporting the positive benefits of that. That's going in there. Or they do what's called pixie dusting. So there were two supplements. I remember specifically they did this very well. There was a supplement called Blue Thunder. You guys remember Blue Thunder, the dream behind the counter? Yes. I remember that. Kuchiga. Yeah. ABB made it, right? Yes. Yeah. Blue Thunder, when you turned it around, first of all, I had a lot of caffeine in it. Yeah. So that's like the main reason. I had a bunch of shit. Oh, it had everything. It had all the stuff I read about. Now, reality, it had like a tiny bit in there. Yeah, yeah. And in liquid forms. Yeah. Cargates of thunder right now. But I remember reading the back of it and being like, oh my god, this has everything that I've ever read about. This must be amazing. So that, there was another supplement called Hot Stuff. Do you guys remember Hot Stuff? I don't remember Hot Stuff. I've heard you talk about it before. Bro, so there was a whole, you guys want to hear something funny. Was it just niacin? No, no, no. Hot Stuff, there's this rumor about Hot Stuff that the original formula contained some anabolic steroids in it. Oh, wow. That, so it was like sold. It wasn't like widely. So almost like it's illegal almost, right? Like you got the Hot Stuff. No, everybody's like, oh, you take the original formula, Hot Stuff, you build hell of a muscle. And then it got popular and apparently they changed the formula. This is the wonderful rumors of the muscle building. Yeah. But anyway, that was another supplement. You read the back, the ingredients, and it was like 85 different things. Like, wow, this has ginseng. Wow, this has Smylax. Wow, that has everything I've ever read about, right? Pixie dusting. Mike doesn't do that. So here's what he put in this new supplement. And this new supplement is not, it is not stimulant based. It is literally, this will improve the pump and give you better performance minus stimulant. So what you could do, and I've tried it, I tried it. What I did is I took this along with my normal caffeine supplement. So I add the stimulant to it and give it a shot. Here's what it has in it. So it's 2,000 milligrams of taurine. Taurine, we know, does improve muscular power and endurance, probably through improving the production of dopamine in the brain. It also has something called nitrousa gene. I think I'm pronouncing that right. This particular product, this is an inositol stabilized arginine silicate. It's a type of arginine that doesn't get degraded so easily in the gut. So it gets converted to nitric oxide. Oh, that's interesting because we figured out a while back that arginine was a better... That's that citrulline was. Oh, citrulline. Because arginine will get degraded. Oh, that's where it is. So like you take 3,000 milligrams of it, chunk of it, most of it will get degraded. The studies on arginine used injection. So it didn't really translate into the real world because nobody's injecting arginine. Well, anyway, this is a type of arginine that is stabilized through with something called an inositol and it does get converted to nitric oxide. So you'll see in studies more blood flow from this. It also has something called hisperidine which is good for blood flow, muscular endurance power. And then grape seed extract. This one I've known about for a long time that increases blood flow. So it's a pretty awesome product and I like it especially for people who don't want stimulant or they want to drink coffee and they don't wanna pre-workout because it's already got caffeine. So they can add it. They wanna control their stimulant. They can add it to their stuff. It also, the way that I would use this is if you have, let's say you have pulse as other pre-workout with caffeine in it and you're like, what do I do with this? I'm already using pulse. Use this a different time during the day. So you could take this not pre-workout on an empty stomach and you're just gonna improve blood flow. Improving blood through nitric oxide is healthy for you. And how do I know this? The studies on the most powerful nitric oxide boosters in the world, Viagra show improvements in health. So reduce care to time. Wasn't Viagra originally earmarked for something else, wasn't it? For blood pressure. Yeah, so that was why they were targeting that in the first place. No, people came back from the study and they're like, well, there's a little, yeah, there's some seems to be a low one. I gotta pass it on. And side effects, yeah. I've heard snake venom too is like they're using that for blood pressure. Oh, isn't there a type of venom where the side effect of it is you get like an uncontrollable erection and then you die? I'm almost walking up, Doug, looking up. What? I just know one of my clients was messing with it because the beta blockers weren't doing them so well. What an embarrassing way to die. You know what I mean? You're with your friends. Oh yeah. What's wrong with John? Oh, he's playing, bro. He's just messing with us. Yeah, he's messing with us, obviously. Obviously, he's happy right now. He seems to be fine. Dude, speaking of like Doug's looking that up to prove that's true or not, you guys have to watch. I watched, by the way, I watched Justin, your sci-fi movie. I loved it. What do you think? It was good. It was very good. It was good. I wouldn't quite put it on Mocky, what was it? Well, X-Mocky. Well, that's a different. Yeah, that was like, that was really. X-Mocky was a different. I'm actually upset I used that as a reference. It was good. It's a different. Hey, I'm glad you did because it got me to watch it. Katrina watched it and actually getting Katrina to watch a sci-fi is like so tough and she watched it and she agreed. It was a better one. What I really enjoyed about it, and I think you kind of highlighted this part of it, was that most of the AI into the world sci-fi movies is just the robots are killing all of us. It was the other side, like they were the ones that were, you just wanted sovereignty, right? They were like, I just want to survive. Leave us, leave us alone. And the humans were like trying to abolish them. And that was kind of a cool twist to it. And very believable, like you said, a lot of the technology and how they use it. It was well done. I would imagine in a real world where AI, which obviously would be far more intelligent than us, if AI really did exist and told us, hey, we just want to be left alone. Just let us be over here. I don't think we would. If we knew that there was a super, like way more intelligent species of something that lived on the same planet, there's no way human fear would allow us to let them live. We'd be like, we gotta figure it out. I mean, Katrina asks this question. She's like, you know, and it's, I could see both. That's why it was done so well that you could see both sides. And I feel like I can argue both cases, right? They also, without ruining the whole thing, like the, you know, AI was trying to create something to protect itself, right? But in the same token, it's gonna have to destroy something that we've created that is put in place to protect us. And so if we knew AI was creating something like that. Yeah. It's like a super weapon, yeah. Yeah. They're not human. I don't think humans, but also. So you're right, their fear would drive them. So why don't you think it got, I saw it only got like a 64 rating or what am I telling you? I don't know. That's why I wanted to bring it up. And no one talked about it. Yeah, I was like, dude, this is such crap. Like, this is a great movie. And I wonder how many movies like that are out there that just get like these terrible reviews. And you're just like, what? This movie should have got way more attention and highlighted. What does that say Doug? It is, huh? Well, it's a spider that causes the erections. So it's the banana spider in Brazil. Banana spider, which makes a lot of sense. So yeah, one of the most deadly spiders in the world is the banana spider. But they say they could potentially use that as a erectile dysfunction medication. So a dude gets bit by it and he's like, with his wife and he's dying, he's like, honey. One last time. That's funny. Yeah, so that was good. I wanted to bring up, ooh, is that what it looks like? Yes. Disgusting. Creepy. Spiders, creepy. What are you more afraid of? Snakes or spiders? Spiders. Yeah, spiders. Yes, snakes don't. I lived with snakes and I mean, I didn't like it, but. And I feel like you could see him coming. Like, the bigger the snake, the scarier. It looks like a little, tiny little snake, like this is even, you know, a gardener snake or whatever, that's not even scary at all. A big snake is kind of scary, but then he's big enough that you see it and you see it coming and you probably hear it. Spiders. Have you seen the video? Creep up, a spider will come up on your shoulder and you don't even know it. Oh, stop it. Listen, have you guys seen the video? I think it's gotta be in Australia because they have all the weird shit. There was a spider, like one of those massive ones. Yeah. And it was on someone's wall. Carrying a rat. No, no, no. It was just on the wall and the dude shot it. To kill it. He shot a hole in the wall. Somebody sent in from Australia when we were talking, the last time we talked about this, they had sent in a clip of one carrying a rat. Yeah, I saw that. I mean that, that's scary. How do you get rid of a spider that big? It was like this big. What do you do? I don't want to smash it. What about you? No, he smashes it. You gotta shovel it. Yeah, you gotta shovel that. Would you be able to just blast it with a shovel? Yeah. You would? Yeah, I might pull the gun out, dude. I mean. You just would blast a hole in this house to kill it. You can repair holes, dude. That's all I'm saying. Imagine you miss, it falls on the floor. Oh, God. Yeah, yeah, no, spiders for sure. Kids, get out. Hey, so I watched something that you guys gotta watch now. So it's on Netflix. It's called BitCond. Oh, I saw that. I haven't watched it. So the store, without ruining the whole story or whatever like that, it's based on the biggest case that the SEC filed on all the crypto coins that were all that hype that happened in the last two years or whatever, three years it's been. I don't know, four years even now. It's been a while. And they were, it was the first big case and you get to hear from the FBI and SEC. They were waiting. They were waiting like they're like, they knew all this rampant fraud was happening, but they wanted to find a case that was big enough they can make an example of and it was the first big case they made an example of and the story is great. I mean, the whole thing is crazy. How it ends is crazy. The time that the guys that did it, what they had to serve, he was facing like 170 years and stuff like that. So what ended up happening to him? He was a 20-something-year-old, 20-year-old guys that were creating this thing. The part that I thought was crazy, that it's not really a spoiler, but at the end they'd start putting up the statistics of all this scams or that. You know what percentage of these coins, they say they have proven to be scams that they say what percentage are? What? Oh no. Like 78%. Wow. Are you serious? Wow. That's nuts. Wow. That's nuts. That's terrible. That's wild to think that there's that much grifters that are out there right now and that whole coin world. You know what's crazy to me about this kind of stuff, I mean, Rage is a shit out of me, is that, and I'm not saying it's good that people are creating fake coins and whatever, or stealing with them, but you get a kid like that, he did a big scam, right? Hundreds, they're gonna charge him and put him in jail potentially for 100 plus years. Then you get perverts that touch kids or do, and they don't go to jail. Yeah. They get all in the public's face. They don't go to jail at all. Or if they do, it's nothing. I don't understand that. Where the fuck are our values? I don't get that shit at all. If you counterfeit money, you're fucked, according to our laws. You are screwed. I mean, yeah, we're setting a pretty good precedent. You heard a kid, you heard a kid, you could not, you could get away with not going to jail. The government's the biggest mafia, the biggest gangsters in the world is the government. You fuck with their money. I mean, you fuck with somebody else, that's a slap on the wrist. You know what I'm saying? In their eyes, their world, you fuck with the mafia's money. You're gonna get it. That's the same thing. I mean, with the government. It shows you the disconnect of value. It is. It's just the truth. I mean, I'm not saying it shouldn't get legal. I'm not saying this shouldn't get legal. We can hurt each other all we want, but you come after their money or what they believe to be their money. I'm sorry, dude. The values are you hurt a kid. I mean, that's the worst thing to do. We're all on a grants on that, but when we're, you know, we're ran or our rules are made up by a governing body and they decide what those rules are gonna look like and the penalties are. This is when I can make the case for like a vigilante, like superhero or something, you know what I mean? Like I'm cool with that. There's a weird guy going around killing, you know, people that hurt kids. Oh, that's weird. Yeah. Speaking of that, I do not have this plan, so I didn't write it down, but I'll look at it. There's a fitness guy, okay? And I just found him recently, I started falling him. So, and I'm always hesitant to shout somebody out that I don't know a lot about yet, but I'll at least share that I started falling and it intrigued me by his content. He is, he's got to kind of lay norton-esque as far as like the going after people and so that, but he goes after all these fake and fitness influencers that Photoshop their photos and do all these things. What I thought was really cool, but he, and he also goes after pedophiles and he sets them up. Oh, wow. So, wow. How does he mix that in with fitness? I, I, that seems like a weird company. So I don't know enough about him, his history and how that, how that got intertwined, but he's found, he has found this and what he does a lot of times is like he, he donates a lot of the money and proceeds as you get to, to helping all this. So it's kind of cool what he does. Helping kids and like, so I like what I've seen so far. I think his Instagram is Goob, G-O-O-B or underscore G-O-O-B. Maybe Andrew, someone could look it up while we're talking. How did you go after him? So, well, so the ones that I said, well the Instagram ones are, are the Photoshopping ones are basic, right? I mean, that's like as simple as like, there's this big influencer. Chris Hansen, is that his name or he shows up? Yeah. He's just like, you're gonna want to sit down. Yeah. What does the guy always say? I was here to protect them. Doug, it's Goob underscore, there he is right there. And so he'll find and what he does is he basically puts them out there. So he'll find these, these predators. You see, look, he says exposing predators, right? And he'll do a whole thing and he'll, he'll, he'll put their shit on blast. This is where they work. This is where they live. This is their full name. Like, yes. Like that. It's kind of cool what he does. And I found him through our other friend, Chris Nagibi and startup and there's one right there, right? There's a, the tattoo artist guy right there exposing predators. So yeah, his whole page is like around exposing predators or exposing fitness frauds and people that are scamming people online. And he does it in a pretty cool way. He's also like, again, really big on, like it's for Christmas. He did this huge toy drive. I think he drove like $30,000 worth of toys for kids and stuff like that. So I like what I see so far, just literally. You know what I, what I found. And he's strong. You know, he's a strong buff dude. Oh, good. Yeah. Let's wait. There's a, there's a, there's these new, there's these new things. We're going to intertwine those, but it's cool. I know, it's a weird combination. You know what? I don't, I'm sure. And maybe he'll hear this. I'm sure it'll get back to him. And then maybe we'll talk. I'll find out his story. I don't know his full story of what made him go this session. I'm, I'm guessing. So I've got two passions. Lifting weights and killing. That's a fine. That's a fine. Well, I wasn't thinking about this until you brought up individual anti thinking of like, this kind of reminds me of that. You know what I'm saying? Like he has, like this dude just has this mission to go and just fuck with all these pedophiles. I'm, I'm here for it. Have you guys seen these guys online that will give you those headcount, you know? Yeah. Have you, there's these guys online that will, you know how you get like these telemarketers that are just fraudsters and they'll try to talk you into giving you control of their laptop or the lie to you. I'm about this warranty and then they'll steal your money or whatever. There's this guy who's like a master hacker and he plays along. I don't know what his name is. We gotta find him. He plays along and then he gets control of the desktop of these callers who are like in India or in other countries. And then he tells them who they are. He watches them through their camera. He, and he shuts down the whole operation. Wasn't that on that documentary that we were all watching last year? Oh yeah, on HBO. Yeah, those were the telemarketer ones. Yeah, the telemarketing ones. Oh, I haven't seen that. Oh, how did you not finish that? Yeah. There's a guy on there that does that. The way they panic? Oh yeah. It's on the phone? Those are amazing. You can see them scrambling like a bunch of cockroaches like yeah, they're onto us. I love it. Hey, speaking of scrambling, so this may be a little late but we gotta bring this up because it's one of the weirdest social media stories that I've seen in a long time. The Miami Mall incident that, I don't know if people have heard of this but I caught it on X. There was this woman. You sent it to me right away, which I sent to you. Immediately sent it to Justin. So there's this woman that gets on and the original video was this woman saying, hey, there's like 100 cop cars driving to, I don't remember what mall it was in Miami. The original report was that there were teenagers fighting each other with sticks. It's some kind of gang related like firework. But she's like, why are there and there's film of like hundreds of cop cars. Just it looked like hundreds, right? Rolling up, cop cars rolling up. There's easily a couple hundred. No power, 20 miles in every direction from the mall. So all power cut out, all internet cut out. The airport shut down. So there was no communication whatsoever. And the weird part is zero film from inside this mall. And then the report started to come out. People, and they kept getting taken down but people were writing about it. There's these eight to 10 foot tall creatures or beings and people were shooting at them with their side arms and they would pop in and out of existence. And like all this weird shit. So you guys brought this up last week. Yes. Has it evolved anymore? You just get a few more eyewitness testimonials starting to kind of come out and kind of like backing up what you're saying in terms of them popping in and out. And like it was really a weird like, they were terrified. Like they were like, and again, you know, it could be acting or whatever. Just like, you know, trying to get attention. But yeah, but at the same time, you sent me one that had like looked like there was a footage of a portal. Like it looked like it just, it looked like a light start. And then it grew, grew, grew, grew. And everybody's freaking out. And then it just kind of exploded and then kind of disappeared. And they're like, what? And everybody freaked out. You can see everybody running. There's video from apartment buildings far away where they had power and they were filming it from their phones. And there's one that you can kind of looks like a tall gray like being walking in front of the club cars. Yeah, that one's a little. That one is too hard to tell. It's rough cause you could also, it looks like a couple of people together kind of walking, you know. So it's like, is that a couple of people or is that one thing that's really big in comparison to the cop cars? I don't know. Everything is super blurry. And it just, what's weird to me is all the power is out, no internet. And then the people who left them all said that they had to show their phones to law enforcement that the phones weren't working. They had to show them their photos before they could leave. So what's weird to me is regardless of what happened, you had tons of cop cars. They had black helicopters. Honestly, it was the attention it got from the authorities that made you be like, why, why all these cops? Literally like they must have like, But no film. Sent every cop station in the area there all at once. Yeah, and there's, but there's no film. Like you would think that something happening like this, everybody's got a cell phone. Well, you don't think you would see something. So you don't think that. Okay. So easily if a bunch of teenagers were throwing fireworks and lighting off like that could be the people could have thought it was gunshots, right? And you don't think that if people thought there was an active shooters in a mall that it wouldn't attract every cop car within. That's the story. That's the story. That's the story. I just don't know why there's not a single, there's no film, nothing. Nobody has, everybody in there has a cell phone. Almost everything that happens that's big. You, you see video. Yeah. So far there's not even film of like kids doing fireworks. Nothing. That's nothing at all. And like I said, all the power and the internet and the airport and helicopters not weird shit. So you get the, all the, the conspiracy theorist people like this is like the feeds right into their like, Oh my God. I had this date written down already. I knew this was going to happen. You guys finally you're seeing it. You know, like we're opening them at the portal from hell. It's right here. I'm just like, Oh great. Election year. I didn't want this to be true. Yeah. October surprise aliens are here. We can't elect a president. Yeah. I don't know. I could, could very honestly, I'm still in like the camp of like there could be ways of, you know, projecting images. Of course. Doing things with like drones and all that to mess with your, you know, the public. So that's, that's all on the table still. Yeah. I thought the, remember the story of the girl in the airplane. I thought that evolved recently. Didn't I hear something? Oh, one is like, what did she say, Justin? Oh, so this, this, they're not real. Or what was she saying? Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Something else just came out about her. Shelling you. That one right there. Yeah. Yeah. That motherfucker right there is no real. That's actually really good. Yeah. People that use digital like to try to break down her face and said it wasn't her. They're like, that's not matching. Yeah. Yeah. We talked about that. I'm talking about like recent. That was. Oh really? Yeah. Again, I don't get sucked in as easily as you guys do with this stuff. So I saw it come across. I'm like, You just stay asleep out of it. Yeah. You live in a hole. Wake up. Keep your head in the sand. It's happening. You know what I'm saying? There's a war. It's happening up there. We're in spiritual battle, you guys. I'm ready. I'm armed. Do you, what's more likely? Do you guys, what camp are you in? That there's aliens from another planet or it's interdimensional demons? Interdimensional demons. Whoa. Whoa. Easy. Easy answer. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know if I believe in either one yet. I'm not sure I'm on board. I know people are going to freak out like, What? We already have all this stuff. Which one would you rather have? I think it's more life. Would you be more like if it was an alien, would you be more afraid? Or if it was an intermentional demon. Intermentional demon sounds fucking really scary, bro. Really? Yeah. Because I'm way more scared of aliens. Really? Yeah, dude. Way more. Really? You know for sure like, oh God, God's cool. He's got my back. If you're a demon and we're good. Alien. Alien. Do whatever he wants. Does he though? Yeah, but an alien. You might have a righteous death. We're an alien. Okay. If there's another species on another planet, we're an alien to them. So what, they're as likely. Yeah, but they got here. So they're smarter. Yes. So they evolved that. Yeah. Yeah. They might anal probe. Bro, a multi-dimensional demon sounds way worse. But I feel like I can pray that away. You know what I mean? You feel like you're praying that way. I feel like with an alien, the aliens are like, what are you doing? Yeah, like the cross. Yeah. Yeah. Stay back. This works. Listen, if there's aliens, they can get to us. They're smart enough already at that. I'm assuming. Telepathy. I know where we're at with weapons. No, your mind. That means their weaponry has to be to our level or beyond. Way beyond. And they have chosen not to destroy us. So to me, they would more likely be curious or like us. They're not like us. An interdimensional demon sounds like it's out to fucking kill me. Or if it's a demon, its job is to bring me to Satan that does not sound better than an alien. Am I alone in this? No, you're not alone. Okay. You're making a bit of logical sense. I feel like if you're interdimensional as well, that you can just appear out of nowhere. Yes. That's scary. But I'm just saying, if I know for sure there's a demon, like I'm cool. You can't show up in my closet. I told you guys. I told you guys. An alien. I mean, I guess an interdimensional demon would also probably make you feel very confident that there's a God. Yeah, I was going to say. Affirm your beliefs. Affirm your beliefs. We're having an alien from another outer space. We'd still probably question gods. People still question. So maybe that part of it like, well, demon might kill me, but at least I know where I'm going. Exactly. I get where you're coming from, but that's still. Ever since I was a kid, that was what I always said. Well, when I was a kid, people, we would walk scary stuff and my cousins, but oh my God, the spirits and demons. I'd be like, that wouldn't scare me. Big foot or aliens would scare the shit out of me. I'm pretty committed to the same thing. So yeah. Yeah. So I think that that's what they saw. Interdimensional. So there was one guy that said that it was like, they kept appearing and reappearing and they look like shadows and you couldn't like, you couldn't like people were shooting at them and the bullets were going through. Yeah. Holograms. Yeah. Holograms. I think, I think what's a more likely scenario with all, I can't speak for these, these, you know, the Miami thing, but as far as like what's came out with the government and that there's these UFOs and all sort of that, I think it's more likely ourselves that we have stuff that we have top secret and it gets leaked or the wrong people. The drones. I mean, I think it's more like or other governments. I think that there's more of that. Our government and including other governments for other countries are all so undercover and black. And what makes me think that is like, what, how long was it? The, what was it? The Blackbird or whatever. Oh yeah. The stealth bomber. No, it wasn't the stealth bomber. It was the Blackbird. It was the Blackbird. SR or something. I saw, I mean, we had that for, every one of those advancements and it is like, there's a whole like progression of technology that you see, like that was secret. Like 30 years, right? Like a latest one. Maybe you could look it up, Doug. Blackbird. I think it's SR 71. I think it was invented in the 70s. Yeah. Like early 70s. So like we were that far, but then we find out about the 90s. Yeah. So there was one recently, I think it was on the drinking bros podcast, but they were talking about this plane that was so advanced and it literally defied all radar, all satellites, like everything. Like it was completely invisible. Like in terms of like anybody being able to tell what an officer... And I think the government allows these people to come forward with these stories and things like that because... Oh God, 1962. Bro, yes. Yeah. I mean, so I... They just withhold the whole... Yeah. All this knowledge from the public. Yeah. When did we learn about the 90s, right? It was like 30 years later. Yeah, dude. Like, hey, look what we got. So where do you... I mean, so if that's true, but they're getting it from international TV. And by the way, Yeah, I agree. Don't forget for international TV. That's where we got the technology. That's where they're getting all the information from. Come on, you guys. And okay, so based on that, Sal, and then you take, if you were to... I would love that there's probably some mathematician that could do this. If you factor in Moore's law to that, where we were with technology then, that was 30 years of being... We basically kept under wraps. Where are we at today? We should be exponentially further. Yeah. So based off of that, to me it's more likely we've got the ability to do a lot of shit that a lot of people don't know about. And the way we keep everybody guessing or thinking it's aliens is by allowing some of this information to get leaked like this. Do you think that we've already hit singularity? Like AGI? We could. I wouldn't be surprised. Why would they announce it to the public? They wouldn't. They wouldn't announce it to anybody. They would just let it work in a clandestine way. Right. Right? The fears are just whatever. They're just hanging out. They're not running shit. I don't think for a second, elected officials are running anything and know all the stuff. No way. Yeah, I don't think so, yeah. This is unelected. These are... They're not a George Bush book. I think they're following algorithms now. These are bureaucracies that were... They were built during the... Especially during the Cold War. People need to understand like the Cold War was a big threat that the world was going to end. That was a real threat. So it was like, let's fund these agencies that's built them and let's make them operate outside of the realm of the public, outside of the realm of elected officials. They are... Their job is to keep us out of... They've had no accountability. And then they do... Oh, whoops. We've made like six trillion dollars just like that. Whoops. That's the other thing. When like trillions of dollars go disappearing from the Pentagon, I mean, that's not like losing a couple hundred bucks. Who's going to go get it? Like, who's going to keep funding that? Yeah. It's just absurdity to me. But you know, the question you might... Did you find a picture of what one trillion dollars would look like in a hundred dollar bills? I think it's... Somebody sent that. Oh, really? Yeah, I saw that. It's like... It's so much money. You can't just lose trillions of dollars in the whole city. And then your question is how do they get these elected officials to do what they want? Epstein Island. That's what happens. You got Epstein Island. That's right now. I'm aligned with that too. That to me sounds... Which is why too. So, I mean, it... I can't wrap my brain around... I said this the off air the other day to you guys, and it's like, well, how many times did Clinton go to the... 30 something. I haven't been anywhere. 38 times. I haven't been anywhere 30-something times. You're right. Yeah. Like, even L.A. I haven't been in any of your houses 38 times. I haven't been anywhere 30-something times. So the fact that this president and these people... Flew there. Flew there that many times is fucking weird. It's bananas. Yeah. Did you know that Gilsane Maxwell, right? The girl that now she's in jail or whatever. That, you know, was with Jeffrey Epstein. Did you know who her dad was? Yeah. He was... He worked for the Mossad. He was... Doug, look up Gilsane Maxwell's father. Wait, wait, wait. That's a... Where's a trillion? There's a trillion dollars right there. Bro. Bro. It's like a city block. Bro. It's... So much more. Bro, it's stacked to be as high as the... I know. I know. Bro, there's 20 trillion right there. Go back to that. That's... Put that into perspective. There's people that have that much wealth. That's... Okay. What are they spending that money on? Did you just say they missed out? UFOs. Six trillion dollars. How do you spend six trillion dollars? Yeah. You build some badass crazy shit, dude. Crazies. What's the most expensive fire check off? Nobody thinks about that stuff and it drives me crazy. No, it's... I think it's called... Yeah, it's 100 million. So, yeah. So, imagine if the most expensive fighter jet is that, imagine the one that can travel in time and shit. Go fucking expensive that. So, yeah. Jelaine Maxwell's father was a media proprietor, spy, and publisher. He was a... Oh, did you see the thing about... He was Mossad agent. Didn't I seen you guys, the sisters, and how, like, Jelaine's sister and her and how they're all tied... Oh, man, I sent this to you guys a while back. That whole thing is so crazy. Yeah. It's so... You know what the craziest part is, though? Of all of this? The craziest part is... What's his name was going? Who's the physicist in the wheelchair? Stephen Hawking. Oh, Stephen Hawking. He went to the island a bunch of times. Oh, my God. The internet's been so crazy with him and the memes. Like, I die. Every day I wake up. That's the one thing I look forward to is, like, the memes about Stephen Hawking. There's one. I don't know what movie it's from, like, it's all Stephen Hawking arriving at FC9 and it's a guy in a wheelchair, like, crashing through a window. Yeah. Like, ah! What's he gonna do there? The internet's won on that one. Oh, wow. Yeah. I wouldn't have guessed that. No, that was a shocker. What's even scarier is the... Those are the people they're letting us know about. Like, how crazy is that? I know. Like, if that's who you get to know, it's like, whoa, what does that mean we don't get to know? I don't know. Some people were actually already taken off. They said we can't release this. Oh, yeah. Why? Who could it be that we can't know? Yeah, there's presidents, ex-presidents on there. I don't know. Weird. Weird. I saw Oprah was on that list, too, huh? Oprah? Yeah, she's on the list. Oh. You know what bummed me out was, Charles Barkley was on there. Oh, was Barkley on there, too? Yeah, that bummed me out. Yeah. So Anthony Kitas, too, was like, oh, wow. I mean, you have to believe, or at least I would think, because put yourself in Barkley's or someone's at that level and everybody who's famous goes there, like probably a lot of people did go there that didn't know, and maybe that's what they found out. They thought it was like the Playboy Mansion or something. Sure. And then they... Exactly. You know the theory that Hugh Hefner was the same way? That Hugh Hefner... Oh, I'm sure. He used the Playboy Mansion or it was used as a way to... Well, there was a, you know, there was like a tunnel and like a way to, yeah, escape and like they kind of like figure that that might have been a trafficking tunnel. Well, even if neither Playboy Mansion or that was not created with that intent, it just organically happens to be there. Yeah. You allow crazy shit to happen. Lots of married, important people are coming there. Yeah. And so... Yeah. You just, you've got the ultimate, you have the ultimate blackmail weapon even if you didn't even intend for it to be there. I mean, this has sort of been the MO since the dawn of time and in terms of power, right? Like when you see this in Game of Thrones where it's like, you know, the brothels and all this, like you get all the information and dirt and you hold that blackmail against powerful people. It's like, why would that not be a recipe, you know, like going forward with like world leaders? It's very clear. It seems very obvious that that island was used for blackmail. Yeah. It seems very, very obvious. Did you see Cat Williams kind of coming out this year? Yes. And like he was calling out Kevin Hart and saying he was like a plant, like an industry plant. Really? He said he got offered all kinds of money to be a part of like all their Illuminati bullshit. What? Yeah. You have to watch it. It's like one of the craziest interviews. It was with Shannon Sharp and Cat Williams. It just happened. It just happened. How scary would that be, right? Like you're a hardworking artist. You start to get some success. You're like taking off. Then you get taken into a room or a party and they reveal to you like, hey, here's the deal. You got to do this. Otherwise, we'll destroy you. Like I would be like, damn it. I wish I didn't know this. You know what I mean? Yeah. God, what am I going to do? Do you think it's like that? I think it's less we're going to destroy you and it's more... It's more like gaining access. Yeah, I think it's more. People are more enamored by greed and fame that you don't even need to threaten. Yeah, but it's implied. You know what I mean? It's implied like if I don't go along what's going to happen. See, I don't think that because then I think then it would be this. People that would didn't accept it would speak out more. I think it's more like, hey, you have this opportunity and let me present to you what you can do if you come this way. And if you don't, you don't. And then they don't care that you don't. They're just looking for more people to join their side. You know what I mean? It would be implied like, oh great, now I'm not going to get a movie. Yeah. I'm not going to get any record label. Yeah. You know? Hey, I wanted to ask you. You said you got off the phone with Organify and they were talking about Shilijit. Big Drew. Yeah. Yeah, they've been. So we were talking about. I knew it would crush. I knew it. Yeah. We were supposed to do like a photo shoot with the product. Sold out. One, it gets here. It gets gone here as soon as we get it. And so I said, could you send me more boxes? He's like, we're sold out over here right now. It's like it's moved. Wow. Almost faster than any product they've ever done before. Wow. That's crazy. Well, I told you guys when I saw it and I saw that it was legit, I had brought a year. God, it must have been three, four years ago I brought up. Shilijit. Thanks, Justin. I brought it up years ago that Shilijit, it's one of those compounds used in like erratic medicine or whatever that has a lot of data supporting it. There's very, there's not a lot of those that are out there. There's a lot of them with a lot of anecdote, but this has, look it up. If you guys, whoever's watching, listening to this, doesn't believe me, look up Shilijit studies and what you'll find is increased testosterone, increased recovery, improved fertility, hormone balancing, anti-inflammatory facts, all proven by studies. And so I always thought like, why isn't this like a blockbuster? And really it was just, he had to make it a tasty gummy. It was crazy. It was like, it's kind of like when we saw the studies on red light therapy. Yeah. It was like hard to like, really all these things? Yeah. It was like, like it covered so many benefits. I mean, I think that's what it is, it's got so many positive things. It's a, what would you quote unquote, a health supplement, right, following that category that tastes good in a gummy? Yeah. It's an, it's easy. You feel it. It's easy, it's smart. You take it, take it for a few days or a week, you start to feel like, oh, I feel good. Now, okay, along those lines, is it like, forget what else you've explained to me before, that has a compounding effect, the more consistent you are taking it? Yes. So it does. Yeah. It's not a stimulant, like you don't take it, but like, whoa, I feel it, but after a few days or a week, then you start to just feel better. Kind of like a supplement like Ashwagandha, where you start to notice it after you take it somewhat consistently. Now that's considered an adaptogen. Is this considered? I would put it in the category, actually, adaptogen. I don't know if you could classify it as one, but I would say it feels like one. Okay. In terms of its effects. Yeah. Anyway, I got to, I'm going to do a little confession here because I brought it up on air and because I want to stay as authentic as possible and I want to not continue down this, this path or whatever. I did. I told everybody, I was going to try and go off cannabis and create them. And I had a failure this weekend. Oh, yeah. So I mean, it depends on how you look at it. It's not necessarily a failure. It was a failure. Yeah. It was a failure. Did you, I mean, was it smoking? Was it weed? No, it was a vape. So, yeah. So Jessica and the kids went out of town. I was alone, which I don't like to be anyway. I hate being alone, which is a whole nother story. And I made sure there was none in the house. Right. So none of the house, make sure there's none in the house. And fuck, man, I went through the closet and I found the old volcano and there was some left in there. And I had some. And that by that point, once you go that point, then you're like, well, I might as well keep going. Yeah. So then I took all the other drugs. So then I ordered some more. It's, you know, it's a shitty feeling, man. I know what this, like I get this, it's all psychological, right? But it's such a weird battle, dude. It is psychological. I'm really, so I was, how do you buy that? It's really weird to admit too, because, you know, it's like, why can't I just? Yeah, but okay. So, so I, I mean, I go back and forth on like, you know, breaks that I would say I take because I don't, I had stopped smoking what, I don't know how many months ago it was when I shared that on the podcast since then I've smoked. Right. But I don't, I don't, I guess, I don't beat myself up like I failed. Right. Like yeah, I had the intention of like, oh, I want to stop. And I don't, I don't want to, and let's see if I don't have to at all or whatever. And that was kind of my attitude was like, you know, I really don't want to do this. I shared the story about Max. And so that really hit home for me that I'm like, I don't want my son to have that smell around the house. I don't want to, and I want to have the marijuana conversation when he's a teenager, not when he's fucking eight, you know what I'm saying? So that was what really motivated me to, to go that direction. Now, since then I've had a handful of times for sure that I, I have, and there's some things that I just, I really like, I still love about it, you know, and I admit that and I know that. So where I'm at now, I think I have a better balance around where I was. I think I, I think I was out of balance. That was enough for me to kind of wake me up and say, hey, I'm going to stop doing this. I've now done that, but I don't have this, like I failed on myself. Do you beat yourself up? Like, I do. And I know that's a, that's a terrible strategy because that can lead, that just leads to more. Rebellion. Yeah. Just like we teach people with fat loss. 100%. Yeah. So I know, I know, I know what's happening. But I say I failed because I haven't proven to myself yet that I can just have nothing for long enough. So it wasn't, what was it a week or two, two weeks maybe. And so it's like, okay, like what the hell. So now I'm making it to two weeks, bro. Yeah. Yeah. So it's like, what the hell? You know what, you know what was, what I think was really tough for me was, I remember the like the first two or three times that I had after I had not for, because I went like two months. I think it was pretty consistent with nothing. And I, when I reintroduced it, I had some of the best nights of sleep I had had in months. Yeah. And that was like the really selling like, Oh God, it's freaking. Yeah. You know, I don't want to need it, which I've proven to myself I can do that. But then it was like, boy has it, it's a useful tool for me is, especially I recognize when I, we got a lot of stuff going on. Yeah. I got a lot of stuff going on on my plate. And I'm like super here coming down at night for me. Sometimes it's really, it was the perfect storm for me. I was home without anybody. I felt I was coming down with something. So I had like a mild, that was mildly ill, which makes me depressed anyway. I don't like to be alone anyway. So I'm like sitting there in my own, you know, whatever, and I'm not doing something else to help myself. I'm just sitting there trying to watch TV or whatever. And that's just a bad, just a bad combination. I mean, I don't know if you're sharing to, to receive any advice around it, but mine would just be literally, I think you have to have empathy for yourself in the situation. I think that, I think when you put it in the category of it's bad, wrong, I failed. Again, it creates that same. I don't, I don't, I don't have that. Yeah. So it's a hundred percent when I'm trying to, trying to work on. Yeah. And I think it's just, Hey, and I still have that now where I'm like, again, I'm like, Hey, I still, still stand by what I said originally with, you know, pulling off of it is like, I don't, you know, it's now about like, Oh, if I go, it's outside. I get this. I get the self shame that people go through when they're trying to fix their diet. Totally. Get that. Same thing. And it's a, it's self-defeating. It's very hard to reverse. So I get that. That's what I'm working on right now. It's like, okay, how do I get myself out of that loop where if I take a step back, it's not like, you know, I'm going to beat myself up for it for a week. You know what I'm saying? Yeah. Self-awareness that you have around it. You guys hug me or something. You know, no, fuck that. Face time. Totally joking. You got to break the tension. What was I talking about? There was something. Yeah. Did you guys, did I, I don't know if we shared this on air. There was like that viral, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, how should I know? I don't know. Did you, did you golf with them 18 holes? Yeah. You didn't ask me what I was doing. It didn't come up. Yeah. Well, didn't they get a divorce? Yeah. Well, how's he doing? I don't know. Yeah. We're just a new girlfriend. What's her name? Yeah. Yeah. That's guys. We just golfed. Yeah. He's got a new driver. Yeah. Speaking of driving, our trainer, uh, course is coming up. It's coming up in a couple of days. Sign up for it. It's mind pump trainer.com. And our goal is for you to leave with information that you can use immediately to improve the success of your clients and your business. These are things that we found to be, uh, big rocks that really make a big difference with the trainers that we've worked with. And there's some surprises coming up. Yeah. What's a link again? Mind pump trainer.com. Mind pump trainer.com. Mind pump trainer.com. And then the shout out was the guy's name is John Dorsey. So shout out to John Dorsey. His, uh, Instagram handle is goob underscore YouTube. Check him out. Hey, look, if you want an on the go snack, that's natural, not heavily processed. That's high in protein, low in carbs. Check out paleo valleys, meat sticks. These are grass fed meat sticks. They're not dry. They're delicious. And it's a great way to supplement your diet with a snack. You could take anywhere. Go check them out. Go to paleo valley.com forward slash mind pump. Use the code mind pump 15 and get yourself 15% off. All right. Back to the show. Our first callers, Jessica from Oregon. Hi, Jessica. How can we help you? Hey, good morning. How is everyone? Good. I'll start with my question and give you a little background. My question is, does a strength training practice, a robust one eventually lead to a reduction in flexibility, absent any kind of mobility training, yoga, stretching, things like that for background. I'm 51. I've been strength training for a year. My routine is three to four days a week, full body. I've always been naturally very flexible. I would say before this year, I would do yoga, maybe twice a month or something like that. But I've done nothing this past year. I'm only strength trained. I've noticed recently, I just feel less flexible. I feel tighter. And it kind of got me wondering if it's just a natural by product of strength training. I think about two like the guys I know who are all really built. They're really inflexible. And so I don't just kind of got me thinking about that. I particularly feel tightness in my posterior chain, my lower back. I think the deadlift is probably my least confident lift. I do also have a compression fracture in my lower spine. So I'm just kind of mindful of working around that as well. I mean, my goal is aging well. I want to be strong. I want to be flexible. And I'm curious about the need for active muscle stretching to have that goal. And as I continue strength training, I kind of optimize for both. What a question. What a great question. This is a complicated question. And there's a common misunderstanding around strength training and that makes people tighter. It does not do that. But let's talk about tightness first. Let's examine what's happening. Why does the body get tight in the first place? So the central nervous system controls your muscles. It'll tell your muscles to contract or relax. It also controls the extensibility of a muscle. How far or long it allows the muscle to get. What makes a body par or muscle area tight is your body sensing instability or sensing potential danger or weakness. And it's weakness. Now here's where it gets complicated. Weakness can mean that you're strong in one direction and it's disproportionate to another direction, therefore causing instability. To give you an easy example, let's say that I'm going to make up a ratio. Let's just say there's a ratio of 2 to 2.5 in terms of strength between the quadriceps and the hamstrings. That's not the number, but let's just make that up and say that that's the ideal ratio where the body feels stable. It's way more complex than that, but we'll just play with that number right there. And then let's say you work out your legs a lot and your quads and hamstrings get stronger, except your quads get stronger a lot faster than your hamstrings because of the way that you train. Maybe the exercises you focus on, the range of motion, whatever. So now that ratio is more like a 3 to 2 or 3 to 1. Even though both of them got stronger, the ratio of strength now moves into a range where your body feels unstable. And you see this with sprinters, for example. Hamstring pulls are common in sprinters. Hamstrings on sprinters are way stronger than the average person. But what happens is they get this power dynamic where there's instability because the power they can generate with one area doesn't necessarily support. If far exceeds it. If far exceeds the stability that is present. So how can we get tighter with strength training? Well, if you've done a lot of the same exercises over and over again, you're not training in different ranges of motion or different planes of movement. You're getting really strong in particular ways, but the stability that's there to support it in the other range of motion and the other planes of movement aren't necessarily keeping up. And so what happens is your body starts to limit your range of motion in your movement to keep you in what it considers to be safe. So a bodybuilder who builds lots of muscle with the same, you know, 20 exercises all the time goes to throw a baseball and his stabilizer muscles and his rotator cuff, right? His infraspinatus, supraspinatus, whatever. They can't support the throw. It'll limit his speed or he'll overcome it, throw hard and tear his rotator cuff or twist in the back seat to get something and hurt his low back. He's like, what the heck? That doesn't make any sense. I thought I was so strong. So really it's about balance. The body has to feel stable and strong and balance is a part of it. Now to be very clear, proper strength training is one of the best flexibility tools that exists, proper being the key word because strength training gives you strength in range of motion. Whereas just static stretching gives you range of motion but doesn't give you strength. Like a baby. It's useful. Yeah, right. So like a baby who's super flexible, no strength, very unstable, right? Put weight on a baby. A baby's gonna hurt itself. They'll do that. So that's what's happening. So it's more complex. So I would look at your workout, identify where the tightness is and what's probably happening is you have either lateral stability issues or rotational weakness or your range of motion has been the same and you're just continuing to add weight without maybe going lateral rotation or the most common. That's the most common. Lateral rotation and then like short and range of motion on things like squats. I'd say those are probably the three most common with clients is we neglect the lateral movement. We neglect rotational movements or we neglect full range of motion in movements like the squat, the overhead press and things like that tend to cause the same issue. Totally. So to give you like another example, you know, years ago, I trained a high level baseball player in high school was actually going to get, he was going to go to a D1 college. He threw incredible speed. He'd never done any other sport than baseball. Never did a strength training. He's played baseball his whole life. His stepfather hired me to train him. The imbalance between his right and left side were incredible. His body started to develop in that direction. If you do the same exercise all the time with strength training, your body's going to develop in that way and it's going to start to limit your movement as a result. So I can guess that your workout, you're probably following the big basic lifts which are great for building muscle, but you're probably now got to the point where you're pretty strong. In fact, I'm looking at your numbers here. You are really strong. You're deadlifting 190 pounds, 170 pound barbell squat, you're bench pressing 105 pounds in a year's worth of training female. You're only weighing 143 pounds. You're really strong, but you're probably now starting to create some instability because the strength is probably in limited movements. What do you say? Performance or symmetry or both? I would love to see you go through map symmetry and map performance. I think they're both going to benefit what you're seeing. What does your workout look like, Jessica? Is all of this ringing the bell? What am I saying? Is this resonating? Yeah, it's completely. I basically did the same workout I mean, again, three, four days a week for the first 10 months. I'm on anabolic. I'm doing the advanced calendar right now. And I really kind of felt like I needed a change. This was a couple of months ago. I just felt like I was doing the same thing. And I recognize that yours are similar, but they were different enough. And of course those phases that you moved through are really helpful. I wasn't doing any kind of really rep and weight variation like you have. So I'm in phase three of anabolic, the advanced calendar right now. And I was just going to do it again, but it really does feel very true that I've basically done the same kind of exercises for a year. Yeah, I would go maps symmetry or maps performance next and then follow those two. Those two would be ideal for you. So whichever one, which one do you want? I'll give you one of those. Which one do you want? Performance. I don't know enough about the differences. I trust you guys. You know, I've got four, three, four days in the gym, easy an hour. And you were only been string training for a year? Yeah. Well, let's go performance. We'll go performance, follow that up with symmetry. Here's the problem with maps anabolic. This is going to sound like a commercial. It's so effective at building strength and muscle and boosting metabolism that people cycle it over and over. It's the program that people tend to stick to. They get addicted to it. They get addicted to it. But it's so focused on one plane. It's like deadlift, squat, bench, overhead press, row. And it's great for building muscle and strength. But if you get really strong and you just stick to those exercises, your lateral stability, I can guarantee you, is lacking. Your rotational stability is lacking. You've got some stability issues now because you've built so much strength in this limited scope. So it's definitely time to move forward. We recommend people go maps anabolic, maps performance. We always recommend people follow up anabolic with performance because of what you're talking about. But great awareness. I think you've done incredible. The gains you've made in a year in strength. And the fact that you have the awareness of you're starting to pick up and notice these things, but that's exactly why we wrote performance. That was the follow up program for these exact reasons. Our philosophy or our original core programs were maps anabolic, maps performance, and then maps aesthetic. And in the ideal world, most all general population, if you're just looking for overall strength, mobility, health, longevity, that's the kind of order that almost everybody should really follow. Yes, we have other things to individualize for people and be more specific. But for the general population that's looking for overall like aesthetics as far as body fat reduction, muscle gain, strength, mobility, like that's the pursuit right there. And I want to be clear, Jessica, you're not going to compromise like fat loss and muscle gain by focusing now on, it's not, in fact, you're compromising it now because you're going to start to get really limited by what you're talking about. In fact, if you continue to stick to maps anabolic, it'll start to get to the point where you're going to start to hit some walls and plateaus because your stability is not going to allow you, your instability, I should say, is not going to allow you to continue to progress. So very common issue. And this is why you see big, like the big, you know, bros in the gym and they look so tight. That's exactly what's happening with them. They look at a program like mass performance. They're really strong in one direction. Yeah, like I'm not going to do all, you know, mobility, like who cares or whatever. By the way, if you did a bunch of static stretching to offset this, you would be doing the wrong thing. So I'm glad you got here on it. Yeah, because the static stretching would temporarily alleviate some of the issues, but it wouldn't fix the root cause. Okay, that's super helpful. I mean, do you have objection to sort of off day yoga once or twice a week? No, that's not really about the stretching piece. That's just more. No, no, that would compliment that. The mistake that I think Sal's alluding to is that what people do is they freak out. They stop the weight training and then they go over to just doing yoga and that would be a big mistake. But to add yoga into like mass performance, what a great compliment. In fact, what you're going to find, I mean, I'm looking forward to you running performance, especially since you like yoga. Like you'll see what our mobility days are. It's like active yoga. So you're moving through these kind of yoga-like poses and those are your every other day. So you have strength training days like anabolic has laid out foundational days. And then every other day are what we call mobility days, which you're going to find are similar to the feeling that you get when you do your yoga. I'm excited. Thanks so much. That's great. I really appreciate that. I appreciate your question. Yes, circle back with us. I'd love to hear how it goes after you go through the program. Okay, thanks so much. I'll let you know. I want to do a quick shout out to Rob Reed. He's one of your coaches and consultants. Yeah, he's in Kentucky. I think I'd sent a question in about the difference in a couple of other programs. And he came back with it. I did offering a 30-minute assessment and he was great. I kind of was going high on a couple of things and he straightened me out and just wanted to do a shout out for him. Rob, you're a great guy. All right, great job. Thank you so much. Thank you, Jessica. All right. Thanks a lot. Take care. You got it. I appreciate that question because it allows us to go in and break down exactly what's happening because that stupid myth continues to exist and it's reinforced by what people observe. Well, the reason why it's reinforced is because there is some truth in it. That's right. That's what I mean. It's like, oh yeah, I do feel tighter. Well, yeah, you get really strong in that one direction. You just have to make sure you incorporate all these other moves so that way too, you can counterbalance that imbalance. I mean, great awareness on her part to do this, but then also a reminder to the audience that maybe came on board in just the last six months or a year and haven't heard the evolution of the maps programs. But when we wrote them, we wrote them with that intent. It's like, I don't care what your pursuit is, most all people in the ideal world, if you were to hire us as trainers, we would run you through that order. One way or another or some way or another, we would run you through that type of a protocol because eventually this is what will happen to anybody and everybody that follows. That's right. Maps and all our muscle building programs that are based in the sagittal plane, you're gonna get that. Get to it before it becomes a problem. Right. Our next caller is Adam from California. Adam, what's happening, man? How can we help you? Hey, how are you guys? Where are you at, bro? What's happening? What is that? What was that? Where are you at? I'm in the captain's barracks. Oh, wow. I'm on duty right now. I asked for permission to do like a 15 minute. Nice. Oh, good deal, man. Sorry, those are all blockers. Hey, no worries. How can we help you, dude? Well, I appreciate you guys having me on. I've been listening for quite a while now, so like everything you guys are doing. Anyway, I'm 6'2", 225 pounds, 33 years old. I'm a firefighter, but I just promoted. So for the next two years, I'm off the engine, kind of behind a desk. So I just had to plan out my movements more, but my workouts are really consistent. I'm at a place where I don't care so much about the scale, and I just want to sculpt my body. I want to be stronger and leaner, for sure. And in January, just in backstory, January of 23, so about a year ago, I was 278 pounds. Oh, wow. I just had enough. I was out of breath, just tying my shoes, my back hurt, my libido was low. I was always the last on our hikes with the firefighters, and just wasn't a really good example for the guys that I was leading. So I got serious, and I got a coach. So thank you guys, because I got them from a shoutout you guys did, Brayden, from Look Like You Lift. So I got down to 223 in October for my wedding, and I'm super happy with the progress that I made, and I just want to keep going. I haven't had the coach since August, so I've kept it all off for quite a while now. But I just don't know what to do to get my body fat down and just keep increasing my strength. So the scale that I have says that my body fat's like 25%. I'm finishing up the Maps Power Lift, which I just did, and I made the max attempts just because I knew I was coming on here. So my new maxes were 405 for squat, 425 for deadlift, 195 for overhead press, strict, and 300 for bench. Wow, very nice. Yeah, and I feel like I did some of it wrong, but just because I was in a deficit, a maintenance for a little bit of it, but then a deficit for most of that. So about 450 calorie deficit. Just because I came back from my honeymoon and I felt like my weight was a little up, so I was like, oh, I'll bring it down a little bit. It probably wasn't the greatest idea for Power Lift. But I do hit at least 10,000 steps a day. My calories are 2450, proteins 240, 168, that's 91. I eat whole foods except for magic spoon. Thanks again, guys. And the bearbell protein bars. And I'm just looking for guidance on what you guys think I should do next just to improve my physique. And I'm just really excited for it. My second part of the question before we go is 2,900 maintenance calories is kind of where I'm at, and it just seems slow. I just want to know what you guys thought. I would, judging by what you've done before, we know Braden and the type of like programming. I know he does. He's got solid programming. It's similar to like our anabolic type of philosophy. It sounds like you would do really well in a slight calorie surplus and a different type of a program, like let's say performance or strong or like a program that is less traditional lifting and go that direction with a calorie surplus. I think it would serve you really well right now. Yeah. Are you like because power lift is a great program. Are you really stuck on like bench dead lift and squad or like how different can we take you? Yeah. I'm down for whatever. I just been doing that. That kind of stayed with that. That was like Braden's kind of program going with that. So I'm down to do whatever. Adam, I'm going to send you maps old time strength. Yeah. Especially for the work that you do. I know you work behind the desk but you'll love it. You'll probably recommend it to some of the guys you lead or people you lead on your team because the strength gains on it are unconventional and amazing. You'll love it. And I agree with Adam. I think you should go on a reverse diet. I think you should go on a slight surplus. So if your maintenance is 29, I'd average about 3,000 a day. Focus on getting stronger. Slowly bring your calories up throughout the program. Try to gain too much body fat. You start to gain body fat, bring it back down, kind of hover a little bit. And then at the end of the program, when you're done with it, then you can go back on a cut. But I want to see your calories a little higher before we cut you. Yeah. I would love to see you get up to like 3,500 calories without putting... That would be a good goal for this is, can I follow this program? Can I slowly increase getting up to 3,500 calories and not see an increase really in body fat percentage? Just build muscle. Yeah. Just build in muscle or maintaining your weight while increasing those calories. While following a program like that, I think it's going to really serve you. And then we can reverse to... And then you can cut. Yeah. Do a cut with a transition to another program. Hey, shout out to 209. You grew up over there or what? Yeah. Yeah. No, I'm from Turlock. Okay. So I don't know if you guys might be with the area. Yeah. I went to Oakdale High School. So, and I had family in Turlock. Oh, awesome. Yeah, yeah. So I had family over there. Right on. Yep. It's born and raised. So I appreciate that guys. Thank you so much. Super excited to be here. So, well, thanks for everything you guys do. Thanks. By the way, when you do the reverse diet and all the program, you just expect to just get stronger. You're just going to see your strength. And when you see the strength going up and your weight not going up too much on the scale, you know you're on the right track. Oh, awesome. All right, man. Thanks, guys. All right. Thank you, brother. That was pretty straightforward. Yeah. Damn, good job so far. He lost a lot of weight. Oh, no. He's as strong as hell. Well, I mean... I mean, that's excellent. Also, shout out to Brayden. I mean, I know that he's one of the reasons why we found him and liked him is he's a younger generation promoting like the big core lifts and like this is the way to get... You know, it's so great to you, right? A guy who's 270 pounds, you think the path to losing the 50 pounds is, oh, cardio like... Like a run. Yeah, a run. No, no. Instead... Just change the stimulus. Yeah, get strong, lift like power lift and look how much it's served him. And look at his numbers are phenomenal. We have studies now that show this. Nothing beats strength training when it comes to fat loss. Yeah, once you establish that foundational sort of meat and potatoes programming, like I love when somebody gets to get into the arena of the old times. Oh, I love that, dude. Those unconventional lifts, you're going to feel so strong and especially like doing what he does for work. It's going to play, you know, so much. This is one of my favorite moves to do with clients. It would be to assess someone like this and get an idea of like, okay, he's done great. He's followed this similar type of a protocol. He's in a deficit, like reverse them out and switch up the stimulus completely. Like if you're used to training power lift, maps, anabolic kind of traditional, you know, type of lifts and then switching them over to something like old timey or performance or OCEA. These programs that are so different. Yeah, it's going to shock the system. It's going to be like a whole new novel stimulus. So that's going to promote growth while you're also feeding the body more calories and usual. Hopefully all that gets partitioned over to building this new found muscle that you're stimulating different. Our next caller is Austin from Utah. Awesome. What's happening, man? How can we help you? Hey, so again, thanks for having me on the show, I guess. Again, one more time. I'm grateful for all you guys do for me. You guys have helped me a lot to see that there's more goals than just aesthetic with fitness and I'm grateful for that. Thanks. For the past couple of years, I've been training a lot of unilateral. I ran maps, cemetery several times. Because the last time I talked to you, I was asking about a broken leg that had actually grown back stronger than my other leg. And so since then, I see a lot of strength and balances fixed there. But my question today is, since we talked last time, I kind of switched career paths because I just got sick of working at a desk and I'm a contractor now. I do a lot of activity each day. And I guess I've been working out for the past four years, roughly. And my body's pretty much stayed the exact same. I've gained 10 pounds. If anything, I look a little bit better. But I've noticed some things like with map symmetry. I've noticed that my imbalances have been fixed and it feels good. But lately, I've been feeling really burnt out of working out as many times a week as a maps program calls for. Even just the two or three times a week that I work out when I do maps anabolic. It feels like a little bit too much. And I'm wondering how I can modify these programs because I love running maps, cemetery. I love maps, power lift. I love anabolic. I'm wondering how I can modify these programs so that I can have them fit my lifestyle more so that right now I'm just focused on improving the way I feel rather than the way I look. Because if I was focused on the way I look, I would have quit a while ago. And so I just want to know how I can modify these programs because I love symmetry and power lift and I would love to run those. But it's just, it feels like too much volume on any given day. So do I just cut it back to only the major lifts? Or do I put them up? I don't know. Map 15. And the slight modification, so map 15 is going to represent like your, the power lift style as far as those are the big compound lifts that we have you do. Basically, you do two compound lifts a day every day. That's basically it. And the way you could modify that to compliment some of the things that you appreciate about symmetry is either one, trade out one of the compound lifts for a unilateral movement or on days where you feel good and you could, and you feel like you could handle a little more volume, add an exercise in there that is a unilateral movement. So as simple as that, I'd follow map 15, the advanced version, pretty much how it's laid out. The days that you feel really good and you can add more, I would add a unilateral movement that you have found has benefited you a lot into the day or trade out the squats or dead lifts or whatever, bilateral movements in there for a unilateral movement. And I think that'll serve you. If you feel like it's too much, it is. And you did change your lifestyle dramatically. You went from working at a desk to being a contractor. I'm assuming you're moving a lot more and your job is a lot more physical than it used to be? Yeah, without a doubt. And that's why you're feeling, we tend to train to the point where this is how much we can tolerate. And then what happens is our lifestyle changes and we keep our training the same. It was probably the right amount of volume and frequency and intensity before, but now your lifestyle is totally different. You're moving way more, your blue collar. And so that's just now inappropriately. When's the last time you took some time off? From working out? Yeah. I've actually been kind of just, the past four weeks, I've literally only been going in to do the repatterning movements and everything. Oh, good. That's exclusively what I've been doing for a month. And how's it feel? Do you feel a little bit better? It feels a lot better. I can do a workout every day without burning myself out. You're on the right track, dude. Adam's advice is perfect. But just so you know, if you want to follow other programs, you can simply cut the volume way down. If you ask for three sets, you could do one working set. If there's, you know, three exercises, you could do one of the exercises. You could always do that. And if you have to pick the exercise, typically the first one is the important one, the most important one for the body part. So you're on the right track. I like what you've done for the last four weeks, in fact. So I think if you go from that to Math 15 Advanced Version, I think you're going to start to see some nice results. Yeah. I mean, these other fun programs have been definitely excited to to try old time strength. That's one that I'm excited to try sometime soon. Yeah. And I just, I knew that Math 15 is what you guys were going to say. Great. But at the same time, it's like, I want to know how to modify these other fun programs so that I can try them all. You just cut the volume way down. Yeah, Austin, you just cut the volume way down, dude. I mean, I do that all the time with our programs. I'll do, you know, one set instead of three or two instead of three. I do that all the time. You can do this where I mean, God, this is what I kind of do myself a lot of the time is I love the Maths 15 protocol, the advanced version. And then you can intermittently pull from the other programs and say, you know what today instead of doing this, you know, squat, I'm going to do this Turkish get up here. Like nothing stops you from pulling or like from an old time strength movement. If that you really like or you want to try is putting that, that lift inside the protocol, which really is just you're picking two big, big lifts a day and that's all you're doing for maps 20. So use that philosophy and pull from the other programs that you're curious and you're interested at. There's nothing wrong with that. Okay. Cool. All right, awesome. Sounds good. You got it, man. All right. Okay. Have a good one, guys. Take it easy, brother. This is just so common. I do this all the time, even if we forget, we know what the right amount of volume and training and frequency and sets and exercises for us at a particular moment and it feels good and we're getting stronger. Then things change in our lifestyle. This is a very obvious one, right? Desk job to a physical job. Complete environment change. Yeah, but it could be, it could be as simple as like just more stress, right? Or something happened or you got sick and they recover or, you know, or accumulated stress over time, right? It was appropriate, but then you did it for so long without taking a break or doing a reload week that then it became too much. So all of it plays a role. All of it's, you know, put in this in this soup and you have to consider all of it. That's what happens. Intensity, volume, you got to look at all these factors that, you know, you might need to adjust and based off of like your current status of what your environment is kind of demanding of you. Our next caller is Dirk from Ohio. Dirk, what's happening? How can we help you? Guys, how are you doing? Pleasure to be on. I'm a big Mind Pump fan and my tribe is probably annoyed at the amount of times they say well wait, the Mind Pump guys say to do this or that. Awesome. How can we help you? Well, I think you guys have seen my package after coming through a pretty devastating eye situation that only affects about 1 in 5 million people in the world. I found myself standing on the scale in June of 20 and I was at 306 pounds at about 5 foot 9. I always tell everybody I got into fitness after I was just fitness cheeseburger in my mouth. Kind of felt like I went through the ringer and I'm just going to live life a little bit and it wasn't crazy about it but I also think during the eye barely lost tons of weight just when you're in pain every second of the day you don't think about eating, right? So at some point they kind of said okay, Dirk, you can start working out. I've always was kind of a bro after, you know, back chest arms. That was it. Notorious for going to the gym and doing arms for an hour on just Saturday. The best thing that ever happened to me was I tore my meniscus in like October of 20 and a physical therapist friend of mine said you need to start training your legs and then listening to you guys and learning about deadlifting and I'm like alright, the first time in my life ever I started deadlifting, working my legs. I think you've seen some of my stats. I think when I sent it to you guys I was still at about 20% 20.4% body fat. Finally that got that down to about 19.7. I'm 52 years old. Two questions. I have a full distal tear of my right rotator cuff. Of course every surgeon I see says fix it. I'll just tell you guys, it hasn't stopped me from doing a lot of things. I'm in the third phase of aesthetic right now. I've learned to maneuver things a little different when I lift a dumbbell. I'm going to suit jacket. I'll feel a little bit. And third, I've just hit a little plateau at my age and while I want to add some muscle which I've done I'd lose a little muscle to show a little more muscle. Just curious your thoughts. Yeah, if it's a full tear you said? Yeah, it's a full distal tear they're calling it. Yeah, then you'll need surgery. Otherwise that what's torn that stability is no longer there. Now here's a deal with stabilizers, even ligaments. I knew a guy who tore his ACL and never replaced it and he would do this funny party trick where he'd sit down and he'd slide his shin out from under his knee. They did that with my MCL. And you can get away with it obviously you're getting away with it but you're noticing anytime you need to rotate in a particular way or stabilize in a particular way that it's a problem. So if you don't mind that I guess you can keep going but it's a full tear and the rotator cuff procedures are pretty damn good now. Now if it was like a partial tear and you saw physical therapists you got a second opinion they said well we can work on that, the tear will heal but it's a fully torn and it ain't coming back unless they go in and reattach it. Now that being said you're going to want to go in if you do get the procedure and you're going to want to have really good correctional exercise and physical therapy afterwards because without that then it'll be a little bit better but it's not going to be that much better. You're going to want to have therapy afterwards to correct things that are happening and rebuild that strength but a full tear means that that muscle is not able to do anything. I'm sure you guys can envision after having four eye surgeries the last thing I ever did surgery. I get it. Talking to some people who had it done and I went down the rabbit hole looking at page like well you talked to people who had the surgery and they still can't move I probably know I'm putting off the inevitable at some point. I quit trying to figure out how to do pull ups and some things but it's probably coming at every surgeon like I've talked to two different ones and interesting you guys will find this that the second guy is supposed to be one of the best here in the state and I said you know I had the meniscus tear years ago I had a took my Achilles and tore it now I've got the shoulder I said what do you think is it do I need some kind of a joint replacement there he says no how's your sleep and at that point I said my sleep is terrible and he said well that's one of your problems. Yeah the studies show studies show that very clearly. Yeah no very clearly in fact there's a study that showed it was a dramatic increase in injury from lack of sleep which is pretty crazy so look here's the deal the reason why some people get a surgery they'll fix a torn you know a rotator cuff and they say oh it still hurts is you gotta correct the muscle recruitment patterns and you have to strain you can't just reattach something and expect it to work okay and by the way doing it when you have the momentum that you have and you're training like you are you're better off now then allowing yourself let's say to have a you know six month spell of off the wagon and not eating great putting on some weight and not having and losing some muscle and then going oh man fuck my shoulders really bothered me I better go get that done now you're gonna heal faster you're gonna you're gonna recover better you'll get back to things so much quicker if you do it when you're on top of the mountain like right now you got great momentum you've made huge progress you're doing really good you almost feel like you don't even necessarily need it so my opinion would be if you're going to do it this is the better time to do it when you're feeling like this then versus when you it's like a half to do it and you're maybe put on some weight you lost some muscle you're not as strong as you are that's gonna only it's only gonna make it that much more difficult to heal the way you want to heal dirt dirks how long has this been torn for it's about a year now that they identified it okay so let me explain will happen and I wish surgeons I know some of them do this now but you know a long time ago I trained a lot of surgeons and we would have these conversations and they often don't communicate this with a lot of procedures if you don't put as much time and energy into the physical therapy afterwards you're wasting your time with the surgery because look that muscle is torn it's disconnected you reconnect it your central nervous system doesn't it doesn't think it's connected it stopped working right stopped activating it so if you just reconnect it and you go and you oh it's healed you go to the gym you're like I don't notice anything well that muscle has been turned off if I tear your bicep and don't do anything with it for a year your CNS turns it off and learns how to move around it you've developed reallocated those movement patterns well there's also a major difference between the basic six week therapy they put you in right after healing versus real true therapy that happens later on after that no matter what I want to put you in our private form because two of the best PTs I know are in our private form and so obviously you don't live in the same state and so you won't be able to necessarily see them but you can consult with them virtually and they're in there and you can communicate with them so if you do decide to go through this process you have some allies with some of our friends that are in there that can be coaching alongside oh yeah that's great advice let me give you two things Dirk that I think will help you make this happen a lot faster so I think the site I want to say it's getluna.com you can confirm that it's a network of therapists and they'll come to your house so this is one of the only companies that does this it's all covered by insurance you don't need to get another special referral or whatever if you get physical therapy you can contact them insurance covers it they'll come to your house teach you the exercises or whatever so it's way more convenient they're really good so there's that the second one is there are peptides that can dramatically accelerate the healing process of surgery for recovery things like BPC157 I was starting to look at the BPC157 and then seeing what happened with the FDA stuff I kind of just stopped realizing I don't even have access I guess you do have access go to mphormones.com they still have access they're working with compound pharmacies that are continuing to provide these peptides until they're shut down which they probably won't be but that's a whole other story right now it's just a little fear mongering that's going on mphormones.com and you can still get things like BPC157 thymus and beta those are the two best peptides to my knowledge for recovery of tears and injuries and stuff like that now they're not going to reattach your rotator cuff if it was a partial tear it would help the healing process but a full tear means that you got to go in and reattach it post surgery though those peptides oh yeah I mean in the animal studies you're looking at cut your time maybe I'm saying that wrong it's connected but there's a tear in the center of it it's what they're telling me so it's connected on both ends but there's a I think it's a one and a half centimeter tear at least when I had the MRI a year ago if it's a full in the middle yeah you got it established if it's gone or if there's some connection and I would take whatever the diagnosis is to a good physical therapist because a certain bring it into the forum we're going to give you free access to the forum get Dr. Brink to give you an assessment and talk to Dr. Justin Brink inside there and get his opinion with a good friend of ours and if it's a partial tear there's still hope for him not to do that and I would love to see what BP157 does with some therapy with him yeah but if they're labeling a full distal tear we got to see what that is because if it's torn and that's it then there's nothing he could do but if there's some connection as far as plateau where I feel like my legs, arms everything I just feel like the last bit of body fat I'm trying to remove is really torso and I see that when I do the evil scan everybody tells me basically it's probably steps in movement which I don't like any kind of cardio obviously but you guys feel like that's where it's at well I mean the activity really overall just keep tracking your steps one way to handle that that's good for health but it's diet yeah we didn't dive into the nutrition piece that's a whole other monster right I mean obviously we're concerned about the shoulder and I know that's what we've been talking about this whole time the next question I would have had for you in regards to like leaning out would be do you know where your calories currently are right now and do you have an idea of like how much you are moving as far as how many steps in a day like what's your activity like I track everything and I'm at like 2,020 calories that's about 8,000 grams of protein I think when I emailed you guys I was about 8,000 steps average but when winter comes here in Ohio that always drops right now I bet I'm 7,000 probably at best that's not a problem it's not the steps then if it went from 8 to 7 that's not a big deal your calories are a bit low though yeah your calories are low for your size I would do a slow maybe reverse diet try and build some strength but here's a deal I think you're being limited quite a bit with your upper body at least that's a limiting fact that's a major stabilizer and even though you can modify your form so it doesn't hurt your body is only going to let you get so strong in certain movements which by the way Sal there's silver lining in there especially since you admitted earlier that legs were something that you neglected for a really long time there is an opportunity to double and triple down on your leg training because that's where you're going to see some of the biggest muscle gains since you have the highest potential there because they've got the least amount of training for decades now so put a lot of that energy there because you're limited to the shoulder and upper body you are only going to be able to push so much weight so instead of getting hung up on that until we solve the shoulder issue is really train legs really get out set some goals as far as some of your big leg movements and get strong as fuck in your legs and that's where in calorie surplus too I would like to reverse you out of where you're at if you're around I'd rather see you around 24-2500 calories and hitting the legs harder than you ever have and then let's see what that does as far as speeding the metabolism up and actually leaning you out Adam how many days a week do you think I can hit legs at my age what would you say is that number a lot of that has to do with the intensity that you bring towards it I think you can handle one to two moderately hard to hard days and then one to two easier light days really depends on that I don't think you can handle three to four intense days of training but you can definitely get after you have a day that's really intense and then two days that are like moderate to light intensity so that was kind of how I would go out do you have access to a sled, Dirk? yeah actually I started doing sled work after hearing you guys and I absolutely love the sled I do my finisher is usually me pushing and pulling a sled Dirk you could do the sled every day if you want that's one that is working on it but it doesn't damage the body like other exercises so if you want every workout you could start with two or three sets of pushing the sled at a moderate intensity so one of my favorite ways to use the sled especially with the advice I'm giving you right now is I'm gonna have a day that's sled free that I'm training hard like it's in its deadlift squatting day Bulgarian split squats those types of movements if I and then let's say that let's just say for argument's sake this is Monday and then Wednesday I want you to hit legs again a few days later basically depending on how much you overreached on Monday depends on if I'm gonna push you towards sled work or like other exercises so if we went really pretty intense on Monday I might do a lot of sled work on Wednesday to let you because I don't give you some active recovery like Sal saying you're not gonna do as much damage now let's say Monday you train really hard but you're like man I didn't really get sore at all I might get after it again I might do some lunges or something else another big strong movement on Wednesday for your legs again I might do some sled as a way to modify your intensity so it's like I want to get after legs Monday Wednesday Friday but if I if I got after him too much on Monday and I'm really having a hard time moving around on Wednesday then I'm gonna do something like the sled instead of doing those hard moves again if I don't feel really sore from it then I might get after those movements again does that make sense yeah it does like Memorial Day I'll give you I wanted to do some different I did a 24 sled pushes down the back of like 275 pounds I did 24 farmer walks with a 70 pound and a 45 pound kettlebell and then I did 24 overhead holds with a 60 pound ball for 24 seconds 24 times and the next day I was sore but I wasn't immovable so I I wanted to do something heavy as I you know listen to you guys I found another gear that I learned to push but I also know that in the next two days I can't do that back to back right that's right that's right okay you got it yeah you got it for sure what are you following one of our maps programs right now yeah I'm in aesthetic I'm in the third phase first week of aesthetic basically and I did that because honestly I want to look better I want to be healthy I'm a grandpa now or paul paul I guess as they call me so I said my goal is to go to like her third grade luncheon with paul paul and kids go oh my god that's your grandpa that's a good goal I like that I like that well we're going to put you in the forum I think fine you keep rolling with aesthetic increase your calories put a little so in aesthetic you pick muscle groups I don't know what one or two muscle groups you pick to focus on but let's make it legs okay so make it legs every Saturday with legs okay good okay good yeah that's it so let's increase the calories by good three to four hundred calories a day somewhere in that range get in the forum we throw you in the forum and then stay close to that one scares me that one scares me to death like everybody else I'm afraid I'm gonna start putting on weight but I'll start creeping it up yeah you creep it up yeah you'll be all right well guys you got such a big audience I'd be remiss if I didn't take one minute just to tell you that anybody out there wearing contact stay away from water you don't want to do it you don't want to deal with what I deal with which was basically a bad splash of water that put a parasite my eye and it's called a can't to me but keratitis so if you don't mind me throwing that plug out to everybody in context I never swam in them I never showered in them it was truly a freak accident for me that that changed my life about three years that's crazy man big holler out there by in context stay away from water please jeez scared the crap out of everyone hey love the show appreciate you guys very much thank you man for calling in man take care man that's crazy it's really splash of water what do you say like one in five million five million bro there's a parasite there's a parasite I was talking about there's a parasite that swam up your pee hole in like some weird lake yeah it's like weird rivers and shit yeah Amazon yeah yeah I'm not going anywhere I'm not gonna stay right here bro that is it I like pools you know okay so I want so obviously he'll get a chance to listen to this dirk make sure that we get a clear diagnosis of what's going on because if he does have a partial tear and he actually feels as good as he says he feels and I think BP 157 with some good rehab will absolutely help but he's a talk to somebody who's who rehabs specifically because there are tears that you ain't gonna rehab right because full tear yeah it usually means yeah you're gonna need surgery there's no rehab that's right look if you like the show head over to mindpumpfree.com check out all of our free fitness guides you can also find all of us on Instagram Justin is at mind pump Justin I'm at mind pump to Stefano and Adam is at mind pump Adam