 people think that you have to do so much to make these big changes in your life. And cause we, we in the fitness space make it so nuanced and we all want to argue over these, these things that don't matter that much. It's like, man, I'm over here trying to struggle with the average person, just getting them motivated to come in and come in and exercise three times a week. It's like, if we can just get you to walk a little bit more through your day, and I can get you to pick up the, pick up the barbell every once in a while and do a few movements. Like we are winning. And then, then we get this stuff where you got people arguing over like the, the stuff that just does not matter to me. And it just drives me crazy. And unless it's a study that just came out tomorrow, they're likely or today, right? The likelihood that we haven't read it and tried to unpack it and then see how we would apply that to clients. Like it's very, it's going to be rare. And what we know, what we've already figured out the big rocks and things that really matter, we've already pieced all that stuff together. So even anything that comes, comes out in the next five years, study-wise, we're not going to have this breakthrough that's going to be like, oh my God, this whole time we had no idea we would do this wrong. Like all we had to do was do cardio right before we weight training. The fucking fat would just have melted off. Like that's not going to happen to us. No. Rhonda Patrick, we love you, but you're super wrong about the way you're working out. Cardio before strength training does not build more muscle. Wrong. Right. I saw that. I got tagged on that multiple times. I saw we got tagged on that post because of what we talk about. And what I found interesting about that was, I believe that she is referencing the same study that Eugene talked about when we all agreed the benefits of doing cardio for those reasons. So, but what, and I watched the clip and, and this is, this is one of the problems I have again with our space is that we take really good information in some science. Aerobic training prior to resistance training increased muscle capitalization, which is known to improve muscle hypertrophy. And then there also a leap from there. Like therefore this is what I'm doing. My personal favorite workout is a HIIT session on my Peloton followed by strength training followed by a 20 minute sauna session at about 175 to 180 degrees Fahrenheit. And then everybody assumes because that person is really intelligent, knows how to read a study much better than they do and respects them as an authority. And then they go, so therefore this is what I do. And it's like, whoa, stop right there. This is a classic example. And again, I have all the respect in the world for Dr. Rhonda Patrick. I think she's one of the best people in the space of health and wellness. She communicates usually very well. In this case, she communicated something completely wrong. A lot of people are misled. And this is, this is part of the reason why I have an issue with academia in the fitness and health space. So let me explain. There was a study that took 14 healthy young men average age about 22. So first off, small sample size, but nonetheless, I don't disagree with the study because I believe it to be true. Yeah, but let me stop you right there. Already what people always have to understand when we communicate health and fitness, the thing that we are always talking about is what we're keeping in mind is the, the person that we trained, which was the average person, which was the majority of people, which by the way is not 14 year old, you mean 22 year old men or 22 year old men or just 14 people. Yeah. I mean, we worked with general population, lots of people. So already small sample size already young men, but nonetheless, I don't disagree with the study just based off my experience. I think you guys will agree. So the study goes, they took these 14 young men, they had them do, I believe 10 weeks of cardiovascular conditioning, then after the 10 weeks of cardiovascular conditioning, then they had them do strength training. And what they found were increased or improved capillary density and markers of improved muscle hypertrophy with the strength training. Okay. So in other words, they got some cardio fitness first, then they did the strength training 10 weeks later, and the signs and signals that they could pick up through sophisticated testing showed that, oh, it looks like there's going to be better muscle growth as a result. Now here's where Dr. Rhonda Patrick messed up. She talked about the study and then she goes on to say, this is why the way I work out is I do cardio first, then I do strength training, then I do sauna on the same workout. Not the same. It's not the same. So having better cardiovascular fitness overall can definitely help with muscle building. We've talked about this before. First off, you got better stamina, better strength endurance, better blood flow, which is what the study talks about. Now doing this, doing cardio before strength training in the same workout, very different. Cause now what happens, and studies have shown this as well, and we've also seen this in our own experience. Now you're sending different adaptation signals within the same workout, competing signals, competing signals somewhat, right? And the first thing you do in the workout is where you get the most adaptation. So if your goal is to build muscle and strength, you want to do the strength training first, then do the cardio after, or ideally you want to do cardio on a separate day from strength training if it fits within your schedule. So the study's true. If you have better cardio fitness, you're going to be able to do strength training better, and that'll probably help with muscle building. Okay, to an extent. Yeah, I was going to say, well, you need to even break that down. It's like the reason why that works is because they just have a greater capacity, a greater gas tank to go after a better workout. It's not like there's a mechanism within them that's like, oh, because you did cardio, therefore your body responds and builds muscle more. It's no, you have a better gas tank. You can put more energy towards your workout, which means you could probably lift a little bit more weight or more repetitions. That, the greater increase of volume then in turn helps with hypertrophy. Now that's, that's overall, right? But the studies showed that there were other markers, right? Satellite cell proliferation, capillary density. So to an extent, doing, having some cardio fitness is going to make strength training more effective. And I say that to an extent because as anybody who's ever worked out for a long time will tell you, if you push the cardio too hard, the strength training starts to suffer. So there's definitely a curve here of, you know, good cardio fitness. Now endurance is my ultimate goal, so the strength gains and the muscle gains start to fall off. But again, the big mistake she made was she took that study and then she says, here's how I like to work out. It's not the same thing. That's not the same at all. In the study, they didn't have people do cardio and strength training the same workout. They did 10 weeks of cardio conditioning followed by some strength training. So yeah, being an overall better fitness and better shape is going to make the strength training more effective. But if you do everything in the same workout, what you do first gets the greatest adaptation. This is by the way, it's even true for exercises. The exercise you do at the beginning of a workout is we're going to see fractionally more strength gains in the exercises you do at the end. So if your goal is to bring up your chest or your shoulders or your legs or whatever, you should probably do those exercises at the beginning of the workout and then the ones at the end of the body parts that you have less concern over. And we've known this again for a long time. So it's misleading. And this is what academia does phenomenally in the fitness space. They do this so well is they'll take a study and then mislead the shit out of everybody or confuse them. And no fault to Dr. Rhonda Patrick. Yeah, I don't think I don't think she has that wasn't her goal. She's malintent over it. I just think that, but this is the, this is the problem to those that we get and we get to always get tagged on stuff like this is that really what we're talking about, whether you do your cardio six weeks leading before or post workout or you like to do it that way, it really is splitting hair argue. Like it's not even the, it's not even the main conversation in my opinion. Yeah. That's the part I don't like. That's the part because then that that's what we get with you. I have to go back and forth in DMs and have to explain to somebody what they're trying to communicate for why and why. And then I catch myself doing your time is like, who fucking cares? This is not even something that we should be arguing about. This is not of all the big rocks that you should be worrying about, whether you do your cardio right before, right afterwards, six weeks leading up to it's like that stuff does not matter when I have somebody that has got poor eating habits and has poor exercise habits, doesn't know how to program correctly. So many other big rocks versus like, okay, let's argue over when and how much like, come on. How consistent have you been, you know, like how, how is this something that you've been able to replicate over and over again, you know, versus like, you know, worrying about having this cardio in front or at the end, or like if your meal timing is like perfectly dialed in in terms of like, yeah, I need to get this protein, I immediately have to work out. Like there's all these like little nuanced things that people just get like stuck on, which, you know, the overall picture is just so much more important. 100%. You look at the scale of things. What makes a big impact? What makes a medium impact? What makes a tiny impact? Okay, that's what you need to pay attention to. Who's the person that should worry about doing cardio before after the workout? This is the advanced bodybuilder or the advanced person who has everything dialed in, likes to tweak the knobs a half a direction this way, a half a degree this way. That's the person that makes sense to you. But I'll give you guys an example. This 100% would happen if I was still managing gyms. I guarantee, let's say this, this, you know, video she puts out goes out. I 100%, this would happen. A member would walk up to me and be like, Sal, yeah, I just saw Dr. Rhonda Patrick say that, you know, cardio before the workout is better, but I hate doing cardio at first. I like doing it at the end. That's just the way I like to work out. Like, like, should I, what should I do? I'm like, just doesn't matter. Or let's flip it around. Cardio in the beginning, I know that that you said that that makes me gain a little bit less strength and muscle, but I like to jog to the gym. And it really, I enjoy that. I jogged to the gym and then I work out. So I do my cardio before, like, should I just drive to the gym and not do any more jogging? Like, no, it doesn't make that big. It doesn't make that big of a difference. It's a small difference. It doesn't make it. The big difference is consistency. Do you enjoy the workout? Is this something you want to do? So the point you're making at them, 100%. And what you're always going to hear experienced coaches and trainers communicate to are the big things, not the small things. How about the client who it's so hard to get them to do a couple exercises? You know what I'm saying? And then they hear this, like, oh, I need to be doing this. I got to do a hit workout in front of my workout. That is part of the problem is that so many people think that you have to do so much to make these big changes in your life. And because we in the fitness space make it so nuanced. And we all want to argue over these things that don't matter that much. It's like, man, I'm over here trying to struggle with the average person, just getting them motivated to come in and exercise three times a week. It's like, if we can just get you to walk a little bit more through your day, and I can get you to pick up the barbell every once in a while and do a few movements, we are winning. And then we get this stuff where you got people arguing over the stuff that just does not matter to me. And it just drives me crazy. And we always get tagged on it because of the information that we communicate. But unless it's a study that just came out tomorrow, they're likely or today, right? The likelihood that we haven't read it and tried to unpack it and then see how we would apply that decline. It's like, it's very, it's going to be rare. And what we know, what we've already figured out, the big rocks and things that really matter, we've already pieced all this stuff together. So even anything that comes comes out in the next five years, study wise, we're not going to have this breakthrough that's going to be like, Oh my God, this whole time we had no idea we've been doing this wrong. Like all we had to do was do cardio right before we weight trade and the fucking fat would just have melted off. Like that's not going to happen to us. No, no, we're not, I guarantee there's not going to be a study that's going to come out that's going to make me go, Oh my God, everything I thought to be true. It's not going to happen. We'll see little things here and there. And usually what happens, and this is not being arrogant. Again, this is just because of our experience. Usually what happens is studies come out and confirm kind of what we've been communicating that we didn't have studies to support. I'll give you guys an example. A study just came out and I'm actually Lane, good friend of mine, Lane Norton, a lot of you may know who he is, is actually doing a deep dive into the study. So a study comes out that shows that artificial sweeteners may have an effect or impair glucose metabolism in the body through affecting the microbiome of the gut or the body. In other words, something you've been saying on the podcast for a very long time. Yeah. So, and what I've been saying is this, again, big rocks, if taking artificial sweeteners is the only way you can cut your calories down. So now you're at a deficit. The benefits probably greater than the potential detriment, although that's never been my strategy. I've never seen it be successful with anybody except for the competitors, competitors. Only people I've ever seen it successfully. Yeah. Who track every single whatever and you don't want to live that way, right? But what if we always said there is an effect, even if the effect is just to perceive innocuous, even yes, even if the effect is just perceived sweetness, that that's an effect on the body. And that means that there's going to be other effects that we don't know about, even if it's just behavioral, right? Anyway, this study comes out the shows, there may be an effect on insulin sensitivity or glucose metabolism. And it's going to kind of support what we've been saying, which is, it's not innocuous. There's, there's, if there wasn't an effect, nobody would use artificial sweeteners and people say, well, what do you mean what effect? Well, you taste it, you perceive it, that's an effect. Does that affect your behaviors? Of course it does. Otherwise, you wouldn't take it in the first place. Nonetheless, I'm not going to dive deep into it because Lane's super honest, got tons of integrity and what he does very well, better than anybody. As he takes the study, and I know what he's doing right now, he's literally writing probably a 20 page, you know, essay on the whole thing. Line for line. Yeah. So when he gets that out, I'm sure he'll talk about it. And then I'll get on the phone with him and he'll break it down for me. And, you know, he's a scientist. So did you guys talk much about it already? Or is it just? Oh yeah. So anytime I see a study in a space that I know he's very, very versed in, I'll send it to him. And he's usually, he's really good. He's really honest. He'll say, oh, this is actually a good study. Or he'll say he'll break it down. No, that sucks because whatever. For example, that study that had come out that showed that there was like a 90% conflict of interest with the governing body that determines our dietary guidelines. Yeah. And he said, yeah, I know that sucks. And he says, but I don't know how else. No one else is going to fund it. Yeah, he goes because he got funded. Remember, he studied leucine. That was his big thesis when he was in college. And he said, I wasn't going to go to the freaking wheat industry to get funding for leucine. I had to go to the beef industry in the dairy industry. So people may say, Oh, you're influenced by beef and dairy, you know, but he's like, where else am I going to get the money? Yeah. So, you know, he's very honest about that kind of stuff. So I'll let everybody know what he says, you know, about that particular. But I, but again, I stand by what I said, at the very least, there's behavioral impacts from artificial sweeteners, which is why studies show unless they're controlling every damn calorie, average person, if they just switch out their artificial sweeteners, you know, their, their normal sweeteners for official sweeteners, they don't lose weight because their behaviors change to make up the calories. This is what ends up. It's crazy though that how much we've been talking about that for so long now that we can't get like just a little bit of trust on that. Like, you know, like just cause there's not a study for it when you collectively think of how many total people, why aren't people losing weight? Artificial sweeteners been around for a long time. Yeah. I mean, I mean, how many each one of us individually have trained a lot of people and combined it's like, and the only group that I, I saw value with the diet sodas and the artificial sweeteners is the competitors because they track everything. Yeah. Because everything is being tracked and, and otherwise, measure everything. Yeah. Otherwise what ends up happening, you end up eating more calories somewhere else. And I even catch this as my own behavior and I have an ex-competitor and I know that. It's that, and I remember what I was talking about, I talked about it on the show. I remember you shared it. There's this kind of interesting phenomenon that happens that went for myself. When I have a soda, a regular soda that I know has 180 or 220 calories in it, I know that I'm getting calories. Therefore, I'm less likely to have a second or a third with that because I'm already like, oh, okay, I've already had, I've had that. That was one treat for me versus if I'm having diet coke, it's like, oh, it's zero. Next thing you know, it was from one to two to three to four, like you're drinking so many of them. And then what I noticed is it spikes my appetite and other things, other than I want other things to eat. And so then I end up eating those calories, the 180 calories I saved on the soda, I end up consuming in other foods, you know, or in my meals. What's up everybody? Here's the giveaway. The most advanced bodybuilding program we have, only for those of you that got crazy recovery ability, good genetics, MAPS PED. By the way, it stands for performance enhanced design, not what you thought. Nonetheless, it's a double split routine workout twice a day, super advanced. I'm going to give it away for free. Here's how you can win. Leave a comment below in the first 24 hours that we drop this episode. Subscribe to this channel, turn on notifications, do all those things. If we like your comment, we'll notify you in the comment section. And boom, you got MAPS PED for free. Also, we got a sale going on right now. MAPS Starter, the starter strength training program, the beginner strength training program, it's 50% off. And then our prime bundle, this includes MAPS Prime, MAPS Prime Pro, this is also 50% off. You can find all of this by clicking the link at the top of the description below and you'll get the 50% off discount. All right, here comes the show. Talk about, so I'm going to switch gears here, but you want to talk about some revelations that I had this morning. So I was, this morning, I dropped my daughter off at school and we're having a good conversation. And I'm talking about how a lot of kids still in her school are wearing masks and I'm like, what is going on with that? And, you know, they don't, you don't have to wear them anymore, but I kind of get it. You know, they've now, the past year and a half, they've worn them. So it's like, you have to be the first one to take it off. So then I'm talking to her about how silly kids are for following, this kind of turned into this conversation, how silly kids are for following trends just because celebrities do something or whoever's cool has got to do something. They, they got to do it too. It's so stupid, blah, blah, blah. Anyway, we had this conversation about it and I left feeling super like, yeah, you know, I'm teaching her a lot of good stuff. Then I come in here and I start working out and Vicky's in here. So I switched off my death metal because I know that she doesn't like it. And I put on my 90s hip hop. So 90s hip hops on, I'm working out and Kris Kross comes on. Remember Kris Kross? Of course. Kris Kross will make you jump. Okay. Yeah. Anyway, this was like, what, 93? So this was at these two kids that they went, you know, back in those days, I didn't have the term viral, but they went viral, went big. And I realized like how judgmental I was of kids because this literally happened, everybody. Okay. So everybody who's like 40 and older, you remember this, everybody else. I'm about to tell you something that's so stupid and ridiculous. It's embarrassing to talk about. So Kris Kross, they were this hip hop group and they wore their clothes backwards. This was part of what they did. Literally pants and shirt backwards. And guess what all the kids did? Everybody did it too. Wore their clothes backwards. It's the stupidest thing ever. My friends did. And it was pretty crazy. Like in two, like overalls, like backwards and then like the, and it's just so unfunctional. Like you're showing up. Remember going to the bathroom? Yeah. Exactly. Well, it doesn't serve anything. You've talked about this before about the, how the generation coming up, no matter what, is always going to buck the system. Right? It's a part of rebellion. It is. So that's, even though you think it's trendy, right, but it always starts from a place of rebellion first. So it gets crazy and popular. Then everyone's like, Oh, it's so trendy. Oh, you're just following this thing. But the reason why it got traction was because it was bucking the system originally. And we still see that today. Yes. I mean, you still see, and it normally is started by somebody who has power influence. I mean, if you read the book, Hitmakers, it talks about that's what is viral. Virality is a myth. There's no such thing as like somebody does something and it goes viral. It's that something gets shared by somebody who has a lot of influence and power. Oprah Winfrey, you know, your big name, famous people, shares something and then it gets introduced to millions at once. And then those millions of people, I mean, perfect timing for it. Dude, I honestly think that sagging the pants was more stupid. Yes. Well, that's still happening though. That's like excessive sagging, though. There used to have kids who would come in literally like their entire butt would be. Everything. Yeah. Out there in the public. Everything. Yeah. I, yeah. Did you guys, so you never wore your clothes backwards for a second? No. Did you do it? No, I sagged my pants though for sure. I did. I wore my clothes. Oh, you wore backwards. I had overalls. No, you did. I did, bro. Bro, and I would pay for that picture, right? I know. I did. You got a picture of that? Did you have corn rows too? No, I didn't go that far. I didn't go that far. I bet it comes to later. I love that. I love to see that. I literally, you know, my one attempt at life to try to be trendy. After that, I was like, I'm not doing the same. I literally had a pair of overalls that I wore backwards. No. My best friends did it. I wish I had a picture of that. I was like tempted, but I was like, you know, because I was really in the, like it was more MC Hammer and then it went into like Chris Cross and all that. And then it was like House of Pain. I was more on the House of Pain side. So I kind of like wore the Larry Bird jersey and stuff like that. And so I got into kind of that style. Yeah, but that's not nearly as embarrassing as wearing like clothes backwards. What? I mean, yeah, that's up there. I didn't get it. I'm trying to think of, you know, now you got me thinking of like, what's the dumbest trend that I did? You know, what's the dumbest thing? Well, you had frosted tips with that, but a lot of people had frosted it. No, that was cool. What are you talking about? I might bring that back. If I had hair, I'd bring it back, dude. First of all, okay, listen, no, I did. Did you ever pierce your nipple or something? No, no, no, no. But you know, I actually, I actually never, okay. Let me get some clarity here. I never frosted my tips. I bleached my hair when I would play sports and it would grow out. And so then it looks like frosted, which I like don't, I'm not denying it. Oh, I was going to say, I rocked it. You know what I'm saying? I mean, it's in my like graduation picture. So, you know, I owned it for sure. And it was my hair all kinds of times. But I never went to like the hair salon and be like, could you just do the tips of my hair and pull through like one of those fucking nets that they do. Well, you have money to do that. You're probably right. I'm the poor man version. I literally bleached my fucking head and I'm like, I got to wait two months before I look cool. Burn the shit out of your scalp? No, yeah. So I'm trying, okay, so that, that, I mean, okay, you could get that, get me there, but I wouldn't. But that's not as bad as backwards clothes. No, no, no. I win this right now. That's so embarrassing. No, yeah, backwards. I mean, did you do the Jankos on top of that? Cause that was another thing. No, okay. So I couldn't, my, my, there was Janko, remember Janko jeans were like a hundred bucks. Really? Yeah, dude. You like the knockoff. There was no way in hell. The knockoff Jankos is even worse. I mean, I had excessively baggy pants. No doubt. Like that was like a thing that was just like everybody. Okay. So I was super baggy. Yeah. It is. And I looked back at those pictures and like, God, it looks like such a like a just a rag. So for, for a small, for a small window, I do remember doing this and which would go in line with like your terrible Jinko pants. Silver tab jeans were like a big deal. Yes. Right. So we would buy silver tab jeans and we would buy them like size 40. Yeah. 42. Yeah. So, and you'd have to belt strap them up just so the bottom would be so, so big to fit like over boots and shit like that. That's what I did. So that was very close to I did the silver tabs cause the Jankos are too expensive. Oh, silver tabs were expensive back then. Not like the Jankos. Oh, silver tabs were expensive. It had to be loose cause you had to be able to hacky sack, you know, in between class. Bro, you was like vital. Remember trying to run in your big ass pants? The bottom where the heels will always be shredded cause you tripped on them. So, okay. Another realization I had. The way you say, Dougie, you had to do some stupid. Do you remember what was the craziest trend you did clothes wise? What did they do back in the 40s? Going floss. Yeah, something like that. I had to Doug sir. Yeah. You had to get the right leopard skin. Honestly, I don't remember. I remember following fashion trends and realizing that I never felt good in the clothes. I was just doing it because it was a fashion trend. Like was it Ralph Lauren type? I never thought I looked good in it actually. That type of stuff. Let's see, let's see. When you were like, cause this is junior high. That's like, in my opinion, that's the peak of where you just follow stuff. Yeah, junior high, high school. How old, what years were you in junior high? So that you're talking about like 13. Junior high to early high school. What was that? Yeah, so late 70s was junior high. Okay. Late 70s. What would have been dumb in the late... Bell bottom. Bell bottoms and the big girl. Yeah. So I remember in high school, oh, this is a good one. In high school, I was part of the jazz band. Yeah. Okay. And the uniform was black bell bottom pants, black platform shoes, and a blue ruffled tuck shirt. And a black bow tie. That was the uniform. Like a pirate? Like ruffled pirate shirt? No, remember the old tuck shirts? They used to have like ruffles down the front and they had ruffles around the sleeves? Yeah. Seriously, that's what we wore. What did you play? I saw some of that this weekend. Hold on a second. That's kind of pimp though. Doug, I've known you for like 10 years. I didn't know you played the trombone. Oh yeah, man. I played the trombone. Wow. I'd be used to play the trumpet, bro. Me and you should jam some. Yeah, we should. You guys got a lot of chicks. We got a lot of chicks. Yeah. Let me tell you. You each have your own door card, I see. You know what? I don't know. I think I got thrown out, but we had a picture taken on this pier in Washington, off on Lake Washington. And we're all wearing our tuck shirts and our black pants and our platform shoes and holding our instruments. And it was a big, like a large format photo. But unfortunately, I don't think I have any. Oh, I love to see that. I think I got thrown out when I moved. Yes, I did band for a few years. I stopped in seventh grade because I didn't want to carry my trumpet to school literally. But this is my first kiss was because of band. That was my first kiss. Yeah, there was a girl in band. Yeah, band camp. Yeah, band camp. There was a girl in band. You know what you do with her flute? Yeah. There was a girl in band. What'd you do with the apple pie cell? Oh, God. She was too hot. No, she was, I wish she wasn't even that attractive. Sorry if she's watching. I wasn't really into. But you know, when you're that age. She probably felt the same way. She probably felt the same way, you know what I'm saying? His overalls are back. She was super into me. She was super into me. No, you know what I did? Hey, listen, you know what I did? Something's don't change. Keep going. I was very confident that she was super into me. No, we went in the back room where all the instruments were and I made one of the band kids watch the door for me so we can make out in there. That was the first time I got ahead of kiss. Yeah. What grade is this? What grade? This was seventh grade. Oh, OK. Seventh grade and yeah. You were making out in seventh grade? I wasn't making out till high school. You know, I realized that my kids started watching the podcast so we're going to stop there. Let's just say, I actually had this conversation with my daughter last night. We were at dinner. When was your first kiss? I'm like, how much information do I give to my kid right now? How much do I lie? About all this stuff. You boost everything a few more years later. I was 30. He's like, that's 30. Wait a minute. You married my mom when you were 20. Yeah, we didn't kiss. Anyway, here's another realization, right? So after my workout, I got Andrew and Kyle and Dylan up there. So editors and our YouTube producer. And I'm telling stories about when I first started working in this industry, right? So all these stories started popping up. And then I realized, and I'd love to ask you guys this. And I'll tell the story. You guys know the story, but I'll tell it real quick so that there's some context. But I realized what a massive headache and pain in the ass employee would be if we hired me at 18. OK, so here's the story and you guys know this. Because I always think to myself, oh man, if I had someone like me, it'd be so awesome. But then as I'm telling the story, I'm like, oh man, I was a headache. Like a wreck loose. Oh, I was crazy. So the story I was telling them and they were like, they couldn't believe this. So you guys remember the barbecue story? So I told this a long time ago, but I was 18. I became a trainer. Four months later, fitness manager. Then I moved to sales so I could become a general manager because back in those days, fitness, they didn't let fitness managers become general managers. You had to prove yourself in the sales side. So I did. And I had this new manager that I worked for. His name is Don. He's a good friend of mine, one of my first mentors. And that was my first weekend. I ran the weekend. I was a sales manager. Right. And on the weekends, we used to compete with other clubs to see who was the best. Now, back then, this was before we had internal email. And so the only way you could know what the other clubs were doing was if you somehow would call and trick the front desk into telling you their numbers. Otherwise it was like, do your best and let's see who wins at the end of the day. Right. But I wanted to know. So I used to call these clubs and I would pretend to be the district manager all the time. Hey, this is Simon. What are we at? And I made his voice because he was this big guy with this big voice or whatever. And I'd get their numbers from the front desk. Right. And I'd know what they're at. Anyway, Saturday goes by. I crushed all the clubs. So I'm first place so far. Sunday comes around. And it's like, I don't know. It's like nine at night. And I'm first, but I'm only first but like a thousand bucks. I'm like, you know, I could get caught. This isn't good. So I'm like, okay, what do I got? I got to make this happen. Well, anyway, family walks in and you guys know this. When you work in gyms, you can tell who's a member and who's not a member. And I could tell from, I'd watch the parking lot and I'd see them walk up. Oh crap, potential member. So I'm all ready to go. Fresh meat. Yeah. So family of four comes in and I'm like, dude, I'm going to get them to buy a three year prepaid membership, personal training. Like if I need to sell like $3,000 worth of this deal so I can for sure win this competition. So they come in, I do the goal assessment, the tour. I mean, I do the whole thing, right? I throw everything at them. We sit down and the man was like, the husband, was like super like, this is like, he's negotiating everything with me. So we're going back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. I'm looking at the clock. It's getting close to 10 p.m. when we're supposed to shut the books down. So I'm like, this needs to happen, right? So we're going, we're going. Anyway, little backstory. 24 our fitness used to have competitions every, you know, every few months or so, internal competitions. And one of this competition this month was as a member, every time you worked out, you got to fill out an entry form to win a brand new barbecue set. So in the middle of the gym, literally, we had a barbecue and all the accessories and balloons on it. It was this big display in the middle of the gym and members would come in, fill out their entry form to win this barbecue. So anyway, I'm going back and forth to this guy. Finally, he stands up. Cause I'm not letting him leave, right? He stands up. Nope. We come back tomorrow. I'm not doing it right now. Starts to walk out. So I literally get in front of the door. Stop. And he goes, what? I said, wait right here. I got a surprise for you. So I go out to the workout floor and I wheel in the barbecue. Literally, I pull it off the floor. I wheel it into the office. So if you sign up right now, you'll get this barbecue. I'll throw this barbecue in. So anyway, he signs up and I win the contest. VP comes in. Boss comes the next day. Hold on, hold on, hold on. VP comes in the next day. Sal just, he makes a big announcement, you know, a big conference call with all the clubs. Sal Stefano, new sales guy. He was only 18 years old, kicked everybody's ass. Good job. He's gonna be $500. You know, bonus thing. I'm excited. First place. Don, my mentor. He's sitting there and he's high-fiving me. Oh, you're fine. This is great, man. We're gonna crush. This is awesome. Nobody notices that the barbecue's gone. So I'm like, okay, cool. Nobody knows, right? Remember, I'm a kid, right? Anyway, later that day, I'm at the front desk and up pulls up a pickup truck with the barbecue in the back. And it's the guy that I sold the membership to and I'm like, oh, fuck. He walks in and I'm like, I don't want to be at the front desk to handle this. So I sneak out and I hear the front desk on the intercom. Don, come to the front desk. So they're calling the general manager. He walks up and I'm watching. I remember I was in the cardio area pretending to like help people with cardio, but watch. And I'm watching and I see Don go, like shake his head a little bit. Then he kind of smirks a little bit. And then I can see his mouth. I don't know if he said this, but it looked like he said, oh really? Is that like that, right? So I'm like, damn. So then the guy, Don goes outside, fiddles with the barbecue with the guy for like 45 minutes. Then the guy drives off. Then he goes in the office, Sal, Don's office, please. I walk in there and he goes, can you sit down, please? I sit down and he goes, you gonna tell me what happened yesterday? I'm like, what? Yeah, we, you know, we sold a bunch of memberships. He's like, that guy just told me you gave away the barbecue and he brought it in because it wasn't working. I had to go out there and fix it for him. I'm like, oh yeah, I thought I'd, you know, I wanted to win. It was a $3,000 deal. Come on, Don. Yeah, we had this long talk and he's like, listen, he goes, I like that you have to put a leash on you and pull you back. I'd rather do that than have to kick you in the butt. You can't do that. He goes, you know, I'm supposed to fire you right now, but I'm going to make up a cover story. Anyway, him and I became best friends after that. But I was, as I'm telling them the story, I could not imagine having an employee like that. Could you imagine? Could you imagine? Andrew's sold like that. Sold our mice. You're selling stuff? Yeah, like that we need in here. Although ironically though, I did, I think he did text me this weekend that he's selling shit off in the back door over there. So he is going to see it. Ironically, he is hustling. You imagine, he puts out an episode of all the stuff we say off air, but it's going viral. Yeah. No, no, but we made some jokes, man, but that's supposed to, you know, oh my gosh. So what you guys, so my question for you guys is, would you guys like think of yourself when you first started and how crazy, because I know you guys were maniacs too. Definitely you, Adam. Would you want, would you have, I mean, it would be a headache, dude. Yes and no, yes and no. Think about how much hands-on you would need to prevent it from doing so. I mean, okay, the part that would drive me crazy, right, if hiring myself is that I definitely have that personality of like challenge everything and ask why. Like I am not the type of person who is like, hey, we're all doing this. I'm like, why are we all doing that? Or why, so I definitely would have been, and that's annoying, right? I'm sure it wasn't. Oh my God, you and you. Could you imagine the argument, Trarian? Yeah. You imagine Adam and him, the argument. I don't know, it's pretty close to what you and I are. So I mean. It is, but we don't work for each other, so we have to get along, bro. That's true. That is true, actually. That is true. If you work for me or vice versa, that would probably. Oh my God, I'd love you and hate you as well. Yeah. I think that's true. I mean, but I was, I, you know, I don't have any great like stories where I like did some crazy shit like that. I definitely was, I mean, early on, they, I mean, the way they've recruited me, they found me and then I started working there. Like I was liked by my peers. I was liked by my boss because I mean, I was definitely like a workaholic. Like, you mean. Go get her for sure. Yeah. Yeah. So they, they really liked that, but I can't remember anything where I did like that. That was so crazy where my boss was like ready to fire me. I, you know, I'm trying, you know, there's been things like in the, in there where for sure I've had that conversation, but it was always over other stuff. Is it when we're like, for example, my boss, and my boss was in here, who was my boss for a long time, he probably would be like, oh, I got a long list of shit. But it was always like, I would disregard things that I thought didn't matter. Like an example would be like, How annoying is that as a boss? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I like the point, man. Well, I've told the story. I don't know if I told the story on air. I know I've told you guys the story of where there was a time where I had just finished like my club. This was actually the second club I ran and we finished it like 115% of goal, right? So which is anything over 100% is great. 115 crushing, we were top in the district. They come down, the VP comes down, the divisional president comes down, and then one other person, oh, my DM, all three come down. And I actually think they're coming down to tell me how great I am. I'm like, oh, they're gonna come in and be like, you know, high five of me and this and that. They come in and they do like a full deep dive on my club. Now part of why they came down there was because how much success we're having so they want to know what we're doing. But it ended up being like this full on diving through all my stuff. And they actually ended up writing me up for not having my MAB highlighted out. And like they wanted me to be- You did it your way, basically. Yeah, exactly. I was very disorganized. Like I was not, and I had a counterpart who they always compared me to. There was two of us that were really successful and he'd come from the banking industry. And he meant- Where's he at now? Yeah, right. So he totally did things differently. And he was nowhere near, like they didn't do the same kind of sales we did. I was the top producer. Like I have the still the company record for a fitness manager and sales there, right? And so that was what I was known for. I was known for leading from the front, being a great sales guy on the fitness side, teaching my staff to be able to do all that stuff. But then I was really bad about these things. And they came in, they like ripped my ass. And so then I was like, and this is what a shit I am, right? So then I was like, okay, next month, I'm not going to sell shit. I'm going to be the most organized guy ever. And I was like all systems, all systems. And all month long, I'm like blanking. And nobody's really saying anything. My boss isn't even saying anything to me because I still have written more revenue than anybody, any of my peers. So he's not going to razz me if I got, if I'm at $0, you know, midway through the month. He's like, you know, Adam will sell or it doesn't matter, like whatever, right? So no one's saying anything to me. So anyways, the month finishes up and I really didn't sell, I sell hardly anything. If like a deal that like fell in my lap. So I like, and I made a point not to, like I was like, my point was to get all organized. And we, and we don't, I don't think we actually hit goal. I think we were short by a few percent as like 90 something percent of goals. So we were short. So the divisional president sends out an email the next day after the month is over that all fitness managers who wrote under $1,500 are to report to Mountain View on Saturday morning at 8am for a sales training. That was 100% because of you. And I was pissed because that was the first time I'd ever even had that low of a month. The whole point of me doing that was to show them like here, I'll do all the things that you do it your way and we'll see how the club does versus doing it my way. And then they roll out this thing and I, and I refused to go. So I wouldn't go. And then like the DM called me and he's like, you have to go. And I'm not going to fire me. Fire. And so I was that guy that was, and I refused. He hung up the phone. He's like, hold on. Let me see what you do. Calls me back. He's like, right. Here's the deal. Cause here's my argument. I'm like, I am the top fitness sales guy in the company for this. And you're going to make me go on a Saturday and sit and listen to somebody. Teach me who I can do that better than. No, I'm not going. I did what you guys told me to do. So I refuse. He hangs up the phone. I like you're so mad about it. I still, he hangs up the phone. He calls, he calls obviously. He's going to put you in your place. His boss, right? Totally. That's exactly what I felt too. And I'm like, I'm not, I'm not, I'll, I'll, I'll, you know, burn this bridge if I have to. Like that's how crazy I was. Like whatever, fire me then. So he calls. I'm sure his boss calls me back and says, okay, here's the deal. This is what I figured out. Okay. You do not have to go to this class. I want you to teach it. So you need to teach it. And I'm like, it's still punishment. You're still punishing me for running my club the way you want to. He tried to psychology. Oh, he tried. And it's just, so I, I never went. So I didn't go and I refused to go. Bro, there's a, I'm starting to, there's a big ordeal. I'm starting to understand now why people were like telling me, you need to work with Adam. And the people were telling me, you need to work with him. There's a, there's a common thread there. A little bit. Yeah, Justin, you were, you were probably more of a pretty good employee. I mean, for the most part. You were a great employee. You tell people, fuck with me. And then I was like, I just don't, I don't deal with the drama the same way you guys do. Yeah. I just, I'm like, oh yes, that was going to happen while I'm out. Yeah. You know, I'm going to do this better than you all by myself, my own rules established. You did. And that's just how I am, dude. It's just like, and that's how, even when I was like pretty much somewhat coachable, but then not coachable. They've realized real quickly, like, let's just leave him alone. He does way better. You know what, that's, you have somebody that works for you like that, is you got to know how to guide them. And I was like that very much, leave me alone, let me tell me what to do, and then give me parameter. I needed, I needed some parameter structure. The real test would have been, had he not had me as the person, that's what I'm saying because, because you knew you understood that 100%. So he, so part now a long time ago. Yeah. Part of his, his journey of being that agreeable, amazing guy was because I recognized that right out the gates. You probably let him do his thing. Yeah. 100%. If he worked for somebody else, I bet it would be a different story because either like you said, he probably would have either pieced out or he would have butted heads. Yeah. And that's the thing, I worked really hard at other professions before that and like did a lot of different jobs and grinded my way through it, but it got to a point where if like the, if we had a disagreement or we had things where I knew that they were like not acknowledging, you know, the amount of effort, you know, and I would come, I wouldn't come in and ask for the world, but sometimes I'm like, look, you know, we got to, we got to revisit this and then they wouldn't want to like, you know, change anything in terms of like how it's going to pay. And I'm like, well, see you later. I'm going to get a better job. And I did. I had a level of, for some things, a level of cockiness that I look back on. I go, where did that come? I'll tell you where it came from because that's what I was just going to say right now. The part that people don't understand that not everybody fully understands unless you were there back and understand that it's like, we earn that. It's not like I was just like cocky shithead. And it was like, and I. It was proven. And I would just buck, you know, buck my boss and say, like, I was not. I was very agreeable. I was an incredible employee. Well, there's. But then I also had like, like when I believed in something or felt strongly about something, I felt strongly like what led to that situation was I felt so strongly about the way I led my team that having somebody, just because you're in upper management, come in and be like, you're doing all these things wrong. This is how you need to do it. It was my integrity is that what got in the way. It's just that I believe, I truly believed in like, I knew what I was doing and how I needed to run this team. And here you're going to come in and tell me, that's not how you run things. So I said, okay, I'll run it your way. I ran it your way. And then you're going to punish me for that. We're like, no. Yeah, but then there's also this difference. Cockiness works when you say, I'm going to do something and then you do it. Yeah. So like I told, literally I told the founder, Mark Mastroff, he's literally the godfather of the fitness industry, came in one of my clubs to see why or how I was doing what I was doing at the time. And I told him, I want to be a general manager. He said, you're too young. I was 19. And I literally said to him, tell me what you need me to do. I don't care what it is. And I'll do it. And then you got to make me a general manager. And he laughed. He said, no, it doesn't work that way. And I literally told him, okay, I'm going to, I'm going to crush so hard that it's going to be embarrassing not to. I told the founder that, now that's very cocky, but if I didn't follow it up, then it'd be. That's everything. That's, you know that, do you know that when Tom Brady, Tom Brady was like, I think the sixth round, like a hundred and something picked. So he was like so late in the draft and he had such a chip on his shoulder because that, you know, when he met Robert Kraft, the owner of the Patriots, he looked him in the eye and said, you just made the best decision you've ever made. Could you imagine that? So frigging, some billionaire dude. Like you draft guys all the time. This guy goes in the sixth round, a hundred and ninety and looking him in the eye and saying like, you just made the best decision you've ever made for this friend. Is it a bled cell? I mean, they're stacked. Yeah. And you gotta think of a part of him kind of chuckle their laugh and then like, holy shit. Well, imagine if you had a, like, because this is the kind of shit I would have done, right? I would have gone to them and said, I want to make this much money. What do I need to do to make that much money? And I'd put it on them. And then I don't care what you tell me, I'm going to try and do that. That's very different than, you know, this is what I deserve. This is what I, so yeah, it comes across as cocky, but I, I mean, I, I mean, you talking about this obviously brings up all kinds of crazy memories and stories for me. But I, I, There were more. Yeah. And well, I think of myself as somebody who was like, a great employee because I did always go above and beyond. It was very successful for my, had my boss had a lot of success because of the success that I had and everything. But you're right. There was definitely things like that were like, if I really felt strongly about something, like I would, I would stand my ground. I never got fired. I never had any of that. So with that, because you, It's hard to fire your top sales guy. Well, it is. Yeah. You know, it, and especially if you do, like, I did things the right way. I didn't cheat the system. Right, right, right. I didn't have success that way. And so it's just like, I, I didn't know I couldn't give the barbecue away. So it's also what makes corporate America. That's what, when you're crazy, I know we have listeners for sure that like, this is one of the most, by the way, one of the best books I ever read, that really calmed me down around like this conversation, working in corporate matter, like working in corporate America is one of the most challenging things, especially if you're really good at your job, because it's inevitable at one point in your career, if not for a long period of your career, somebody shittier than you is going to be your boss. Yeah. It's just part of the game. It's part of the game. Yes. And John C. Maxwell wrote a book called 360 Leader that talked about, and I love this book because it talks about managing and leading your leaders and your bosses. Oh, that's great. And so, and it's like, really around the art of conversation and still leading, even when you're in a place of, you know... Where you're following. Yes. Wow, that's great. So it's a great, it was a great read, and it was such a, it came at a certain, a great point in my life because I was getting frustrated in my mid-20s of feeling like my boss, my boss's boss. For sure you're going to get a Lundberg in the mix. It is. And that wants your TPS reports all the time. And it'll ruin a good... It doesn't fucking matter. It'll ruin a really good employee that, you know, that is meant to do great things because you'll stifle their growth. But I'll tell you one of the, what happened at that point in my life was one of the most pivotal because I remember at that time in my life, I was still so hung up on climbing the corporate ladder. Like I had aspirations of being the vice president and like that's really, like I was so, I would bleed for that company. And when I recognized quickly, like God, I'm barely here in my career. And I know I want to be five more levels up. And it's taken me eight years to get here. God, how long, how old am I going to be? Yeah. And I remember that I was attaching myself worth to this title or on my name badge and an income. And I thought, why am I allowing this company, this invisible person, to control my personal growth? If I really want to, what is it that I want to be if I want to be the CEO of this company or I want to be like, okay, well then what stops me from learning everything he knows? Like what stops me from growing? Like I'm right now blaming you on the company. Well, I'm not, I'm not the CEO or I'm not going because they won't put me to DM and then they won't put me to VP. It's like, okay, well what's to stop me from educating myself and getting as smart as all those people. That's so self-aware, dude. And then like it was this huge, and that was like, that sent me down the rabbit hole of like reading like crazy. But up into that point into my life. It's very empowering when you make that, that choice. Big, big difference. All right. I'm going to turn back to fitness and health here now for a second. So did you guys know that, okay, so melatonin, right, the hormone that's produced at night when we sleep, you know it's closely connected to growth hormone. So if melatonin production is low, growth hormone also tends to be low or is affected. So melatonin's got kind of these, these far reaching effects. So if you're getting crappy sleep or for example, if you're exposing yourself to lots of electronic light right before we go to bed, melatonin production is reduced. And theoretically, and there is some studies to suggest that this is the case, your growth hormone will also be affected. And growth hormone, you know is commonly referred to as like the fountain of youth of their youth hormone, right? A lot of people as they get older, they'll take growth hormone to feel younger, better skin, all that other stuff. Well, if you're not, if your sleep isn't optimized, you're not just affecting melatonin, what you need, it's healthy for you, you need that. You're also probably affecting your growth hormone. So again, one of the sponsors we work with is Felix Gray, Blue Light Blocking Glasses. Such an easy way, such a simple and easy way to, you know, potentially improve or increase your growth hormone production. I like things that are easy because you don't have to do much. You just put glasses on and then you can watch TV and do your normal stuff. You don't have to turn the lights off. Although that's ideal, it'd be best if you turned everything off. You just put glasses on and you'll see an improvement. So does that naturally shift based on, you know, the, one of my circadian rhythms, like say like, you know, the sun goes down and then your body just will naturally kind of shift over, yep, you know, into, you know, more growth hormone type of production, but it having that stimulus of the blue light like keeps that sense that, you know, it's still daytime, it's still alert, it's still up. Yeah, cause it takes time for your brain and your body to get ready for sleep. It isn't just, oh, time for bed, turn everything off, go to sleep. Cause now your brain's like, okay, let's prepare to go to sleep. But what you've done is you've gone to bed eight hours before you need to wake up thinking, oh, I'm gonna get eight hours of sleep. No, you're not, you're not gonna get eight hours of great sleep cause it takes an hour or two to get your body into that state. So you're really getting like six hours of good sleep and two hours of crappy sleep. So it's not the same. Now, since you mentioned earlier on this podcast our friend, Lane Norton, I'm gonna play devil's advocate with you cause I'd like to hear how you would explain this cause he would make the case that it's an acute issue and then growth hormone returns therefore it's not that big of a deal. It's kind of like how he responded to Ben Greenfield's when Ben Greenfield was on fasting. Yeah. Oh, the fasting post-workout? Yeah, yeah. He's and he's talking about yeah, okay, that's what happens acutely at the in that moment but then everything kind of balanced itself out therefore it doesn't matter. Yes. Okay. So and say and I would yes and no. Okay. Yes and no. So yes, you probably do get some balancing effect. However, this is the part that makes the biggest impact not just on growth hormone but on testosterone, cortisol. I mean, every hormone gets affected negatively by just having worse sleep. Yeah. So at that's how I would defend. Yeah. If it makes you have better sleep and we know the values of that which is something he would not deny, it's like then why would you try it? Literally, I give some to my parents and I like and they're always like, oh, you're telling us to do something. I said just try it at night, put this on seven o'clock a night, just put them on. Doesn't change anything. Does it make the room orange or red? You know, because the Felix Gray glasses are clear. Just put them on and then let me know if you notice a difference and they do. Well, the the point you made, I think is because here's the thing we talk always about all natural, ways and there's an all-natural way to do this. The reality of it is that nobody's doing that. Who turns off their electronics? You know, yeah, when the sun goes down, who shuts all their fluorescent lights off in their house? We're just conditioned culturally to want to like veg out and entertain ourselves and we're still like taking all that blue light. Because that's what I would say to somebody who would scoff at something like that, how silly or ridiculous it is, I'd be like, yeah, okay, well, if you're someone who's disciplined enough to at night, when the sun goes down, shut your fluorescent lights off, turn the TV off, turn your computers off, don't look at your phone anymore. Go by candlelight. Yeah. Then hey, that's a free way to do it and probably really good for you. And I would totally be a fan if a client said, I do that. You can also churn butter if you want. Yeah. That's an option. Yeah. No, you're right. That's a great point and that's just it. And now, today's time, people are around electronics till almost they crash and they're using fluorescent lights. And so to Sal's point, it's such an easy fix. It's why I have so many pairs. So like people come to my house like, what's with all these? You don't even wear glasses. I'm like, no, they're all blue blockers. And I just, I keep them throughout the house. So I never have an excuse. Yeah. So if I'm down, you know, downstairs in a certain area in a room or what that, and I'm in it's late and nights out and so I can just throw them on. It's an easy fix for me. Yeah. When I was in Tahoe, I noticed a huge, I didn't bring them and we were at the casino and I would try to go to bed late because we're outright. So midnight when I am, but because casinos are designed to keep you awake. Like they literally designed casinos to keep you stimulated and awake. And that's why they allow smoking in there. Pump oxygen in there. Oh, they do. No clocks. Yeah. You didn't know that? I didn't know they pumped oxygen into the room. You didn't know that? No. Yes. Can Vegas casinos pump oxygen into? Yes. Wow. That's why you feel so good in there like that. It's why it's like taking hits of oxygen. It's impossible to get to sleep. So they get back to the room. Even though I'm tired. And that's so stimulating. Yes. Oh my God. And I lay in bed and I'm like, and they, so you know, they strategically have no clocks, right? Strategically, there's no clocks. They pump oxygen. They make the exits impossible to find. Yeah. They do all kinds of things. You ever try to find your elevator afterwards? Where the hell is the freaking elevator? Oh, but there's a roulette table right here. Oh, it's funny. Hey, talking about sleep. So Katrina asked me this. So I'm curious about you guys because I actually, I had to think about it for a minute. She goes, because I talk all the time about the two products that comes in my sleep. Well, three, actually, if you include the, the Ned Mello, because that's been a big one for me. But I would say, chili sleep and then Felix Gray are two of the biggest, like game changers. She was asking me of the two, the Felix Gray and chili sleep, what has made a bigger impact on my sleep? What would you say you guys? That's a tough one. So for me, probably the I, and I did not know this before until I met my wife. I'm far more, I'm affected a lot by bright lights at night. I didn't know this because I grew up that way. So I'd have to say that because the temperature in the room, I think doesn't affect me as much as you polar bears. Yeah. Because you guys like it freezing cold. That's where I'm drawing more. Me too. In terms of like, temperature, because it's always something that in the middle of the night, like just having the fans on it because I have to have movement of air or something to like keep things feeling like it's cool. Otherwise I'm up and I wake up multiple times during the middle of the night, which totally sucks. So like the chili sleep, it's the only thing that it gives that consistent temperature or where I just it, I have moments where I just don't wake up in the middle of the night. Otherwise I always do. Yeah, I told her that. I said the chili sleep. I mean, I, if I'm being honest, like even though I have glasses everywhere, I could miss that. Like there could be like, Oh, I didn't even do that last night. You know, or I screwed if you don't have, I'm yeah, chili sleep. But like, since we have started working with them, I have never not slept with that thing. Listen, I am going to 100% back this up because we travel and often, usually if we get two rooms, Doug and I will share a room and you two will share a room. And the reason why it happens that way is because I've short, I've shared rooms with both you guys and I hate it because you guys set the AC to whatever the lowest temperature as low as it'll go always. And I'm literally in the middle of the night. Like, I'm like, what? Who sleeps like this? You guys are both crazy. Yeah. It's like you're both women in menopause. You know what part of it is too? And I don't know if that's it for him. Like Katrina won't let me let it go that low at my house. Yeah. As soon as I'm like traveling. That's exactly what it is. I'm like, ooh. It goes all the way and see. I literally do it at him. I normally sleep in my underwear. I'm like, I'm going to start bringing pajamas when I share rooms with the guys. Just wear some like, like flat pajamas. Really, the outside is it like dries out, you know, the stuff in my nose. I feel like I have triskets in there and like start whistling. Who eats triskets, by the way? It's an old reference. What the hell did you eat a trisket for? I don't know. I like triskets. It's flavorless. It used to be the jam. It's all, yeah. Did you put anything on? Yeah. Cheese or meat or like that. Yeah. So it's good. They're not very good by themselves. No. It's like a froth. It's like a shredded wheat. It is like shredded wheat, but it's like a, like a cracker. What was shredded wheat? Snacks back in the day. Just got a thing. They're still popular, aren't they? It's like they just took a hay bale and were like, let's make this into a snack. Hey, instead of throwing that stuff away, I bet we could sell it like a treat. It's a scrap. Dry it out. Boom. Here we go. Brilliant. Hey, check this out. We all know that nutrients, vitamins, minerals, and certain compounds can improve our health or recovery. The problem is most of these products that you find in the market don't get to the tissues that they need to help. They're not digested or utilized properly. That's because they have a crappy delivery system, which means you just have expensive urine. You're wasting it. Well, there's a company called Live on Labs that uses a delivery system called liposomal technology that dramatically improves the absorption of key nutrients. And right now, if you go to liveonlabs.com forward slash mp, so L-I-V-O-N, labs.com forward slash mp, you can get lipoglutathione for free, so glutathione on the master antioxidant. You can get that product for free when you bundle it with their B complex and vitamin C, only for mind pump listeners. So go check it out. All right. Here comes the rest of the show. Our first caller is Kelly from Virginia. Hey, Kelly. How are you doing? How can we help you? Hey, guys. It's so nice to meet all of you. Just thanks so much for having me. I've been a listener for three years, and just like everyone else, just wanted to thank you for all the content you put out. It's inspiring to see how you've taken your collective passion for helping people and making a career out of it, while just keeping your integrity. Thank you, awesome. Thank you. Thanks. So just to set the scene, I'm a 29-year-old mother, working mother, with a pretty stressful job, but have been weightlifting consistently for years now. I eat at a maintenance of around 2,200 calories and try to get between 10k steps a day, depending on the day. Despite that, I always come in on my dexa skin a little above 30% body fat against my best efforts, and my doctor says my LDL cholesterol is slightly elevated. I've run through MAPS anabolic twice through. Jump to aesthetic. And for both programs, really start aching towards the third phase, probably like a lot of your listeners. So with my goal of getting to a better body fat percentage and mostly just getting into a better place health-wise in hopes for baby number two in the future, I fear MAPS performance might be a great switch up. So phase one has been pretty straightforward. I loved it. Actually hit some PRs in that phase. But this week, I just started phase two and have been completely gassed. My heart rate has been really high throughout the workouts and just have had some ridiculously long rest times just to catch my breath. I hate cardio. It stresses me out, but I've always wondered if I should be focusing on really building my cardio or endurance capacity. My husband always jokes that I'm pretty stubborn about advice, especially about cardio. So coming to you guys. So my question really is for those coming from a traditional metabolic routine with my main form of cardio is walking every day or between days, between foundational days, how does someone work to adjust to this kind of programming and what is generally the benchmark to be to workout stamina? Adam, I know you say try to run about a mile within eight minutes every once in a while just to see if you can and just wondering if that's something that I should aspire to do as well. Yeah, so benchmarks are can be very individual and quite personal. So Adam sent that for himself because that's what he feels he would like to have. Really, I like to tell people like, think about what you'd like to do. Think about your quality of life. What kind of performance you would like to maintain realistically, because of course, sometimes we could set goals that are unrealistic depending on the context of our life. And that's kind of your benchmark. You know, with MAPS performance you're going to build the stamina through the program. Now, if it feels like it's too much now, I would reduce the volume or go lighter with the weight so that it feels like something that you can accomplish because we write the program out in a particular way that we think is going to be is a good kind of benchmark or blueprint, but everybody's individual. So if you were my client and I was watching you follow the program and I'm watching you and I'm saying, okay, this looks like it's too much. We have to rest a long time between sets to do this. She seems like she's a little over-trained. I would reduce the weight or reduce the intensity and allow your body to adapt and improve there. As far as getting leaners concerned, that's, I mean, your best bet is going to be looking at your diet. Now, you said your maintenance is about 2,200 calories. I would try a slow reverse diet while doing mass performance. So you have a higher place to cut from cutting from 2,200 for most people is a little low. Unless you feel like 2,200 calories is like super filling and you're like, oh my gosh, it's too much food. In which case, I would say you could probably cut from there, but probably not, right? You're probably like, you know, I could eat more and feel better. So I would go slow reverse diet, reduce the intensity, reduce the weight so that it feels appropriately challenging and then allow your stamina to build there. You don't need to in other words, you don't need to add more to what you're doing so that you can get more stamina. The program sounds like it's already challenging your stamina enough. Doesn't sound like you need to do more with that. Yeah, I'm going to add to the weight point that you made. I think one of the more challenging things for people when they're coming out of phase one and go into phase two, especially in performance, is reducing the weight enough. It's just with the matrix lunges and there's some movements in there that are just super taxing stamina and cardio. Especially if you're somebody who doesn't do a lot of cardio. Now, are people that love cardio and do it a lot, they love that phase because it fits right into their avatar and they're just like, oh yeah, I love it. You know, it's pushing me that way. People that don't are like, oh my god, they're gassed. And a lot of times they're really gassed and struggling to get to the workout because they're still referencing their PR weights or their strength weights that they were doing in phase one and they want to get as close to that as possible in phase two and the reality is they probably just need to reduce the weight dramatically. And to Sal's point, that's what's, I mean, if it's taxing you like that, it's going to build stamina. You're going, if you keep going through it, you're going to build that endurance and stamina, especially for lifting weights. So you'll get it. My recommendation would just pull back on the weights a little bit. If you wanted to do the eight-minute thing, I think there's nothing wrong with that, but you're going to, that's specifically for that. I want to be able to do that just so I could do it, so I could, you know, always talk trash to Sal and race him outside and be faster than him. That's a personal thing for me. My way of doing that isn't like, oh, this is so I can get through the programs with the best stamina cardio because the way to get through the programs with the best stamina cardio would actually be following the programs. That's what's going to give you that. It's all built in there. We've never raced. You'd tear something. Yeah, I mean, it's all built in there. I mean, this is one of those programs where we actually were intentionally kind of weaving in some aerobic capacity. So, you know, phase three, phase four, you're going to get, you know, even more heavy doses of that. But in terms of setting like, you know, personal goals of that, sure. But if you're going through this program, that's literally laid out for you. So it should take you naturally through just a little bit more, you know, volume with that and a little more intensity in terms of like really like pushing you endurance, you know, durability wise. Yeah, you know, Kelly, each phase, especially the first week of a new phase, should feel challenging. A little awful. Yeah, but it needs to be appropriately challenging. Okay, so challenging is good in discomfort and challenges which gets the body to adapt. But it has to be an amount that is tolerable so that your body can adapt. If you go beyond that, then your body can't adapt. It's just too much, right? So, you know, back to what we're saying about the weight. Just to give you an example, if I go through a long phase of training for strength, I'll give you some numbers for myself, okay? Let's say I go through like a six-week period of trying to get my barbell squat up. And I could get my barbell squat. I mean, the last time I did this, I got it up to close to 500 pounds for a single, you know, 450 for a triple. And, you know, it's a lot of weight. Now, when I would switch out of that and go, I'm going to try sets of 15. Okay, I'm going to try to go 15 reps. I'd go from 450 to 315 or less. Okay, so that's more than 100 pounds off the bar. So, you can't use your weight from phase one and be like, oh, I'm going to reduce it by 25%. That should be enough. You're probably going to have to cut it in half or more and feel yourself, you know, challenged but appropriately challenged that your body has room to adapt. And that's a mistake I think a lot of people make. So, if you feel like, if you feel like, oh my God, I'm so gassed, I can barely get this through this workout. This feels like it's too much. Go way lighter. Go way lighter. Go through the workout. Feel appropriately challenged and your body will adapt and you'll build that stamina. Really, that's really how it was designed. No, that's super helpful. I sounds like I just need to reduce my ego. It's challenging definitely going from phase one. And, you know, as I said, I hit a few PRs and a few of my lifts and I'm going into phase two is such a different mindset. Totally. So, just having a gauge to, you know, where my capacity should be and like, should I be gassed? I mean, is it like, what is the appropriate amount of challenge? Is something that I'm kind of still gauging and Justin, if this is how you typically train, just hands off to you. It's really difficult going from, you know, just the main lifts and prioritizing that over the past few years. So, I appreciate that. When we're coaching somebody, or I'm coaching somebody to phase two of mass performance, what I actually tell them to think about more than any, is form and technique. So, that's the priority of that phase. And that's why I say it's a tough transition from phase one because phase one, people are thinking strength, they want to get stronger, you reference, you built, you hit PRs, which is great. That's what should happen in that phase. But then it's really hard to also go from, oh, I care about how strong I am to like, okay, that doesn't matter at all anymore. Now it's all about how well do I move this weight and how good is my technique and form. And so, I would go, whatever number you're thinking in your head for lightening the load up from Sal's point, I would go even lighter and I would slow down the repetitions and pause in places and really assess your form and technique until you go like, oh, that's perfect. Okay, now I can add a little bit of weight because that is the adaptation we're seeking in that phase more than anything else is form and technique. Yeah, even though it looks similar, treat them as completely different exercises. Like this is a whole new host of exercises that you're just working on learning and teaching the body and getting good and proficient at. So, that way too, it's not, you can take some of the ego out of it a bit. It's like this is a completely new animal I'm facing. Yeah, Kelly, there's a lot of growth that happens in each phase and some of it is not physical. Some of it is building your mental and emotional and psychological growth with exercise. So, you're learning to appreciate it for different things. And phase two, phase three, whatever, they're all different. So, you go into it with a different mentality, a different understanding and over time what this does is it allows you to develop a relationship with exercise where it's lifelong and you can manipulate it and change it and always improve the quality of your life regardless of the context of your life. So, the challenge you're going through is super common, okay? We hear this all the time. So, it's great that you called in and now you get to try it out and experience something totally different. Yeah, no, thank you. I just really appreciate it and it's just good to hear that I don't have to do any extra cardio. That's always a newness. Yeah, just like try to run, try to run. And it stresses me out. I have a stressful job. I don't want to do this long term. It's not going to be sustainable. So, it's just good to confirm that, too. Excellent, awesome job. I'm going to send this stuff to them. Well, thank you for calling in, Kelly. I appreciate it. Thank you. Thanks, guys. Thank you. Could you imagine if the three of us went outside and raced the injuries that would probably occur if it were the people who saw a bunch of middle-aged men outside? It's like, what are they doing out there? Oh, that's a terrible idea. Let's see who's the fastest. Yeah, yeah. I predict what happened. I come out faster than I pull something. Sal's pulling behind. Justin's like cruising in the middle. Justin wins. That's what I think. I think I said this to someone the other day when they asked what would happen. I said, you know, probably right now where everyone's condition is, I said, Justin would be like the one who eventually won. Sal and I would end up pulling something along the way. You know? Yeah, either that or Justin would just run through me. Bro. Because he's that way. He sleeps on me, dude. I'm one of the most dependent motherfuckers here. Bro, you got cake power. I'm not going to mess with that cake power, bro. Which also still puts you at high risk of pulling something. Of course. Hey, what if you pull a horse power? What if you pull the glute? Bro, you'd hear that sound. My glute is disconnected. You'd hear that sound miles away. What was that sound? Oh, my God. You know, I'm underclassed. I'm glad we actually took this question because it's a really common thing. Super common. I don't remember the last time that we addressed this with math performance. And I remember vividly going through it myself and doing the things like the lunge matrix and the reverse lunge to press with the landmine and these movements that I just I'm not, I don't normally train them. And so I was so much weaker in it. And then, of course, I'm battling my ego who wants to like, oh, man, I want to put more weight on. But then I go like, that's not the purpose of this phase. It's to really work on the technique. And so really having to take a weight that was dramatically less than what I would do. Like, I know you gave your 453.15. I would disagree and go all the way down to 135. Oh, right. I mean, it turned into something like that. It's like, I could do way more weight than what I, but what I ended up doing was, okay, get rid of the ego. It's not about the weight that I'm putting on this bar. It's like, can I perfect this movement? And so that's the focus as you're going through that phase. Yeah. And it's, it really does allow you to really value strength training in particular for all of these different values, because it's a totally different mindset. If you've ever trained with a power lifter in a bodybuilding workout or a bodybuilder in a powerlifting workout or a, you know, power lifter in a Olympic triad style workout, what you notice is their mindset is totally off when they're doing the exercises, because it's not just completely different protocol. It's totally, it's totally different. So going through different phases at the very least is going to teach you how to train your body appropriately in different ways. And that is so valuable when you're looking at long-term success. It's so valuable. Our next caller is Jack from Missouri. Jack, what's happening, man? How can we help you? What are you doing with that? Good. Good. What's going on? All right. So quick before something that you guys never hear being any calls. I'm a huge fan. I've been a listener for about five years. So, and this is when I was on about a year ago today. So this will be my second time calling in. So hopefully more in the future. Quick background. I'm a 21-year-old college senior right now at Mizzou. I've been lifting for about six and a half, seven years. The first half of that was high school and was mainly functional and performance-based for all. But the last three have been more a bodybuilder-type split with about switching between five and six-day splits throughout the week. Pretty avid macro tracker. Nights I go out, I'll track the drains, I'll save the calories, stuff like that. My question kind of revolves around nutrition and kind of the food profile that makes up the diet. So I started out, I left high school at about 290 pounds. And then I went into overdue cut and lost. And the lowest I got was about 174. About 18 months ago, I started bulking, started refitting. Went for 1600 and right now I'm at 800. Adding about half a pound every two weeks. So it's real slow, but that's how I kind of design it. That's how I wanted what I wanted. Even at my age, which was pretty skinny, by my standards, still a loose appearance in the midsection. Not overweight, but just not tight, for lack of a better term. I know there's exercise. I know you can't spy reduce, obviously. I know there's exercise, or not the, but a strength in it, a vacuum for the TVA, progressive overload with table crunch and stuff like that. But I was wondering if meal timing could have an effect on it. I don't normally get hungry throughout the day, or at least super hungry throughout the day. So most of my eating is at night and being that I'm at quite a bit of food. It's a lot of food to eat at night. I'm eating whole foods with no added sugar as of about eight months ago. So the food that I will eat at night, a 2,000 calorie meal, 1500, 2,000 calorie meal will be potatoes, rice, normally some form of lean meat and avocado or eggs. And I was wondering if that could lead to bloating or kind of a stretching at the midsection that would just allow it to become tight once the weight comes off, or allow it to stretch and give off that sort of loose appearance that I'm talking about. Okay, Jack. So did you go for, did I hear that right? 290 down to 175? Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Okay, so that's where the loose skin is coming from. Yeah, you're, you're, this is the definition of, you know, don't take this wrong way of looking at things too closely and paying too much attention to things that don't make a big difference. So, okay, meal time, let's talk about that for a second. How can meal timing have an effect on things like body fat percentage and stuff like that? Well, one, if it's adversely affecting your hormones, there could be an effect there. Although that's not super common, but it can happen. Two, it can change your eating behaviors. This is usually how meal timing can cause issues for people. Or three, it affects your sleep negatively or all of the above. So, meal timing, I would really pay attention to how it makes you feel. That's where meal timing comes into play. Has it made me feel, do I feel better for you at this time? That time does affect my sleep. That's it. Other than that, really it's about your calories, your macros, and then how the foods that you're eating affects your behaviors. Does it make you overeat, under eat, et cetera. Now, as far as the looseness is concerned, you may have loose skin that comes from losing so much body fat initially. Muscle looseness is just strengthening and tightening muscles. So, when you say loose, I'm assuming you're referring to the looseness of the skin, yeah, because muscles don't appear loose typically. That's not how it works. It's probably loose skin, and there's really not a whole lot you can do about loose skin, aside from surgery. So, really, there's not much you could do other than what you're doing already. Go ahead. And you already nailed some of the things that I would probably recommend, which is progressive overloading the core and the vacuums, and all those things are going to help that, right? That's going to help the midsection look tighter, because you're going to fill it out with more muscle. But just to a point, I mean, anybody who goes from 290 pounds down to one, I mean, you're talking about losing 100 pounds, and sounds like over a pretty short period of time, you're going to have some of that. Now, over time, you may see the skin kind of tighten up a little bit, but eventually, if that's something that really, really bothers you, that would be a situation where somebody might actually get surgery and actually tighten up the skin. Have you gone through any food allergy tests or looked at that in terms of what might potentially make you bloated or irritated? I do blood work pretty regularly. That's just because I'm super interested and love it. It was actually because you guys about a year and a half ago recommended, even if you're feeling good to do it. Glad I did, but I haven't done a few food allergy tests yet. But that's another aspect of the question is, beginning of this past summer, I did the carnivore diet just to try it because it sounded fun and I liked to eat and eating steak for three meals sounded pretty cool. And I did that for about six weeks. How'd it go? And granted, I know it's water weight dropping and it's bloating, dropping because the carbs aren't holding on any more water. There's none there anymore. But the looseness, I know what loose skin is because I mean, I have some, but it's not. I mean, it's not a lot. I've built up more since I was at the bottom at 175. But during that time it did, the looseness kind of dissipates. So I was thinking it could be food intolerance, but I've also, that was a bare bone elimination diet. And then I slowly reintroduced. And it seems at this point it's just quantity of food, I guess. Yeah, look, rather than specific food. Jack, there's different types of bacteria and digestive processes that happen for fats, carbohydrates, and proteins. And then we can throw fiber in there as well. And when your body breaks down carbohydrates and fiber in particular, you are going to produce more gases. You are going to have different processes that feel like you're feeling a little bit more in your gut. So yeah, eating just protein and fat will make things feel flatter. That's not necessarily a good or bad thing. Now, if it's excessive bloating, I would work with a functional medicine practitioner who could test you for like dysbiosis or a parasite or something like that. But if they test you and everything's healthy, yeah, eating fiber is going to cause more quote unquote, blow in the gut than just eating proteins and fats. Because the process of breaking those down does create more gases in the gut. It's a normal process. It's not abnormal. Abnormal bloating causes discomfort, pain, can cause digestive issues. So it's a different thing. So working with a functional medicine practitioner will do that. Now, there's one more thing I'd like to comment on. I mean, you're 21 years old, you're a young man, you appear to be pretty healthy. I think you might be a little overly detailed and obsessed with some of this stuff. Now, that's okay if it's something you really want to enjoy, if you want to make this your field and it's really fun. But if you find that it's adding stress to your life, decreasing the quality of your life, or taking you away from things that can improve the quality or add to quality of your life, then you may want to step back a little bit and fast from paying attention. So you can fast from a lot of things, you can fast from electronics, you can fast from food, you can fast from pornography, you can fast, you can also fast from paying attention to everything and counting everything all the time. So now, here's the deal. I'm going to ask you a question, okay? The people closest to you, your friends and family, the people that you trust, okay? Not people that you don't trust, but people who have your best intentions of mine. If I were to approach them and say, hey, you know, Jack? And they say, yeah. And I say, do you think he overly obsesses about like diet and exercise? What would they say? No, because I still make, they know I am 100% obsessed and I'm 100, but it's main, it's because I'm in for all and I'm super interested and I enjoy the hell out of it. So it's not like I'll ruin my day if I go out and have like nachos with my buddies at dinner. Jack, I'm going to give you a little advice here. And look, I'm not saying that you're, look, I 100% resonate with you, okay? Because you sound like me right now. I love supplements. I have a lot of fun with supplements. It's a great time. I love learning about them. I also know I have a bit of a dysfunctional relationship with them. And I could be in denial about that. So I think you're, just from your question and how you're posing it, I would say step back a little bit from looking too close at the details. And just for a week and see how you feel. And if it brings you a lot of stress to step back, you know there's an issue. If you find a lot of joy from stepping back, then you know there's an issue as well. So any extreme in either direction. But other than that, I think working with a functional medicine practitioner might be a good idea to identify any food intolerances. But other than that, you're the kind of person I train that I would tell to do less with some of the stuff just based off of what you're telling me. You know a lot about what you're doing. You've added things up. You've lost a lot of weight. You've reversed dieted. You're counting the calories of the drinks when you go out with your friends. You said you're the person I would be like, Hey, let's step back for a little bit. Let's just enjoy the process a little bit. And maybe not nerd out quite as much and see what happens. Sorry if I'm overstepping by the way. No, you look, you look great. No, no, no, you're, you're, you're all good. You're all good. No, I'm just, it's, I'll take a step back. If you think that's best, I'll take a step back. It's not something that takes my mind up 24 seven. And I've got a pretty good handle on it. But if you think that I should, then sure. Yeah. Based off the nude photos that you were sending Sal, you look really good, bro. I think you're doing fine. His were a lot better. Yeah. I got another question for you with, with, with the voice like yours. I bet if you get on the phone with a girl before anything, automatic. I'd love to hear you seen the Bee Gees. I bet she dates you right away. Just with that, you know, I can, I can email Jerry and we can set up a little call after everyone goes through. You're a good sport. Hey, listen, Jack, I look, I put you in the hot, hot seat a little bit. I'd like to give you a free program. I appreciate you being a good sport. Any, any maps programs you're interested in? Um, I've been through a aesthetic PD and split. So whichever one you guys think I'll leave it up to you guys. I've dug them all. Symmetry or anabolic because anabolic you'd have them scale back a bit. Oh yeah. No, I like symmetry. I'm going to give you symmetry, Jack. Symmetry sweet. Awesome. Thank you guys very much. You got it, brother. Appreciate you. I swear. I promise you at this point, I'm literally, I'm wearing Biori. Red juice is in my cabinet. Mass times are my drawer. Yeah. I think, I think you guys could shut down marketing and supply it pretty much everywhere else and I'd still keep you guys afloat. True pump head. I like you, Jack. Thank you, Jack. Thanks, man. Thanks for calling in, brother. I appreciate it. Yeah, no, no problem. Thank you all very much. Take care. You got it, man. You ever, you ever get a client and then they talk to you and you're like, oh man, that sounds like me. Well, you know, especially in the sultry voice. Yeah, that's true. Yeah. And what's hard to tell is if it's, if it's something that's necessarily unhealthy or he's just, he's 21, you remember that. I know. Yeah. You know, and at that age, it, and it does sound like he still goes out and has a balanced life, but I mean, he's just geeked out on it. I remember that. You know, I remember starting things to piece things together and be like, and then you just, you're questioning everything. It's like you've done all kinds of different diets. You've been able to control your weight like that. So that's why I'm telling him like, take a step back for a second. You know, I mean, you tried carnivore. He's counting the calories when he goes out. Just take a little step back just for a bit and then see. Trust the process. Yeah. And see what happens, you know, in terms of your mental, you know, space around it all because. No, I thought that was great advice. I think this would be a great time for him. I mean, this is what the intuitive, we should probably give him the intuitive eating guide. You know, Doug, sneak that in there. Throw him the intuitive. Because I mean, that's probably what I, if he was a client of mine, I'd say, hey, what we're going to do just for the, you know, this program, I'm going to have you intuitively eat while we train this program. So I'd say, hey, let's follow symmetry. While we're following symmetry, as far as diets concerned, let's try intuitive eating. And I would just do that as an exercise for him to see and then get feedback of how he's handling it. Is it keeping his weight in a healthy place? And then, and that would tell me a lot about his relationship with nutrition and exercise. And you know, the other thing too I want to say, I want to mention is that when I have a client like this, what I just said to him, I would never say first session. This is just a question on, you know, we're doing here on the podcast. This is a long conversation. I would never hit someone with that much that quickly because it can sometimes not be very effective. That's why I wanted to make sure I ended that well with him. So, you know, if someone's listening, they're like, man, that was a little straight up, a little harsh. Well, we only have, you know, five minutes. Well, the truth is too, you're taking your best shot at a guess, let's be honest. Hundred percent. You know what I'm saying? Hundred percent. You could be wrong. Totally. I could totally be wrong. Yeah, you would never do that on a first session for that exact reason. Yeah. So, you know, I get it. Yeah. Our next caller is Remy from California. Remy, what's happening, man? How can we help you? Hey, what's up guys? Thanks for your time for having me on. The obligatory thanks. One, as a dad, I have two adolescent sons who just like don't want to fucking talk to me anymore. But yeah, we all listen to mind pump together. So you guys have like given me a way to like just share this with my sons, right? So just like shout out to my kids, Eric and Gabe. They're going to be like pumped that I'm here. That's awesome. Very cool. Very cool. Yeah, that's great. So context, 34 years old, six foot three. I fluctuate between like 195 and 200 pounds, about seven, eight percent body fat. All my labs are within like normal limits. I'm not in any medications. I have a master's degree in exercise physiology. I'm currently a PhD student in psychology. And my athletic background is in Olympic weightlifting. You looking for a job? Yeah, I was going to say. I hope you don't have a question for us. I'm actually down the street from you guys at Stanford at the School of Medicine. No shit. Good deal. Oh, yeah. All right. All right. So shout out. Come to our Viori. It's way better than yours. Yes, no, you guys do have better. Why don't you why don't you and your boys come down and watch a live show? That'd be pretty cool since you guys listen to it. I was waiting for the question first. Yeah, we'll get to that. Oh, well, if you're an asshole, I'll do it. At the end of this, you're like, no fuck that guy. Yeah, dude. So the question, I spent 15 years as a tactical athlete. I was a Special Forces combat medic in the Army. I have always done and excelled at extremely high volume, high frequency and high intensity. About a year ago, after injury sustained in Afghanistan, I received my second purple heart and I retired. That's why I wear these glasses. I have a traumatic brain injury. So I'm just like really photo sensitive. I'm not just like a Kyle. I know what I'm fucking working with, right? You're like, who is this guy? I'm so glad you shared that. I'm so glad you shared that. Yeah, I was about to say I wear my sunglasses at night. Now that I'm just like a regular dude, I literally have to spend four to six hours in the gym five to six days a week just to not get out of shape. When I first retired, I just did like normal. I listen to mine pump, right? Like three day a week full body split. I got up to like 19% body fat. It's just like I was just I was stuck in dick for gas money, man. It was not good. So I heard you guys on dropping volume. You know, see what happens. But here's where I would argue that I come from a demographic as a Green Beret that were the genetic freaks, right? And I've listened to you guys for a long time. And the conversation often ends there on the show. Like, well, unless you're a genetic freak, I'm like, bro, like what about me? How do I, how do I maintain aesthetics performance and like have a life? So for example, right now I'm lifting four days a week, basically day on day off split. I'm running small off on four lifts at the same time and doing Olympic weightlifting programming and three of those days is cardio. And I'm thriving, man, like everything's on point. Calories are currently 3500. That was a lot. Sorry, what you got? Yeah, so two things, right? First off, I appreciate your service and you're a bad ass. And yes, you are a freak in the sense that you're on one end of the spectrum. But I'm going to say this about people like you, okay? You're definitely higher on the athletic side. You're not pro-athlete genetic freak. But what makes you a genetic freak that's different than other people? And I love your input on this. It's a mindset for sure. It's a psychology and mindset. I've trained green berets. I've trained, no, people who were green berets, people who were Navy SEALs. And I always had lots of questions for them. And what they used to tell me, what separated them from their peers, wasn't the physical part, it was the mental part. And so I'm going to assume that a lot of the benefit you get from challenging your body is probably mental. You probably really enjoy the challenge. You probably conditioned yourself to enjoy the challenge. And that's also another challenge as you get older, as you have kids to take care of, a family to take care of, a PhD. So this is the balance conversations we have with the average person applies to you as well, except it's on a different scale. That's right. Okay, so balance for someone else is going to be two days a week, 45 minutes, you know, whatever. Balance for you is going to be totally different, but it's the same conversation. You're going to have to find that sweet spot of, I'm putting time in the gym. This is what makes me feel mentally healthy. This is what gives me, you know, improves my quality of life, but still allows me to do the things that are important to me now, like be with my kids, you know, focus on my education or do my job and that kind of stuff. And that's going to be, that's hard for someone like you because your capacity or the capacity that you've had in the past and what you have now doesn't compare to the average person. It's really hard. And I know this is kind of what you're saying, right? It's hard for you to look at the average person and be like, yeah, that doesn't apply to me, my friend. I know you say you need to go to bed at nine o'clock at night and you work real hard, nine to five, working at a desk, but that doesn't apply to me. For me, that would be so boring and so torturous and my body wouldn't even respond, right? So this is a very different conversation. I've trained maybe two people in my entire life that I would say are in a similar category to you. That's how rare it is. And this is over two decades. So this is going to be a tough one for you, man. You're going to have to constantly sit there and look at things and say, okay, what am I valuing in my life? What's most important? And balance these things out and you're going to have to give and take a few things. So this may mean, okay, I value time with my, for example, I value time with my kids. I place that as a higher priority over, you know, my physical fitness. So I'm going to have to take away from my workout time to give over here, but you can't do everything. You can't do everything all the time. I'm sure you're probably running into that issue right now. So this is, I can't answer this for you, dude. Well, I have a question, Remi. I have a question because you mentioned, you know, when you became a quote unquote regular dude, and then you kind of did like these scale back and then your body fat percentage shot up. Up until this point, have you pretty much managed your physical fitness through exercise versus diet? Or have you ever really like tried to count macros and wave food and do shit like that? Like how do you, how do you maintain that lean body fat? Yeah, good question. With my background in Olympic weightlifting, with my size, I've always weighed and measured food because I'm competing against guys that are like sales height, but my body weight, right? So I've always had to stay really lean to even stay competitive in weightlifting. Okay. Okay. Yeah. Yeah, that was just, and I was just wondering if that's how you were getting lean all the time. So if you've actually met, you measure away, sales, right? I mean, you're the same advice that we give to average people as far as like learning to find balance and scaling back is still true to you. Just your scaling back is different than scaling back that we advise to normal people. It's just, it's learning to find that. And of course, and you know this because you've weighed and measured food is like, okay, pulling back a little bit. Like right now you're running like basically two programs at once. You're running like an Olympic lifting program and then you're building like a strength training program together in addition to doing some cardio, it sounded like. It's like, I would, I might suggest like, hey, let's, you know, let's carve one of those things or scale back on one of those things. And if you notice body fat percentage going up, well, then I'd say, okay, let's adjust nutrition a little bit. And or I would say, listen, your blood markers are fine. You fucking love doing this. If you're happy, let's, let's rock it till the wheels fall off too. So I mean, if you were a client of mine, there'd be a lot of this conversation going on. Listen, I'm not getting it. You did your blood work. You're not getting any signal. You're not telling me you feel terrible or anything like that. Like you feel great, you know, and why not? You still, you still feel good. You love doing this. I might allow you to do that. Unless you were giving me signs that like, hey, this is, this is hurting my relationship with my family or, hey, this is, I have these blood markers are showing me X, Y and Z or, hey, I'm getting terrible sleep. Okay. Maybe we need to adjust. But otherwise you, you feel young, strong. You feel good. You look good. You're everything's looking fine. There's nothing wrong with you potentially actually still training this way, but at some point in your life, whether that is now or in 10 years from now, you know, something we'll start to give. And, and, and I don't know where that will be, whether it be relationship, body, you know, your intensity that you can come to the gym at like, I'm not sure where that is. But, you know, I just keep a close eye on it. And then the advice still remains the same. It's just your level of scaling back is way different than the, the average person because of your mental fortitude that you have built over decades now. You have the ability to train at a much higher level than the average person. And there's, I think you guys hit the nail on the head that it's like, I'm not disillusioned. I don't have pro athlete ability. I think it's my capacity like operators. We can handle so much more abuse, you know? Totally. Oh, 100%. Totally. And you don't have any like obvious joint pain or any kind of issues from this type of intensity that you're applying to all your workouts and everything. Is that something you're just constantly keeping an inventory of at least? Yeah, Justin. Thanks, man. I was really looking forward to your input as like the performance guy too, dude. Yeah. So I just to like let listeners know too, you can't afford to go as hard as I do. And as we do as operators, right? Well, I guess not me anymore or whatever. If you don't like have the same capacity to recover. So everything that I say every week, I'm also in sports massage. I like own compression boots at home, hot, cold therapy. And like my cardio is low impact, assault, bike, swim, do sled work because that's like all concentric. So I recover from it like I don't run. So yeah, I keep inventory of like, I keep inventory of how my body feels. And I've just found for me personally, like an object in motion stays in motion. Like if I don't work out for a few days or like deload weeks, bro, everything hurts. Hey, that's perfect. Rock it till the wheels fall off, bro. You know, Remy, something that my dad did that I, is that when I was a kid, I didn't realize the value. But now I see the value. So my dad worked seven days a week for most of my life. Okay, so he's, you know, he came to this country, poor, uneducated, but he had a lot of skill with stonework. And so that's what he did. And in order to support a family with four kids in San Jose, the Bay Area, he worked seven days a week. So we didn't do a lot of stuff together, like vacations and trips, but we had dinner every night together. Every single night, my dad, and it was a big deal. Like if you didn't show up to dinner, it was a big deal. Or if you were late to dinner. So every single night we had dinner together. And those, you know, one hour periods or one and a half or two hour periods that we had every single night was so valuable because it was every single day. And so the point I'm making with that is because you brought up the fact that you're a father. I think sometimes we think, oh man, I don't have time to take my kids to do a week backpacking trip or to do, it's like every day, like I take them to school and we have lunch together or every day we have dinner together or I make sure before they go to bed for 30 minutes, we sit down and we talk or whatever. And it doesn't sound like a lot of time, but if you do the math and you add that up over the course of the next five, 10, 15 years, like that's a lot of quality time. And so that's another thing that you can also consider. If part of what you're challenged with is taking time away from your boys. And I know that, and look, you mentioned their adolescence that I want to talk to you. I have teenage kids too. I know what that means. I force my kids. So we're gonna have dinner every night and they sit there and they're quiet and I don't give a shit, turn off your electronics. And about 20 minutes into it, conversations start to kind of happen a little bit, right? Or when we're doing the dishes, take out your headphones, we're doing the dishes and we'll play music for the whole house, but you can't put your headphone. And I see, you know, we have conversations and sometimes everybody's quiet, but a lot of times we have a great time, we have good conversation. So that's just something my dad did that I didn't see the value in when I was a kid. But now I realize like, man, that was worth more than the two vacations a year type of deal. So just a little feedback with that. No, bro, that's good. I appreciate that. Because I definitely run into that with the kids like, oh, I love you. Why don't you take my love? And they're just like, oh, okay. I'm like, blood of my butt. I love you so much. I'm proud of you. And they're like, yeah, cool, dad. Hey, Remy, listen. Definitely you're in the Bay Area. We're going to have, I want you to reach out to the person you emailed on here. Jerry, yeah, Jerry will do it. Jerry, and let's get you and your boys in here watching a show live. How's that sound? Give you guys a good time. Bro, I would be, I would be so pumped. They would be pumped. I'd probably like be left in the corner. So last question, would it be, I hope this is a yes. Would it be appropriate? The only time I've seen like genetic freak, like pushing it is maps PED before I like pump out 200 bucks for that. Would that be appropriate for me? Like to just follow that and see what happens. Listen, you're a smart guy. I think you'll, you'll, you'll stop if you notice that it ain't working for you. So I'm going to give that to you. I'll give you maps PED, but I'm going to tell you this much right now. Oh, dude, it's too much. It's too much for most people. Okay. But you got to, you got to make sure you just, you scale back or stop. If you start to notice like this is burning me out. You are though a guy that I would be good experience. Yes, I absolutely would throw it at you. I've always done strictly like performance and like, can I ruck up a mountain? But I'm like, Hey man, it'd be cool to see like, how good can I look? Just keep applying that same recovery though. That's right. Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. And don't try to combine it with all the other shit you're doing because it's enough by itself. So yeah, I would love to see you and everything else. I'd love to see you run it for a while. We'll send that to you. Yep. Dude, thank you guys so much for your time. I appreciate you. You got it, brother. Thank you very much. Thanks man. Dude, how funny is that? Maybe my favorite caller. Oh, so funny. Hey, how funny? Listen, Hey, what a lesson for dads out there or parents in general. Your kids at a certain age, they're going to not think you're cool, even if you're the baddest motherfucker on the town. Yeah, I know, right? Like, I'm talking to him like, you're what? You did what? I didn't even know you can get two purple hearts. Yeah. You can get more than one? Yeah. Well, yeah. Holy shit. You keep serving. Yeah. But, you know, when his kids are older, they're going to be like, my dad was a bad, I mean, but you know, when you're, when you're that age, you think you know everything type of deal. Yeah. But I mean, you know, what a great question because it's so individual. Yeah. It's so and also it changes. You know, here's another thing. What your capacity was at one point, maybe completely different at another point in your life because of life circumstances. Well, that's why my advice was rock it till the wheels fall off. I mean, he's, he's getting his blood work done. He's doing all the recovery stuff. He feels good. He loves it. He feels good. He's sleeping. I mean, fucking do it, bro. Like you're the, you're the 1% that I would still push to encourage it. And then, hey, but here's the reality though, at one point. Of course. Yeah. You know, you know, aging is undefeated. You know what I'm saying? Like eventually that happens. Eventually life has to slow down. And what's then, and then he'll be faced with a new challenge in his life, which is my whole life. I've identified as this fucking machine. And for the first time, I feel like life is catching up to me. Age is catching up to me. Now, how do I balance that? I should have recommended Arthur Brooks book from strength to strength because that's exactly what he talks about. Yeah. How do you transition? And what he says in the book is you go from doing to teaching. And that's how you keep that fire invigorated, you know, within your body. Our next caller is Brian from Ohio. Brian, what's happening? How can we help you? Hey, how are you? Appreciate the education, guys. You got it. Thank you. So I've been doing full body over six days a week. And I was wondering if I were to go to the three, three days a week full body and cut the volume down and the days down a week. What are your thoughts if I've been training 25 years? Would I have to worry about maybe losing some muscle or anything like that? Okay. So one of two things will happen. Either one, you'll maintain because you've been training for so long. The amount of volume required to maintain what you have is a lot lower than the kind of volume that was it would be needed to continue progressing, for example. And there's actually quite a big range there, especially the longer you've been training. So either one, you'll see nothing really happen. Or two, which is what I think will probably happen is you're just going to get stronger either from the novelty or because you may actually be using a little bit more volume than is required, which is what people tend to do naturally. So my guess is if you, like I said, worst case scenario, nothing happens. You can go back to training more if you love it, not a big deal. I think you'll probably get stronger. That's what I think. I think you'll build a little bit more and get stronger. I like this question, Brian, because this is, and I haven't shared this on the podcast yet. We're actually waiting for, we have a program that's coming out and we're going to release and Doug normally doesn't let me talk about stuff like this until the program's out. But something I've been testing on myself for the last month or so is these really short workouts. I'm only working out about 15, 20 minutes, six days a week. And so one of my fears was similar to yours, which is, man, if I dramatically reduce the volume, am I going to like just shrink? And the opposite is happening to me right now. So I'm like tripping out on how much muscle mass I'm able to maintain off of that. And I attribute a lot of that to two things. One, to Sal's point, I probably tend to always overdue the volume more than I need to. And so my body's always trying to prioritize recovery versus adaptation. And so reducing that, and then also the years and years of experience of building muscle over time, my body has built so much muscle over the decades of training that it has that muscle memory that it takes very little to stimulate it to keep it. So and one of the things I'm loving that I feel is because one of the things I've noticed being 40 now is I'm constantly always managing joint pain or tightness. And I feel the best right now that I've ever felt. I just don't, I'm not getting very sore from the training. I leave the workouts with lots of energy. My joints don't hurt. I don't feel overly tight or sore. And so I'm actually kind of blown away by what I'm feeling right now and the way my body is shaping up. So I actually think you're going to be just fine, especially since you have so many years of experience of lifting. Yeah. Awesome. Yeah, give it a try. See what happens. Give it a good. I predict you'll see strength increases within the first three to four weeks. So you'll know pretty quickly if it's something that's working for you. Do you guys do much full body three days a week yourselves? You know, that's typically where I end up. And I go, I'll try some splits. I'll do full body. And full body generally is where I end up because I feel best doing it that way. And every time I move away from it, I always tend to move back to it. Now that doesn't mean it's best for everybody. But it does tend to work. I would say for about 80% of people, it tends to be the better way to train. Honestly, for me, it just helps to prevent me from overtraining, overdoing it for certain body part groups. I just have a tendency in that direction. So everybody's different, but it's definitely one of those that works a lot better for me. Brian, do you have maps in a ball? I do not. All right. You got it now. We'll send that over to you. Thanks, guys. Appreciate that. You got it, man. I appreciate you calling in. Thank you very much. Thank you guys. Appreciate you guys. You got it. You know, Adam, I'm going to be, I'm going to be messing around a little bit with something along the lines of what you're doing, because I'm watching your, I'm watching the progress that you're experiencing. And it's actually pretty remarkable. And I know the science behind it, and I know I've seen other clients do it. And I'm also a little forced at the moment because I'm having to take my daughter to school in the morning again, which means I'm not going to have a lot of time on some weeks. And so I'm kind of messing around with something along the lines of what you're doing. Mess around, find out. And I tell you, I tell you what, dude. I tell you what, Justin. Yeah. I mean, I'm do it. I'm loving it right now. So the only thing that I feel challenged about that I need to kind of go back to the drawing board is... You're weak. I'm actually getting pretty strong pretty quick, which is cool too. I know. I'm watching you, bro. It's pretty great. I'm watching that come up pretty fast, which is nice. It's actually, normally I kind of have this when I get my kick going right, where I'm like really consistent again and I'm eating good. But I'm not leaning out as fast. I'm getting really strong. I'm building muscle. I feel amazing. Normally I kind of simultaneously lean out too. So I think because of the reduction in volume and also intensity in the workouts, isn't equating to the normal calorie expenditure and burn and demand of my body to recover. And so I've got to play. If I want to lean out, like right now, I'm just kind of enjoying the process because I'm building muscle. I wonder though, if you're going to see how much of a metabolism boost you're going to start to see. So that's why I haven't done anything yet. So I am patiently waiting like, okay, if I keep kind of building muscle and getting stronger week over week and not really mess with my food, just keep eating the way I'm eating, well, at one point I've reached to where I've got enough muscle mass that it requires more calories and naturally I start to. You're in this deficit. Yes. So I'm kind of patiently waiting on that before I dramatically try and mess with anything calorie wise, macro wise. But so far so good, man. The thing that I noticed the most is the feeling good and not feeling really, really sore or joints. Yeah, it's funny. It's like, typically if somebody's been working out for a long time and they really have this, they love it and they really enjoy it. Tip, not always, but typically they tend to do a little more than they need to. It's just that, because you enjoy it. I do this all, listen, I still do this. I have a freaking podcast where I tell people not to do this. And I still do this. And then when I scale the volume down at a necessity like time, I have to or whatever, I'm like, oh my God, I feel so great. You know, it's like, of course, got to take my own advice. So look, if you love Mind Pump, you're going to like MindPumpFree.com. This is where we offer people free advice and guidance and written guides. It can help you with almost any health or fitness goal. You can also find all of us on social media. So Justin is on Instagram at Mind Pump. Justin, Adam is on Instagram at Mind Pump. Adam, and you can find me on Twitter at Mind Pump Sal. The rules that apply to somebody who is going from a man who's going from 20% body fat to 15% the rules that apply to that person are the same as all the same that go from 10% to 5%. The difference is everything that we talked about.