 What makes life bearable, obviously, is giving meaning to this challenge. Otherwise life is unbearable. My God, we would be just seeking out drugs and pleasure and all the time, which we know that leads. So there's value there. And then again, the argument that I'm making here is for health and fitness people who are data-driven, forget all that stuff I just said. Look at the data. The data is clear. You wanna live longer. You wanna be healthier. If you're really pursuing health, that's really what you're after. You cannot deny the data. So at the very least, you should be open-minded and say, okay, there's something here. Just like exercise, the data is clear. If somebody tries to debate with me against exercise, I'll show them all the data and say, look, here's a deal. Try it out. You got nothing to lose. Be open-minded, all the data says so. The same thing is true of spiritual practice. The data is clear. You live longer. You're healthier. You have better immune system. You tend to have worse health problems. You have better relationships. People tend to stay married longer and be happier. They had happier children. This is all proven in the data. So it's a part of health. So if we're health influencers or podcasts or celebrities or whoever you are, you're a personal trainer coach, you can't deny that. One of the most effective ways to lower depression, improve happiness, reduce blood pressure, make yourself live longer and have better relationships is to have a spiritual practice. This is clinically proven. I know I'm blowing everyone's minds, but a spiritual practice has been proven to improve your health in almost every single parameter that they measure. I had a day in the life yesterday on the Mindput Media IG and that was actually one of the, I posted a picture of the two of you and said, ask anything about Justin or Sal. And they actually asked me what your spiritual practice was. So I didn't know you were gonna go this direction, but I answered that. I think it was prayer. I said, I didn't know for sure if there was other practices or whatever. Would you guys say that you would, your way of practicing spirituality? Yes, and you know what's funny about this is that, well, it's not funny, it's actually quite interesting, is that when you pursue fitness, usually you get into it because you're trying to change how you look. So it kind of starts off as this cosmetic thing, maybe insecurity-based, right? Then you go along that path and if you stick to it long enough, you start to develop acceptance because either you're aging or you realize, oh, like if I'm enjoying this for other reasons, so then you kind of develop this more health-oriented, you know, context around it. And then it's like, I like the mental effects, I like the psychological effects and you continue to pursue health, eventually you land on spirituality. And what's interesting about this is in our space, there's lots of evidence-based individuals. Like the evidence shows that the data is clear with calories, with proteins, with fats, with carbs, the data is clear with strength training, the data is clear with cardiovascular training. The data is clear with spiritual practices. So forget the esoteric part, right? The mystical aspect of it. People who have a spiritual practice are healthier. They live longer. They have lower rates of depression. They have happier children. This is all in clinical data. So if you're a health-minded person and this is something that's important to you, you can't deny the data. There's something there. So I think it's important to be open-minded because if you really want to improve your health, that is such a big chunk. In fact, spiritual practice has as big of an effect on your health as diet and exercise does. Well, I think it provides a lot of things that people sort of seek out and say that they do it in different sections. Like so I'm seeking out purpose and I'm doing that through work or I'm doing that through relationships or I'm seeking a way to de-stress. I'm seeking a way to kind of lower my overall just volume of stress and prayer itself for me is a bit of a meditative process with that too, which I do a bit of both, but they both serve like that same kind of purpose and physiologically with just stopping and acknowledging things outside of yourself. And then also, I mean, to the first, I just lost my train of thought. So check this out. This is what I think is really important because you're arguing about how it makes you feel, purpose, meaning, and I think a lot of people understand that, but where people don't get it is are the measurable physiological effects. For example, if I say to you, eating healthy has been shown to boost immune function in actual studies where they look at things like, you're like T cells and immune cell count, right? Spirituality has done this. There's a study that was done at your University of Los Angeles I pulled up right now to show that HIV positive patients who meditated slowed down the decline in their immune cell count. Another study found that mindfulness produced demonstrable effects on brain and immune function. So it's not just you feel better. It's not just you have a better outlook on things. They can actually measure and show changes in your physiology through a spiritual practice. So what would you connect this to? Because would you connect it more to the power of the mind? Would you connect it more to the foundation of having morals and values and a greater purpose? What would you connect the scientific literature to the response? So there's obviously something is happening where with the people that choose to live a life that is ingrained and it does, it could be any spiritual practice. They show this with all spiritual practice. So it doesn't have to be one, it's not one religion is superior to the other. It's that believing in a higher power and a purpose and having these kind of moral, there's moral codes or values in life. What do you attribute? Do you think that's just, it's because mentally the mind is that powerful that if I think positively, if I think that I have this reason and therefore these things happen or do you think there's something there? I think it's very complex. I think that's part of it. We've all been in tough situations where you're in this really tough situation and then you find a way to reframe it. And usually that requires you take a 40,000 foot view of the issue. And then all of a sudden that problem now, it goes from unbearable to it's a driver, right? Or it's motivating or there's, I can see the meaning behind what's going on. That definitely will affect your physiology, just how you think we've proven that. Is there a metaphysical part to it? That I don't think you can ever prove the metaphysical part. That's where the faith part comes in. But the practice of the spiritual practices, it has a profound effect. And like I said, measurable metrics of just health. Which I'd argue it does though, in terms of belief. So what does belief do in terms of like, if I believe that I'm gonna get better? If I believe that I'm gonna heal, if I truly believe in that direction, you see placebo effects of that physiologically versus somebody who has maybe a negative aspect in their mindset towards recovering from certain things. So this is an interesting perspective listening to YouTube because we, and like I've formulated my own thoughts around this already. And I guess we've never really had this dialogue openly like this and really thought about it, right? Because I've had an interesting path with spirituality and religion. Like I grew up in it so strongly in the point that my parents wanted me to be a pastor one day and go in that direction. And I never had any desire to. And I had a, we won't hash out all the things that I went through as a child and stuff like that with my father, my mom remarrying and all that. But I saw a lot of hypocrisy as a kid and I saw a lot of dogma. And so when I got older, it really kind of turned me off. Religion in general, spirituality in general. And I kind of, I wouldn't say that I strayed away from my faith or I didn't believe anymore but it was just like, I was really turned off by a lot of that. It's the human element, it's the pageantry of it. You're right, for me. Well, you're right. And that came full circle for me. Now later in adulthood, this is like getting into my mid to late 20s. What I started to notice in my life that really started to be really interesting to me was when I kind of like had abandoned going to church and thinking about that stuff, it was no longer a thought for me of this is why I do this or not do this. I no longer really thought like that anymore. But I still had that moral foundation was built because I grew up in it, right? So I did have the values still in there. And what I started to notice when I wasn't being forced down my throat or choosing to go somewhere and be in this collective group all the time was the more the things that I decided in my life aligned with these values that I learned through these spiritual practices, the better my life was. And sometimes that meant sacrifice. Sometimes that meant saying no. Sometimes that meant taking the higher road. Often times it does. Yeah, many times it was the harder decision. And many times I didn't. And I would make the probably more expedient decision and what always would happen was shit would happen in my life that didn't go right. But every time that I made these decisions based off these values that were ingrained in me, my life enhanced and got better and better. And it was really crazy. And I've gotten older now. And so I've realized that now how valuable that is and how healthy my life has been. The people that I attract in my life, the people that are in my life that I surround myself with because I've become closer and closer to this person that has all these values. I now attract other people that are like that which has also elevated my health mentally, physically, all those things. So for me, it's been a lot about the values that come with somebody who has a lot of these spiritual because you take somebody who grew up like me and then Katrina was very different. They're very, her family is very anti-religion. But then they have spiritual practices. So that was really an interesting situation for me for someone who grew up in a very structured religious home and spiritual home. And then meeting somebody who had this kind of like free kind of spirituality where it's just like, yeah, you know, not claiming that this religion or this belief is the way it is, but yes, there's a greater higher power. Yes, we should do good to others and like having those still some sort of a moral fabric. And then realizing like how good of people she was and her family. It's like, oh wow, so maybe it's less about, you know, the religion or my religion and it's more about the moral fabric and values that come from those practices. Yeah, there's two things that I think about when I talk about that specific topic with that is one, how arrogant we are to look at spiritual practices that have existed for thousands and thousands of years. Actually, I mean, recorded human history shows that humans have always had some kind of a spiritual esoteric type of practice. So how arrogant are we to say we don't need that? I think we do. I think we do need that. And the ideas that have stuck around morality as it is that you see lots of common morality and lots of different spiritual practices, lots of common like different religions, different spiritual practices and there's some common threads, that's wisdom, that's truth. And those things have stood the test of time just like evolution, right? So how evolution works is, you know, bad things that don't work tend to get thrown out. Good things tend to continue moving forward. So this happens with ideas as well. And we're very arrogant to look at things and go, that's dumb, we're smart now, let's just use reason. Reason is great, but it's super limited because we're so smart that we can reason ourselves to almost anything. We can reason almost anything into existence and make excuses and reasons for why we act a particular way, why we take advantage. Like it's far more reasonable and more natural to look around at people and say, yeah, you're weaker than me. I should have power over you, you know? And we're obviously not all, we all are born with equal rights. That doesn't make sense, you're tall, you're short, you're handicapped, you're not. What's a strange belief system that we now take for granted is that, you know, we all have these kind of, we should all be treated a particular way regardless of how we're born, where we're from or whatever. Now it's not exercise perfectly, but that's a crazy belief that came from these spiritual practices where there's a lot of wisdom. And then also this like, life is hard for everybody, okay? It's always gonna be challenging for everybody. And I know the argument, oh, some people have it harder than others. I think that that's very general. I think it's hard to look at an individual and say, well, you have it easier than me because you're rich or because you're, because we don't know what's going on. What makes life bearable, obviously, is giving meaning to this challenge. Otherwise, life is unbearable. My God, we would be just seeking out drugs and pleasure and all the time, which we know where that leads. So there's value there. And then again, the argument that I'm making here is for health and fitness people who are data driven, forget all that stuff I just said. Look at the data. The data is clear. You wanna live longer. You wanna be healthier. If you're really pursuing health, that's really what you're after. You cannot deny the data. So at the very least, you should be open-minded and say, okay, there's something here. Just like exercise, the data is clear. If somebody tries to debate with me against exercise, I'll show them all the data and say, look, here's a deal. Try it out. You got nothing to lose. Be open-minded. All the data says so. The same thing is true of spiritual practice. The data is clear. You live longer. You're healthier. You have a better immune system. You tend to have worse health problems. You have better relationships. People tend to stay married longer and be happier. They had happier children. This is all proven in the data. So it's a part of health. So if we're health influencers or podcasts or celebrities or whoever you are, you're a personal trainer coach. You can't deny that. Hey, what's up everybody? Thinking about competing in your first powerlifting competition or do you just want to get stronger and your bench press, deadlift, and squat? We have a program called Maps Power Lift and I'm gonna give it away for free right now to one of you viewers, but this is how you enter to win. Leave a comment below in the first 24 hours that we drop this episode. Subscribe to this channel, turn on notifications. Do all of those things and then if we like your comment and pick you as the winner we'll notify you in the comment section and you'll get free access to Maps Power Lift. One more thing before we start the show, we're running a sale on some other programs. Maps Starter, which is a introductory strength training program is 50% off and then the Prime Bundle, which is Prime Pro and Maps Prime. This is correctional exercise, mobility focused. This you can combine with any workout program. So it just improves whatever you're doing now by making you move better and be more connected to your movement and reducing things like pain and imbalances. That bundle is 50% off. So Maps Starter 50% off, Prime Bundle 50% off. You can find both of them at mapsfitnessproducts.com but you have to use the code August 50 for the 50% off discount. All right, here comes the show. To me it's very similar to when you brought up those community studies that were kind of comparing relationships and toxic relationships to packs of cigarettes and versus like creating this community and like what that does for longevity in terms of your lifespan. The thing about, you know, there's turn offs and things for people with religion but what it does provides a lot of structure there, a lot of purpose, a lot of community, a lot of moral fabric, a lot of like thinking outside of yourself which is a very important thing that I think these days, I don't see a lot of it because everything just is pushed into this narcissistic way of voicing my opinion of being me, me, me and like showing myself off at my best and just it's so self-consuming. What are you doing for other people? Like how many times I'm just like, that's like the first question I'll ask somebody that's like, you know, in this sort of state of like depression or just like, I just don't feel like, you know, things are going well. Yeah, well look, religious people is a fact. Again, this is data. Religious people are more charitable, it's a fact. They give more time, they give more money and they actually literally help more people. Not that they signal that they help more people. They don't post on their social media that they help more people. They don't get mad and rage on social media. Actually the data shows they actually do more for others and it's the religion, it's the spiritual practice that moves you in that direction. And it's not as much as you're obeying words but rather when you- No, it's a hack. So you're actually touching on stuff. So I actually, I was journaling the other night and it's kind of, this is weird, we're going this direction. And what you guys are talking about is something that I wrote down because it was, I was trying to define, just a handful, three to five of my truths. Or if I were to go back and tell my younger self, like these are some of the biggest hacks in life if you can figure this out young, like to get, and that was what inspired me to start and write things. And I'll read you one of them that is to the point you're talking about. And it's actually a Bible verse, 2 Corinthians 9, 6 through 8. Remember this, whoever so sparingly will also reap sparingly and whoever so generously will also reap generously. And you hear that in a lot of different versions, right? Like you get what you give, the energy you put out, you come back, like you hear that a lot of different versions. But I mean, that's something that I've lived my life by, which is, here's a non-religious way you've heard it before, which is your true net worth is your network. And part of building a large network is doing service for other people and living a life like that where you don't expect something in return. That's like the secret sauce in a lot of the success that I've had in my life is understanding that and having those values of like, I look for people, one that I like and I wanna build a relationship and I look for ways that I could be of service to their life. And that ends up always paying me back. Now it doesn't always pay me back with that one person and you have to understand that. And also you're not doing it for the payback. And that's why you have to do it like that because if you do it like that, then you start counting like, oh, I done that and I helped this person and they burned me. And it's like, okay, that does happen to me. Let's say 10 times I live my life that way where I don't expect anything in return. I genuinely wanna give to this person. I wanna be of service and I wanna help them. But you know what does happen is that one person out of 10 and that one person completely radically changes my life. Either levels me up in a whole another way, ends up being a crazy best friend or partners or something else in my life that takes me so much further than those nine other people who did nothing for me. And so if you can live your life that way where you look at it like that, you don't expect anything in return, it does pay you back. Well, so you know, people talk about authenticity all the time. Like, oh, be authentic. This is a big thing on social media. Be authentic. Authenticity is doing things for, for example, doing things for others for the sake of doing things for others. Not for the sake of getting something returned, getting more views, making more sales, having that person, you know, oh, I know that person's got connections. So I'm gonna do this. And we all know this. We all know those people who act nice to you, but you could tell they want something back. And those people are just, they just are genuinely good people. They never want anything in return. It's a totally different feeling. And by the way, you know, if you wanna talk about, you don't have to, again, you don't have to have the mystical esoteric part. So let's take that out for a second. If you look at all these spiritual practices, there are commonalities in a lot of them. And that's one of them. One of them is, you know, what they call it, the golden rule or, you know, and lots of religions. I think if anything, all the popular religions and spiritual practices talk about that. What does that tell you? There is a human truth there. There's wisdom there that people have found that never communicated with each other on corners of the earth where there wasn't cross-breeding of religions and spirits. And yet they figured this out. They figured this out. They figured this out. And they all preached this. And they say it a little different, but they all say the same thing. That's where you find like really interesting truths that humans have figured out and practiced for thousands and found value in. So here we are, right? Fiber optic cables, internet. I'm so smart. We got all these studies and arrogance. Wow, the arrogance. Arrogance is through the roof. It's so crazy. Well, another one of the truths that I had written down was things don't happen to me. They happen for me. And I think that requires a bit of belief that reframes the shit out of everything, doesn't it? It does. Nothing happens to me. Everything happens for me. And you have to kind of have this faith or belief in a higher power guiding that, or whether that be the universe or God or whatever thing that I believe that this was a gift, even in the most awful circumstances. And it's really fucking tough to actually believe that. Like you have to practice that. And when you learn to reframe all those situations, at least in my life, when I've learned to reframe those situations. And you're not gonna be able to do it every time, right? Something terrible happens, it could be so hard. Right, or it sometimes what ends up happens, it takes a while. Initially it hurts so bad, it hits you so hard and you go like, oh my God, how could losing this child or losing this thing in my life or this being fired from this, how could there be a gift here? Because it's causing all these other rippling effects. But I truly believe that it always is. There's a reason why I needed to leave there. There's a reason why that person's no longer in my life. So, and then I'm on this crazy path to figure it out. Like what is the message? What am I supposed to learn? And that, I mean, that is definitely part of the spiritual practice is learning how to do that. Have you guys seen the movie, The Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind? Yeah, great movie. Have you seen that? Okay, so Jim Carrey, but it's a serious role. It's actually one of the most underrated movies that I've ever seen. And in it, the premise is that they have this technology where you have like trauma or tough things, you go and they erase it. And so he, in the movie, and I'm a spoiler alert, in the movie, he meets this girl and they start to have this connection, but it doesn't realize that they had been before had a relationship and they broke up and it was so traumatizing that they had gone and erased their memories of each other. And you end up realizing the value and the pain and what they went through before that they erased because they got rid of it because they didn't want that pain. It's a popular procedure. Really, really powerful movie. It takes you on such a roller coaster. Oh, interesting. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's really good. I can't have never seen that before. So I watched it one night because I kept hearing about it. Why is it not so popular? Is it because it has kind of like religious undertones? Because Jim Carrey at the time, I think was known as being like this funny guy. Yeah, they weren't taking him serious in a serious acting role I think back then. But yeah, it was like one of those kind of indie films that just didn't get enough publicity, I think. Yeah, it was really good. Oh, hey, so talking about love and stuff. So check this out. Did you know that giving men testosterone or having their testosterone come up to a healthy, high level, we all know it's more drive, more confidence, more strength, right, all that stuff. It's also more affection, more hugs, and more love. So there's a study that shows that when men's testosterone levels were... So it's not always toxic. It's not a toxic hormone. It's a hormone that you need for health. And that when men had low testosterone and they brought it up to healthy levels, they were more affectionate with their partners, more loving, more... Why are you laughing? Because you know I got something for that too. You think they just want to have sex? Yes. Yes, bro. My husband's a man. So mean, man. Yes, bro. I mean, I think they have ulterior motives. No, they don't. I think it's funny. A lot more heavy penning. I mean, it'd be real hard to tease that out of that study, you know what I'm saying? It's like... This was general. It was a general feeling. It was a pretty well-made study. I mean, I appreciate your deliver. He buys me more flowers now. This is so weird. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I get more background. You know what I'm saying? That testosterone's running through me. He didn't care so much before. Well, no. Think about it this way. When you were... Okay, so I'll joking aside. When your testosterone was super low, you probably were more sad, more irritable. Totally. Or negative. Not wanting to have sex. All those things. Yeah. So then when it's higher, you feel happier. You're more likely to feel confident, which makes you want to... I mean, I think part of why I'm laughing is because I have personally experienced that, and I do agree with that. But what I haven't done is unpacked my motives, right? I've been really honest with myself. I mean, let's be completely real here, right? So when my... Yeah, libido goes up too. When you're happier, yeah. When my testosterone was really, really low, okay? I don't feel good sexually. I don't want it sexually. I'm not thinking that way. Therefore, I'm probably not as touchy-feely and kissing on my wife and doing those things. When my hormone levels are up, I want to have sex. I feel more confident. Well, hold on. I got something for you, because we worked with you through this process. Right, right. You're testosterone go low and your testosterone go high. Now, unless you want to have sex with Justin and I... Wow. Which I don't... Maybe, who knows, but I don't think so. I'm not used as a clip. You were... I know. You were... You definitely were friendlier and not like you're a super touchy-feely person anyway. Yeah. But the ear-rub thing that you do... Yeah. Definitely happen more frequently. Oh, okay. Being happier. Okay. Yeah. Adam does this thing. Okay, well that's... He likes to rub your ears. It goes all the way... I like it now. It goes all the way back to the elementary. But it doesn't happen. Yeah. Wait, wait. That goes back to elementary school? Yeah, yeah. All the way back to elementary school. I actually had a friend that used to do it. He... I can't take the credit for being the first person to do it. Like, he used to do that. And then I asked you, you used to do it to like relax me and calm me down when I was younger. Oh, what? Yeah, yeah. You know what's really fucking trippy? Is actually seeing my son do it laying in bed. Shut your face. Yeah, yeah. I don't think I've ever shared that before. Yeah, like... Isn't that weird? Yeah. You didn't teach him that? No, of course I didn't teach him that. And he hasn't even seen me do that. But I've seen him soothe himself like laying in bed and just kind of like play with his ear a little bit. The way... Yeah, trip out. Totally trip out. Dude, Araleas. I'm terrible at that. I just punched my friends in the gut. You're such a dick. Yeah. You know why? Because you want to touch him so bad, but you don't want to do it in a way that... Someone asked me, another one of the questions they asked about you guys is, who's more likely to give a compliment? And I said, oh, Sal, for sure. I said, Justin Berry's all his feelings. Good ones, bad ones. Yeah, all of them. Like, even if he's like, you know what? Adam's a really nice guy. Berry, Berry. Yeah, Berry. I don't want him to think I'm attracted to him. Yeah. Open that door. You know what though? But when he gives a compliment. Yeah. It's a real one. Whoa, bro. And it's not even a big compliment. You know, you're an all right guy. You're gonna cry right now. Justin said something like that. That's right. He didn't punch me. So I was gonna tell you guys, so Araleas has got this thing now where he's so cocky. He says no. It's cocky. Dude. He says no, but like, he looks at you and he just goes, no. No. So I'll tell you what happens. So Jessica, she's, she's, she has to go to the bathroom. Are you ready to argue? She has to go to the bathroom. So she leaves the door open because he's playing and they're by the front door. So if you go to my house, there's a bathroom as soon as you walk in to the right. So she goes, she's, you know, about to go to the bathroom and he goes to open the front door. So the front door opens out, obviously the front yard and she goes, Araleas, I'm gonna go to the bathroom. You can't do that. And he goes, no. And then he starts to crank on the door. Araleas, I'm going to the bathroom. Don't do that. And he goes, and then we filmed him saying this, no, because it's such a shitty, he likes, no, and he opens the door. So now he's looking outside and then he makes this, this car noise when he sees cars pull up. So he goes, so he's looking outside and he goes, and he goes, and she goes, oh shit. It's the, it's like UPS or Amazon, right? She's like, Araleas, close the door and go to the bathroom. No. And then he looks and he goes, hi, hi. And the Amazon lady walks up the door's open. She brings the package in like looking around. She's like, please put it down in the bathroom. Sorry. It's so hilarious. Little turkey. Yeah, he does that. We have to be careful now because he'll, he'll just open the front door and walk out. You know what I just did? I just introduced Max to the Paleo Valley beef sticks. He loved them. Oh, it really is like those two. Oh yeah. He does. And I just introduced him to him. We were driving somewhere and he was a truck and he was asking hungry. You know, his thing is a tummy hurts. Tummy hurts. That's when he's hungry. That's what he says. When he's hungry. Yeah, yeah. Tummy hurts, you know. All right, all right. We could eat all day long like nonstop, but I wasn't sure if he was going to like it. He loved it. Yeah. Araleas likes all my kids like the beef sticks, which is cool because especially for my daughter, it's hard to give her adequate protein. She's not like a protein person, but she likes to meat sticks. So I'm like, I think it's like six or seven grams of protein. Well, it's such a it goes back to the snack. It goes back to the conversation I was telling you guys about the whole percentage of protein. It's a it's an actually true protein snack. And it's so hard to find a quote unquote protein snack because you have to normally go get a thing of meat in order to get a good amount of calories. That's also find me other like other convenient protein snacks. You know, they're hard. Jerky is one of them, but Jerky's dry as hell. Boiled eggs. And kids never like Jerky the meat sticks are like, I think that's why my kids like it because they're not dry. You know, they're you know, I hate to use the word moist, but they are. They're not moist. Nobody likes that word. Also, you know what I'll say introduce them to not that I'm going to do this regularly, but I thought it'll be funny. We were in, I think we were a little Glenn and we ate some some early dinner and there's this new little candy store. And I, I love candy stores. I just, I don't know what it is about him. I like walking through him. So I'm like, I'm going to walk him through. And of course you want, he's looking at all the colors and he wants to try stuff. And I saw Pop Rocks. Do you guys remember Pop Rocks? Yes. You give him Pop Rocks. I give it to my kids, dude, just to watch them. Yes. Yes. Did you sit there just like anticipating like what is going to happen? So I'm like, this is going to be great. And I gave it to him and he's loved it. He sticks his tongue out. And he's like more. I'm like, okay. Pop and error. I took a video of it. So we'll put that up. It's a good time to enjoy it. Right now we're going into the swimming phase right now. I'm trying to get him to kind of break free. Like first of all, it took forever to get Max to get in a cold pool. He got so used to like spas, warm baths, and he like just the cold, a cold pool. He would just freak out. Didn't want nothing to do with it. So almost all of last year I could hardly ever get him into the pool. He's finally got to the place where, and I think it was just being around a bunch of other kids and playing in the pool. Haven't you noticed that when they're around other kids are way more likely to try new shit? Yes, totally. I mean, I think that has a huge, I think that's the main reason because he's seen all these other kids that are close to his age that are jumping in the pool and doing all that stuff like that. I still can't, he doesn't want anything to do with like, you know, all the cool life vests, water wing things that they have. So he can get in there. He still wants to be attached to me. Well, yeah, bro. Have you seen the video that he did? He hangs onto your back and he's swimming around. That's like the most fun thing I've ever heard too. Yeah. Well, and selfishly for me too, I like it. He literally holds on to you like you're a boat. Bro, and I can freestyle, swim, I can jump left, right. And he just hangs on? Yeah, he cleans. He wraps me. Of course he's not going to want a life vest. Yeah, he wraps me with his legs really well and he holds on with his hands and he'll put both hands up and then he's still hooked with my legs and like, it's pretty funny how he does it. Oh, that's so funny. So yeah, selfishly, I'm like, yeah, he doesn't break free. Yeah, I'm okay with that. Well, that's, we'll see, so no, it's true when kids see other kids, so it's the same thing. We were, again, Will Glenn and my son likes to hold my hand when he goes ups and down the stairs, unless he's crawling up or when he's trying to step down. And there were little kids that were his age and they were going up and down. Sure enough, he goes to try it and he doesn't. He gives himself an applause, which is hilarious. But I'm like, good job. And Jessica's like, he's your son. He's not good right now. Good job, buddy. But I talked to one of the dads because he had a son that was the same age as Aurelius and I said, man, your kid's like, going up and down these stairs and jumping down. And he goes, oh, he's got an older sister. I'm like, oh, that's true. When little ones have an older sibling, they have to quickly. They have to pick up that. Because they see their older brother. It was funny to talk about, you know, my son as well. Like he, he just, he's been doing piano and learning from my mom like all this like piano songs and he's really getting into it. And you could tell that like, you know, the musical side is starting to kind of come in with him. Like, oh, interesting. It's never ever. It's ever. Yeah. And so he, he was asking her about, because I took piano and everything when I was a kid and all this stuff. And so they're talking about it. And so my mom actually like pulled out another video. Like she is, my mom is like really good at capturing everything. So these all like VHS and like pictures. She has like albums for like everything. That's awesome, bro. Which is great. Like, and it's like, we're terrible at that. Me and Courtney have like, you know, like stopped kind of filming the kids doing things and like capturing all these moments. But it's just, I forget that sometimes. And she's like, oh yeah. So I have this video of like my first piano performance and it was like Moonlight Sonata, which is like this, you know, this, this great song. I don't know Beethoven or whoever, but it was like a watered down version of it. So it was like a little easier because I was just like, I think it was like nine years old or something. No. Yeah. And so I'm playing it and I'm, and I'm getting all into it. Like, I don't have any music, but like back then when I was a kid, I didn't have any sort of like social cues or like filters in terms of like, you know, like I just started like really getting into it, like rocking my body. Was this a recital? Yeah. It was a recital. I'm playing for all these people and I get to the point where it's towards the end and I'm just like trying to play it softer and then playing it softer and then I'm like punching them all the way down on the, like this. No. I want to see this. Yeah. You know, and everybody's like on pins and needles and they're like, you know, like done, but it was just so, it's all over dramatic, dude. He said like seven, right? No, nine. It was like probably like nine, eight or nine. Yeah. Oh, yeah. But yeah, it was pretty hilarious to watch. I did one piano solo recital and I played a hot cross buns. You know, that's the song everybody learns. Yeah. And I just, you could tell if you, I don't know if I'll ever be able to find this video, but I remember watching it because my mom showed me like 10 years ago and I'd like, I'm tripping on the way in, trying to step over something. And then I, and I just, I'm not a music person. You mentioned that you and Courtney are really bad about kind of documenting everything with the kids like at this point. Like, and what about you, Sal, with you and Jessica? Excellent. She's really good. She's super good. And you're not so good. No. So I'll take a lot of pictures, but I never organize them. I just don't. I'll have my phones, got bazillion pictures, but she'll, she's very good and she'll go on my phone or she'll tell me, send me all the pictures you took just now right away. And she actually takes the time to organize them into digital albums. And then what she did recently is she printed albums. So we have 2017, 2018, 2019, I think we have 2020. And their albums of like, you know, good, like pictures that are meaningful throughout the year of just her and I, us with the kids, whatever. So we, and so she does a great job. I would, I'm terrible. I would never, we get lost in the max. I never look at them again. I think you guys do that. Yeah. I'm, I'm actually the one who does that. I wish I wasn't, but it's a lot of work. It is. It is a lot of work. Cause it takes her hours. It's a lot of work. And I do all of it. Like I do all the, the photo taking, the video wing, the organizing of it, the building max is like page. Like I separate them over, but I separate them by year also. So they're all in chronological order and I have different albums for each one. So have you tried printing them yet? So I've made books. So I, so what I do is I go to Shutterfly and I actually create albums in Shutterfly. Yeah. Yeah. And then we, we print. That's what she does. Yeah. So that's what I like. So you have those. Yeah. I've done it for Katrina and I's relationships since we started. I used to be really good at the beginning. I used to, I used to, yeah, it's very romantic. It's actually at a necessity because I think I really appreciate that stuff. I actually, until Katrina, I would never did that in my relationship. So I wasn't the guy who, but I've had, I've been in relationships from a family that didn't have a lot of stuff. There's not a lot of video of me as a kid or a lot of photos. Like my mom has minimal stuff that I can look back at. And the same thing goes for like my dad. Like I have very little stuff of my real dad that I wish that I could go back, watch or look at and stuff like that. And I really don't. So I've always liked that stuff because I want that for my son or my kids. Like to be able to go back and like look at albums or watch videos. So I make an effort to do it. You know what I hate? I've said this before and the book will be like eight years ago today. And it's a picture of my kids. Messes me up for a good 30 minutes. Oh yeah. Every time. I just saw one the other day. I was at Disneyland. My son and my daughter, she must have been three. So he was seven and they're just standing there all cute and little. And now, you know, he's 17. She's going to turn 13. And I was like, turn the page. Yeah. I can't do it. Yeah. It just, it gets a little hard. Anyway, I just watched the new predator. Have you guys seen this? What? Yeah. So I mean, is it on Amazon? Like where do you find it? Oh, Hulu. Okay. Like for real, like real or is it like some knockoff version? No, no, no. It's predator. It's called prey. Is it a movie? It's a movie. Okay. Okay. So prequel. No, it's just in the, in that universe, right? In the, in the whole universe of predator, right? Cause you have the original predator and predator to the alien predator. Predators. Yeah. So and some of them are cheesy, some of them are fast. The one with Arnold, there's like none of them come close to that. Yeah. This one takes place in it's probably, if I had to guess, 1700s in North America. Oh, I did see. Okay. I saw a trailer for this and it was like, yeah, you had the Wild West kind of settlers and all that. It was Cherokee. Cherokee. Yeah. So, so there it is right there. So it would be, it would be technically prequel because Arnold Arnold time is predator one. Yes. I mean, there's nothing that really harks. Oh, like, so it doesn't tie in at all? No, it's just, the story is if you're, and I'm a huge predator fan. When I was a kid, that original one, I must have watched at least 50 times, right? So it's just like this in a different setting. Yeah. The whole story is right that predator, it's the species of alien and their favorite thing to do is hunt. And what they do is they go to other planets and they're always looking for the hardest, most challenging prey to hunt. And that's why in the, I think it was predator two, the one with Danny Glover where they go, he goes on the ship. And then you see the alien skull in the background. And that's why they connected him because obviously they hunted, you know, the alien monsters or whatever. But anyway, in this one, it's Cherokee. And this, and the predator looks different. He's got a different like mask on, almost like they're a little bit more primitive because maybe it's before. Yeah. So their technology is even slightly more primitive. Oh, interesting. But it was, it was pretty cool, you know, parts of it I don't like, like, you know, it's just petite Cherokee chick. And she's like a ninja, you know, like, she's fighting this predator. I'm like, dude, he literally slaughtered 15 men with muskets and you have a hatchet and you're just like, kicking his ass. Like that kind of stuff. I'm like, come on, let's make it more. But I like the, the predator. I like the, the way he looked. It looked different than the original one. So you could tell it's just, he's a little different. Oh, interesting. But if you're not a hardcore fan, I don't know. I mean, I liked it. I liked even some of the cheesy ones. Cause I liked it. Oh, I liked it. Yeah. I liked it. I thought it was cool. I think the hunting, but you have to go into it with yet, like knowing there's a little cheesy. I like the hunting weapons that he, that they use. Like, remember the one where the net flies on you, but then it shrinks and it like slices you up. There was that one. And then, you know, you know how he has that aiming device? It's like three laser points. And this one, he shoots like these, these like darts that go through people instead of the laser. Yeah. That makes the, it challenging. They won't go, like he could obviously slaughter everybody if he wanted to. Is it always the same writer? Is the same writer wrote all of them? I don't know. That's a good question. Yeah. Cause I feel like they're so different that sometimes I feel like maybe it's like different people picked it up and we're writing it or has it been consistent? Find that out there. I seriously doubt it. Yeah. You doubt it's the same person? I doubt it's the same person. Dude, do you know that the camouflage technology that they showed in the first predator, which one was the first predator? That's real. Yeah. That's sci-fi. And that's when that's when science starts to follow sci-fi. 87. 87. That, that, that, that camouflage where it's almost like cameras behind you, right? Yes. And then they can project it in front of you, which then creates the solution. They now have technology like that. Yeah. Literally off the, like based off what the predator did. That's why. Isn't that crazy? Think about the imagination. Speaking of like predicting some of that, do you listen to it? I'm like 45 minutes in. Oh, okay. So I've listened to almost all of it. And there's, I don't know if you guys got to this part yet, but he actually brought up to Joe. There's 20, I think it's 20 predictions. They made memes about 76. 76. Oh, that was 20. I just listened to that part. Oh, 76 things they predicted like through like joking memes. That actually happened. That came true. Oh my God. Yeah. You know, like slightly true or like, you know, you know, some of those things with like Gavin Newsom being like the, the top sales person for U-Haul. You know, like he did, he did like a, like a couple months before, like it was released that like, U-Haul said like, yeah, we ran out of trucks. Like, like they're all going to Texas. Yeah. And so things like that or it was like, it was pretty funny that they've nailed spot on culture. I really good conversation around abortion between the two of them. Well, it was civil. That's why they disagreed. Yeah. And they were civil. That's actually what got me to listen to the interview. I mean, I'm already curious and interested about the Babylon B guy already. So I probably might have tuned in a little bit, but for sure, what got me was the clip. You know, what makes Rogan so good is that he can, he can have a different opinion from you, but he's curious and he'll still, if you're logical, he'll, he'll say, okay, well that makes sense. He'll still listen. Yeah. And I think too, like to, which was weird. It was a little misleading because some of the cut that brought me into that interview was it seemed like it was a little more emotionally charged and driven, but like when you actually listen to them talk it through, there might have been like a little bit of like, well, what about, you know, but it, it was really evenly composed. Like both were just kind of, you know, calm about how they're delivering their point of view. I thought the Babylon B guy crushed it because I thought that Joe came off a little bit aggressive like I actually didn't like. He was deliberately trying to challenge him. He was like, you know, even like, okay, so I actually, because I don't, I haven't seen that many of you. You've seen more Joe Rogan's, but I haven't never seen him like right out the gates, puffing on a cigar and blowing the smoke and stuff like that. And I thought he kind of had this edge. Like he knew he was going to go after him on some things that he knew that they wouldn't agree on. I felt that. I thought I felt that energy from the, I'm sure he planned stuff like that, right? Oh yeah. And you're like, okay, I'm going to give you some of these ideas. I appreciated the whole conversation so far from what I've heard. No it was. It sounds good. But I thought Joe, I thought Joe was like getting louder and louder and kept saying like, you're going to, you're not going to tell my 14 year old, like he was getting aggressive and he was kind of like, well, no, I'm not saying that. This is, you know, this is, you know, I don't think that one murder definitely makes a, a rape right. So like, so he, I thought he kept his calm really well and explain his, and then afterwards, they kind of came full circle together. I like it. I like it when people can discuss something that they disagree on, continue to disagree. You don't have to agree. But also, you know, it's civil and it's good and we're making points and I can see your side and you can see my side. Okay. That's versus this like shouting, we can all live together. Yeah. You know, otherwise this whole thing of like, oh no, like we just got to get rid of that kind of talk completely and push these people away. Like how are we ever going to live with each other? That's crazy. Hey, I pulled up some really interesting studies on a supplement called rhodiola, which you guys, I've talked to you guys before about rhodiola. It's in the Organifi red juice. It's one of the main ingredients in that. There was a lot of Soviet studies on rhodiola. So the Soviets heavily invested in studying rhodiola and they found tremendous benefits, improvements in speed and strength for track and field swimming, speed skating, ski racing, weight lifters, wrestlers, gymnasts, triathletes, better for stamina and strength output. And the studies are phenomenal. And then I followed up with studies that were done here in the States that kind of mirrored it. It's a really interesting compound. It's one of the few ancient, I guess, herbs that has lots of data behind it. Strength, stamina, not just endurance then, huh? Strength and strength. Was it rhodiola? One of the ones they were considering banning from Olympics. Was there a courtroom that they worked in? No, there was court, there's court of saps, rhodiola, ecti sterone. The one that's banned is ecti sterone or will be banned. Yeah. But rhodiola's got like clinically proven mental and physical performance enhancing benefits where you can see like statistically there's a difference. Yeah. And the Soviets again, you know, remember this was state sponsored athletics and during the Cold War it was like, you know, whoever is superior. So the Soviets spent a lot of money on researching some of the stuff and rhodiola has been an ancient, you know, practice for a long time. So they spent a lot of money on it. And the studies, I mean, it's for sure, it for sure has an effect. Now I've used rhodiola. I use the red juice to get off caffeine. And I notice a significant difference. When I go off caffeine without it, it does not feel great. When I do use that, wow, does it take the edge off considerably? Yeah. I was looking into this because I had thought and I guess I'm wrong with this, you know, Olympic, there's an Olympic team that was like using beetroot powder and then that somehow was like targeted and then they became like one of those substances that they weren't going to allow. But I don't, I don't think that's true, but I know that there's been a lot of like buzz around beetroot powder as well in that direction. Endurance. Yeah. Nitric oxide. Yeah. Nitric oxide and endurance. That's another one. It's hard though to find something that does both mental, physical, performance and then in physical performance, and endurance. Usually it's one or the other and rhodiola shows both. So it's just across the board, improvements in performance. Oh, and mental performance. So cognitive tests, fatigue, that kind of stuff. So they'll fatigue people, have them take a cognitive test, fatigue another group, give them rhodiola and they do much better. So it's like it basically, you know, they consider it an adaptogen, but it basically makes your body more resilient. That's the term that they use in these studies. I mean, I feel good when I take it. And it's how I use it. There's a right dose though. It's like, I notice for me, if I take too much, I don't feel good. Make you sleepy. Yes. So I have to take like a, I take a low dose. Now I know other people who can take a higher dose and feel better. So just, you know, caveat, if you use it, start low, see how it affects you before you jump on it. I know we're in science right now, but I want to transition over into the economy because Doug sent me over some stuff on real estate last night about the Bay Area market, which I'd been falling already and see it's coming, right? As far as the reduction in prices. Yeah. And I didn't think that this could happen already. I thought this was something that they were going to vote on. Did I hear that, that Biden signed the Tax Reduction Act or whatever like that? And is that going through? Tax Reduction Act or the inflation? Oh, that's, excuse me, inflation. Because I don't think it's going to reduce. Well, they're presenting it like the tax reduction too, right? I mean there, but the inflation reduction tax enforcement. No, no, you're ready for this. Taxes across the board are going up except for super wealthy individuals. Yeah, it's going to crush the middle class. Isn't it ridiculous? We talked about that with the whole IRS thing. So misleading, dude. Okay, so check this out. You want to talk about like, it makes me wonder if, because these lobbies are these big lobbies that work with government. We know this is not a secret. So they have an electric car subsidy. So electric cars, if you qualify and you go buy an electric car, you'll get $7,500 for the government or not you, but the electric car company. So that way they could make it cheaper and more affordable. Did you see what Ford and GM did? Raised it up. Raised the prices of the electric cars by, guess how much? $7,500. You know, what's lame too is that the sweet spot you have to be in, like the car has to be under 80,000 under 80,000 and you have to make under 100. Something like that. Yeah, yeah. But it's interesting. I wonder if GM and those are powerful lobbies, right? Powerful American companies. Sure. They're like, do that. We'll raise the price. It'll all be good. You know, we'll get more taxpayer money, whatever. Here's the thing. Okay. And I was going to bring this up as like a speculative discussion because like we actually like had a bit of an issue with like the IRS was like, no, you guys need to pay still like based off of taxes that we had paid and this and that. And there was some discussion there, but like they finally came back months later and like, oh, we were wrong. You did pay that, right? And so now we're like the IRS potentially like new agents that are coming in that are going to be strapped have guns. Like what's going to happen when they're wrong and you're contesting it. And you know, now they're that's not like conspiracy. That's that's what's happening. That's part of the in the budget. So there it's, I told you guys the other day that it was what 80 billion or something like that with their increasing it to, which is like 10 times. Yeah. Almost almost 10 xing it and one of the main Well, it's because that what they say is that that that there's a lot of people who don't want to pay taxes. There's going to be there's going to be a lot of resistance. There's, you know, this faction, this extremist faction that believes that taxes are theft, which technically, you know, if we want to be technical, it is. They're not wrong on that part. I've shared the story with you guys off air. I think of, you know, my experience as a kid, you know, how I learned about car repos, you know, was, you know, and him standing on the back porch with a shotgun. You know what I'm saying? Like you're not taking our car. Like so. And there's obviously a potential threat. And if you're coming to collect on somebody who owes $50,000 in the IRS or whatever it be, and they don't have that kind of money, I could see that happen. So I get that, although that it's a slippery slope. Right? Are you serious? We have police for that. What if they're wrong and they take all in your assets and then they find out months later, but like you've had to, you know, go through hell, you know, to fight that. Well, here's the way this is the way I look at it. First of all, we have police. Okay. We have police. So what they could do is they could work with local law enforcement, which they've done in the past and collect. The difference is this is a federal agency that's armed to collect. Yes. Means that they overstep any local police. Well, the difference means that IRS could come in and don't have to contact the local police. The difference is that and what I'm most worried about for just us in general like society, right, is that you if you almost 10x the IRS, what is that? What how much does that increase your odds as just the average Jane or Joe to get audited? Like I think that just means that the and the reason why they need that and the reason why they can't get the support from police is because I think that is going to be a ridiculous increase. Like we're going to see a lot of that. Oh, I think they're going to go after things like PayPal, Venmo tips, people getting tips. They're going to go after crypto for sure. So what does that say there, Doug? Well, they've always had the criminal investigation division, which is carried guns. So I don't know if this is just expanding that part or if it's going to be general dramatically expanding. That's what yeah, that's what's happening. So that's none of that is like, you know, conspiracy theory. I mean, that's happening. They also throw $80 billion. I'm not worried it's going to get like we're going to get, you know, people are going to show up and throw us in gulags. But I think that they're going to go after billionaires. There's 700 billionaires in the U.S. They got 80,000 new IRS employees. It ain't for the billionaires. No. It's for every day. It's for small businesses and for people making cash and, you know, doing online businesses. Yeah, who are much easier to trip up than somebody who's making billions of dollars has multiple CPAs, lawyers, irony for me of like increasing the amount of enforcement with guns from the party that doesn't want anybody to have guns. It's just, it's just like my brain hurts. So go back to my original question. Can you look this up? Did Biden sign that? I thought I saw. I believe it was signed. Yes. So is that official? Did we just infuse another $600 billion into the economy? Oh, but that reduces the inflation. Shut the fuck up, bro. It's like putting a fire out with gasoline. Yeah. Hey, don't dump this big old thing of gasoline to put this fire out. Let's see. Check out our new fire signatures full of gunpowder. Oh my God. Don't worry, you had enough and eventually puts it out. I mean that that scares the shit out of me of like trying to figure out what's going to. So I mean, Doug sent me over the housing thing. Oh, the Bay Area starting to reduce prices. Yada, yada, yada on stuff with that. Okay. But if we all said now shoot another $600 billion in the economy, dude, don't be surprised if it goes back. Taxes. Did you guys know what marijuana dispensaries are doing? That I just figured I just learned this. Maybe you already know this because you know how. Okay, so you know this because you were in the business. If you own medical marijuana or even recreational marijuana, state legal business, it's very hard to do banking. It's very hard to deposit your money, put it anywhere. When I was in it, you couldn't do it. Right. And my partner's part of their big vision was actually to open a bank that actually would take that money. Yes. But the federal government makes it very challenging, almost impossible. Very. So these marijuana growers have to do illegal things to get this money to pay taxes on it. They actually have to find ways to pay taxes on it so it becomes anyway. Check out this brilliant, brilliant method that they're totally going to crack down on. You go to this recreational marijuana place. You take your credit card. You convert it to crypto. You take the crypto. You buy the marijuana. They immediately convert that crypto back to cash. Now it's just they just took crypto. You just they just took crypto turn to cash pay taxes on it. And literally he says it happens on the spot, literally on the spot. How much you want to buy $100. Boom. Ethereum. Boom. Cash. Here we go. Pretty smart. I'm telling you right now that that's like the number one way that and why cryptocurrency is being held up right now is from things like that. It's from black market and that shit like that. It's it is completely. Well, they're going to go after it for sure. Yeah. Oh, yeah. I mean, I actually think that I know we, you know, we're talking about how it's going to fuck the middle class, which I think it's going to for sure too. But I think their main it's going to be it's crypto, Venmo, PayPal, all those. I mean, easy come easy go. Yeah. Apple pay, sending people money. You know, they don't track any of that. So it's basically like it's a digital way of because cash cash has always been a problem. It's hard to track cash but digitally. I mean, if they have enough people technically they could go in. Yeah. They don't have a firm grasp on it yet, but it makes sense that they would start targeting it. I mean, look at how many people you I mean, crypto in the last two or three years. Yeah. And so and I don't know a lot of those people talking about how they're going to pay the taxes on that. No. Unless if you and if you don't declare it, they're yet they will, but yet they don't know a way of them knowing they can't. They can't go to these wallets or these companies and say who made money because they don't know everyone else. You know, this is what made me switch sides of the calendar in the marijuana industry. Right. So originally I started as as an operator, right, as somebody who ran with the clubs. And when I saw the way of doing like so, this is how it used, this is how it used to work. Right. The laws have progressed, but this is what originally made me jump to the farming side was, OK, farmer comes in. I don't know who he is. First time he's ever meeting me, he has, you know, five pounds of marijuana at that time. Like the going rate, let's just say was like $3,000, $3,000 a pound. Right. So like $15,000 worth of marijuana he walks in with. And I look at it and go, OK, this is this works. I like it, but he will pay him the $15,000. I am responsible on my end for tracking that transaction, paying that he is protected by another law of his farmers for farmers and his identity that he does not have to give me any of his stuff. So then it is on up to have to jump through a bunch of hoops and break laws to make that he, it's up to him to decide if he's going to claim that. And I'm always dealing in cash in the marijuana business. It's always cash. So I'm handing him $15,000 in cash. I have to log it in my books, pay my taxes on what's going on, right? He doesn't. He doesn't have to do any of that. He's supposed to on his end claim any sort of cash or income that he gets. But I mean, there's nothing that tracks or trace is traced back to him. And I was like, oh my God, I'm on the wrong. I'm on the wrong side of this. Could he also technically be like I sold corn. I sold and they wouldn't know. And then he'll pay taxes on it. Sure. Yeah. Sure. Wow. Yeah. Or nothing at all. He's tracking his trees and pounds of weed that come from like. How funny is that the federal government literally is creating black markets and more and more black markets. It's so wild. I mean, that's what. So what happened again, what made me leave the clubs to another part of that equation was there. And we all used to meet, right? So I was there when it was that we were one of the first four. And then there was like 10 and there was we had we created a group called MC 13, which was the original 13 marijuana clubs. And we'd all get together and try and fight, you know, the city on things like that. And quickly it became very competitive with pricing and stuff like that. And I remember you guys know me like I'm like I'm always doing the numbers and it's like this doesn't mathematically make sense. There's no way these guys are selling this with. I know all the way that you're going to pay taxes. I know it's not making sense. And then when I find out it's like, oh, because everybody's doing backdoor deals. Everybody's doing illegal stuff or taking stuff off the books or selling something else. And legally they won't let you. Yeah. And so then you either got to play the same game as them doing illegal stuff in order to compete and stay keep your doors open. Or you try and be legit and you end up getting crushed because you can't afford to stay to stay in the market. And so it was like the writing was on the wall for me really early. Like I got to get out of this or go to another side. And at that point it was like, oh, the farming side. That's where it's at. The farming side. It's still so gray right now. I can go be a producer for all these people. And then it's up to me to claim how much that I'm making off of doing all that stuff. Wow. Wow. Hey, check this out. Look, you're into health and fitness, but you also like to enjoy yourself sometimes with the occasional alcoholic beverage. The only problem is it makes people feel bad sometimes physically makes them feel bad. We'll check out this company we work with called Zebotics. This is a probiotic drink that is genetically modified. So you'll never find this anywhere else. This is patented to break down acetaldehyde in the gut. Some of the negative byproducts of alcohol. So when you drink alcohol, acetaldehyde gets produced. Your liver breaks down pretty much most of it. But some of it ends up in your gut, goes in your bloodstream, reeks havoc. Zebotics takes care of that. It's remarkable. Drink this, then go drink some alcohol, and notice how you feel the next day. It's pretty awesome stuff. Go check them out. Head over to Zebiotics.com. That's Z-B-I-O-T-I-C-S.com forward slash mind pump. And then use code MINDPUMP22 for 10% off your first order. All right. Here comes the rest of the show. First question is from Olivia A. Pretty. Hanging leg raises have been very difficult for me. What kind of progression plan would you suggest to be able to do them with ease? Okay, so Regression is the what we're looking for. Yeah, regression. So the short answer is reverse crunches. That's the best exercise that'll lead to hanging leg raises. But the point I want to make with this is that hanging leg raises are one of the most challenging exercises for the core, for the abs to do properly. A lot of people do hanging leg raises. Very few people do it properly. A lot of people do what are called hip flexor raises, where they're just bending up the hips and bringing the legs up. I see people do this all the time at the gym. I work out in the morning and I see middle-aged people who have no business, you know, getting on and hanging on the straps or holding on to the one that supports the arms. And we program them. Hanging leg raises are in no BS six pack. Just that one. Yes. That's the only program. It's not a popular exercise I recommend. No, because if you do them right, they are incredible muscle builders. But the proper way to do a hanging leg raise is you have to go, your pelvis has to rotate up. That's the part of the abs that's working. It's not bringing the legs up. The legs are just a lever. The lever is long because your legs are long and it's not the hips that you want to flex. That's your resistance in a sense. It's the pelvis to rotate up and squeeze the core. So it's not just bringing the legs up. It's rotating the pelvis. And by the way, this exercise is very hard for most people. Strong people. Even people who think that they can do it, most people do it wrong. Yes. Most people use mostly hip. That's why I don't like using it until I've got somebody who really understands how to do that. So let me give you an example of what I'm talking about to kind of illustrate this. Imagine I'm on the ground and I'm laying flat on my back on my head and then I just do this with my arms. Okay. That's the equivalent of what people do with leg raises. And you'd be like, you're not working your abs. You're just moving your arms. Well, that's what people are doing with their legs. Now you may feel some of it in your abs because your abs have to stabilize. But that's what's happening. Now, if I wanted to do this and work my core, my arms stay in position and I roll up and work the core. It's the same thing with hanging leg raises. Think of it as a hanging reverse crunch. That's what you're trying to do. And if your knees are bent, it's harder. Then you'd probably say we refer them to your hip flexor deactivator video. Video first in terms of the technique of being able to connect there within that position and then move towards your reverse crunch and then what do you call that? Is it a Roman chair? I call it Roman chair. Is it leg lift? No, it's not. Yeah, it's a Roman chair. Your arms are pushing down and then you're doing leg lifts. That's what I call it. I don't think it's a Roman chair. But either way, for me in terms of scale, in terms of like progression. That would be the next. And then we get up to where we're actually hanging because that's very difficult just to hang there and then quit. You know, you buy it from moving. I'll regress it even more. This is what it would look like for me. Laying flat on the ground, reverse crunch first. Flat on the ground. Getting that down, knowing how to bring it with your knees tucked in. Then you go to a decline bench. A slight decline. Yeah, a slight decline bench and do that rolling up. Then you can incline it a little bit more and roll it up. Eventually you get to the chair you're talking about and then roll it up. And then Right. Like a decline bench you're holding. Yes. And then you get That's a Roman chair. I knew it. Oh, wow. Yeah. What do you call the other one? I don't know. It's like a hanging leg raise apparatus. I have no idea. Oh, that's interesting. That's a Roman chair. I called it Roman chair just in two forever. Maybe because I taught you. Yeah. Adam did set me up for failure. Well, you know, that's rad. I'm going to blame it right now. No, I'm not. It's not. I bought it a couple of years ago. So this is the attitude, anything. Hey, well look, it did originate in Rome. What do they call right there? A vertical knee raise chair? Yeah. That's a stupid name. That's a dumb name. That's a Roman chair, man. It even looks more like a chair. You're like sitting at your chair. Yeah. So I never questioned it or I never questioned. No, remember that the function of the abs. You think of this is your spine. The function of the abs are they attach here at the lower rib cage and at the pelvis. They have to spine in order to move through their full range of motion. To roll it up. To roll it up. The hips, now it can stabilize with hip flexor exercise. This is why people, but I feel it burn. I feel it burn. Well, yes, it's holding on and stabilizing, but you're not really working your abs. You know, it's something you understand that your spine can stay like this and you can literally do this with your hips. I'm doing it right now. So that's- I'm doing this right now with hip flexors. And if the action of the abs is to roll the spine up and yet you do this with the hips all day long, which is what people do with leg raises and knee ups all the time. And the only reason why they kind of feel the abs is like you said, as they come up and they come down, the abs help kind of stabilize the deceleration of the legs coming down. So they do feel some abs, but it's not directly hitting the abs at all. It's a terrible exercise. And so I would regress it back to like I said, on the floor, then a slight incline, then a more incline, then the chair that Justin and I thought was the Roman chair and then leg raises. And that's a long, like you should do one of those for weeks. And then the next one for weeks. Incidentally- You can't do that at first. Yeah, you're not doing that for a while before you get to something like that, in my opinion, like we're really good. Unless you already have a pretty strong core and are a little more advanced in your- But once you get there, this is like the ab building exercise, one of the most high resistance ab exercise. If you do it right. Well, that's why it's high resistance. So if you get to the place where you have really strong abs and then you just do some leg raises every now and then, not everybody does it bad. I've seen like really fit. I do, I could do maybe 12 or 15 max. And I, you guys know, my core's pretty strong. I train it at most, right? Usually it's eight to 10. People doing those windshield wiper ones, you know, all they all fancy with that. Next question is from Elsa Vasquez. What should you do if you sleep wrong? Is that your body telling you something? Define wrong. I know. Yeah, I know. I was awake all night. I slept wrong. No, I- Oh, that was wrong. You know, when you wake up and you have a stiff neck or your shoulder hurts, you know, this is just poor sleep usually. Usually poor sleep can result in pain and inflammation. Also, previous injuries can sometimes show up when you're in bed, not moving. So like, you got a stiff shoulder, but because you're moving it all day, you don't notice as much then you're in bed, you're laying on it, not moving for eight hours, then the pain kind of shows up. But when people would come to me with this, and even when I would experience this, if I improve the quality of my sleep, like if I didn't look at electronics two hours before, make sure the room was cool, make sure that the room was pitch black, didn't have stimulants past a certain point or time of the day, I just didn't wake up feeling achy. I felt really good. I actually noticed the reduction inflammation from using the oolor too. That's one of the companies we work with because it kept my bed cool, so. I mean, I would say this, what should you do if you sleep wrong? Is that your body telling you something, something? Well, yeah, it's telling you that you slept wrong. So let's just take like an example of like you, your pillow was too elevated and so then your neck is all stiff, or you were on your side, so your shoulder like fell asleep and so then your shoulders all stiff. This is where like Prime Pro is magical in my opinion. So this is like a perfect example of if someone, like a client told me an area like that, I would send them videos from our Prime Pro. So if they did slept wrong on their neck and their neck was all locked up and stiff, I would say do the exercises for the neck in Prime Pro and that'll help prime you, warm you up and then go about your normal day. If that was in the shoulder, hip, whatever, name your place, we address all that in Prime Pro and they're all mobility drills and priming drills to get you ready and so I would have them do that. That would be my advice. Yeah, a lot of times too, it's like the preceding day. Like maybe you had an intense workout or you had something that you're, where you're like I was doing yard work or whatever and I just was super tight going into sleep and then I slept in a position that aggravated those same muscles that I had like super tight already wake up and I'm just stiff and locked up and but yeah, like opening it up with mobility exercise is gonna help a lot with that. Sometimes that just doesn't mean anything other than like that's just, you know, the position you're locked up into. And maybe, you know, maybe you do it going into sleep so that way your body, you know, won't have that tendency to kind of tighten up and firm and feel like it needs to provide stability while you're laying down. Yeah, you know, also too, as you start to develop muscle or as you start to lose weight, the pillows that you use and your sleep positions may have to change. So like, if you're muscular, you need a bigger pillow. Like, you know, when you're muscular, you got big arms and shoulders, you need more pillow to keep your head. I need one to hug, dude, I'm serious. I need one to hug, and I'm just sleeping, I'm hugging this pillow, do you even have a face on it? This has nothing to do with your fetishes, bro. Don't go there on this. I drew a face on it. Listen, it helps. Well, hey, so here's something that we're not really, I mean, Sal's starting to go that way right now. So I guess if you are consistently feeling pain or stiffness in the same area every time, because then you do need to look into your bed, your pillow, your sleep routine, getting ready for bed. So your body could be telling you that. So I guess maybe that's what this person is asking. So if you are chronically feeling this same stiff neck, the same all the time. Adjust what you're, how you're sleeping? Yeah, so there absolutely could be something with the mattress that you're using, the pillow that you're using, even how you get ready for bed and your restless shirt. Two of the biggest hips hurt, you maybe need a wedge pillow in there, you know, for your hips. Two, those are the two, I was just gonna say, the two biggest places where people mess up is the pillow is the wrong size for their, the size of their shoulders and their neck mobility, and they need a pillow between their legs. In fact, the bigger my legs get, if I bulk and get bigger legs, I need to put a pillow between them, otherwise my hips can start to bother me. What was that great company we worked with for a while there? Pluto. Pluto pillow. Yeah, they customize your pillow for that one. I thought that was a really cool company that we only worked with them for a while. So hold on, so Justin, you hug a pillow and you have one between your legs? I don't have one between my legs. That is right to life. Just one. One. No thrusting going on. It's a hip thing, it goes down below. Yeah, see you tomorrow. That's hilarious. Next question is from CMOS23, does blending foods make the nutrients more bioavailable? Oh, what a good question. Depends and people take this to crazy levels. So blending foods breaks them down, right? Increases the ratio of surface area to volume, thus making it technically easier to break down, but people forget this. Chewing food. Rate of absorption change with that? Well, chewing food, yes, you break it down to smaller bits, but the chewing process also produces digestive enzymes in the gut and in the mouth. So when you just blend and drink food very quickly, You're bypassing that process. You're bypassing a very important signaling process. So like if you just blended your meat and drank it all the time and think, well, I could get more food down this way and I could digest it more, I bet you would probably find digestive issues as a result. Now in some cases, you need mechanical ways of breaking foods down. For example, wheat, like you ain't gonna grab wheat off the stock or whatever, chew on it and be okay. We have to mill the shit out of it in order to make it bioavailable. This is true for a lot of plant foods where you really have to break them down or cook them, right? Otherwise, this is largely oversold. The whole like- Isn't there a role that the air and oxygen plays in the value of the nutrients too? Like if you blended up like that, like I remember reading like if you left like, like if you blended like a smoothie or whatever and you let it sit overnight in your refrigerator and then you drank it the next day, some of the nutrient value would go down. Oh, I don't know. Yeah, I've never heard that. No, I do know that with certain like, I know that if you for example, make potatoes or rice and then store them and reheat them, some of the starch becomes resistant. I'm talking about fruits in general. Yeah, I don't know about that. Vegetables in general. Is it oxidized? Yeah. I'm not sure about that. And the process happens so much faster when it's been blended. Different, if it's fruit is sitting in its hole. The skins are protected. That's right. When the fruit is sitting in its hole and its hole and the skin is on there. Could you look that up for Doug? Maybe for me and maybe you can fact check. It sounds logical. Well, you know, here's the other thing too. This is why I'm not a big fan of blending food. Talk about smoothies. Whenever do you eat three apples, two bananas and an avocado all at once, right? Almost never, but you'll blend the shit out of that and make it a smoothie. Go get yourself a Jamba juice. Well, that's why I'm not a big fan of juicing or juicers because you have to go through. You have to have so much. So concentrated. Oh, it's like 100 grams of sugar and what you would never do if you ate the fruit. You juice vegetables, that's one thing. That's another, because the vegetables are so low. You want to know what else too. You know a lot of... But fruit is really hot. There's a case, and I actually believe this case. There's, you know, we have to remove our wisdom teeth, right? Oh, we got to get rid of our wisdom teeth all the time. Do you know that children who grow up chewing on tough things, it actually spreads their palate and creates space for the teeth to come in. So when babies are fed constant baby food that's blended up, we develop smaller jaws and we have less space for teeth. So that chewing process, there's much more to it than just it breaks the food into smaller bits. There's a lot of physiological things that are happening and there's a lot of value in that. And of course, for most of human evolution, we didn't have blenders. So it kind of makes sense. What does it say there? It does, but it says it's not going to be great. Oh, okay. Because of oxidation. Yes. I don't think it makes that big of a difference. I'm not a huge fan of blending shit up except for enjoying a smoothie. I like the way they say it. Also talking about the bioavailability by blending or not blending. We're also talking about things that I would never talk to a client about. Like it's your splitting hairs at that rate, like trying to increase the bioavailability of it by blending it up. It makes sense. Or to what I was bringing up, worrying about the oxidation of it. It's like, come on at the end of the day. It can make sense for certain plant foods, like chlorella, for example. Chlorella is very nutrient dense in plant terms. Algae, I think chlorella is an algae if I'm not mistaken. But if you try to eat it and chew on it and get anything, you have to break it down and break it down and mel it. Same thing with wheat. Same thing with other vegetables. You can cook plants and that'll help quite a bit. But for the most part, like the chewing process, there are things that happen in the brain, the body, like I said, like I said, digestive enzymes, hormones and chemicals that release that are from the chewing process that you bypass when you drink your food. And again, I'm gonna go back to babies. We feed babies because they don't have teeth or whatever. But it actually changes the shape of our jaws. And children who don't chew on tough things tend to need braces and tend to run out of room for their teeth. Whereas when kids are allowed to chew on tough things like they do in ancestral cultures, they don't need to remove their wisdom teeth. They actually can fit everything. Next question is from Thabish Kay. Do performing squats, deadlifts and overhead presses make you shorter? So, is that what happened? Were you big overhead presser? Yeah, very big. He was 6'7". He's been crushing. And then pound it into the ground. You know what's funny? Okay, so this is a funny question. It reminds me of the old myth, like with the children lifting, that they just stunt your growth. You know, that's what they used to tell you. Okay, so you know what's, you know what's still persist. You know what's funny about this is that people as they age do get shorter. But it's not because. They're lifting heavy shit. It's literally because their bones are deteriorating. Deterating and they're round weaker. Yeah, they're closing up. Yeah, and even if you straighten them out. There's space between their vertebrae and everything else. Yes, even if you straighten them out, they're shorter. But it's the opposite. Lifting heavy things, first off, lift it appropriately, right? You can injure yourself, but lifting heavy things appropriately over the years, over the decades for your entire life. Slow that process. Will maintain your height. That's right. It won't make you shorter. It'll keep you from getting shorter. And in multiple ways, because you're right, your bones like are going to deteriorate. But you also, you, I think like when, so for example, my uncle always talks about this, Monk Kasey, who you guys know, because he was, you know, he says he was six, four, six, three. And he's like two, a good two inches shorter than me now. But he's also got terrible posture too. Yeah, that too. Half of it is like the rounding of the back and closing in. And then also to your point, what's going on. So, and both are improved by weight training. If you get, if you perform a really good squat and overhead press for most of your life, you're going to have pretty damn good posture. You'll maintain it. It requires good posture and we'll do that. So you're all going to be standing upright more and you're going to strengthen your bones, which will slow down the process of that deterioration. I remember my great grandmother, she passed away years ago, but she had a humpback. You know, you've seen that, you see that sometimes in older people, that's literally bones getting weak and you get these kind of micro fractures and then they heal and you start to create this question mark back. And that's not the result of lifting heavy things. It's the result of not lifting heavy things, of not strengthening your bones, of sitting in particular positions over time, not offsetting, you know, those positions. I feel like this person was watching a lot of cartoons like Tom and Jerry or something like that. It's still this weight smashing them down and they like an accordion, they just shrink down. Yeah, no, it doesn't work that way. Look, if you like our information, head over to mindpumpfree.com and check out our guides. We have guides that 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 Cell. 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 the rules that go from 10% to 5%. The difference is everything that we talked about.