 In this episode of Mind Pump, the world's number one fitness, health, and entertainment podcast, we answer fitness and health questions asked by listeners like you. Now the way we open the episode is we do our introductory portion. This lasts about 40 minutes. This is where we talk about current events. We talk about things that we've been thinking about in regards to fitness or whatever. And sometimes we mention our sponsors. So what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna give you a breakdown of this whole episode so you know which part you wanna listen to. Here's the breakdown. We start out by talking about hot, sweaty, and sore. That's the way people gauge their workouts. So if you get hot, if you get hot, if it's hard, if you're sweaty, if you get real sore. You're turning me on. Well that means that the workout was really good. Actually it doesn't. Terrible gauge. You'll find out why in the beginning of this episode. Then we talk about something called stop, pause, sets. It's a great technique to build strength. Oh, blueberry flavor is back for magic spoon. So everybody that was on back order because it's so popular. Praise Odin. Now magic spoon is a cereal. So yes, it is a cereal that you pour milk over but it's high protein made with whey protein, all natural ingredients. The macros on this thing are amazing and it does taste incredible. So it's a food you can enjoy. If you like this child cereals that you had when you were a kid, this one's got a lot of protein. So it'll help you build muscle. Here's what you do if you wanna get the mind pump discount. Go to magicspoon.com forward slash mind pump. You automatically get the mind pump discount and it comes with a 100% happiness guarantee. By the way, don't forget to use the code mind pump for that discount. It's delicious, change my mind. Then we talk about Elon Musk and his little quarrel with California. Go Elon. Then we talked about gyms reopening. We talked about what the gyms look like in Hong Kong. How they're moving forward what that's gonna look like for the gym industry. I talked about my son and how much homework and schoolwork is doing now online just then talked about the same thing. One thing I'm having my kid do now cause he's on his computer so much cause it's all distance learning is to wear blue blocker glasses. Very important to reduce the amount of blue light you're exposed to especially if you're on a computer a lot to reduce tension headaches, protect your eyes. Blue blockers are great to use at night before bed. It helps you get into a better sleep. You produce more melatonin. Now our favorite company of blue blockers are Felix Gray. These blue blocker glasses don't turn the whole world orange or red. You can see everything in the normal colors yet they still block blue light. They make a massive difference. And they look really good. And again, we have the place to go check them out. We have the link for you. So go to FelixGrayGlasses.com that's F-E-L-I-X-G-R-A-Y glasses.com forward slash mind pump. You'll get free shipping and free returns. And then Adam talked about some learning lessons he's having now as a father, kind of cool part of the episode. Then we get into the questions. The first question is, should you lock out on exercises like the bench press? Or should you stop just short of locking out to keep tension on the muscles? Bit of a debate on this topic in the fitness space. So we shine some light on it. The next question, how do you make shin splints go away? Shin splints can really get in the way of your progress, especially if you like to run or jog or hike. So we give you the remedies. The next question, this person wants to know what we think of straps or grips. These are the things that help you hold onto the bar or the dumbbell or the machine so you can pull more weight. Yeah, they're cute. Again, we give our advice there. And the final question. This person asked a more personal one. They wanna know how we handle fear and anxiety around topics that we can't control that can affect our children. This is a very timely question obviously with things that are going on. So we talk about how we handle those things with our children. Also, this month, all month long, MAPS Starter is 50% off. Now, if this is an at home workout program, all you need is a physio ball and dumbbells. That's it, full body workout with dumbbells and a physio ball. This program is very, very appropriate for beginners or for people with little experience working out. But it also has value for people who are advanced. Because you're using a physio ball and dumbbells, it forces you to focus on perfect technique, form, and stability. MAPS Starter, again, excellent program, 50% off. Here's how you get the discount. Go to mapsstarter.com. That's M-A-P-S-S-T-A-R-T-E-R dot com and use the code starter50. That's S-T-A-R-T-E-R-5-0, no space for the discount. You guys wanna play a quick game? Yeah, what's that? So I'm gonna say some words and then you have to tell me the question that produces the answer that I'm gonna give you. Like, kind of like Jeopardy. Okay, let's try. You know what I'm saying? Okay, so hard, sweaty, and sore. What's the question? Something sexual. CrossFit. No. How do you feel after CrossFit? Yeah, maybe. I know, you know why? Okay, so I did a post that got went crazy about the most misused metrics to judge a workout is how hard was it? How sweaty I got and how sore I got. And those metrics are terrible. They're so bad. The truth is though, I mean, I use those metrics for a very long time. Oh yeah, it's insidious. Even as a trainer. As a trainer, I fell right into that, that the more muscle fibers I could break down, the more potential I would recover and build. And how do you judge that? How hard it was? How sore I got? It's like family food. You know how you go to the streets, you ask people for a pull? That would be like totally the top, those three. Oh, totally. And if you think about it, knowing what you know now, if you look at mainstream workouts or just workouts that people follow, some of the worst workouts possible are the ones that make you, that feel the hardest, make you sweat the most and make you the most sore. Well, I think. Some of the worst workouts. I think that's where, you know, obviously our messaging for, you know, since we've started this has been anti that. And I think that we're, I think we say it so much and we're so passionate about it because we know that so many people fall into that trap. And I know that so much because I know I fell into that trap and I should know better as a coach and a trainer. So if I'm falling into that trap, you gotta think there's lots of other trainers that are falling in that trap and there's even more so clients and consumers that are definitely not knowing better because they're looking up to people like us to guide them in the right direction. And here we are pushing them down that. So yeah, it took me a long time to break free of that mentality that I needed to be so sore the next or I actually would chalk it up as a bad workout. That's right. If you didn't get super sore. Yeah, if I didn't get really sore from it, it was like. You know what's funny about that? It's the opposite. Right. It's the opposite. How hard something is and how sore you get are actually, they are metrics that you can use but they don't tell you your workout was effective. They can tell you if you did too much. If you got really, really sore and you felt it for a few days afterwards, that's a decent indicator that told you, oops, I went and I went too hard or I went too long because what's hard to communicate is that there is a perfect dose of exercise which is gonna be different from person to person. The perfect dose for me is gonna be different from another person. But anything outside of that perfect dose, if I go too hard or I go too easy, anything outside of that perfect dose means I'm gonna get slower results. I'm gonna get less progress, I'm gonna less gains, all that stuff. This is perfect if I go more, let's get there faster, slows things down. I remember, I wish I remember which certification it was. I knew it was one of my certs that I was going through and it had to been, so it definitely wasn't the first NASM, it was something else. It was something mid-career for me because I remember reading it and I'd already been a trainer for like five years and still training clients this way, training myself this way. And I remember reading that, that it was, that soreness was actually a sign of overtraining. And that just completely shattered my paradigm. Because up into that point, it was like, I was chasing that as a marker. And then here I was getting some cert or doing some CEUs or something and I come across this and I read that and I was just like, wait, yeah. Well, because it's directly in contrast with mental discipline for me. Going into athletics and having to endure the most arduous, hard type of a practice or you just put so much, that was the standard. That was what you always tried to achieve and be like the Jordan mentality where it's like I'm just killing every single practice and workout and it took me a long time to understand that it is dose dependent. I'm gonna get to a point where I'm ahead of wall because I'm pushing too far. No, I'm glad you said that because I did get messages from people who are like, well, someone should tell the military or what about sports and it's like totally different. Yes, there is a value in training yourself, getting to learn how to deal with how hard something feels to be able to endure. So let's say you're an athlete and you're gonna run a marathon. Is there value in learning how to deal with pain and deal with something being really, really hard? Of course. Is there value in the being in the military? Yes, but if you're the everyday workout person, are you training yourself to be like, oh, I need to be able to learn how to deal with more pain? No, you're training mental fortitude, that's what you're doing. And that makes sense if you are going to war or you are an athlete and in the training. How many people call their workouts war? I'm gonna go to war in the gym. Right, so it does make sense. And I think that's why the line got blurred and why it's so hard to, because we do, we idolize athletes so much, right? And I think that because that it does make sense for the football player to push beyond those sets sometimes because it's not, we're not trying to build the most muscle in this workout. It's not about that. It's like, you know, he's tired, he's broken down. Can you get another set in because you're gonna be on the field next week and you're gonna wanna quit in fourth quarter and you're gonna need to push through that. Think about it this way. Why the fuck are there off seasons? Because you can't keep playing every fucking day like that. You just can't. So that mentality in working out and improving yourself does not work. Well, so here's the thing. Marketers of fitness programs know that people judge the workout effectiveness immediately through how hard it is, how much they sweat and how sore they get. So what kind of workouts do you think they construct? Now I felt victim to this as an early trainer. When I first became a trainer, that's what I tried to do. I got a new potential client. I'm gonna make this workout real hard and I wanna make them real sore so that they come back and they hire me because they can feel the pain or whatever. So fitness marketers do this. So when you look at all the workout, it's funny because I can see this. I've been doing this for a long time. I'll look at workout programs that people put out. I'll be like, well, I know what they were aiming for, making people hella sore. That's all they're aiming for, make it as hard as possible because then people are like, that was really great workout I almost threw up. So I know this one's super effective. No, really, the truth is you should feel good after your workout. You should not feel like you survived. That feeling like, oh my gosh, I barely made that. That should be a rare occurrence. It should be you finish your workout and be like, I feel really good and energized for the rest of my day. That's the feeling that you should, and you shouldn't get sore the next day. Or if you do, it should be minor. You shouldn't be aiming for this really crazy, soreness or whatever, which actually brings me to another training thing. I've been practicing stop-pause sets a little bit, similar to cluster sets. So I did it today with deadlifts and it felt so good. What I did was, and this is kind of an interesting strength technique, a lot of strength athletes used to do this back in the day and it's got a lot of value. And so what I'll do is I'll take away, this morning I took 400 pounds for a deadlift, which if I really went at it, I could probably, I don't know, I might be able to get seven or eight reps if I just went for it. But instead, what I did is I did one rep and then I rested 30 seconds and did another rep and rested 30 seconds. And I did this for eight reps. So I did eight of them, but I rested about 25 to 30 seconds in between each rep. And wow, can I feel, I can tell that this is gonna be, this is an effective tool and advanced tool that people can use. Have you guys ever done anything like that? Have you used? Yeah. The last time I deadlifted, I trained similar to that, not exactly that. I was doing three though. So I was doing triples. So three. And then I'd rest for about 45 seconds and go back at it three, 45 seconds and go back at it. Yeah. I was fried though from it for sure. Yeah, you can overdo it. Yeah, you gotta be careful. Looking back now after how I know I felt from it, like I probably should either one have done singles with that same weight or I should have lightened it up and done that because I definitely overreached. So are you guys excited or what? For what? What? Blueberry is out again. Did you see my post? Magic Spoon has got Blueberry. I don't have to fight my youngest for it anymore. So that's good. They sent, obviously, you know, they know this, right? Cause they sell out all the time. So I got an email, I think it was last week. And actually, before I got the email, I got a DM of somebody letting me know cause we've talked about the Blueberry so much that they said, yo, they got the four pack back and they sent to me and then I checked my email. Pretty sure we influenced them on this. Oh yeah. I right away picked that up. Cause it's, they sell out so fast. Well, they hit a home run with that flavor specifically. And I think that they probably gotten a lot of feedback from that because it's like, we, dude, I mean, I seriously am fighting my kids for, for that specific flavor. Like we're kind of going through the other ones are just as good, but it's just that flavor. And they, I don't know what it was specifically, but they nailed it. Now, do you, do you pull the whole dad card? Like listen, I'm dad, so that's mine. I get at least half, you know? You two can split the rest. Which was it? Which one of you guys was getting flack from somebody about us being sponsored by Magic Spoon? Who was that? Was it you or was it me? Oh, wasn't one of you guys? Oh, somebody, maybe it was, maybe somebody was giving me flack over. I thought it was one of you guys that shared that, but somebody was, you know, cause we talk about process foods and that, that we, you know, how could you guys be partnered up with a company that is process cereal when you guys talk all about this stuff? And I said, Oh, you know, it was my sister, my sister who handles all the customers. Oh, I thought she was giving you flack. No, no, no. I was like, dang, girl. She shares, I always ask her, like, you know, what's the pulse of what we're getting, like, especially if it's a negative thing. Like, you know, it's, of course, it feels good to hear all the positive stuff, but I actually prefer to hear, you know, is there a common theme or have you heard, you know, multiple negative things about something going on in the business? And, you know, rarely ever is it. And if it does, we normally fix it. And I said, what about our partners? And she goes, Oh, I just got an email recently about Magic Spoon. I said, what, what was about Magic Spoon? And then she tells me that that was, that's what it was. And I was like, well, how did you handle that? And she goes, well, they obviously haven't heard you guys communicated on the podcast and they're just seeing that you're partnered with them and maybe they heard you talk about processed food and they obviously just connect that as, oh, that's bullshit. Why would you do that? Cause she's like, I mean, I explained to them, you should listen to how they talk about the product. They're not encouraging people to eat boxes of cereal every day. First off, let's talk about processed foods for a second. Are there actual values to process? And now I've spoken this about this a million times on the podcast. Heavily processed foods contribute to overeating, probably the number one reason why we have an obesity epidemic to begin with. They're engineered to make you eat more studies. Now confirm this, if you eat a diet that's comprised of a lot of processed foods, you typically will consume about just naturally 500 more calories a day. And the example I like to give people is a full bag of laced potato chips is about four to five potatoes. Most people could not eat four to five plain boiled potatoes, but they could go through a bag of chips easily. That's the drawback or the power of heavily processed food. Are there actual values? Well, first off, is there value to eating something that tastes really good and that is enjoyable to eat? The hedonistic value, of course there is. There's also the value that heavily processed foods have a long shelf life. If I buy fruits and vegetables and I store them, they go bad really quickly. I buy a box of something, it lasts a long time so they actually have a lot of value. And then here's the other thing. We are not zealots. That's actually, mind pump is opposite of zealots. We talk about drinking alcohol, smoking weed, eating certain foods. And so, okay, so let's say you're a fitness minded person. You're probably interested in building muscle because that's important. So you wanna make sure you get adequate protein because eating a high protein diet has been proven to help with the muscle building process and the fat loss process and all that stuff. And you are not a maniac, you're not a zealot. You like to enjoy cereal. Okay, well you could eat Cheerios and it would take you a million bowls to get 40 grams of protein. Or you could eat a bowl of magic spoon and you'd get that high protein. And it's quality, it's way protein. Well, I also wanna point this out, like if you ate a bag of ruffles or a box of chips ahoy, you're talking about 3000 plus calories, mostly carbs, saturated fat, and like no protein whatsoever in it. You could eat a whole box, okay, which I'm not advocating, but you could eat a whole box of magic spoon, it's 700 calories and like 100 grams of protein. Okay, so not that I would encourage anybody to do that, but you are not comparing. Justin did that a thing. Apples to apples. I'm being quiet over here. When you talk about your typical processed food. So it's a, and for me, and I've shared how I use it. I mean, it's completely curved my ice cream habits at all. I mean, I love having something, a treat like that after dinner. When I've had a good day of eating, I know my a lot of calories that I can have. And at the end of the night, I've got room for more calories. And if option A, Ben and Jerry's fucking pint of ice cream or a big bowl of freaking magic spoon, yeah, I'm gonna go the other round. What is your biggest processed food weakness? Like, is there a food that you have that you essentially have banned from your house? Cause you know if it's there, it's gonna happen. You're gonna do it. Ice cream, for sure. Yeah, yeah, ice cream. Wait a minute. You just smash it. Yeah, so I can't do what Katrina does. Like Katrina has this ability to, she could have a Ben and Jerry's pint of ice cream in the freezer and it lasts six months cause she eats two spoonfuls at a time. Like that just, I'll sit and eat the whole thing in one city. For sure. Yeah, it's a waste for me to- And you said cookies, Justin? Yeah, cookies. What kind of cookies? Well, obviously homemade are the best. But I mean, if I'm gonna go, I used to like Oreos. What's my thing? The tall house ones, I think? Yeah, yeah. Soft or crunchy? Soft, yeah. That's not bad. Chips for me. If there is potato chips in the house- That's Courtney, she loves chips. If there's potato chips in the house, it's done. It's a done deal. And it's so funny. I'll literally, it'll be up in the pantry and I'll go up there and I'll open it and I'll eat like five. I'll roll it up, close it, put it up in the pantry, walk around, come back, pull it out, open it. At some point I say, you know what? I'm just gonna eat the whole thing right now. This is, who am I fooling? I'm not fooling anybody with this whole thing. Anyway, dude, Elon Musk, let me tell you guys something right now. Your man crush. I would, I would for him. You know what I'm saying? I mean, I like him too. Dude, to be honest. So you guys saw what he did, you guys heard what he did for his shops or whatever, his Tesla factory in Fremont? You hear what happened? Yeah, yeah, yeah, explain it. So shelter in place, everything needs to stay closed. They won't reopen it. Elon is like, here's what's gonna happen. I'm gonna reopen it. Employees, if you wanna take the risk, if you wanna work and make money, show up and I'll be there myself. Then he does a tweet and he says, if you wanna arrest anybody, come arrest me. Now here's why I like Elon. I don't know if I agree with what he did, but the way he did it, you know what I'm saying? He opened it and he said it and he said I'm going down there if you wanna arrest anybody. To your responsibility for your actions. I'm on the front line and you arrest me, which is just like, whoa, the dude's got some serious balls. And then there was a, it was like a lawmaker from California that, did you see the tweet that she put in? No, no, she's just basically like, fuck you Elon. She's like, that was it, right? That's all she said. That's the whole tweet. She said, fuck you Elon. Like what a baby. Yeah. No. What is that? Like who does that? You're a professional. Yes. Well, so what? You're in a high position in government. So what happened when he pulled their card because he was threatening to leave out of California. Oh yeah, he's going. Is he still? That's what he says. He says he's taking the shit out of you. So I was talking to someone and said that he was threatening to do that and then California said, no, no, no, it's okay. Within a week, they said, all of your California stuff will be up and running. No way. Yeah, that's what I heard. That happened? Yeah. Wow. They're not gonna let him leave out. Do you know how many tens of thousands of jobs that is? I know. I mean, California would just. We're already getting crippled. Right. We need that. We're in an interesting situation. One of the things I love about America that's unique is that we have states. This is not something that you see in other countries where you have states that have their own legislator and powers that they can enact. In fact, originally the states were supposed to have more power than the federal government. It's not like that anymore. But what's gonna be interesting is right now it's a big experiment with how to handle this pandemic with what the long-term consequences are gonna look like and all that stuff. And you have the blue states, the Democrat states are trending more towards stronger regulations. Like you have to be closed, you can't be open, you gotta do this, you gotta that. The red states are trending, not all of them, but are trending more towards, hey, let's reopen, try to be careful type of deal. It's too soon to tell whose approach is gonna be better. But in a year or two, we'll be able to look back at the whole picture, compare apples to apples because population density matters, right? Like a Montana, you can't compare Montana to like San Francisco or whatever, but they'll compare apples to apples and then we'll be able to see whose approach worked better. And that's the wonderful thing about our state system is that each state is like a laboratory of their own policies and you can start, you can see which ones work better than others. So we're gonna see. We'll see what happens. What do you guys think about what you're seeing right now? I know I'm sure you guys are getting as many DMs as I am of the gyms that are reopening and like how they're doing things. The 24-hour fitness one I've seen, the video on that I sent to you guys and then the Hong Kong picture. It's like post-apocalyptic. It's crazy what kind of standards they have to abide by now. It's pretty crazy. Did you, okay, so tell me the truth, okay? You saw the commercial for 24-hour fitness. Does that make you at all wanna go to the gym? Why? Or that make you say, I don't even wanna go there. Give me stuff at home. I know, I don't wanna fuck with that. I felt so bad, you know, I'm watching it and I want them to do well. I want all the gyms to do well. I mean, that's my, I was born there, dude. That was like the second home is the gym. You know, it's completely different now. I mean, they're gonna, every hour they're gonna close for 30 minutes to clean the gym and you have to sign up to work out and they said you can work out a mask if you want but you don't have to, but everybody else is gonna be in a mask. What a weird, do you see the picture of the gyms in Hong Kong? Yeah, with all the shields between everything. You're working out on a treadmill and you're in your own bubble of like plastic shields. You're just like isolating you. No, here's what I believe will happen is I think the slots will fill up. I think lots of people will go back to the gym. My question though, that just doesn't add up to me is when you understand how the business model works that's what doesn't compute. It doesn't- Yeah, how do you profit? Yeah, because there's a 90% of the gyms traffic really happens within about four hours of the day, two in the morning and two in the evening. Like literally like 80% of the traffic happens in that little window. Now, if you have to close for a half hour on every hour and you're only allotted X amount of people that can be in the gym and you're shutting down treadmills and equipment, you are limiting how many people can even sign up and come and most of the profits that they make are based off of the prime times. Yeah, not only that, but people that pay and don't show up, right? Like, because that's how it works. So now they have even less chance to show up. How many people are gonna continue to let their accounts get dinged for that $45? Especially when they have a great reason to cancel. Right. They're getting reminded, oh yeah, I got that gym membership. That's the part that is, I mean, you can debate me all day long on, because I've had people of course that have, we've had open discussions about this in DMs and get people that have heard what we've said and our opinions on what's gonna happen to these models and how crippling it's gonna be for the industry. And somebody's like, oh, it's fine. We're doing great over here at our gym and we're prepared for everything. And it's like, okay, you can be prepared all you want. And you can have all these great policies in place. 24 Fitness dropped a great YouTube video and put a positive spin on it. We're so excited to see you with your mask and here's your touch-free scan in and we're gonna clean behind you. Great, all great, but when you can only allow so many people in a square footage and most of these models are built off of the math on how many people can we fit in the small amount of square footage and then also how many people can we get to pay us and not show up? Do you think their operating costs are gonna go up when they have to close every hour for 30 minutes and you have to clean the whole gym? That's the other thing. Right. You know, I mean- That's the other thing. So here's what I think. I think the hard- And now you're a trainer janitor. Well, I think the hardcore fitness fanatics are the ones that are gonna show up. They're the ones that are gonna be able, they're gonna wanna deal with all these changes. They're the ones that are gonna withstand. Okay, fine, it's different. I only have an hour in and out. I gotta sign up, no problem. But the fitness fanatics, I hate to say this, the gym model has not made money off of you. In fact, you're the ones that they lost money on. The ones that showed up and used all the equipment are, this is a dirty secret of the gym industry. They're the money suckers because they keep showing, God, that guy shows up five days a week and fucks up my equipment. It's, and he only pays 20 bucks a month. That guy right there is costing me. Yeah, the company loses on that guy, but it's okay because they make up on the five other guys that don't ever show up but still pay their bill. And my theory is that those five, four of those five other guys cancel. And then they're not gonna be motivated to turn it back on right now, especially if they weren't already using it. They're gonna have to charge a lot more to keep their, I think they're gonna have to charge, dude, and then you look at LA, LA County. And now this is not official yet, but LA County, which has a huge concentration of gyms. Let's be honest, California in general is like gym, you know, capital of the world. And the gym capital within California is Southern California. LA Fitness is a huge company. Oh, I mean, there's, they have more, I think LA has more gyms per square mile, probably than anywhere else in the world. It's number two to Arizona. Is it really? Yeah, yeah, I think Scottsdale, Arizona is number one. Okay, so it's one of the top places in the world, right? Yeah, for sure, yeah. And here you are, and this is not official yet, but as of the recording of the podcast, their health official said with all certainty that they would have, they were gonna be shut down for another three months. So for three more months, they're not gonna open up their businesses. Who can survive that? I don't know, how are they gonna do this? I don't know. This is gonna be really crazy and really weird. Luckily LA's got great weather, so people will be able to be active and stuff outdoors. Right. And I can foresee a lot of gyms or fitness people. But even any gym that's like just holding on real excited and ready for those members to come back and then you give them that news, like, oh man, what a blow. You know what, Jim, might actually work out and might be open? Muscle Beach. It's outside, outside in the sun, you know? I mean, they'd have to limit how many people use it. Yeah, you still would. And it's a small section of it, dude. That's tiny. Yeah, it's not a big part. Yeah, do you guys remember the first time you saw Muscle Beach? Yeah. Oh yeah, it's tiny. It's a small little... Yeah, it looks much bigger on TV, right? On camera? Yeah. You guys ever work out there? I actually, every time I've been there, I have not lifted there. Oh dude, it's like, you know, I mean, it's just regular equipment. Yeah, I did it one time, it was just... It's the history of it, it's all rundown and everything. Bro, and you're in the sun and everything. Even the Venice gym, it's pretty much sucks, let's be honest. I mean, it doesn't even crack the top 50 gyms I've ever been in. But it's the environment. No, it's the history of it. Yeah, it's all the pictures on the wall. It's the environment, yeah. But yeah, with these shutdowns, I'm thinking about education and I wonder if they're going to, at least in California, I wonder if they're gonna even reopen the schools next year or if they're gonna just keep them shut down where the kids have to go. Well, I know you guys both have kids in different types of schools. What is the schedule look like for them right now for your son right now, Sal? They just, oh, Sal, go ahead. No, no, so both my kids, my daughter starts school at like nine and she's typically done by like one. It's live, she'll do a little bit of homework. My son is 930 to 330 straight on class the whole time, on the computer the whole time, which I am not a huge fan of. The kid, he comes down to have lunch for 20 minutes, goes right back upstairs. And when he's done, I call him down because I take him through a workout and do like an hour walk with him because he looks like, you guys remember the first matrix? Yeah. Okay, remember Neo before he goes in the matrix where he's like a computer programmer? Pasty. Yeah, just pale and like looks like he never gets in. That's what he looks like when he comes down. I'm like, this is not good. This is not a good approach. I would think staring at a computer screen like that has got to fry. He's wearing the Felix race because he started getting headaches. He was getting headaches and I was like, are you drinking enough water? What's going on? And I'm like, I bet you it's the screen because he's 930 to 330 straight. That's a lot of screen time. So he's wearing the blue blockers and it helped big time. So that's like a thing now. Like you're on so much. This is, you have to wear them the whole time. Oh, I think you have to. I think it'll be a mandatory thing for a lot of these companies. The more and more of the science that comes out to support the why that's so important and more and more jobs are becoming online at home on the computer. I can't believe he's from nine to three nons. That's crazy. That's because the school he goes to is like super academic. I tell you right now. And he's in high school. Yeah, but if they don't reopen next year, why the hell am I paying for this academic school? You know what I mean? Like, okay, well maybe we'll figure something else out. It's a valid point. And I can't be the only parent that's thinking, you know, like maybe we can do a little homeschooling. Maybe we can, you know, since you're doing it, you're just sitting in front of a computer anyway. Why don't I figure out some stuff for you that might be a little better? Yeah, it's been up and down. Like we've finally had like a good routine kind of established. But even then, like, so Ethan's had a lot more work, obviously, because he's older and like, you know, they try and give him a lot more assignments and things to do. He's having a hard time with being able to accomplish it all. Like they're really bombarding these kids with work, which you think is good. But then again, like it's part of it. It's like, okay, you know, they're spending so much time. He's on his iPad and then he's having behavioral issues as a result of that, you know, like going out. So, you know, Courtney's been able to kind of break it up a lot more and like send him outside and go walk the dogs, be in the sun, you know, trying to kind of interrupt that pattern. But then it stretches it out even longer, you know, throughout the day. So it's all come home and he's still working because he's been doing it in spurts throughout the day. And then my youngest, you know, obviously he doesn't have quite as much work. He's, you know, I mean, they're not gonna like, you know, add that much assignments for his age group. But he's been having a really hard time not being able to connect with his friends. And you can tell, dude, like how, cause even Ethan has been able to at least been able to chat with his friend, drive by. His friends are closer by like Everett's friends, like they're MIA, you know, and it's really taken a toll on him. So, you know, we're thinking of, you know, just, you know, hey, we're gonna do some things that aren't socially acceptable and we're gonna intervene here. Cause it's just like, come on, dude, think about if you're that age and you're a little kid, how important your friends are to you, you know, I have to like, I have to go back into that mind space and be like, dude, how tough would that be? I overheard you guys talking about something that blew my mind that I didn't know was you guys said that some schools aren't doing anything. Public schools, because they weren't prepared, they didn't have the resources. And so I have friends whose kids are in schools. Well, Justin's in a public school and his kids are his stuff. It depends on the youth as well. Yeah, exactly. It depends on the school. Now, is this a common thing or is it more rare? I have no idea, but I have two friends whose kids go to two different high schools. One of them, nothing for two months. The other one was nothing for four weeks and then now just, and then started four weeks later and starts now having, because they had to prepare and get everything set up. Yeah, my brother was telling me about two schools up in his district that, you know, have been doing nothing for like two months. Really? Yeah. Well, I mean, they weren't ready. They had no resources. They weren't ready. How do you imagine organizing for, I don't know how many, hundreds of thousands of kids for different age groups and teachers for, you know, online, you know, distance learning. You know? They didn't have the curriculum there. Yeah. So, but I don't know, I don't know. Maybe you guys explain, you guys have better perspective than I do. Like, why is it so challenging? I would think that if I was a teacher, I would pretend as if I had a class and I would just be zooming it and then they're there. Like, no, that's not that simple. I think it's a completely different. So my daughter's school, here's how they do it. She doesn't go on with the whole class at the same time. She goes on with a group of kids. So each, they'll put the kids in groups and they'll all meet at different times with the teacher. Because think about this. 30 kids on a Zoom call. I got a, what about the, how do I say something? It's two, it doesn't work. Oh really? It doesn't work. So, unless they're just doing a lecture, which, you know, my son's school does a lot of that, right? Where they just do a lecture. In which case they can all watch. I guess that makes sense. If you're high school and above, lecture type stuff is okay and that may, then you could have 30 watching. But if you're in third grade, you know, the kids are just gonna watch a screen for an hour while the teacher talks. I didn't think about that. Yeah, and it's just, and then some kids don't have the computer set up and depending on the district. So it's, and this isolation is just, it's gonna have its own psychological impact for sure. I mean, I can see what my kids do and not seeing their friends. Yeah, it's crazy. I mean, it's just, it's tough. And then to see that they're gonna extend it even further, it's just such another like punch in the nuts, you know, for, I don't know, man. I don't, at a certain point, like we're really gonna have to like assess like whether or not we're gonna go back to real life or not. Yeah, yeah, they did a, they follow cell phone usage and they can tell how people are moving. And I know in California, they're already showing that people are not, now they're moving around, they're over it. Like they're people are just like I can, they gotta go see people or whatever. Yeah, I've heard NSA has already been able to kind of track specifically who's had a coronavirus and then they follow them through their cell phone to see, you know, where potentially, yes. Like they can, and they plot it all out to see like a more accurate model that way. Oh, that's crazy. I know, they already know what we're doing. That's so crazy. Yeah. How's dadhood for you? I mean, your kid's not in school, but how's the, how's the, you know. It's going good, dude. I mean, it's a very fun stage right now. You know, funny you asked because, you know, you said something to me before I became a father and it was in the back of my mind, I hadn't surfaced yet and I hadn't experienced it yet. And what you had said is, you know, we all, all of us, you know, one of the things that is connected or bonded us is our work ethic and our drive. We're all highly motivated. We're all very, very competitive with ourselves and are always stretching ourselves to grow. And, you know, you said to me like, oh, you know, you think you're that guy right now, you know, wait till you have your son and you'll see a whole new level of you come out that you didn't think you could have a new gear, right? And so I guess I really hadn't thought about it that much. I mean, we're so, I'm so entrenched in what we're doing with Mind Pump that, you know, every day kind of seems like that, so I haven't really thought about it. Well, and this is kind of a neat thing to talk about because a lot of the interviews I do, I get asked questions around self-awareness because I talk about that a lot and developing that. And I share like some practices that I've done over, you know, the last couple of decades on how I've developed self-awareness with myself. And one of the things that I share is that, you know, when I have these moments in my day where I'm either negged out or Katrina and I get a little irritated with each other or something like that, just a change in my mood up or down, at the end of the night when I lie there, I ponder on it and I asked myself like, you know, why did I feel that way? Like why did I get, you know, frustrated by that? And I always take her out of the equation. It has nothing to do with what she said, what she did. If I got irritated, I allowed something to affect me. That has nothing to do with her, it has everything to do with me. And when you start to dive and unpack that, you many times find out it's rooted in something else. And so yesterday, I said something to her that I definitely offended her and, you know, we kind of moved right through it. She brushed it off didn't say anything. But I was like, what the fuck, why did I say that? And it is related to what you said to me. And, you know, I've had this sense of urgency. And I'm sure fatherhood, COVID-19, all of that is probably, you know, compounding. And- Same here, I feel the same. Oh yeah, so I mean, I'm in just, I'm in another, I am in another level of work mode. But I honestly, I was probably attributing it more to COVID. But when I think about it, man, it has a lot, because a lot of it's like our future and investment and setting up our son and school, all the things like that are going through, swirling through my head. And I asked her a question that challenged like her work ethic right now, like where her head is at. And so disrespectful on my part to even question her on that, especially since it's one of the qualities about her that I'm most attracted about. I mean, she is probably one of the most driven persons I've ever met in my life. Like she's, that's, it's one of the things that I fell in love with when we first met. And, you know, for me to, to even question, you know, where her head's at in that area is completely, it'd be like her questioning me, which is I would find that very disrespectful. And, you know, I had asked her that like, you know, hey, cause she's responsible for a lot of things we do. And I was just like, you know, you know that, you know, every one of us has a sense of urgency right now because what's going on with COVID. And, you know, even though the business is okay and stuff like that, like I don't, I don't want to act like it is. I want us to be like everything is all hands on deck. And if there's a project or something that is being bottleneck in your area and stuff like that, like I can't stress enough, you know, how important. And so I like made a comment like that. And she just kind of looked at me like sideways and didn't like respond. And I, you know, we caught one of those looks, you know, and so I was just like moved along with my day. And then in the evening I'm laying in bed. I'm like, why would I, you know, I know that about her. Like she's, she's a maniac, you know, she's working at 12, one o'clock in the morning while she's pumping, you know, she's savage like that. And here I am asking you about that. But it made me go, oh, you know what, like this is probably connected one to COVID. And then also, you know, what Sal had expressed to me when, you know, before I had Max that, you know, you will feel this sense of urgency and that you've never felt before. And I think that this, that was the first time that I felt it bleed out and potentially affect somebody else. So I totally, I mean, I came up, she actually came upstairs and lay next to me and she goes, what are you doing? I go, oh man, I'm just, I'm pondering on why I said that to you. And she's like, yeah, I was, and she said, I forget what she said, but she said some like smart ass comment to me like she was gonna talk shit. That you deserve. Yeah, which I totally deserve. I said, no, you're right. I said, I don't know where that came from. For me to even question you when it comes to that is just insane. I can't believe I did that, but obviously there's a reason for that. And I said, so I'm personally trying to process that and work through that right now on making sure that I stay level headed, even though that I find it's good, you know, that I have that drive to provide for my family and stuff, but not at the expense of rubbing off on her or making her feel that way. Yeah, that's one of the bigger challenge I've talked to counselors about this and I say that a lot of this happens more often than not to men. And I think it's just the way we identify ourselves like, okay, I'm a provider. I'm a protector and a provider, right? That's what we're taught growing up and there's a history behind that. And so then you have a child and you know, your reaction or a man's reaction can very well be, I need to make more. I need to work harder. I need to provide more. And you just hit another. And then one of the challenges with that is and this is what the counselor would tell me is that then the man disconnects from his family and buries themselves in work. So all of a sudden this man who was around and you know, was part of everything. And now all of a sudden he's working seven days a week and because he feels this deep sense of responsibility like this is all my value, which so it's something that needs to be balanced out. Oh, I could totally see and I'm that personality that could get lost in them. Oh, I did. Yeah. I did. That's one factor that played into my, how I got divorced. I 100% did that. And it was like, this is what I do. This is what I'm for. This is all my value. And it's very easy to, especially because it's not coming from a bad place. You're thinking to yourself. Yeah, you justify it. Yeah. And you're thinking to yourself like, I need to provide for my family. And you know this and you have kids, you will die for your kids. No question. I don't give it. I will totally do that. And I'll work myself to death if I have to. And that's not a bad, that's not coming from a bad place. It's just something you need to be aware of. And that to me, that's the reason why it was great. You asked and then I could share because I do get asked a lot about like specific situations where I try and develop my self-awareness. And that's an example where I know that I did something out of character or crossed the line or said something to her that she does not deserve. And that it's my own shit. And I have to work through that and make sure that I don't lose myself in this new level of drive that I have found with everything going on with COVID and then being a father. Totally. There's nothing like having kids, dude, to make yourself reflect. I swear to God. You just wait to get your kids grow up? They're mirrors. Oh, dude. Yeah. It comes right back at you. Like all of your nuances and different things and characteristics that make up who you are. Like you just see them visibly, like right in front of you. For good and bad. So your kids are a little older, Justin. Has this happened to you yet where one of your kids displays a bad habit or they say something and you realize right away, like, oh, that's me. That's what I do. That's how I would react. Yeah. And then you're like, son of a bitch. That's not good. Bro, his youngest is him. 100%. Yes. I know. His youngest is him to a T. It's the good and bad. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah, absolutely. Everything. You could see it in him. I could see like the child and Justin in him, you know. For sure. It was very like, it's somewhat uncomfortable, you know, sometimes. Because it's just like, ah. And then my heart goes out for him, you know, because like when he feels, he feels, you know. And it's like, I just remember that as a kid, just like those emotions and everything like, you know, just him struggling through that and trying to figure it all out. Like I just see it like every day. But yeah, man, it's another lesson. This is another leg that now like also comes back and, you know, fulfills you in a different way. Yeah, and they're like, oh, parenthood is hard. I have no idea. It's hard on all level. Like I have a tendency, you guys know this about me. I can be very cynical and I can have a dark sense of humor. And you know, I rubbed off on my kids so my son will say something and I'll be like, God, that sounds like a dick thing to say. And I'll be like, oh, man. Yeah. He learned that from me. Oh, shit. Maybe I sound like a dick too sometimes, you know. Dude, Justin, I gotta say something just to change gears. Okay. You, your personality comes out so well when you're saying certain things on camera. That video you did for the webinar that you're gonna do where you're telling people like, you know, trying to like hype it up. Dude, I was watching them like, cause you know, usually I'm on camera. You know, Adam will do a little bit on camera. Usually you do other types of things. I love you on it. I was watching them. Don't pump him up anymore, bro. He's already got a massive head cause he's a fan favorite already. I know why he's a fan favorite. Don't grease his wheels anymore, bro. He's on common. On camera now. But that whole webinar series is gonna be so, you know. Let's sign ups through the roof now. Better yourself. Here it comes. You guys wanna watch Justin coming. Make it rain. Yeah. Your stop. The way you taught the class, so good. So good. I think it's gonna go well. Well, I had a good student in Doug. Yeah. You're gonna see Doug do some fun stuff. You fucked him up in the video. It's so great. The first one is Saturday, right? Saturday, it's the class that, so Justin is teaching you how to do a self-assessment, which is you need to learn this by watching. It's very hard to teach over the podcast. So he teaches you how to do a self-assessment. Then he teaches you how to prime your body based off that assessment. And then what he does, he has you go back through the assessment so you could see the difference. Well, I'm excited about this because probably, if not the number one question, one of the top questions that we get is that people have a hard time. And this is our own fault is we've take the feedback and it's in the works of changing things. But that people have a hard time understanding the difference between Prime and Prime Pro. Because the names are so similar. Right. And we do. Because they're very different. And it's something, it's on the agenda to rebrand change so it's more clear for people. But in the meantime, that was some of the motivation behind doing both these webinars I did the Prime Pro one first and took you through a class in that. Justin is now doing the Prime one and taking you through a class in that. And the feedback we've gotten has been incredible. And they'll also, after we're done with them, so a couple things. One, even if you can't make one of the live times, right? So the live times, the benefits of that is you get to interact with us because we'll be on there live talking to people and answering questions. But if you can't make that time, if you register, you will get an email to you. So register no matter what. And hopefully we get to see you on there live and get to communicate with them. I'm excited to see the feedback for this and to see if it really helps benefit people kind of identify some underlying issues that they can address right now and move forward from and really benefit from. So yeah, I'm excited. Yeah, I mean, you learn how to self assess your movement pattern by watching Justin and he teaches it in a way to where then you can do it on your own. So it's like super, super valuable and you can sign up and it's unlimited. There's no cost. So anybody can do it. It's mapsprimewebinar.com. So go do this. First question is from Coach Ken Oh. Should you lock out on exercises like a bench press? Pavel said you should lock out to build joint strength. I always thought you should come, I always thought you come just shy of lock out to keep tension on the muscle and off the joint. Yeah, so yes, both are right. Pavel is definitely right with how he's explaining it because I know how he talks about it. Okay, how do you keep tension on the muscle and off the joint? That comes intrinsically. Now, can you do that by shortening your range of motion? Yes, I guess, but the problem is now you're not strengthening the end range of motion. The problem isn't locking out. The problem is locking out and then not keeping. You're resting on the joint. Yes. I also think that this is partly the fault of us and our peers. Well, bodybuilders for sure. Yeah, I think even trainers and coaches, I was guilty of this because when you're teaching somebody, you know, it is hard to teach somebody to do something intrinsically, like keep tension on a muscle. Right, keep squeezing. Yeah, keep the bicep tense while you open up in a bicep curl versus just saying, hey, you know what? Go almost all the way to the end and then come back up. You know that it forces them to keep tension in there because you don't allow them to rest on the joint. But the truth is we're robbing them of that full range of motion by not allowing them to go all the way to the end range. But the key is that you don't relax on the joint. You don't lock out in a bench press and let the weight rest on your elbows in that locked position. You keep your chest tense, your shoulders tense while you're in then your triceps all tense while you're in that fully extended position before you come back down. This is just another example of certifications kind of putting in place safety measures, right? Like so, you know, only going to 90 degrees, not locking out fully because they want your muscles to take on most of the stress and the impact. You know, there's a way to teach through this to be able to still provide that intrinsic tension in that support system, but that's a vital part of training. You can't cut it out. So, you know, for me personally, I would lean more on the povel side of it, but it requires that education. It requires learning how to do that. Yeah, so imagine this, right? Imagine you're sitting on a chair and then you have an ottoman that you put your heels up on. So you put your legs out in front of you, like an ottoman. And so in between you and the chair, there's some space, right? Now your kids come over and they sit on your knees, okay? If I relax my legs, that's not gonna feel good. That's my joint supporting them. If I tense up my legs and allow my muscles to support them, now I can support their weight and it not cause problems with my joints. Now that's directly opposing my joints ability. When I'm straightening my arms out on a bench press or overhead press, totally different. It's even safer, but you gotta maintain tension. You can't press it up and then let the joint, what ends up happening is the ligaments end up holding the weight. And ligaments are, you know, they don't necessarily build strength that way and if they fail, they break. If your muscles fail, then you lower the weight. So it's safer. So yes, you wanna go full range of motion but keep tension the whole time. You're not relaxing at any point of the rep. Next question is from Dr. Aloe. How do you make shin splints go away? What corrective training do you recommend to prevent future flare ups? Combat stretch. This is a good example of how different I approach certain things between the beginning of my career and then towards the end. In the beginning, you had shin splints. All right, let's stop running. Ice and elevate. That was my answer for everything. Ice, elevate, stop doing whatever hurts them and then later on I learned that shin splints come from just muscle weakness and imbalance and the ankles and the tibialis muscle. That's the muscle in the front of your shin. You do have a muscle there. Maybe tightness in the calves. Not strong enough. Feet. That's it. And so the very first thing that I figured out with this was when I learned that it was maybe a tibialis weakness. I had my clients do toe raises where they stand on their heels and lift their toes up as high as they can and just do reps. Very silly basis. Not the best thing you could do by the way. I think combat stretch is superior but it was all I knew at the time and I would do what my clients with shin splints. Then they'd go jogging and they'd come back like, whoa, my shin splints are totally gone and then my mind was just like exploded. But combat stretch has got to be. This is combat, so important. Yeah, I mean in a perfect world, I know that the goals that I used to go to before this COVID thing was going on, they have a. Oh, a tibialis raise. Yeah, they actually have one. So in a perfect world, you do a combat stretch and then you go over and you strength train the tibialis and you do that coupled. I mean, you could take somebody who's been suffering from shin splints and damn near eliminated completely for them. So it's, but normally even the combat stretch alone by itself will do wonders for somebody who's battling it. Yeah, and it's a lot of the mechanics too. I know when I would be just a little bit overweight going back into season for playing, I used to blame it and attribute it more to the hard ground. Like, cause the hard ground really had like a damaging impact. I mean, I would get shin splints almost immediately but I didn't have the muscle support there for that kind of impact. And so, you know, if I were to go back and work on the musculature there to support myself in that environment would have been such a better strategy. Yeah, cause the tibialis acts a lot like a shock absorber in some ways. It's a stabilizer, especially when you're running. And, you know, you have two bones in the lower leg and the tibialis is kind of in between them. And when it's not doing its job, you get a lot of inflammation in that area. And that's what a shin splint is. And if you run on a hard surface, you need more stabilization. You need more shock absorbing. And that's why people say, oh, if I run on a hard surface, right, I get more pain. But if you just strengthen them good enough and you've got good control on your feet and your ankles, you shouldn't get any splints, shin splints. So if you have shin splints, you probably should reduce your running and then focus on strengthening your feet, your ankles, working on your tibialis. As it gets stronger, start running more and more again and then you should find and if you can hear your footsteps, that's already an indication. Yeah, you better work on that. All this stuff is addressed in Prime Pro. Like this is, I mean, this is kind of one of the things that we do is we look at every major joint in the body and this is a common area that this would address and fix. So, you know, here's the perfect example. This is where you would be working down in the ankle area and doing all the mobility drills that are related to that and strength training exercises. You do that and, you know, 90% of the people that are listening that are battling shin splints, it'll go away. Next question is from Fabris too. What do you think of straps and grips? I've used them for years, but wonder if I should just build my forearm strength and only lift what I can without them. All right, so this depends who I'm talking to. If you are going to compete in a sport that allows you to use straps, like you're a strongman and strongman oftentimes will do like these crazy lifts and the competition will allow for straps, then I'd say you can use them obviously because you need to get good at using them. But for the average person, this is my advice. If you can't hold the weight, that means you can't lift it, that's all. So if you can't hold it, then that's your weakest link and that means you can't lift it. And so people will say to me, well then that's because my back is too strong. My back is too strong for my hands. Okay, our hands are freaking, we evolved to have really strong hands. We're primates for goodness sakes. If you allow your hands to get stronger, believe me, they will be strong enough to support 99% of the people who are listening right now. Now in the extreme cases where you're like super power, incredible strength or whatever, maybe. But I mean, I've pulled 600 pounds bare hands. Power lifters aren't allowed to use wrist straps. They use alternate grips or hook grips and they can do it. I say, let your hands get strong. I don't know why we're so afraid of this. Yeah, I don't know, again, I'm probably the most extreme on this. I don't know when it happened. I think it was after training for football for so long and trying to get numbers and trying to get PRs and things to put on the board and be like the strongest guy in the gym and all this. And that meant a lot to me. And I would use a belt and I would use wrist wraps for poles. And at some point, I went to go grip, just maybe half the weight in dumbbells and I could barely even hold onto it for very long. I had no endurance, I had no grip strength and then just started to work on that specifically and just basically made it so no aids were at all involved in any one of my lifts, no belts, no straps, no special shoes, no shirts, none of that stuff. Like what I'm doing is eliminating a component of training that now I don't have to really focus on as much, but I'm really in a sense, I'm just being lazy. Like at the end of the day, I'm cutting out a portion of important things to work on that my body's sending me feedback and signal on that I'm being arrogant and I'm avoiding it because I think that this stuff is more fun and cool and is gonna fucking make me look cool on Instagram and I'm gonna get numbers and praise for it. That's ego, you know? And so I've just been challenging myself. What can I really do? You're not gonna know what you can really do unless you address all those things that your body's telling you. So since the beginning of the podcast, I've challenged this the most, right? So of the three of us, I have probably used the straps the most. I don't right now, because I don't see the value in them for where I'm currently at. Where I found value in them was when I was competing and because a lot of my training was very similar like Maps Aesthetic where we have foundational days and then we have these focus days where I would be working on specific body parts or even like small muscles in the back, right? And I'm doing a lot of isolation type exercises. And when I would do that after heavy deadlifting or maybe to did something the day before and my arms are weak or sore and that would become a limiting factor to where that would start to give out before the muscle that I was trying to target, I would strap up. And the reason why I would is because the opposite of everything that Sal and Justin just said, I didn't care about strength. I didn't care about having my forearms matching my back strength. I cared about developing an area that I needed to work on until I could present my physique on stage. And if my forearms were the limiting factor, I didn't care about what I should be doing for like overall functional and what makes the most sense for the average person. I cared about not letting my forearms fatigue at all while I could really focus on squeezing and pumping and driving home this muscle that I was trying to work. So I found a lot of value in using straps when training like that. So I do agree with everything that the boys are saying that if you're just a person who's trying to build strength, trying to build muscle, burn body fat, not a lot of value there, but I do see it for somebody who is- That's the 1%. Right, sculpting a physique and has a plan going into that workout and they do not want the forearms to be a limiting factor. They don't give a shit if they're weaker or not. They are targeting a specific area that they want to completely feel it there. That's different. And so I can justify somebody using that. And that's not to say that that person still wouldn't benefit for working on forearm strength. I just didn't care. Dude, it took me a year. I used to use wrist straps all the time. And then one day I said, I'm not gonna use them anymore. And I could not lift what I lifted. It took me a year, but I did get back to the point where I could then go back to the previous lifts. It took me literally a year of focus. And the other thing is like, I come from a blue collar family. And in the summers, I would go and work with my dad. And the thing that separated the strong guys from the guys that couldn't handle it was hands. The guys with the strong hands, they could carry the two by fours. They could swing the hammer. They could throw the cement up on the wall or whatever. And the guys with the weak hands, I don't care how big and strong their shoulders and backs and chest and everything else were. If their hands were weak, it was like, doesn't matter. You can't connect to anything. It doesn't matter at all. Then when I got into judo and wrestling and jujitsu, I'm gonna tell you right now, you tangle with a guy who's got really strong hands. You could be stronger everywhere else. You're in trouble. He's gonna take a coldia and you know it. You feel it. They grab you. And my dad was like that. My dad came and did jujitsu at almost 50. And everybody called him iron grip. Cause if you got a whole day, you're fucked. You do anything because the stands were so strong. So then I started to really value that. And I got rid of the straps. I think you have to be honest with yourself. And just, you know, if you are somebody who can't lift over, you know, 300 pounds without any strap for like deadlift. And then, but you can do 500 something pounds with the straps. That's a huge discrepancy from that. I was never like that. I could still over over underhand 550 and pull it up barehanded without straps. I would use it like, for example, one of the areas that I really focused on when I was competing was my rear delts. It was one of the things that separated me. I felt from a lot of my peers. I was really good at training them. And that's the mechanics on a rear delt fly, for example, is it's really easy to allow traps or other muscles to kick in to overcompensate for the movement. And when I worked myself up to where I could, I could control, very controlled rear delt fly with 50 pound dumbbells. Now, you do that controlled as a rear delt fly. Your forearms get trashed from that. And then the next thing I know, I'm fighting it with my forearms and I'm not feeling it in my rear delts. So you'd see me strap up on something like that, which is an unusual exercise to do it. But there was logic behind why I was doing it. It wasn't an ego thing of I need to just show her but I can do 50 pound dumbbells. I worked my rear delt strength up to that. But then if I got that heavy of weight to control that with my forearms, really, really tough. And then I would lose the purpose of why I was doing that exercise. So there's places for it. All of the intention. Next question is from Megan Mack. How do you and your partners handle fear and anxiety around topics you can't control that affect your children and their future? Oh man, this has really changed for me a lot. You battled this the most, I think, right? Well, personally, like my fear and anxieties. Yeah, but no, this is talking about, I guess, how you handle the fear and anxiety for your kids. That's the same thing. It's you're getting the anxiety because of what could possibly happen to your kids. Is that how am I reading that? Oh no, yeah. So I was interpreting it like how to handle your kid's anxiety. No, I think this is like, for example, I think this is alluding to like COVID-19 and what's happening to them. Like how much fear and anxiety you guys have knowing that it's impacting their lives. Yeah, so that's, oh, that's rough, man. I'll tell you what, I don't care how tough you are. You start to picture your own child's challenges and stuff. That'll definitely mess you up. Well, number one is acknowledge it. You have to acknowledge that you have these fears around certain things. And then you should probably talk to somebody. I think if you don't, and what I mean by is it could be a partner, it could be a friend. If you don't, what tends to happen, at least what happens with me is I can, it'll mull around in my head and it becomes obsessive and I can think about something that can build upon it or you could stuff it in which case it comes out in different ways. So I'll talk about certain things with Jessica, for example, she's an excellent partner to talk about these types of things about. This is 100% a communication thing with your partner, period. Like, and this is if you're human, this will happen to you. It's just the people that are self-aware about it and recognize it when it rears itself. Like we just, I mean, beginning of this episode we talked about the self-awareness thing that I try and practice and this is no different. Like, here's mine. And this is very recent that we had something like this where Katrina and I might have shared this on the podcast but it fits for this question is I am, I'm so afraid, or I get anxiety around not having enough adversity in my son's life. Because I know how much it served me to getting to where I am at and I now look back and I'm appreciative of all the adversity that I had growing up and think it was a very important role to developing a lot of characteristics about myself that I want my son to have. And my Katrina is completely opposite. She had a very successful childhood. She's very successful in life and they did it with a complete opposite approach. Lots of love, lots of support and comfort and therefore each other. And she's been very successful for it. She's very independent too. And so we are, I'm challenged here where there'll be times where she does something where I feel like, God, let him struggle a little bit. I know he's a baby and stuff like that but it's like, it starts now, right? It doesn't start now. I mean, at what age do you start letting them be challenged a little bit and she's so quick to rescue them. And then to her, I'm so quick to let him struggle on everything and she's like, damn, he's a fucking baby. Let, you know, pick him up and love him. Change your own diaper. Right, so this is an area that we don't see eye to eye. I have anxiety over it that my biggest fear is that he turns out to be a spoiled little kid because I gave him too much growing up and didn't show him enough adversity. And so it's communication. And when we have to have dialogue around it and the great thing about both her and I is that we do have that level of self-awareness that I recognize that it's my issue. If you have anxiety about something with your child, it has nothing to do with the thing that you can't control and has nothing to do with them and has nothing to do with you and your insecurities around that topic and that's where the work needs to be done on yourself. You can't control the uncontrollable. COVID-19, nobody can control that. You can't control how your kid is going to respond to it. Only you can control the anxiety that you get from it and it comes from something within that is normally rooted in something deeper. And so that communication with your partner and yourself is, I think, where the work is done to get through situations like this. Yeah, I have a very similar, very similar with me and Courtney in terms of us being sort of polar opposites for certain things, especially with fear. And this was a lot harder when she was working in the pediatric environment where she was a pediatric nurse and every day she would see the worst case scenario of how something would play out with a child where they would fall out of a window, they weren't wearing a helmet, they got into a car crash. Like all these things, she would inevitably bring that kind of energy home and I would have to talk her down through all these scenarios just to let our kids ride their bikes. Or just to go out at a park and not be worried about everybody's colds, diseases, whatever else, bacteria that are out there to get us and harm us. But at the same time, I had a moment where I was so disconnected from that fear where I'm sleeping soundly like a rock and just the faintest noise sparked Courtney to get up, run downstairs and my son was choking on a marble. Oh, I remember this. And like I cannot shake that. That's something that I'm so glad that she had that instinct in that, you know. And so it's tough because it's like, you know, you can't be completely oblivious to the fact that it's a signal. Like there is real things out there to consider. How much do you water that though? How much do you invite that to dictate how you make your decisions and how much can you really control? So, you know, it's a balance. I feel for parents that are single in trying to raise children and deal with that fact and not have a balance from that because I really do lean on her from those types of scenarios because I don't wanna run my life going forward and providing and doing all these things and taking risks with that kind of pulling me super hard the other direction. Yeah, no, that's a great, it's almost like, I mean, obviously, you know, it takes two people to make a kid and it's like they balance each other out oftentimes or one is too far one way. Others too far if they were by themselves, probably not a good idea, but then together. And I think that's the answer to this question is you, you know, how do we work it out with our partners or handle that with our partners is appreciate your partner for being the opposite of you. You know, no matter what side you're probably on. You're probably gonna go too far with that. Right, and so, and that's Katrina and I like, you know, hopefully he ends up being an amazing kid because he gets a great balance, right? He gets a dad who manufactures adversity, you know, to make sure that he has some challenges and he has a loving mother who's there to support and save him when needed. And so, you know, hopefully he ends up being this incredible kid that gets both sides of that and you have to embrace it. I think we're, you have one, you have challenges as if you're a single parent. I mean, I can't imagine that. Or if you're, you know, the headstrong person in the relationship and you decide your way of the highway and then the other person just folds, like, I don't think that's healthy either. I don't think there's a reason for that push-pull and you can use it to your benefit. Yeah, and it's funny, I interpreted this like, how do you handle your kids' fear and anxiety? And I was gonna say, it's such a different, I have such a different approach with that now than I used to where if my kids were really scared about something that I perceived as being like irrational, like, oh, don't be afraid. It's not a big deal or whatever. They usually dismiss it. Yes, and I realized more, relatively recently, you gotta let them have their feelings. They have to let them process their feelings. Oh, you were scared? Same lesson, dude. Yeah, so how did that feel? What was that like? And let them process out their feelings so that they can honor it because when you dismiss it, they'll probably think, okay, well, this is not an accurate feeling. I can just stuff it or dad is not the person to go talk to. Totally different than the way I used to handle it in the past. And with that, go to mindpumpfree.com, download all of our guides and resources. At the beginning of the episode, we talked about our free webinar. That's at mapsprimewebinar.com. Go sign up. 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