 Our first caller is Alec from La Jolla, California. Hey, what's up, Alec? How can we help you? Hey, what's up, guys? So I just have a question. I'm looking for recommendation for program. So I do a lot of surfing, also yoga and mobility work, and have a hard time keeping on muscle mass. So looking to take one of your programs. Excellent. Do you do any strength training now? I do. Yeah. Intermittently. Nothing consistent. So I'm really looking for consistency. Okay. And you want to be able to maintain your performance, too, with your surfing and yoga and that kind of stuff, right? Exactly. Excellent. Okay. Would you say you want to look like a sexy athlete? Sure. Here's why I'm asking. Here's why I said that. So I think the perfect... Or me. Yeah. Here's... No, no. Just sexy, not athlete. Here's the reason why I said that. We have something called a sexy athlete bundle that combines MAPS Aesthetic, which is kind of a bodybuilding focus program. Really good for building muscle, but it also has MAPS Performance, which is an athletic training program. And what you do with the both of them in that particular bundle is you combine the two workouts. You alternate between MAPS Aesthetic workouts with MAPS Performance. And you kind of get a little bit of both worlds, right? You get to sculpt and shape your body, build some muscle, but you also get to train your body to move and perform like an athlete, which it sounds like it's something that you value. The second thing I would say is you definitely want to look at your nutrition. Sometimes people have trouble, oftentimes I would say, people have trouble building and maintaining muscle just because their calories aren't high enough. So you want to kind of combine the two, bump your calories, high protein diet, and then follow the sexy athlete bundle, which is MAPS Aesthetic with MAPS Performance. So I want to dive a little bit into the... Because obviously you gave the short version because Doug wouldn't allow you to say everything, but I'm reading your question right now and it sounds like you've tried to gain muscle in the past and you've struggled with that. And I'm guessing that has a lot to do with you teach classes, you're super active, you're surfing. It sounds like you're probably burning a lot and you struggle with probably building. Is that true? Yeah, it's true. Okay, so nutritionally kind of what do you see? I mean, are you consistent with the way you eat? Are you inconsistent? Have you tracked at all? Yeah. I have tracked in the past and it's pretty intuitive. I eat when I'm hungry and I don't eat when I'm not. I also track my activity as well. So sometimes I see them burning well over 3,000 calories in a day, roughly. And so I try to match that. And eating that much is sometimes pretty difficult, but I do my best. Alec, I'm going to say something real quick. You said you're eating intuitively, which is great, but intuitive eating is keeping you at your body weight, which sounds like you're healthy, you can move well, but your goal is to gain a little bit of muscle. This is when you're going to want to eat a little more than what your body would intuitively want you to eat. So if you're okay staying where you're at, then keep doing what you're doing. But if you want to gain a little bit, you're going to have to purposely and consciously add more food. Some strategies for someone like you who's this active is, and I wouldn't give this strategy to most people, but considering the position you're in and how active you are, is actually drinking like some liquid calories before and after a lot of your activity. That's a beer. I mean, that's. Cheers. Honestly, in your situation with trying to gain, I mean, that's actually probably better than water, but drinking drinks that have calories, they're easy for you to take down. And that could be a protein shake, that could be some sugar filled drink. And I know some people are probably cringing because that's not great advice for the average person, but somebody who struggles with putting muscle, putting weight on and has a very active lifestyle, one of the best things that helped me because I struggled with the same thing was before I'd go play basketball, in your case before you go surf, I would make sure I drank like a five to 700 calorie drink or like shake that was loaded full of calories before. And then as soon as I was done, I would make sure I fill back up again. And that will kind of help get to the calorie intake you need. Another thing was also prioritizing my breakfast. I was real easily, I could get to 11 o'clock without really eating much because I wasn't that hungry in the morning. And then I was constantly playing catch up the rest of the day. So if struggling, because we could put you on the best program in the world, which would be maps, anabolic and then performance, but if you're not feeding the body enough calories to build, you're gonna have a hell of a time. You might feel stronger, you might feel good and mobile because of the great programming, but as far as adding more muscle and more size, you may struggle to do that if we don't hit your calorie intake on a consistent basis. Makes sense. All right, so do you have the programs that I had talked about that are in the Sexy Athlete Bundle, Maps Aesthetic and Maps Performance? No, I don't. All right, we'll send those over to you, Alex. So follow them, again, in that bundle. We actually explain how you can combine the two programs. So some people like to do more of Maps Performance in that blend, because they like more of the athletic parts. Other people will add a little more Maps Aesthetic in that blend because they're looking more for the aesthetic aspect. So I'm gonna push you in the direction of more Maps Aesthetic and even modify performance because as you start to get towards the back half of performance, there is a lot of movement. And you're a very active guy already. So I would probably back off on some of the stuff towards the end of the program, as far as I think we even get any cardio recommendation. You don't need that. Yeah. You're doing that right. That's phase four. So phase one and two basically kind of stick with that where we're just working on max strength and also proprioceptive type strength. So that would work and go well with what you're trying to do on top of that. Also in the days in between is really where you want to maintain your surf skill and all these other activities that you're a part of. That's a great fit for that on your in between mobility or if it's aesthetic, it's your focus days. Yeah. I think the mobility portion of performance is gonna be great for you. I would just back half of that program gets pretty intense as far as how much we were moving and burning. So a guy like you doesn't need that but the mobility is gonna be phenomenal. It's gonna compliment everything that you're doing. Maps Aesthetic though is where I would push you to spend more of your time. You know what's good about the mobility too Alec is I know you do in your comment in your written question it says you've been practicing yoga for a long time which is which you probably have great ranges of motion. I'm sure your flexibility is pretty good. The mobility and performance really focuses on connection. Now I know when yoga is performed correctly that when you're getting into poses and positions you're active, right? You're not just holding a static stretch but rather trying to stay active. So you're getting some of that with yoga. You'll love the mobility movements in performance. In fact, you should notice an improvement even in your yoga practice from the mobility programming in mass performance. Right on. All right man, thanks for calling. Yeah, thank you guys so much. You got it. Yeah, I wanna touch on what he said about eating intuitively. Eating intuitive is a great way to maintain general leanness, general health, general fitness. It's what I like to refer to as the baseline. Moving above or below that. Yeah, so you wanna move above that baseline or below. Let's say my baseline, when I'm healthy, when I eat intuitively my body kind of settles around 11% body fat, 12, I tend to be more naturally lean. It's great for me. If I wanna get down to 7% body fat, it's not intuitive. I have to like push my body. Well, it's the difference between having a general goal versus a specific goal in my opinion, right? So if you generally wanna be healthy and strong and fit. That's a great place to live. Yeah, intuitive eating and exercising is excellent. And there's no reason for you to get crazy with tracking and weighing and all that stuff. But if you have a very specific goal, I wanna add five pounds of muscle or 10 pounds of muscle or I want to lose. You wanna maximize efficiency and you can really like direct it towards there like as quickly as possible. That's what you have to do. And it's not to say that you can't get to a place where you can kinda do that intuitively. I just think that's a black belt of nutrition to be able to say- It's a pursuit. It's not a goal. Does that make sense? It's not a destination. This is just- Well, even the best of us, you know, you go back and you figure out what's your tracking. You're like, oh wow, I didn't even realize I was adding that in. It still happens to me today. I always, I'm off always. Rarely ever am I like right on the calories and then also you're burning because, you know, maybe I'm dialed in, I guessed really close on my calorie intake. But then I realized, holy shit, I was moving way less than what I thought too. So all that stuff matters. But, and that was my concern with the performance recommendation with this guy because map's performance is definitely, there's a lot more moving in that than- Well, towards the later phases. That was a good point you made, absolutely. Because the beginning phase are really good. Yeah, one and two functional strength. You start getting a three, four and there's a lot more, there's an endurance component in there. So because we're thinking of training an athlete and this guy is having a hard time keeping up with the calories. One of the best things I ever did was actually switch. And this is why I know we went in the sexy athlete bundle but I also could make the case for maps and a ball for him because one of the biggest hurdles I ever got over was reducing my movement. And one of the best things I did was get out of a five to seven day a week program and drop down to a two to three day training volume. And that was way better for muscle gaining from you know.