 Hello, everyone. Welcome to Mind Pump. In the first half of the show today, we talk about how cutting the weight that you lift in half can actually improve your results. Later, we talk about our favorite music to listen to when lifting, as well as the benefits of cold therapy and other topics. In the second half of the show, the guys coached four live callers on questions such as, the job I'm training for has me doing a lot of cardio, so I'm having a hard time packing on muscle and gaining weight. What should I do? Do you build muscle faster on a dirty bulk or a clean bulk? Should I eat before or after my morning workout? And how can I train for bodybuilding and powerlifting at the same time so I not only look great, but I'm strong as well. Finally, if your favorite part of this show is a Q&A portion where we take questions from our Instagram or have live callers, you can find all of those clips over at our other channel, Mind Pump Clips, right here on YouTube. All right, enjoy the show. Check this out. This is a great workout for gains, especially if it's different from what you're doing now. So check this out. Use half the weight you normally use. Use half the intensity you normally use, but double the volume of your workout. In other words, if you do three sets for a body part, do six sets. If it's 10 sets, do 20 sets. But with half weight, half intensity, focus on the volume, the pump, the technique, and the form. It's very different and always produces great results when it's novel. GVT. Ooh, they're higher intensity. Oh, I so I think that's the mistake that you make when you do when you do. Well, I guess I guess you're right. Towards the end, it gets the higher Yeah, I mean that. So every time I so I do similar, right? So and I'll interrupt my training and I'm like, you know, when's the last time I just did, you know, 10 sets of bench or, you know, like I'll and I'll do that. And every time I do that, I base the weight off of like my standard, you know, sets of four or five, my strength and think, well, if I take about 25 or 30% off of that, I should be good. No. And you know, the first three sets is easy breezy, but by sets four, five, six, like I'm cutting away. Always calculate. Oh, I'm always off. I remember the last time I did that for bench, I had 35s on by the end of the. Wow. Yeah, I was so depressed. That's embarrassing. And you feel sore as hell. But you know, so I like that you're presenting it this way for the audience because that's a better approach. Like you just, okay, I benched 225 when I work out, let's say in my five by five 10 routine. Okay, I'm going to go in there and put, you know, 135 or less. Yeah. So I call this the half, the, the half half double routine, right? And so I did it today, right? I went to the gym. I had a good amount of time. I was able to get up early. Everything was fine this morning, baby stayed in bed, whatever. So I went to the gym and I cut all the weight in half. I cut my intensity way down. So the focus is just on the muscle and the movement. And then I doubled the volume. I did twice as much volume as I normally do. And it's, it was different because that's not how I've been training. So I got a crazy pump. I felt really good. It's, it's a lot of fun to change it up. Swallow up like a balloon. Yeah, totally. And you do this occasionally. By the way, you could go in the opposite, right? You could take your workout, double the, you know, or go heavy, double the intensity and cut the volume in half. This formula works in the opposite direction as well. And when it's novel, that's the important thing here, by the way, when it's something that you're not currently doing, this is when you really start to reap the benefits. And lately I've been training with low volume, heavy weight, you know, longer rest periods, type of deal. So I went in today, did this totally different and I could feel it. And I've been working out long enough to know that I could feel that this was, this was going to, you know, cause some changes, some positive changes. Oh yeah, that one's for me is it's like the, the ultimate kind of a, what do you call it? Where it just like shakes everything up. Oh yeah, destroys you like it's plateau buster. Yeah, cause it's, for me, it's like such a, you know, dynamic shift from what I always tend to do, which is just, you know, one to five rep range and like focus on heavy, heavy lifting and to get that kind of like rep count up and then weight drop and all that, dude. When's the last time you did, when's the last time you did like a bodybuilding workout, like full bodybuilding? Not like I did one, you know, set of curls. Like is it more is probably like the last challenge like we had, you know, really the four of us never does. I don't do it, dude. Like, I mean, unless it's just that I want to get, I catch you doing some stuff in there. Yeah, but those are like trigger sessions. It's not like I can't claim I've been doing. It goes against his like core to like to train for aesthetics. You know what I mean? Oh, he hates himself after I start looking at the mirror and I'm like, who am I, you know, it gets away from me real quick. It gets away from you. Yeah. Yeah, I'm just like, God, look at it. Stop it. I'm so hot. Oh, it happened again. Exactly. But really, it's been it's been that long, huh? It has. Yeah, I know I'm due for it. So this is something I've spent on my mind. You bringing that up, it's funny because like I've been like teasing with the idea of like going more hypertrophy for a while and doing a phase, at least for a couple of months or so. Yeah. Do you have to change the music if you do something like that? Yeah, yo, yeah. Yeah. Otherwise, if I go like my normal metal and heavy and yeah, I will just get too aggressive. And again, I'll miscalculate the hell out of the weight load and then destroy myself. So I have to calm down. What's your bodybuilding play? It sounds like we know what Sal's is. Yeah. Because I know you lead a little more like hip hop or something, right? Yeah, if I'm not, if I'm not trying to, if I had to scale intensity back, it's hip hop because rock, rock, I'm like, we're all the same when it comes to like, this is where I like heavy metal. Like if I'm going after it, it's heavy deadlifting or I'm pushing limits for sure. Heavy metal rock. And I would say. Yeah, but the heaviest you go with not weight, but with the music. Rage, tool. Yeah, that's about as deep as you go. Yeah, maybe a little bit of Pantera every once in a while. Maybe some. Touring with Metallica. Deftones. I'll go Deftones. But I, you guys, you guys like. Chevelle, I love. Yeah, those are all, those are all in my playlist, right? But yeah, I don't go too. But I even listen to that, too. Like, like, so like tool for me is a nice kind of cruise train hard. But I don't like, I'm not like rage is like angry. I got, I want to get after Pantera is angry. I want to get after it. Hip hop is like, I don't. I'm trying to avoid any level of intensity. Yeah, I'm just kind of going through the movements. I'm pumping. Yeah, I'm pumping. I'm doing mobility. Like, yeah, I'm not a big hip hop guy. I listen to hip hop mainly for if we're presenting or we do anything that like, yeah, in front of people. Because I don't know, it's like this ego pump. It makes you feel cool. Yeah, usually. Yeah. No, I mean, that's why I played it in here the other day when we had the live. That puts me in the mood like that, too, like that. If I go, if I'm going heavy ish, then it's what you. It's your playlist. Same thing. Raging, it's machine tool Chevelle. So that's like right for me. Rob Zombie light for you when I'm going when I know when I go and I want to go as heavy as I can. And I want to try and hit PRs and go nuts and throw caution to the wind. Then it's fast. It's evil. It's crazy shit. It's sepultura and the like. It's, yeah, it's stuff like that where you almost can't make out what's going on in the song. You just hear yelling and shit and it just makes me angry. I love it though. But when I'm doing like bodybuilding workout, it's EDM. Oh, EDM is your boost. It's like rave music. Yeah. I'm still a little bit more in the rock genre. Like I'll go more like royal blood or, you know, I guess I'm trying to think of the other name of some of these like kind of newer bands, but like like Led Zeppelin and like I'll do some classic rock, I guess, like in that vein. But like, dude, yeah, I can't go like too soft. I had to work out to like top 40 the other day because I had my headphones and I, you know, put them on and then it makes that sound do, do, do, do. I'm like, oh, it's going to die. My headphones are going to die. Top 40. What's that? That's what the gym plays. Oh, because you were in the gym. He was in the gym, dude. So I was like, oh, it was a long time since I'd worked out. What's on there? Like little noses. It's just trash. Whatever top 40, you know, shit is like Taylor Swift. Like a commercial gym's trash. The only way you get good music in a, is a dungeon type gym. You might get some. Oh, yeah. You might get some good, good. See when I used to, so when I, so back in the day, which is understandable, right? You're in a commercial gym. You have to appeal to like the general audience. Like, you don't want like, you know, the 60 year old grandma walks in and is like, do, do, do, do, do, do. Yeah, come on over here. Let's check out this elliptical. Oh, did I ever tell you guys, did I ever tell you guys one time, dude, this is great for your knees. You just reminded me of a hilarious memory. Like the loud murders, not like for everybody. When I had my wellness studio, I used to work out in the middle of the day sometimes, and it would be no one else in there. It'd be just me, sometimes a trainer, but no clients. And I would kind of turn the lights down because I liked it kind of dark. And if I was going to go heavy, I would do crazy metal or whatever. And I remember this was towards the end of my workout. And I was, at this point, I was trying to build my neck up. I was trying to, I was like, for fun. I was like, let's see if I get my neck strong. So I had this neck, I had this neck harness on with chains coming on down the sides. We're so similar yet so different. So we went, I know, totally different. You had one of those head chains. You know you were doing that. I've done neck training for sure, but it wasn't like a goal. No, he's just built it on accident. He has a little more application when he's playing football and stuff. He's better. Actually wearing a helmet will build a shit out of your neck. You're gonna put on a football helmet for an hour. I mean, it'll mess you up. Anyway, so I had the head harness on. So remember it's like leather straps, right? When were you wearing a helmet for an hour, by the way? Chains, huh? When would you be wearing it? I played football for us, just like you. I tried it out and I fucking hated it. I don't think you've ever told me that. I did tell you guys. No, you haven't. Bro, I signed up, because I... I did not know this. I swear. I thought... He's never said this. Has he said this? What? No. It was to me. Did you know? He's got the thumbs up. Yeah, he's definitely brought it up. You knew? Really? I think if I remember. I did. Really? I'll let you tell us something. I did. So I tried out, or not tried out. It was just a pop Warner, right? So I signed up. I was probably 13, maybe 12, 13. And I'm like, oh, this is gonna be awesome. And they beat the shit out of us so bad and the coaches were yelling. And I was like, ready to throw up? And then I remember being like... I don't know if I remember. You had the same experiences as I did. We've had a lot of real similar things like that. Very similar. But anyway, I had the head harness on, leather straps, chains coming down. I had like three 25 pound plates on, just hanging in between my legs. Crazy ass heavy metal music. And then I kind of pulled my neck. So I stand up and I had this metal hook looking thing with the ball at the end that I would use to press on my traps. So I'm holding this metal hook with the ball at the end with the chains off my head. I was like, and this old lady walks in. She opens the door and the metal... And it's like a rah, rah, rah, rah. And I got chains and I got this metal hook and I'm looking at her. Hey, just like she did. She went like this. She went, ooh. Is she doing it? Ooh, it's not for me. I was like, no, no, I love training old people. Never came back here. Never come back here. Never. Lost the client like that. It was fucked up. Oh no. All right, today's program giveaway is Maps Split. This is a pure bodybuilding workout program designed by us. Here's how you can win the program. Here's how you enter, okay? Leave a comment below this video in the first 24 hours that we dropped this episode. And then subscribe to this channel, turn on notifications, do all those things. If we declare you the winner, we'll let you know in the comment section that you won. And then you got free access to Maps Split. Also got a sale going on right now. Check this out. We put together an at home workout holiday bundle. So Maps Anywhere, Maps Suspension, Maps Prime and the no BS six pack formula all require little to no equipment. So they're great for at home workouts. We put them all together. The retail price is $330, but right now we made them 99.99. So 99 bucks and 99 cents. You get all those programs at the at home holiday bundle. So if you're interested, just click on the link at the top of the description below to get signed up. All right, here comes the show. No, I was gonna bring up, I see the cold plunger starting to get used now. Nobody was using that. That's gnarly. Huh, so you went in? You dipped, huh? I did it. I did a minute. That was it. I know you did two minutes. I don't know what's wrong with you. No, I did five yesterday. Five minutes. Yeah, yeah, so I'm up to over four. Actually, I don't think- When you first started, what'd you start with? Two. Wow, you went two rounds. Yeah, you need to go two. Like, one, you're not getting shit at one, bro. Really? Yeah, yeah. I'm not getting any benefits. I mean, maybe it's a bitsy, you know? You need a little more than that. I think, okay, so- It's like a splash. I gotta start little by little, you know? I heard Andrew Huberman talk about what the studies show as far as reaping the most benefits for the least amount of time in there. It's twice a week, right? It's 15 minutes total in the- No, excuse me. 12 minutes total for the week. 12 to 15. So I didn't do shit. Yeah, so my thought is I get at least three sessions in of four minutes is my minimum goal. I try and do it every day, but I know I wanna get in there at least three times. So here's what's weird. I've noticed this about people is that you either tolerate hot very well or you tolerate cold very well. I'm, okay, you and I are like each other here. I'm more of the steam Sonic guy. The cold thing is fucking miserable, man. You know, it's been a- Because I can do hot forever. I can sit in a steam room or a sauna and I could just sit in there. And I tell you, I've been consistently doing this now and it's still a motherfucker. Every time I get in it, it's like, oh. Oh, it's not. I mean, what gets easier is I have the ability to calm myself down really quick now and I know what I need to do to get in that space. And so that part gets easier, but the feeling it gives me is just as gnarly every time. Well, so when I did it, I only did it for a minute, but you get a very distinct dopamine boost afterwards. And now the problem is to get the dopamine you gotta go through the shit, but that's also a feature. So they show that when you have to do hard work to get dopamine, you don't get the negative feedback loop that you might get with drugs and shit like that. So if your dopamine comes from something that was hard, it's a good thing. If your dopamine comes from something that's easy, like taking a pill, then it can become a problem. Oh, is that true? That is true. That's interesting. So it's like, you climb the mountain or you do this crazy ass hike and you're super exhilarated, right? Very different than getting exhilarated from taking a pill. You're gonna opiate. Correct. Interesting. So it's the hard before the reward that makes it different. What is it? What is it? Is it like, is there a mechanism that's different? I'm sure there is. Yeah, I gotta read a little bit more about it, but so cold dipping. By the way, do you know the cold dips? Some people get addicted to them? You guys know that? Yeah. Well, I mean, of course it's another, you're getting this huge dopamine rush. I mean, it's the part that I really enjoy is the after fact. I mean, to me, it shits on any pre-workout caffeine drink I could ever take. Oh, you're energized for like five hours. Yeah, it's a, you know what I noticed yesterday? Because yesterday was the long, five minutes is the longest I've stayed in there now. It took me like hours later to warm up. So I can imagine the calorie burn benefits that my body probably get of trying to re-acclimate my body. It converts white fat to brown fat. Dude, I was driving home yesterday. It was a moderately warm day yesterday and I had a flannel on it, so with that. And normally by the time we get this fucking sauna out of here, sorry, Doug, I've been swearing a lot that I just caught that. I feel I'm like ready to get down to a T-shirt, but after doing that, I was cold all the way home. I had the fire, I was standing in front of the fire. I was like, oh wow, that actually took a while to heat my temperature back up. And you can only imagine when you're running that cold, the body working to get its temperature back up, I'm sure. No, no, that's what I'm saying. So you didn't go sauna after that and try and warm yourself back up. I like sauna first. So I haven't been doing, so I was on, before we had the cold plunge, I was pretty consistent with the sauna. So I've trained hot for quite some time now. I'm not consistent with the cold plunge, so that's more of a priority for me. And I've been doing, and what I like with a cold plunge is it's a quick in and out. The sauna, our sauna takes freaking 30, 40 minutes to warm up and then, you know, and then you gotta sit in there for 20 minutes. Yeah, so the cold plunge is like, I just gotta make that commitment real quick. So brown fat is thermogenic body fat. So this is body fat on your body that burns calories and it warms you up. And when you do cold therapy, the white fat, by the way, white fat's harder to burn. It's not thermogenic. It sticks to your body more. In other words, if you have body fat, you want it to be the brown fat. That's the kind that's thermogenically active. Doing the cold dips converts the white fat to brown fat. So actually, because your body's adapting to be able to warm up better. So you're actually making your body, that's your speculation, you're actually teaching your body to burn more calories on its own. In essence, speeding up your metabolism through converting fat, which is pretty wild. Yeah, no, it's, I'm, I don't know, like, I'm super, super about it now. Like it's, it's, I've noted, I mean, the fact that I, that I've made it this far into winter with the amount of people we've had around us sick and even like another thing I always get sick, traveling, like to, like we've been doing flights to Utah and stuff like that and being in the airplane, airport, like touching stuff. Like I almost always get sick. I've been good. Did I? So, so you guys know Jessica. She learned Russian. And then her, when she was Russian, you didn't? Yeah, I remember you saying that. I do remember that one. But not the football. When did you tell these stories? Like on the podcast. Is he telling the podcast? Where are you telling these? You didn't know that too? You didn't know that? Yeah, she's learned a couple of languages, right? You've been forgetting a lot lately, Adam. Is it, I'm forgetting a lot? I think I just, I think I just learned it. Products. I think I just learned it too. We better hurry up and retire before Adam's brain goes completely. Don't smoke weed, kids. No, no. So she, yeah, she's a, I mean, she's a very intelligent person at one point. So her ex-husband was a Ukrainian and she traveled with Cirque du Soleil, a lot of Russian acrobats. Her ex-husband's family spoke Russian. So she decided I'm gonna learn Russian. So she speaks it fluently. She's been to Russia. She's been to Ukraine. She said that it is a common practice in some of those places where when they bathe a child, that at the very end they do a cold, they do like a cold rinse, freezing cold rinse. Well, you guys remember Kingsbury, right? Yeah. Kyle's kids never had warm water. Yeah, it's always cold. Yeah, they date from out the gates. I remember him saying that. Yeah. So I started doing this with the Raleighists. So he'll take a shower with me sometimes and then I make it a game afterwards. I make it cold and I go, all right, you ready? And then we go in there and I, I'm gonna start doing this a little bit more regularly. But there's videos. You can watch videos of Russian school children where it's snowing outside and they'll take like a 15 minute recess break and they go out in their bathing suit and play in the snow. Okay, so this is gonna be interesting how this plays out for you because so I tried to introduce Max to cold water early on like this. And I did it through the swimming pool and it like totally turned him off to getting in the pool for like a year because of that. And I could, I guess, I could only get him into like a heated pool or jacuzzi after that. Like I could not get, if it was even just like slightly. Your kid's bougie like you. Dude, he was, it was, and I blame myself that I, you know, I tried to get him to acclimate to really cold pool water and he was just not having it. So I figured that too. I thought, okay, well, he's with the Raleighists. I'm like, if I make him hate this, he'll never want to do it again. So I made it a game. So I said, oh, I'm gonna make it cold. You, and I made it cold and I'm like, oh my God, it's so cold. And I'll pretend to go in and then I give him a little cup that he splashes water on me. So I was like, oh my God, don't get me wet. And then of course he splashes me. Then I splashed him and then I go, you ready? And then I go in and we stay in there for like, just like 15 seconds. And then he laughs and then we're done. You know what happened yesterday? My, our teachers, Max's teachers, suggested to Katrina or implied that, you know, to consider putting him in a speech therapy again. And I thought that was interesting because she was saying that, you know, right now they have issues sometimes where the kids are playing and like he's moved to the next level up of age. So he's with his kids, they're all his age and older. He was, his speech was a little delayed as far as his ability to communicate. And I was actually telling Katrina, I'm the one who's like more paranoid with that. I'm the one that kind of pushed the speech therapist early. And I was like, you know, he's, he should be starting to, to say more things. And, and then of course I told you guys we went through it and they were like, oh, he totally understands it'll come and it happened. So she's like, the kids will get into it or something. And then the other kids can articulate what, what happened. And he get, you can tell he gets frustrated when he gets lost for words. But I told her, I was like, you know, I said, I'm never opposed to having a professional, you know, see him and then give their advice. I said, but I'm less worried this time. And she's like, really? And she's like, you're the one that was so, you know, pushing that. I said, well, he's progressing. I see it every, I see it every month right now. If he was stagnant, I would be concerned. That's a very good point. I was like, yeah, I would be more concerned. I said, what you're, what the teacher's experiencing is that they're all those kids are ahead of them. He's just, he's playing, he's catching up. Yeah. I said, they went through that too. It was just a year ago for them. You know, they went through the like where they can kind of communicate. And so he's, he's behind on that. And so then I said, the teacher is just saying that to you because it's hard for her. It's hard for her because he's the only one of those kids in that group that can articulate his point, right? And so I'm like, I mean, do it. I said, have the speech therapist talk to him. I said, I'm totally open to hearing their opinion. But I mean, the kid is like, every week says a new sentence of something that he couldn't say before, but. Being around those other kids is really going to help, you know, elevate that. Oh yeah. I mean, I see her, I told you guys just the other day, like how cute it is we put him on the, the FaceTime with his friend who's four who could like totally talk. Like, and, and you hear them, they're, they're communicating back and forth. And so I see him progressing like every week. So I'm like, you know. But you know, if he, if he, because with that kind of stuff, if he enjoys it, it does hurt, right? That's what I said. You know what I'm saying? I don't care. Cause if you ever watch them work with kids, the good ones, they make it fun, the kid enjoys it. So it's like, okay, well, you know, won't hurt or whatever. But he understands everything, everything. You talk to him. You just, you just see, he gets, like sometimes he's lost for the word and you could see him searching. And then he gets a little frustrated like that when he's with kids that are, and they're moving fast and doing something. I'm like, you know, every kid goes through that. He just, he's going through it later because he was delayed, you know? So, I mean, as long as I see progression and what I didn't see a year and a half ago, that was what was kind of making me worry. Where now I'm like, nah, he's, he's picking up shoes. Dude, I was, I was holding my, my infant daughter at Dahlia. So now she's like what, two and a half, two and a half weeks. And I was changing her diaper and I'm looking at her little, little legs. I love baby legs. So I was, I was like squeezing them and whatever. Chunky. I just love them. But she's not chunky yet. She's only two and a half weeks old. But I look at her legs and I'm like, hell yeah, dude. She inherited Jessica's muscle bellies. That's two for two now. Like, yes. I got two kids, you know, because Jessica's got these really long muscle bellies, long calves and quads and hams and all this. So I'm looking at her. I'm like, babe, look at her calves. She's going to have nice calves. I'm like, hell yeah, dude. Justin, you were going to say something. What were you going to say? Yeah, no, I had a funny story actually with Everett and Ethan too. Like they're both kind of in this phase right now where they're trying to get attention from the other opposite sex and trying to figure all this stuff out. They both are. You know they are. Yeah, I think too, the older brother kind of like having a bit of a girlfriend now quote unquote has kind of spawned his interest a little bit more to see what he can do. But anyways, it's just like, it's so insanely typical. Like the pulling hair, the lighting on fire, the throwing stuff at girl to get attention and stuff. But like, so this is what happened with him and he was telling me about this. I was dying laughing because this girl that he kind of likes like, so she grabbed his friend's hat and goes and puts it on and is like, you know, trying to be like flirty, I guess, some bit with them, right, like, and just having fun with them. And so he's like, oh, oh no, you put the hat on. He's like, Jameson has lice. Oh, she's like, she's like, oh, like takes it off. Did he really have lice? No, no, he's just messing with her, you know? And like, dude, you got to like, say, I'm just kidding. You know, just keep thinking like, now she's got lice. Oh my God, he's your son. You know, oh, I was dying, dude. And yeah, there's a bunch of other like funny things like he was telling me about one of them was a dweeb. So he has this kind of term that he just came up with for like kids that are like really into anime because he just doesn't get it. And it was funny, the first time I heard him swear to me, like he doesn't do it or anything, but he's just like, there's this one name for, I'm trying to look at like the name. Oh, Naruto. Naruto, yeah, he's like, who the hell is Naruto? You know who that is? Of course I do. I'm like, I don't know who the hell Naruto is. Like, where'd they come up with these names? You know, and he's like going off about like, I don't understand it. He like calls them dweebs, or weebs. I remember you saying this yesterday. Weebs, dweebs. You're not even a normal dweebs. Weebs. Yeah. I was like, I'm going to use that. Oh yeah. Way to go, Justin. You're building yourself a little bully, just like you said. I mean, Apple doesn't fall in the form. It's just jokes, dude. He's got a great sense of humor. Yeah, he delivers it all cheeky, so it's not like. It is true. Boys are, well, God, we're kind of doofuses for a long time with flirting with girls, aren't we? Like there's, because my daughter has, there's boys in her class that mess with her all the time. And I know it's because they're trying to flirt with her. Yeah, yeah. But they're just, they're, you know, how boys are. It's a transition. It takes a while to really figure that out. Like how to like, it was a couple of funny, but like not hurt feelings and, you know, be able to get attention, but like the right attention. Yeah. So I'll do one of the commercials right now, because then I want to transition us into a conversation that I want to ask you guys about that I heard. Okay, well, we're supposed to talk about Organifi and Felix Gray. I actually have a study on Felix Gray. We'll get to that later, which is kind of cool, but Organifi, we're still getting great feedback on peak power. So a lot of people are saying that they like it more than their pre-workout because they need less caffeine with it. That's what they're saying. Have you heard what the average scoop is? Because I know you made it to where it's designed to where you can kind of- One scoop is 100 milligrams of caffeine. Oh, it's 150 for some reason. No, 100. So two is 200. Yeah. And three, obviously 300. Good math there. Yeah, there you go. So you want to guess what four is? Anybody have a guess? I think I can handle it. So I do 300 milligrams of caffeine normally before a workout, but with peak power, 200 is where I go. And I feel just as good, actually better, because I don't get the jitters. No, no, no. That's the feedback I'm hearing the most from it is the people love the smooth caffeine high that you get from it without the jitters and the tingles that you get with a lot of pre-workouts and stuff, which I'm glad you didn't do that because that's my least favorite part. It is. It makes my face itch and I don't like it. Didn't you have somebody like email you that they PR using it? I did. I did. Somebody using that for a commercial later. Oh, yeah. Okay, my bad. I don't want to expose. Yeah. Oh, like I PR too. Yeah, yeah. Okay, so listen. So yesterday I was, so we have Chris Williamson, who does, he's got the modern wisdom podcast. Really liked this guy. I've watched quite a bit of his interviews. He's a great interviewer. He's had huge names on there. He's had Jocko, Jordan Peterson. I mean, you name it. He's had our friends, Max Lugavere and stuff. Just Max had great things to say about him. So we have him coming in studio, I think next month. If that, do you know Doug? I think it's the next month. I don't know. It's okay. I mean, I think it's the next month. We have him coming in and then right after that, we were going out to AZ and we'll see Alex Hormozzi. And so there's actually an interview a few months ago that Chris did of Alex and I was listening to. It was great conversation. Really good conversation. So check it out. If you like either one of those guys, but Chris brought something up that I've never heard someone say before. And I thought it was a really interesting point, I guess. He says that he's been kind of toying around with this idea that we all have a different materialism set point. And I thought, oh, that's a really interesting. Like what we, like how much like material stuff we want. What we feel comfortable with. Right, right. Well, before, before the like, it's like we've talked to you and we know this, like there's studies to support that, you know, if you're, you're poor and you have no money, like you get happier. Yeah, you get happier, right? So the material set point is at one point, everybody has a point where they reach peak happiness and then it's either plateaus are actually dips down afterwards. So he's like, you know, I think that there's this, there's this. And I think that it's unique to the individual. I mean, we've, everyone's met that friend who's like, I, you know, could live in a trailer and as long as they have their basic needs met there as happy as they can get and they have no desire for things, you have other people that feel like they need this, you know, 10,000 square foot house to feel like they're comfortable or whatever. So I thought that was a really interesting conversation and do you guys think that you have figured out what your materialism set point is in your life and have you noticed that because everyone's at a place, I think financially where they've probably reached that or maybe beyond that you don't get any happier. And do you remember how you came about figuring that out? Like, oh, like here, like Hermosi talked about how they ended up buying like this massive house at one point and then realized like, you know, it was so big that they needed someone to take care of the cleaning and they needed someone to take care of the upkeep of the pool. And he's like, you know, landscaper and he's like, before you know it was like, we had another business that we had to manage and they realized like, man, I don't feel any happier having all this extra space. I would rather get rid of all these people we have to manage now and live in something more modest. And then if we need big stuff, we'll travel to it for vacations or things like that. I thought that was really interesting. And so do you feel like you guys are still figuring that out for yourself or do you feel like you've already kind of figured that out? And then if you have already figured that out, what were those key signs or indicators that made you feel that way? That's a good question. You know, what's interesting too about that is if you have any insecurities around feeling secure, I guess, then that's probably gonna skew what's gonna make you feel comfortable, you know? So I could see that as well. What do you mean by that? Like, well, if you grew up and money was an issue or a challenge or you know what it's like to not be able to pay bills, stuff like that or when you're a kid, it was unstable, you may feel more comfortable, you know, with more and more because it's an insecurity, right? So I could see how that can make an impact or maybe even the reverse. I would think it'd be the reverse. I would think you think, that was my experience. My experience was that's how I grew up. I assumed that I needed so much more in order to feel good. And once you reach that, surpass that, surpass that, it kind of clicks, you go, oh, shit, no, I don't. Like that's my own insecurity that's telling me that I think I need all this. And so, I mean- You're such a self-aware person. You're not the typical person, you know what I mean? The typical person is not nearly as self-aware as you. And so, but anyway, my point is, boy, so many things play a role in that. I mean, for me, I don't need much at all. And I identified this for me a long time ago. I like to have, I wanna have enough space to where my kids have a bedroom. That's it. I like to not have to worry about money. So as far, now, what does that mean for me? I like to eat out here and there. I like to go on vacations a couple of times a year. I don't need a whole lot. I know that about myself. So if I were to spend more money, it would be on experiences. Now, did you find yourself over time coming to that conclusion, or have you felt like you've always been aware that even when you were super young and ambitious, you were like, yeah, I only need to get to about this point. My ambition was never, wasn't really ever motivated by the money. It was more motivated by the success and accolades and then what I could accomplish. But the money and the money was like a nice side effect of it. So I was never like, oh, I wanna hit this dollar amount and hit that dollar amount. It was more like, I wanna be able to be the top person in this category, or I wanna be able to build my business to this. So that's kind of what always- You like winning more than you actually like money. Yeah, now I've never been in a position where money was super challenging for me. So I don't know what that would look like, right? Maybe once, one time, there was one period where I had to live paycheck to paycheck for, but it wasn't very long, it was like a few months. But I just don't need much. I don't need much to feel happy. I like to not worry about it. In other words, if something were to happen and I were to make no money, I like to have at least six months to a year's worth of savings, I would be okay. That's kind of where, but again, what does that mean for person to person? Now, okay, so it doesn't sound like you had this epiphany or this time in your life where this really came full circle. Justin, did you have a time where you realized this? Yeah, so for me, it was really the intensity of paycheck to paycheck and kind of digging myself out of a massive hole was when Courtney was pregnant with Ethan and we were living with my in-laws for a bit for a couple months and I was stacking as many chips as possible, working three jobs and she was working on top of it till the very end as a nurse and then trying to build up as much for maternity leave after that. And it was like, we were just on the pure hustle. I didn't sleep much, like I was just kind of in and out. I didn't even want to stay at my in-laws. And so it was like, to me, it's kind of a blur because it was just like, it was so much intensity and a round of like me getting out of that situation. And I was very thankful that they allowed me to do that to save around here in California was huge. And then we finally were able to kind of go and I had considered about like renting and we were renting before, but we really wanted to have that kind of security and stability. So we were able to kind of put our money towards this real sort of house that was like just modest and had potential for me to be able to build and grow the family with. And so that was like, okay, I got to now put all of my skills into this and then try to build a comfortable environment for my family in this situation. And so it was just, I think it was a lot of just running and not necessarily considering that things could get easier until I got to a point where the paychecks were getting better and bigger and I was able to kind of keep her forever off longer, but then it set us back again. And we kind of like went all the way back because I did a full year for off work and it was all dependent on whatever income I was bringing in. So honestly, it wasn't until like our stuff really started to take off here at Mind Pump to where I felt like, oh wow, like the intensity of the basic necessities and being able to cover all this stuff was sort of lifted. And I'm like, wow, this is a totally different feeling for me. I always felt like I was like just this hamster on a wheel just crying to grind. Like the whole button for me was just grind. I'm gonna work my way through whatever is presented to me. So just having that kind of lift and being able to now consider like, I don't have to like go through the punishing kind of like I have to do all these things and put it all on my shoulders anymore was enormous. Honestly, I don't, I feel like the size of my house now, the access for them to be able to walk to school, like just the overall flexibility of our business, what we're doing with growth in this business. I honestly, I'm already there. So I feel like I'm super content. What about you, Doug? Yeah, so when I was younger, I thought, I had these massive visions of great wealth, big house, all the amenities that go along with being very wealthy. And, but the reality was that I struggled for a lot of years. I had debt, I didn't make a lot of money. And so all, all during that time, I held this vision of, you know, making all this money. But now that I don't have any debt and bills are paid, I have a lot more contentment in my life. And so I hit a point where it's like, okay, I don't need to live in a massive place, even though I still have goals about, say, building a bigger house and things like that. I feel like, you know, anything extra, as far as that is concerned, is not really gonna add to the quality of my life a whole lot. As Sal mentioned, I think experiences are really probably the thing that's gonna add the most to the quality of your life. Traveling, for me, is very important. So, yeah, I mean, I'm not, I still have a lot of goals, okay, but I don't feel like those goals are gonna change my life in a substantial way. Yeah, and two to add, like in terms of being content, like I still look at anything now as a reflection of like our own success and like where we're going. Like I'm very much attached to like the trophy, just because of sports and everything else, like being able to elevate and achieve new things. And so I'm just, I'm driven by that still. Like that's the big driver for me is to like, where can I go that I've never been? I always want to go to the next level of where I've never been. Yeah, yeah. I actually think that we're all really actually similar in this area. I think that our materialism set points are just a little bit different. But as far as our philosophy around what we're looking for, what we want, I think it's all, it's actually more, I think it's more similar than it's not. It just, there's different stuff like. Yeah, like would you want to live in a 10,000 square foot mansion? No, no, no, I know that already. I mean, I'm in 4,000 square feet for just Katrina and I and Max. That's it, that's it, that's plenty. Oh yeah, it's more than enough. I mean, even this next move that we're doing, we're gonna downgrade slightly in space. Not a lot, but enough that I'm like, there was a whole room that like never got used. It's like, yeah, it's a little wasteful. There's no need for that. I would rather have land than a big house. You know what I'm saying? Like space where I could do things on there. Like I've always wanted to build a gym, and maybe build like a guest house, but I wouldn't necessarily want like a massive, you know why? Because then your kids, you don't even see your kids. They're in the room over here over there. You gotta text them on the phone to have them come downstairs. You know, it's just. Yeah, no, there's definitely drawbacks to bigger and more. I mean, you get that much space and to maintain it becomes like another job or more work. And it's like, oh, you know, that's, so I do think there's a happy medium there. I mean, I learned my lesson before actually mine pump, you know, so I kind of reached that financial place that I was chasing when I got into cannabis. So this time around for me, when, you know, going through this whole process, I had such a better relationship with money and materialistic things. And I like nice stuff. There's no doubt. Like I don't try and deny or hide that. But my relationship with it is so different. I think I'm like, I align a lot with Doug's kind of attitude and philosophy is I love nice things, but I can also not, you know, it's not. You don't care. Yeah, I already recognize that more of those nice things aren't gonna make me any happier as a person. So, but I like the option. I like the idea that, you know, if I want to do that, or if I want that, I can, you know, and I, but I choose many times not to. I don't know how, I mean, I just did it two nights ago where I'll, you know, oh, if I feel like I think I really want something, I'd shop it all in the shopping cart, you know, and it's not even crazy amount of money for me to say yes and send it. And then I go, you know, do I really need it? I've already got enough of those things like that. Tomorrow, if I still feel that passion about it, you know, I didn't buy it. You know, Arthur Brooks says that the part of it, one of the keys to happiness is not getting, it's not having more, it's wanting less. He said, for a lot of people, for most people, that's the key, it's not, it's just wanting less. It's not getting more. And that makes, to me, that makes a whole lot of sense. It's like, there was, I can't, you know, there was this one article I read years ago, and then I remember I was talking to my dad about it, because my dad grew up very differently than I did. He was very poor when he grew up. And I read this article and it said that there's the myth that it's more expensive today than it was 60 years ago. And they said, the reason why people think it's more expensive is we don't compare apples to apples. We have more bills for more stuff that we don't necessarily need. He goes, but if you lived the way someone did 60 years ago, where you don't have three cars in car payments, you don't have all these streaming services, you don't have- I grew up, my first computer that I had was when I was 20 something years old. I mean, now in our house, we've got, you know, four laptops, a computer. We all have a computer in our phone. You know what I'm saying? That was a luxury to have something like that. Well, that's what this article said. It said that. It literally said, actually, if you compare apples to apples, it's far less expensive today than it was back then. The difference is we've changed our wants. We want more, more, more. We think we need more, more, more, when in reality, and that's why I mean, I would say that's one of the factors that's playing into the depression and anxiety. 100%, I think you brought it up a long time ago. I guess I had never really thought about that until you had brought it up on one show. This was a long time ago. When you talked about somebody who would be considered in poverty today, if you just took what was in their place where they live, and you compared it to somebody 150 years ago or whatever, like, they would be wealthy compared to that. When you look at it, they would have, they probably have a little TV, they have a microwave, they have these things that would be like, and that's not, I'm saying 150, probably not even 150. No, you go, listen, a person today who's, let's say lower middle class or even in poverty today has access to things that didn't exist a thousand years ago when kings existed. So they have more than a king did a thousand years ago. So that just goes to show you the problem is the comparison. It's the other guy has more than I do. And then it's the wants. I think I want that, that's what I need. That's what I need. And so that's never ending in it results and just feeling like shit. I told Jessica this, I said, I would rather, I would prefer to, if I had a choice of retiring with a big old house, you know, mansion, whatever, or her and I live for six months in the year in like a townhouse in different parts of the country, one time in Hawaii, one time over here. And I'm like, I would be way, I would way enjoy that living in like an apartment or something for three to six months of the year and other parts of the world versus having this massive. For me, I feel like that would be so much more fulfilling than have this huge like crazy house or whatever. Yeah, I like the, I like this. I mean, obviously I probably have more space than the necessary out of everybody. My favorite part about that is that it's solved a lot of issues within our relationship of I'm a bit of a neat freak. And if there's clutter that starts to clutter on the counters and things like that, so the fact that I have so much extra space, there's a place for me to put things on. Do you do it on top of each other? Yeah, I gotta do that. I value that. Do you do purge annually? Do you like throw shit away? I do, I do. I just did it in my closet the other day, especially with us having an apparel business. We have so many damn research. Jessica's brutal with that. Brutal with purging. She will throw shit. I am too, but Katrina's hard. Katrina's really hard, she holds on to her stuff, she holds on to Max's stuff and I'm just like, hun, this is like you, you haven't wore it any, my rule is this, if it's in my closet and I purge annually and I didn't wear it for the year, it's gotta go. Yeah, unless it has some sentimental value to it, like, oh, this was my first jersey I ever bought. I mean, that's different. Like that's something that I'll probably save and then turn it into a fucking quilt. Did I ever tell you what my dad did? Because he proved a point to my mom once, so obviously four kids and growing up. Probably hid something and she didn't know what was going on. Well, not, it was hilarious. So growing up, my sisters, my two sisters shared a room so that we could have what was called a play room and this is where we had our TV and toys and shit like that. And my dad was always like, there's too much crap in here. The kids don't need it. I'm gonna throw it all away. What am I? I'm like, no, don't throw it away. These are the kids, so what my dad did is without anybody knowing, he went in there with garbage bags, took like 70% of the shit out of there, didn't throw the garbage bag away. Just hid in the garage. Hid it, waited for like a month, nobody noticed. And he goes, do you even notice I took 70% of the stuff out of there? The first time I cleared Max's stuff out, that's how I did it. Cause I was like, cause that was kind of an argument back and forth. And I'm like, you know what I'm gonna do? I'm just gonna do it. I'm not gonna say nothing. And I put in the garage and like nobody knew. I know, isn't that funny? Yeah, so yeah, I know, I'm good about purging. All right, so let me talk about Felix Gray cause that's our next sponsor. But I have a study on blue blockers here that I thought was pretty phenomenal. So this was a randomized trial where they had people where blue blockers three hours before sleep versus just regular glasses. Significant improvement in sleep quality. Significant, like a big difference. And this is cool because it's easy. It's so easy to just put on, you don't have to change your electronic habits. You don't have to change your lights. You don't have to do anything. All you have to do is three hours before bed, like what they did here in the study is you put on your, you know, whatever your blue blockers, your Felix Gray glasses go about your day. Felix Gray doesn't change the color of everything. So they're not red or orange. So you could just enjoy your normal day and then go to bed and then you'll get better sleep. How were they in the study? How were they measuring quality of sleep or to show like what was the marker that was improved by so much? Was it how long they slept? How quick they fell asleep? Was it all the above? Yeah, so sleep diaries. So people reported. So you know what's interesting about this by the way is that you can have measures of better sleep if they hook things up to you and you might not necessarily perceive them. You don't necessarily perceive better sleep unless it's significant, right? So you can have better like, you know, REM for sleep and, you know, oh, you went to sleep, you know, 15% faster than before. And the person might be like, ah, I think I'm feeling better. But when people report like, oh my God, I feel way more rested. It's pretty significant. So these are the kind of studies I like on this because, okay, great, REM, you know, whatever went up 15%, like did the person perceive that? Is that like a big deal? Now on this one with the sleep diaries, it was significant. People are like, big difference. How consistent are you guys all personally? I'm really, FilxGrey is one of the things I do like religiously. So I'm really good about. I'm consistent if we don't do the lights down thing, but we're really good with that. Jessica's like, sun goes down, it's candles or dim ass lights, no TV, no nothing, and we're good. Now if I put TV on, I might put them on. Yeah, go in spurts. I always notice the difference. So like even today, like just memory recall for me and like what I'm trying to bring up. Like if I haven't had good sleep, totally affects the way that I communicate. So it's like, it's frustrating. And then it promotes me to incorporate like this ritual, like really get back on track. But it does help. Do you, cause you're up late a lot of times looking at work. Lately I've been up till midnight, the last three nights. And I have been wearing the glasses. There was a while there though I wasn't. I was getting in the bed earlier, but I decided I better get back at it. I mean, I always take little breaks off that where I'm inconsistent with it, but it's a short one for me. Cause I notice it. You notice it. I notice it right away. If you're consistent, you notice it when you stop. That's a big time. That's what I tell because sometimes someone, like I've had, we've had people buy them and they'll do them. And then they'll be like, yeah, I don't know. I don't really know it's different. I was like, be consistent for a while, stay consistent with it and then remove it and then tell me how you feel. Like that's how I really connected it. Like, oh wow, this is making a bigger difference than I realized. All right, so I want to give a shout out to a social media page. I know we're doing this. That was a great idea, Adam, when you came up with it. So the page is called, let's see, at Barbell Films, Barbell with 1L Films on Instagram. I like, so you guys know the kind of stuff I'm into. It's old school. Old timey. Yeah, it's old school, old timey, you know. Is there any spaces on the at Barbell Films or it was just at Barbell Films? Yeah, let me see. Maybe it's two. No, no, it's two L's. It's two L's. At Barbell with two L's Films, I misspelled it. So if you go there, you see like old time strong men, strong women. For example, there's a picture here of Katie Sandwina in 1910 and she's literally holding, she's holding three men in her arms, like babies. So she's got one guy on one arm and two guys in the other arm. And this is a woman in 1910. This is back when, I mean, gosh, if a woman did anything that involved strength. Oh, I'm a dummy. I was putting A.T. in front of Barbell Films. Oh, instead of the at system? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like, why can't I find it, dude? So it's cool because they have in here men, women. It's all like another one. There's a female again. Laverie Ville Ni Cooper. Her stage name was Charmoyne. This is in 1905. This was a early bodybuilder and vaudeville trapeze artist. And they show her flexing her biceps and her back. Remember, this is before supplements, steroids, before anything. It's pretty remarkable stuff. And they'll show strength feats and stuff like that. So I like this again because this is before Photoshop. This is before they're doing crazy things with lighting. There's no debates on are these bodies natural or not? They are natural. They didn't even have that shit. It's as natural as they can get. I don't even think they had protein powder. That's what I mean. It's as natural as you can get right here. Pretty amazing stuff. That's cool. Hey, check this out. There's a company called Joy Mode. And this company was created because the products on the market are terrible, and they knew they could do better. Prescriptions, first of all, come with all sorts of side effects. But Joy Mode makes natural and science-based wellness products for men specifically, for men. Go check them out. Go to usejoymode.com forward slash mind pump. And then use the code mind pump at checkout for 20% off your order. All right, here comes the rest of the show. Our first caller is Will from Georgia. Will, what's happening, man? How can we help you? How you guys doing? Appreciate you having me on. Yeah, man. Thanks for calling. So basically, I'm in a predicament kind of. I'm currently on a bulk sitting at about 170, trying to get to 180, 190. However, I am starting law enforcement training here pretty soon, which is heavy, heavy cardio, intense cardio. So I was just curious on how I could balance building muscle and gaining weight, but at the same time having to do tons of cardio. Yeah, that's a tough one, because there's kind of competing signals going on. But really, your best strategy, first off, would be appropriate strength training. So if you're doing a lot of cardiovascular type training, then maybe one day a week of strength training would be what you'd want to stick to, because too much strength training on top of lots of cardio will really burn your body out. And then the second piece, and this is the most important, stay fed. Yeah, you got to eat more. You just got to really feed yourself. And if you're not gaining weight, that means you're not eating enough. And there are strategies to help yourself with something like this. For example, you could add, I don't know if you can have dairy, but a glass of whole milk with each meal will add like 600, 700 calories right there. But you got to lift weights appropriately, meaning in the context of what you're currently doing, and then really feed yourself. And it's especially when you're doing lots of lots of cardio, defeating yourself is going to be like an all day, consistent everyday thing. Otherwise it's going to be hard to put on any size. This is going to sound like kind of contradicting advice that we normally give to people as far as health, right? That I think helped me a lot, because I remember playing basketball and trying to do this at the same time. And the first kind of hack that I had was loading up with a sugar drink before I played and then having another one afterwards. So I'd have like something, and by the way, there's better healthy choices, I'm just going to tell you what I did just being honest. I had like a sugar loaded rock star, like 380 calorie rock star before I wouldn't play basketball. And then afterwards I'd have like 1000 calorie Jamba juice. And that right there, like as long as I had it before and after I did this like intense hour to two hours of like cardio seemed to like mitigate the muscle loss and keep my calorie intake high. And it was easy for me because it was liquid to get in there in addition. So I ate like I normally would all my meat and rice type of meals. And then if I knew I was going to do intense cardio for an hour or more, I'd hit a sugar drink before and after and that really helped. Are you able to pick the type of cardio you're doing? Or is this just like mandatory? Like you have it all prescribed already. For the training, it's mandatory, which is mostly just running. But then there's also like some, I guess body weight things like burpees and like calisthenics type of things. Currently I'm just riding the bike and like walking up hills with a heavy pack on. But I'm pretty here soon. It's going to be just strictly like long runs. Yeah, how many days a week are they making you do all this? I don't know exactly yet, but if I had to gauge probably three or four. Okay, I'm going to send you, do you have maps on a Bollack Will? I did not. Let me send you maps on a Bollack. And I would suggest that you follow one foundational workout a week. If the cardio that they're doing with you is let's say two days a week, then you can do two days of foundational workouts. But if you're doing three, if it's three hard cardio days, then just do one, okay? Now there's another program that I think would also benefit you, which would be maps 15. This is 15 minutes a day of some strength training or 20 minutes if you do the advanced version today. That's going to be a great routine to carry you through when you do become a law enforcement officer. Because it's every single day, it's sure, it's easy to stay consistent. It's not a ton of stress on the body and you still see strength gains. I mean, I was able to hit a PR in deadlifts training this particular way. So, but maps and a Bollack's the one I'll send you. Cause I think, I think one of those foundational workouts a week will work well with what you're currently doing. Awesome, appreciate that. No problem, man. You got it. And then do you take any supplements? Creatine and then pre-workout sometimes. Yeah, your set. Creatine was the one I was going to recommend your set. Aside from things that can add extra calories like protein shakes or, you know, gainer shakes. And I know I just recommended gainer shakes, but I think in this case that may actually help. Yeah, I've been, I've been bulking for, I guess two months now and a lot of protein shakes, creatine, like I said, rice, chicken, beef, the whole essentials basically. Good deal. All right, man. Yeah, as much fast twitch cardio as you can do. I know like they'll probably have you do like long endurance runs. But, you know, if you can change and structure it in a way that you, you know, have control over, I would do, you know, focus a little bit more on head or like sprints to try and preserve muscle. Yeah, it's more muscle sparing for sure. Right, right. All right, man. Well, thanks for calling in. Awesome, appreciate you guys. You guys are welcome. Thank you. You know, at the end of the day, weight gain or weight loss, now I'm not saying necessarily muscle or fat, okay, because then it gets more complicated, but just weight, you know, you eat more, you eat less. And if you're not gaining, you've got to eat more. And you can definitely gain weight while doing tons and tons of cardio. Now the muscle aspect, that can make it real tricky because you can gain body fat and do lots of cardio if you're not sending the right muscle building signal or if you're overdoing the cardio. Nonetheless, the calorie piece of this equation is I think where people miss because they're like, oh, I can't gain any weight. I can't gain any weight. Jump your calories up 500 or 1,000 and then watch what happens. And it's true. It's an energy in versus energy out thing and it works every single time. You just might not be eating as much as you think. It's really interesting how whether you're trying to increase calories or reduce calories, how our body has this like homeostasis and anything outside of that is hard. I don't care what you're trying to do. And I think in a case like this, which is why I gave crazy advice of like sugar drinks and Jamba juice because I understand when you go from somebody who like is almost probably force feeding or really focused on eating a ton of calories just to get yourself in a normal bowl. And then all of a sudden you start running every day for an hour or whatever like that. Total and drastic change. It's huge and it was already hard for you to hit that calorie intake as it is. And then now your body is demanding an extra three to 500 more every single day. Maybe you have one or two days where you're good and you hit it but then you go back down to normal especially if you're not tracking and paying attention. And along those lines, when it comes to gaining if it's challenging for you to get enough calories for whatever reason, this right here what I'm about to say makes a massive difference. Start your day off with a high calorie breakfast. What you don't wanna do is end up around noon or 1 p.m. Trying to get you. And yeah, and you're behind the eight ball cause then it sucks. It really does suck. But if you start with like a big breakfast and you know, choose foods that are easy to digest, you don't wanna be bloated all day but eat a big breakfast, that makes a huge difference. Our next caller is Landon from North Carolina. Landon, what's happening? How can we help you? Fellas, how we doing this morning? Doing good, man. Good. Right on. Appreciate you guys taking the time to talk with me. Got a question for you all but before I dive into that just wanna say the obligatory thank you after years of hammering myself in the gym and not really knowing why I was plateauing finally feeling like I can get some concrete truth and real information from you guys. So truly appreciate what you do. I've also introduced you to some of my family. Shout out my brother-in-law, Neil Wagstaff. He's running an anabolic right now and loving it. Got my wife running starter too. So she's a big fan of that trying to convince her of the reverse diet but struggling a little bit there but we'll get her soon. Excellent. So just some quick background, I'll try to make it quick. I know you guys are busy. Played basketball in college. Did a lot of explosive movements, cleans, squats, that type of thing. Never really bulked to try to put on size. Once I finally graduated, I did try to go on kind of a bro split, bulked a lot, put on muscle pretty rapidly. Within the first eight weeks or so I gained probably 30 pounds on my bench press. Got some stretch marks on my chest, harder and stretch marks there. Gained way too much weight though. I did a dirty, dirty bulk. Eating McDonald's, washing it down with a Pop-Tar smoothie. I mean, I was getting after it. So put on way too much fat but also gained muscle incredibly fast. Stopped working out about a year after that for the next five years, got back into it during COVID and did, you know, bulks and cuts on and off from there. Most recently did a cut down to about 7.5% body fat and it worked my way up to about 10%. Now running anabolic, loving it, amazing program. Got some more of your programs as well, I plan on starting. But my question is the, I'm doing a clean bulk right now and my muscle gain, while it's happening, I'm gaining strength, gaining muscle, I can see it. It's still not as fast as that initial dirty bulk I did five or six years ago. And I'm wondering if there's any science around, you know, I know long-term dirty bulks are a poor strategy, but in eight weeks or so scientifically, do you put on more muscle mass doing a dirty bulk or was that just a one-off thing where all the factors might have been right in my life where I can't muscle that quickly? All right, that's a cool question. Yeah, so okay, there's a couple of things we wanna consider with this. One is you were a collegiate athlete and at that level of sports, you're on the, I don't know, the better end of genetics when it comes to muscle building. So your body is going to build more muscle probably faster than most average people. So you've got that going for you, okay? So let's consider that. Number two, eating in a dirty bulk, especially initially, probably will put on a little bit more muscle. The challenge though is when you measure lean body mass, that's also measuring water and you tend to hold more glycogen, more water with more calories. That's considered lean body mass is not body fat. So sometimes it's hard to separate and I know there's like body fat tests and stuff but they're not super necessarily accurate with that. And then the other thing to consider is, okay, let's say you could gain 10 pounds with a cleaner bulk and let's say eight pounds of that is muscle or you could gain 15 pounds but nine or 10 pounds of it is muscle. Is that really a worthy trade-off? I mean, if you're starting off with 6% body fat maybe because you don't really care about adding extra body fat at that point but for a lot of people it's not worth it because then when they go and they try to back out, they end up losing that extra pound or two that they gained eating all that stuff. And then of course there's the health implications. It's just not healthy for your body. Now you're young so you're probably not going to see a lot in that way but as you get older you may notice that eating that way it's just not going to start, it's not going to work for your body. You're going to notice issues with your health maybe long-term digestive issues can start to become an issue. I know I suffered from those because of the way I would quote unquote bulk when I was younger. And then lastly, you will see more strength oftentimes with more body fat gain. And that has to do with energy, it has to do with leverage, CNS output might be better so my power lifters tend to carry more body fat and find that they're stronger in doing so. And so that can mess with you a little bit. Like I've done this where I've gained more weight maybe not as much more muscle but a lot more body fat but my strength was a lot higher. Like what's the value of that? I don't know, it depends. If I was competing I guess in an open weight class I might be okay. Or if I like to have certain PR numbers just for my own ego that might be okay but as I've gotten older and trained more people I just see there's just more value in trying to minimize fat gain than there is in just trying to gain as much as possible unless I'm dealing with someone who's super shredded in which case gaining some body fat is a good idea. You also have to consider that when you dirty bulk right we tend to be in way more calories than we necessarily need to in order to bulk and what you potentially do when you do that is actually add fat cells to the body which makes it increasingly more difficult when you go back to cutting. So this was like really common in the bodybuilding world with my peers. So with my peers I would see like some of my buddies would they would be in the bulk part of getting ready for a show and they would just eat everything in sight and I'd see them put on 30, 50 pounds all to try and cut that back. And what I'd see what happened is every time they go back to a cut for the next show it was increasingly more difficult for them to get as lean as they had did before doing the same stuff doing just as much cardio, dieting the same way and they would be confused and it'd be like man what's happening is every time you go back to this bulk you bulk so aggressively your body's got to be adding fat cells and so you're making it that much more difficult for you to lean out. Also, back to kind of what Sal was saying there is like a, you know there is a little bit of deception there on how much muscle you're putting on because when you're dirty bulking and you're eating that many calories you're filled up with extra water you're filled up with extra glycogen so the muscle bellies look filler like so you look like you're putting on more and I know coming from being a skinny kid who was trying to build how that psychologically can fuck with you a little bit like oh man this is working I feel better but then it's just that much more difficult when you cut and then when you cut what ends up happening you have to cut so hard to get off that extra body fat you put on you end up with the same amount of muscle or sometimes even a little bit less when you get back to the desired body fat percentage that you want and so what I have found works really well is okay I want a clean bulk but then when I'm a leaner guy if I carry myself it's six to 10% type of body fat hey when I go out on Friday night with my wife and we eat like I'm not gonna trip out if I have some dessert or so I'm gonna enjoy so in that sense I would you know I wouldn't call it like- There's some flexibility in that. Yeah exactly, I wouldn't call it like a dirty bulk but then I'm also not really worried too much I keep myself relatively lean I eat most of my calories through good choices of food but hey it's Friday night with my wife and I'm in a bulk anyways so tonight I'm gonna have that bazookie after I have that steak and rice or whatever like that so to me that's how I would allow some of that flexibility of allowing some of those quote unquote dirty foods into the diet but not like giving that as an excuse of like oh now I'm eating Pop-Tart smoothies and I'm eating you know sour patch candy kids all the like that type of shit that's only gonna make it more difficult for you when you go back to lean out I wouldn't do things like that but I would give yourself some flexibility in your normal eating pattern. Yeah and Landon let me rephrase your question because what we're kind of presenting right now is a bit of a false binary or dichotomy which is you know eat clean bulk not as many calories or eat a dirty bulk with more calories here's the real comparison that we wanna look at same amount of calories okay so both in a bulk even if it's an excessive bulk but one of them is made up of foods that are more whole natural not fast food not candy not what would be considered garbage the other one includes fast food, candy, garbage now I'm gonna tell you from that standpoint cause I've done both and I've trained people who've done both the whole natural quote unquote healthier version even though the calories are the same builds more muscle it just builds more muscle the other one tends to gain more body fat so even if your goal is to just gain as much muscle as possible and you're like I'm gonna just eat way more calories you're still better off doing it with calories that come from foods that don't mess with your your palate sensitivity that don't mess with your dopamine that don't mess with your insulin foods that are on the healthier side now you can do this with you know calorically dense healthier foods like you can get ground beef 80% 80% ground beef makes it with some rice make your rice with bone broth you got yourself a high calorie bowl of rice and bone broth and you know fatty ground beef throwing some vegetables if you want some fiber right you can if you can have dairy whole milk have a glass of whole milk with every meal there's some good you know dense calories that you're gonna get it's not soda it's not garbage it's not you know crap right so those are just a couple examples of ways you can add calories with foods that are better for your body and like I said when you go apples to apples 3,500 calories 3,500 calories or 4,000 calories 4,000 calories but one of them is you know more what we would consider healthier better options you gain more muscle that way that's my experience that's been my experience across the board and people just feel better too like dirty bowls with crappy food just feel like shit you know and that's another trade-off I don't think is worth it Right right I guess just a quick follow-up on that and I appreciate the information that makes a lot of sense just in terms of and again I know this can vary so widely depending on the person and all kinds of factors but just to try to tamper my expectations for muscle growth and when to expect to see size increase I mean a rough estimation does that take three months does it take six to nine months or is it hard to really tell? Yeah it's hard to it's hard to tell I would guess like I said because of your level of because you were an athlete at a pretty high level you're probably going to build muscle faster than the average person how tall are you and what's your body weight you said you're 10% body fat right now I'm six five two oh five at about 10% All right so two oh five at six five you know boy I think you could probably get up to 220, 225 with right around the body fat you're at now with probably a year and a half of good consistent training I would that's I'm gonna give you a guess now here's the deal I could be totally off because genetics make a big difference but I'm hitting you know you're hitting all cylinders getting good sleep you're eating good you're hitting a surplus with your calories you're getting stronger you're not losing sleep because you just had a baby or whatever I know you said you're married so everything going great I mean you could probably gain a good 15 pounds of lean body mass within a year and a half two years of consistent you know doing it that way and how old are you right now I'm 31 okay yeah years yeah yeah those are those are good building years yeah for sure awesome yeah awesome we'll really appreciate it guys that's very encouraging to know and excited about it I've got anabolic now I'm gonna hopefully run through performance and aesthetic and then I've got powerlifting strong so that's gonna be my years with the program you got it are you doing prime or prime pro to help with the mobility issues because when you're packing on muscle like that you want to make sure you maintain you know mobility yep I've got prime so I'm using that every single workout definitely can immediately feel the difference especially my ankles and hips when I squat so that's been a game changer especially when you're tall like you are so I'm gonna send you prime pro just because it gets a little deeper so I'll send you that for free and then a good program to follow up with some of these would be symmetry especially with someone tall like you the unilateral stuff tends to work really really well with somebody got long limbs awesome man thank you so much I didn't expect that so I really appreciate it and look forward to putting that in the routine you got it man thanks for calling in all right take care no problem yeah do you guys remember well I don't think Justin ever had to deal with this but I don't know what are you gonna say Jason's gaining muscle right now just us talking about it but I know Adam and I we've gone through this process do you remember when you when you piece together like oh if I eat like a lot of calories make it like whole natural food I just build more muscle yeah I mean it just blew me away yeah I wanted to add to that like in terms of like building more muscle through like whole food so there has to be a factor to that if you have gastrointestinal issues yeah this is something I did go through right with just pounding a bunch of shakes and just eating whatever I possibly could just for the calorie sake but really not be able to assimilate a lot of it and a lot of it just went through me you know with diarrhea with gas everything else so it's like you know you gotta consider that's a factor yeah I know there's that there's that you feel like crap you're probably not gonna work out as well you're probably not gonna sleep as well there's also the the behaviors around your food choice too so like one of the things that I remember when I was allowing myself to quote unquote dirty bulk and just kind of eat whatever right just to get extra calories when I when I did an assessment on what I was consuming it was like okay sure I was hitting 4,000 5,000 calories but most of it came from carbohydrates or saturated fat and I was still not hitting my protein that's true because I would gravitate towards these you know snacky type foods and desserts and candies and they're always heavy carbs yeah they're all heavy carbs and I'm not getting I'm not even getting quality protein from there and then I look at my thing and I'll be like oh shit I had 120 grams of protein today but I had 4,000 calories because it was all in like carbs and sugar and shit like that so you know that's the other thing that I don't like about the process of dirty bulking is that it kind of gives people this pass of like oh I just eat everything in sight and then hopefully I hit my my you know targets my macro targets but then when you go back and you actually track it all you're like oh wow I tend to gravitate towards it because honestly eating especially if you have a guy like this 6,5 eating eating enough calories to put on size for a guy that that tall and lanky and an athlete oh man probably four or 5,000 calories and doing that through steak and potatoes and chicken I mean that's hard so you so you tend to throw in these calories to try and get it get up over that number and then you realize like oh shit I'm eating just a bunch of pop tarts and stuff just at that you know it's interesting the athletes the traditional athletes of the world who have really figured out how to gain lots of weight sumo wrestlers and if you look at and sumo has been around for a long time there's a traditional dish that sumo wrestlers would eat to gain weight I don't remember the name of it maybe Doug can find it but it's a it's a type of a soup and it's a high calorie soup and the sumo wrestlers and remember these guys don't mind getting body fat obviously they want to be huge but they also have to be mobile they have to move if you've ever watched sumo wrestlers you know fight they're actually incredibly mobile four guys their size super explosive very for guys that you know 500 pound 400 pound like they can move and this suit what's the soup called Doug chunko nabe chunko nabe and they will say these are these are guys that just want to put on size they will say avoid junk food and they've been this is something that's been around for a long time so you know eating whole natural foods and gaining weight makes you feel better that's just the bottom line our next caller is Drew from Nebraska Drew what's happening how can we help you awesome hey guys thanks for having me on taking the time to answer my questions obligatory thank you for everything you do I've been listening about a year and where I'm at right now compared to then it's it's very different so thank you very much you got it just going to go ahead and jump in I have a couple of questions about nutrition my life has changed a little bit I had a little bit more flexible of a schedule I was used to working out more after work early afternoon and now I am working out first thing in the morning so 6 a.m. I'm in the gym going out and I'm kind of having trouble with my morning nutrition even now when I occasionally work out in the afternoon I'm more well fed I have a chance to eat a couple meals I don't know if it's a thing or I'm just kind of chasing my tail and the convenience of working out in the morning I just have to kind of deal with not being as well fed and not being quite ready to go but I didn't know if you had any advice for where I should be kind of putting my meals if I should be really eating anything beforehand you guys have anything for me there yeah back low carbs at night well yeah he wrote that actually too he says he eats a pretty good meal before bed what time do you wake up you work out at 6 what time do you wake up 5 a.m. I try to get up a little bit and move around before I head out that way but you know if I'm eating anything significant I'm not going to really have time to digest it no yeah so plus is with morning workouts it's the people tend to be more consistent it tends to set the tone for the day minus is your performance isn't going to be as good and studies are going to show this across the board look I've been working out first thing in the morning for years so my body's acclimated to an extent but even now even after years and years of training in the morning if I wanted to just max out my strength and look at my best performance I do better off in the afternoon this is just how it is so you got to kind of deal with that and be okay with it but as far as meals are concerned you just eat right after you're done and bring your breakfast with you this will make it a lot easier that's what I do so I eat you know what I eat every morning to everybody's demise and complaints is I have eight hard boiled eggs so right after my workout I eat eight hard boiled eggs and there's my first meal and I get my proteins my fats and everything feels great so fumes everywhere yeah so I would say I would say bring your breakfast with you so that right after you're done you can just see what time are you finished with your workout usually by seven thirty or so usually an hour and a half this is where the creatures have it sick bro oh yeah well that's super convenient you could either throw that in cold water and shake it up and actually drink it like a shake I've actually had its bomb like that or you have like a thing where you can boil it throw hot water on it it's good but so I would experiment too I don't know how much you've tracked like what the calories and carbohydrates that you have for dinner but I would experiment with that like actually like really loading up at night time if I really load up at night time come morning time I've still got enough fuel in the tank to actually feel a decent workout although I hate morning workouts so I'm not a fan of them for the reasons that you're explaining right now it's just not my thing I don't I don't like to feel as weak as Sal is and I just think that you imagine if you're as weak as I was training in the afternoon keeps Justin and I much stronger than him so for us we prefer that but you know for videos he is more consistent though you know he is more consistent than we are so I mean he's got that going for him so no I try that try loading some carbohydrates I think trying to get something before that's not going to happen and then Sal's point eat right after I love creatures I have but for some of that it's easy to digest it's got 30 something grams of protein in it it tastes good like that's a great post workout type of meal that you can have but really really try playing around with like having like a high high carb dinner and see what that does as long as it doesn't disrupt sleep I would play around with that you know what I realized too is that because you're just lifting right that's all you're doing in the morning it's not like you're doing crazy long-term cardio workout or anything okay so because I was going to say if you're doing like real high intensity long you know kind of steady-state type cardio type workout you might want to have a carbohydrate drink with you while you're training but for weight training not necessary here's what I figured out a long time ago is that I would have like this really crappy performance in the morning workout and then about halfway through my workout I would start to feel better and I started to realize it's because I didn't drink water so as soon as you wake up drink like two glasses of water and that makes a big difference because what I would do is I'd wake up early I'd get ready brush my teeth the whole thing and then start my workout and then start drinking water while I was working out in 20, 30 minutes in I started to feel better and so now what I do as soon as I wake up I go and I have two big glasses of water about an hour before 45 minutes before I work out and that made a huge difference so try that out too got it I I had a gut feeling you were going to bring up preachers I have but I'm intolerant to oats oh a little rough there but I've been mainly my carb meals are first thing post-workout and then I've been trying to do more before bed should I just put everything before bed like go just hard on that or just post-workout really he said experiment I think what Adam said is ideal yeah experiment yeah play with it I don't like I don't know where you're at if you've actually counted carbohydrates and seeing like oh you know because people will say like oh I have a big dinner I said okay well what's a big dinner oh well I and track it for me and then you go oh I eat 40 grams of protein and I have 100 grams of carbs and then I go okay let's try 200 grams of carbs for dinner and see what happens so that's what I mean figure out kind of where you're at currently right now increase it by 50% or more and see how that affects your workout in the morning if you notice a difference and so long as you digest that amount of carbohydrates fine you sleep okay if it if it improves performance that may be an answer for you is to start to totally back low carbohydrates like that perfect and then if there if we saw time I had one other part to kind of the nutrition side I I was in an extended deficit for a better part of two years I lost about 120 pounds from 2020 till more recently in that time I don't think I was probably in a surplus for more than maybe a month of that whole time right now I'm in a bulk I've been in a bulk since October and I was planning on just going until about February and then around summertime kind of coming back down I've heard you guys talk about being in an extended deficit like that maybe living in a bulk a little bit longer and so I feel pretty good but I just didn't know if you had any you know any more input on that on how long I should really say I would interrupt it with many one-week cuts yeah many can bulk for a long time that way yeah so I mean you know you know your plan is to bulk all the way till like February whatever okay so just you know every every fourth week and it doesn't have to be a full week to be honest with you every fourth week run three to four days of really low calorie and then go back so just interrupt it like that every every three to four weeks with a three to four days of of a low low cow and then go back the other direction I think you'll you'll feel a lot better and you'll you'll see a better response now to add to that in my experience one of the best ways to do that is to go three to four days of very low carbohydrates it's an easy way to cut calories during that period of time and you end up you know you're maintaining the essential fats and proteins perfect all right man well hey good job on the 120 pound weight loss yeah that's phenomenal yeah and the fact that you're able psychologically to go in a bulk that's actually really really difficult it's tough yeah especially putting the carbs back on seeing the scale go up and I mean my muscles are fuller but just everything else it's a little a little rough here there but yeah gay good for you bro that takes a lot it takes a lot of discipline to do that that's probably one of the most difficult things I had with clients that lost that kind of weight was to they're so afraid of yes right to be able to do what you're doing so you're doing the right thing so keep it up awesome thank you you got it man right on yeah that's um you know as far as the morning workouts are concerned there's going to be trade-offs and I think this is where people have the challenge but look my argument is always going to be this with it is um you know it does make the day better you tend to have more energy throughout the day you tend to you start your day off on the right foot because you're like motivated you push yourself you have great workout so it tends to help with work tends to help with the rest of the day you tend to be more consistent and I think for a lot of people it's not everybody for a lot of people when you weigh that out and you add in the okay yes my performance is 5% worse in my workouts it's still worth it it's a net positive you know I'll add one more thing that it does too even though I I hate morning workouts and I wish I would be better about it is you get better sleep yeah because you start have your caffeine so late you start so early you have your caffeine earlier you you have a longer day so then when when the sun naturally goes down you're already kind of exhausted one of the drawbacks of being a late riser and a late workout person as I am is you know 9 10 o'clock at night I'm still wired sometimes and when wanting to stay up where when I do and have disappointed myself to get up and train at like six in the morning shit sun goes down and I'm already yawning and I'm ready to go to bed and then I tend to get really good sleep so there are definitely those benefits but I you know I drag ass in the workout it's tough to to power through it and so there's always trade-offs you know I just you got to look at the whole picture is what I tend to tell people but if I could work out at the best time for performance for me would be like noon it's just I'd lift that noon but I mean there's no way I'll maybe be able to make that happen if not going to be as consistent and you know before noon we tend to record two podcasts and I like to come in here after my workout and record I'm just sharper I feel better so just works out better for for me and I know a lot of people like that so our next caller is Colton from Utah Colton what's happening how can we help you hey how are you guys good man so I have two questions my first question is I'm trying to find a balance between like a bodybuilding and a powerlifting workout I tend to find myself leaning naturally more towards like some of the powerlifting type stuff the heavy compound lifts but I want to also get the benefit of building muscle like in a bodybuilding type workout so is there a way that you can incorporate both of those into the same training session or would it be more efficient to like cycle in a powerlifting phase and then a bodybuilding phase that's a common question well first off I want to correct what you said they both build muscle okay so whether you're trained and they both build a lot of muscle too but yeah so there's a myth that oh one builds you know more than the other I mean if you cycle them properly you're gonna get better results and if you just stick to one all the time so this is a question we get often now in terms of like results in the studies when people are monitored and told what to do it doesn't matter if you do you know a heavy workout on Monday a lighter higher rep workout on Wednesday and so on but in our experience it's better to do a cycle of a specific type of training for a few weeks and then move into another cycle of a specific type of training mainly because there's a different mindset with the training and you know this right when you do three reps of a squat versus you know 12 reps of a squat it's a different focus right on one of them it's all about the movements keeping tight you hold your breath when you do your left the other one it's like smooth focus on the muscles the contraction the stretch the squeeze the pump and that's a hard mindset to get in and out of okay it's hard for me to do it's hard for me to do and I've been training for a long time so I prefer being in the mindset of I'm trying to train for strength for the next three weeks and then I'm trying to train in more of a hypertrophy you know style for the next three to four weeks what ends up happening is I pick too much weight for my bodybuilding style workouts or I end up focusing too much on the squeeze and the pump or the lack of the pump when I'm doing the powerlifting workouts but if I'm in that mindset then that's where I'm at and it's all good so it's more of a psychological thing it's a lot easier to acknowledge the intent going in and to be able to refine and fine tune what you're doing in terms of your overall technique especially if you can place that kind of emphasis on technique well especially while you're powerlifting because it requires so much dedicated focus I would highly suggest kind of staying in that for a bit plus it's more measurable so that's the thing is when you start like combining different methods it's really hard to kind of tease out what really is working the best and what isn't so just in terms of those two points you know I would try to to cycle them both at different times the main point I would have brought up was what Justin just said I think that that's the most important thing is that I was notorious for this like I trained like all the modalities in one it was like every I used to in fact my philosophy was as a trainer I've never repeated the same workout every workout was unique and different because to Sal's point that's what the studies show like the studies show that if you're if you're if you're continuously moving and changing rep ranges and exercises and modalities like the body's going to keep adapting and responding and it's just as good as somebody who's like cycling and phasing but here's the drawback of that is it's really hard to Justin's point to measure well what's really working for my body like oh when I train these exercises in this manner wow I really notice X, Y and Z like and you can see that because you're sticking to something very consistently for three to four weeks and you're not sprinkling and other things otherwise you look back after two months of kind of sprinkling a little bit of everything and you're like oh shit yeah I definitely put on some good size oh what was that from was that from my powerlifting training that I was doing or was that doing more from the bodybuilding stuff I was doing like and so it's harder to tease out what what is your body really responding to and so we tend to lean and push people more and by the way there's I think it's Michael Hearn who who's the coin building yeah who's coined the power building program where he combines powerlifting with bodybuilding and and really that's a marketing tool to to appeal to someone just like you who goes like oh I like powerlifting and I want to look like a bodybuilder like this is the perfect program for me like okay sure but it really is in our opinion better and more beneficial for you to focus on a phase a way of training run run and work run a program like power lift for a while then run a program like split like we have in fact do you have any of our programs I actually don't no okay so I mean are you more into the the powerlifting or the bodybuilding which one do you enjoy the most right now myself I enjoy the powerlifting more and I think that's just because like you guys said it's measurable and you can see the increase you can see the results a lot faster yeah so I'm gonna have Doug send you over power lift and then I would follow that up with map split I think those the in combination of running one and then running the next program you'll get the benefits that you're looking for yeah and one more thing I'd like to add here is that I think that I don't want to discount the self-awareness and knowing your body or learning your body as you go through this journey of of exercise and I think you learn better and faster when you can stay in a focused modality for a few weeks versus mixing it all up you also can experience one of my favorite thing and I don't like I said if you looked at this over the course of a year I don't think the results necessarily would be better however there's something to be said about the psychological benefit of going for three four weeks in a in a modality then switching and seeing like these really rapid changes in that first week or two like when I switch from you know 12 to 15 reps to three to five reps and that first two to three weeks it's like boom I see great but that slows down and then I switch to something else versus kind of this real slow consistent product I like that like I like the way that feels I also like knowing how my body feels and how it feels different when I train differently and I can notice signs and signals in my body for example when I power lift for too long I feel it in my joints when I body build for too long I just feel burnt out and it's a different feeling both of them are different feelings so it would be hard for me to pinpoint what's going on if I did it all at the same time so you'll see when you look at our programs how they're phased we don't mix everything up at once we we we tend to phase them that way so you get in power lift and then after that I think split would be a good a good follow-up for you for sure no that's awesome I'm excited to try those you got it my second question I kind of went down the intermittent fasting rabbit hole pretty far I did it pretty religiously for about two years lost a bunch of weight it was great and now that I have started lifting more I'm about 12 weeks into lifting pretty consistently now I've been trying to incorporate some more meals some more calories kind of break out of that intermittent fasting cycle but it's been a really really big challenge for me mentally and it's hard because I really liked the way that I felt when I was intermittent fasting it seemed like my body really agreed with that so do you think there's any room for intermittent fasting in like a muscle building power lifting space I mean there is it's gonna make it getting powder productive it's just gonna be harder you know if you're trying to eat you know I don't know how many calories you're trying to eat here but if you're trying to eat you know 3,500 calories and your eating window is noon to six okay you're gonna be stuffing yourself it's not gonna feel very good so I don't think it's a great way to do it I would use it as an interrupter right so I wouldn't use it as like what you're referring to like every day having this eating window and trying to do it like good luck with that I think that is kind of counterproductive but if you're like consistently eating four to six meals a day all day long and you've been doing that for a week or two and you're like hey you know what this weekend I'm gonna intermittent fast because I just feel like I'm I'm like feeling a little lethargic or maybe I a little I overdid it on on Friday night or whatever with that so hey tomorrow I'm gonna intermittent fast like that's how I would do it I would I would interrupt my kind of normal eating routine with an intermittent fast based off of how I feel because you've already said I feel good on it it agrees with my body so when you notice that you've been pushing the food quite a bit and you want to take a break from that I think that's a great tool but using intermittent fasting as on a daily basis while also trying to gain strength inside that's tough that's really tough and that is kind of counterproductive what are your benefits that you notice from fasting that you like so much my mental clarity is 150% better I would say my digestive system really agrees with it less bloated more consistent energy just a general in general I feel a lot better when I intermittent fast try this try this try eating a lower carb bulking diet and then put your carbs around your workout yeah so this is like a cyclic you know kind of targeted carbohydrate type of diet so maybe your carbs are 150 for the day or 100 for the day which is kind of low for a bulk especially you know I don't know how big you are but you know if you're you know over 180 pounds is real low I would go carbs before and after my workout and then the rest of the day it's keto that was I mean I was going to interject that that was the biggest thing I found was like it's carbs calories like like how I was going to manage that because I was skipping a lot of breakfast and also you know a heavy meal at the end I would skip that too I had the bulk of what I would eat was like you know during that window and that took a long time for me to kind of bust through in terms of like I didn't feel that same kind of strength and energy in my workouts and didn't realize it until I actually started to put work in and I had to start with like a lot lower calorie intake for breakfast because my body just didn't want to include that and so it just took some effort but definitely like the timing of it did play quite a bit of a factor where I would add a bit more carbs right before the workout and then after so you know that's something to play around with yeah would you say there's like a certain range of carbs that I need to be in before a workout or kind of just whatever I feel the best all right it depends I mean yeah I guess that's the right answer but I would start with like you know start with this right if you feel really good on low carb I would go 50 to 60 grams of carbohydrates about an hour or two before your workout and then after your workout your post workout meal would have about 50 grams of carbohydrate so there you go 100 120 grams of carbs and that's it for the day so it's still low carb and you might even depending on how much activity you do and how hard your workouts you still might even be able to get in ketosis with that I know I can get in ketosis with about 100 grams of carbohydrates if I'm working out you know really hard but look I don't look I I like you I feel way better eating that way so yeah so what I if I want to maximize my performance and mental acuity that's how I do it I eat my carbs around my workout that's perfect well I'm gonna try that and see how that works for me you got some yeah thanks for calling in brother yeah thank you guys I appreciate it appreciate it you got it you know it's great about you know follow I guess you know kind of doing like a fitness journey and learning about yourself from whatever you can kind of start to figure this out and then you know as I've said many times on the show you can use your diet and your workout in ways to improve your life so like when I know I'm gonna go like often sometimes I'll go down to LA and I'll do these big podcasts right and I'll try to represent the team and I want to be sharp I don't care about you know how much I could squat or deadlift or if I have extra three pounds of muscle I want to be sharp on the show so what do I do I make sure I go into ketosis because I just feel my sharpest doing that and I'll utilize fasting and I'll eat no carbohydrates now if I want to like hit a new PR on my lift or I know we're gonna do a crazy workout or maybe I'm gonna be filmed working out which rarely ever happens but let's say I am well then I'll introduce some carbohydrates into my diet and you can do this you can do this and mess around with it to maximize the quality of your life you not only can do this you should learn to do this instead of becoming a zealot about a single like one way right yeah one way of eating because you've now attached oh keto is for me well okay for you for what reasons oh you like the the mental sharpness oh you like how there's less you're less bloated okay well those are all positive things but what about when you decide you want to go after a squat PR do you think keto is going to be the best thing for you I'll tell you it's not going to be or what if all of a sudden you decide you want to sign up for a Spartan race with your friends you think training for that on keto is going to be ideal for you probably not like so learning about your body and how it responds to all the different ways of eating and then learning how to ebb and flow in that and for what reasons that you change the diet I just think that everybody I mean this is later in my career this is how I used to train all clients is that when they would you're teaching them lifestyle so that's great at one point when they would they would hire me I would take them through like all the diets everything I would take them through all the popular right whether it be a a ketogenic or a you know intermittent fasting type of deal or a vegan diet and I'd let and I explained to them as we are like I'm I'm inquiring how do you feel what do you notice like okay cool you notice that this you feel this way in these times in your life this is a great opportunity to shift shift eating like this I'm not getting good sleep like I have a protocol for that I'm you know feeling some kind of indigestion constantly like I got a protocol for that I want more performance in the gym you know so you just start to figure out like what foods pair best of that or what calorie amounts or what timing with the whole thing and that's very important yeah and it's all fun it's all super fun you know one one thing I did notice on keto which is really I know obviously the mental acuity or whatever and it's probably five ten percent improvement so it's not huge but it's enough to where I can tell here's the other weird stuff I notice my skin becomes resilient to sunburns very strange so if I'm on keto and I go on the sun I don't sunburn as easily I don't get sore as much in my workouts and yeah those are the two the two big things that I noticed was a really really strange on a diet like that so if I'm going to go out and be on the sun a lot then I tend to do you know keto diet look if you like the show 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 us all 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 South today we're going to teach you everything you need to know to build a strong well-developed chest when I think of weak points and areas that I struggled with developing for a really long time chest was up there with the yeah it was for me it was for me for sure I got more caught up in the weight I could lift versus how I was developing my body I think it's one of the most challenging muscles to develop for most people because the form and technique