 In this episode of Mind Pump, we answer fitness and health questions asked by listeners like you. Now we open the episode with introductory conversation where we talk about current events, non-fitness topics, and about our lives. Here's what we talked about in this episode. We started by talking about space travel. Yeah. Telling about people who wanna fly to Mars. Okay, wait. Crazy, crazy people. Then I talked about a study done on resistance training and volume. They compared three types of volume, low volume training, moderate volume training, and high volume training. Pump up the volume, Sal. And then they looked at the results to see who built the most muscle. You're gonna have to listen to the episode to find out the results. Then there was another study I brought up on training to failure. Failure is when you lift a weight until you can't lift it anymore. Does that get you better results than stopping before that? Again, listen to the episode to find out the results of that study. Then we talked about using a sauna to fight sickness. Now this is a very interesting one. Using a sauna temporarily increases your core temperature. Simulating a fever, stimulating your immune system. Yes, there are studies that show that this actually may work. Simulating and stimulating. Now Adam likes to use Mind Pump sauna. We have a sauna by, it's a sanctuary wide jacuzzi infrared sauna. It's made by Clearlight Infrared. It's phenomenal. And they are one of our sponsors. So if you wanna get a sauna like the one we use here at Mind Pump and you wanna get those benefits, here's what you do. Go to infraredsana.com forward slash Mind Pump to look at those Clearlight Infrared saunas. You get up to $600 off when you mention Mind Pump. So when you get on there, tell them, hey, I heard about this place through Mind Pump. Then we talked about low vitamin D levels during the winter. A lot of people's vitamin D levels drop during the winter because of the less sunlight. It's depressing, so. And some researchers think that that may be why we have a flu season to begin with. So supplementing with vitamin D may be beneficial for a lot of people, but here's the thing. If your vitamin D levels are already high, supplementing with vitamin D won't do you any benefit. In fact, may actually do you harm. So how do you know if you need to supplement with vitamin D to get your immune system to be stronger and so that you're not at a deficiency? You can test your vitamin D levels at home. Everly Well is an at home test kit company that sends tests to your door. Very inexpensive. No doctor's prescription required. And yes, we have a hookup for you. Go to everlywell.com, that's E-V-E-R-L-Y-WELL, W-E-L-L. Dot com and use the code Mind Pump and get 15% off any tests on the whole site. Then I brought up the side effects of statins. These are cholesterol lowering drugs that have some mental side effects in people. Then we talked about how the box office raked in $11 billion, it's a massive year. We talked about Pokemon Go and worldwide how that's getting close to reaching a billion dollars. Apparently it still exists. In sales. And then I brought up a video I saw on kids and how to help them deal with their feelings. That was a cool discussion. Then we got into answering the questions. The first question, this person's doing stomach vacuums for the first time, getting great results in a smaller midsection. In stomach vacuums, that's a forgotten exercise. It's bodybuilders do that back in the day. Nobody really does those anymore. Doesn't actually involve a vacuum. Yeah, it doesn't involve vacuuming the house. But they're asking, look, are there any other exercises that people did way back in the day that we forgot about that have amazing results? So we talked about some of our favorite forgotten exercises in that part of the episode. Next question, this person's a hard gainer. They've downloaded our hard gainer guide. But they're having trouble getting enough calories. And they asked if getting a weight gainer from a company like Legion, Legion's a company we work with by the way, if that is gonna be valuable. So we talk about how to eat more food, strategies to increase your appetite, workouts that help you build muscle. And if you do wanna go the weight gainer route, Legion is a, again, it's a great company. And we have a discount. Go to bylegion.com forward slash mind pump. Use the code mind pump at checkout for 20% off your first order. Or if you're a current Legion consumer, you'll get double rewards points. The final, the next question was, what is the minimum macro calorie intake that you would like to see somebody at before they start to cut? So when you're trying to get leaner, you have to reduce your calories. But we always recommend people get their calories up to a certain point. In other words, get your metabolism fast before you start to cut, so you have room to go. So we give the numbers that we like to see people at before we start to do that. And the final question, this person can only work out in the morning and at the evening, but they have their best workouts in the midday. What kind of tips do we have for them to help them improve the productivity of their morning or late evening workouts? Also this month, maps hit is 50% off. Now hit is an acronym. It stands for high intensity interval training. Hit training has been shown in studies to burn more body fat in shorter periods of time. In other words, a 20 minute hit session can burn as much body fat as a 40 to 50 minute traditional cardio or workout session. So it's shorter time, great fat burning effect. The problem is most hit workouts are designed poorly. They dramatically increase risk of injury or they're just crappy workouts that don't produce great results. So we created maps hit. It's a full workout based around high intensity interval training. We included it with three levels, beginner, intermediate and advanced. So it's suitable for a lot of different people and it's got everything in there. It's got your workout demos, your exercise demos, blueprints, so you don't have to do any of the work. You just go in there, follow the program at the gym or at home if you have dumbbells and a barbell for excellent results. So that program's half off. Here's how you get the discount. Go to mapshit.com, that's M-A-P-S-H-I-I-T dot com and use the code HIT50, that's H-I-I-T-5-0, no space for that discount. Billionaire who's paid for the seat to go there. To Mars? No, no, no. Yeah, yeah, to Mars I think it is. I just read, so he's already like invested with, I think it's Elon, like that if and when we can do this, I want a, so he's a round trip or whatever there and he's gonna do it. There's no round trip to Mars. There's no coming back. There's a reality show that he's about to do about finding his partner, like he's gonna do like a bachelor at bachelor because he's looking for a girl to take. To Mars. Yeah, and he's a billionaire. Wow. Yeah, let me, I fucking read it this morning. That's a, okay, you guys know what a self-selection bias is, right? So like study, like they'll run a study. Eat the women away, go into Mars, 13 new astronauts. Okay, let me show you. So they'll run a study, but because of the study itself, automatically you get a bias of who will do the study. Yeah. Okay, so you're about to fly to Mars, which will probably take years and you're not gonna come back. No. What kind of group of women do you think would want to go with you? Yeah. Crazy. Yeah, real psychotic. Yeah. I want to get off earth. The kind that where it depends diapers just to follow you wherever you go. I don't know. The ones that want super fucking stardom, right? That won't care about being famous, because you're gonna be famous forever, right? You'll go down as the, okay, Japanese billionaires looking for a space girlfriend. Yes, you read that right. Space girlfriend? Space girlfriend. You sock them as war. The guy who's- What's his name? Yuzaka Mazwa. Okay. Yuzaka Mazwa. I thought I knew him. Sorry, I was wrong. The guy who's paying a pretty penny to become SpaceX first sp- Oh, it's okay, so just space tourist. This doesn't say it's going to Mars. I thought, dude, you go to Mars, you're not coming back. But still, listen though. The guy who's paying a pretty penny to become SpaceX first space tourist announced that he's looking for a life partner to travel to space with him. It doesn't end there. He's also plans to find this lucky lady by hosting a bachelor style reality TV competition. Wow. Isn't that funny? Yeah, yeah, that is. How, dude, you know what's crazy to me is how- It was a fashion moment. Like, now if the girl agrees, she's probably going to feel some pressure to at least- Put out? Give him a hand job or something, right? Because he just bought you millions of dollars- You're in the zero gravity club at that point. Yeah, your phone, no. Yeah. You know what I mean? What's that? Yeah. Oh, whoa. Hey! It's on my head. We got some floaters. You know what? I've never heard anyone talk- Do they have- Do any of the astronauts, they got to have sex. They had to, right? I don't think they have sex, but they're sure they jerk off. Does that ever happen? What? Space sex? Yeah, somebody had- Somebody had done it. Yeah, somebody had to be like- Do you know what the ratio- James Bond did. Yeah. Thanks, Doug. Moonraker. He did. Did you look- Google that. There's got to be somebody who had sex in space. Hold on a second, bro. First person to have sex in space. Do you know what the ratio of female to male astronauts is out in space? I don't know. It's terrible. It doesn't matter. If you're the one female, I'm sure every dude's trying. I mean- You're in space. There's no rules. Space train. That's terrible. Yeah. And there could be gay sex, too. So it doesn't- Any sex. I mean, it's all free form at that point. If it doesn't count, it is all the same. No, it doesn't count. If astronauts have had space sex- Very difficult. Astronauts also have a demanding work schedule, leaving them with little energy time to messing around. That's a stupid argument. That is stupid. That's a stupid argument. Did you see, though, they are trying to actually build a kind of a hotel in space. They're trying to work their way so it's like a tourist thing. They fly up there. They stay a night up there in space. I don't know if it's in the atmosphere or just outside it or what, but they're already working on this. Space hotel. I would do that. But do you know that- That actually is really cool. Yeah, I would do that. Do you guys know it's dangerous to stay in zero gravity for too long? Did you guys read about that? Let's consider too long. That's a good question. That's a good question. There was- Well, for your body, for sure, like what are the damages? All of it. It's not just your body, psychologically, too. Because remember the human body evolved with gravity and so what they did is they actually did a test. If I'm not mistaken, there's Moon Raker. Thanks, Doug. Yeah. That movie came out when you were- That did 60. Doug, can you just pull up- Just rake it. Pull up the astronaut who lived in space too long or something like that or the whatever. Doug was too excited to look for that. He's like, I know I've seen a few porn. So you remember this? So there was this- They're spinning everything. I believe they were twins. I believe one of them stayed on Earth. The other one went into space and lived there for a full year. And then he came back and- This is a true story you're talking about in the movie. Here it is, Scott Kelly. And I don't know if he had a twin. I don't know, maybe I made that part up, but it was a one-year mission to see how low gravity would affect the body. And- What did they find? Oh, dude, he had terrible issues. Terrible health issues. Anxieties, depressions, his bones weakened. He exercised in everything in space too to try and reverse some of that stuff. Digestion was all fucked up when he came back. Because- Oh, I'm sure, yeah. It's a year- You're lying gravity, appreciating that. Justin and I are talking about staying a weekend at the hotel. That's not- We're not about staying there for a- Yeah, you'll be all right. He'll bounce back. When was the last time you had more than a 10-day vacation, dude? You're not going to space for a year? A whole year. I don't know, yeah. I wonder what the side effects were. If you could find those, Doug, I'd love to see what some of those side effects were. Yeah, I just find it funny. People want so badly to go to Mars, you know? Like, it totally has to be that, like I'm the Christopher Columbus. I'm like the undiscovered territory thing, but you're going to die. There's nothing there that's inviting. Yeah, and you're not- Yeah, but you know what though? That's a really good, that's a great analogy. I mean, probably at that time, when people were talking about doing it, there was probably fear around, would there be food? Would we be able to survive? You mean for like Christopher Columbus? Yeah, I mean, you don't think that- Oh yeah, they were the- Dude, Lewis and Clark, who explored North America, they didn't have a map, they had not, they didn't know what they were doing. Right, so they were- They was basically like going to Mars. Right, so it definitely had to have the similar type of fears. Well, here's the difference though. When you go up to Mars today- You can actually see food, and shoot it with an arrow or something. Yeah, you know there's something to kill. Yeah, there's something. Well, you think nothing there. No, when you're traveling to somewhere where no one's ever been, they don't know that. They don't, you're right, you're right. But here's the difference though. When you're leaving Spain in hundreds of years ago to go to New World, you're not leaving something awesome to go somewhere scary. You're kind of like, this place sucks, I'm just gonna go see what happens. You're leaving Earth now. A lot of people think- You're 2020. A lot of people think Earth sucks. Really? I think we're doomed. A lot of people think we're idiots. There's a lot of people that think we're doomed. Come on, we've all talked to many people who believe that. Sure, but at the moment, is the best place to live ever? Yeah, yeah. Well, again, same thing they were saying about that. At the moment, that was- The one thing, Chris, like, if they still believed the world was flat, right? And then like you reach the edge and you like fell off, like that might be kind of scary. Don't flat Earthers say that the reason why that doesn't happen is because there's an ice wall. Yeah, there's an ice wall like in the Game of Thrones. Surrounding the world. That's what they say. Something crazy like that. They said at the edges of the Earth- Are ice walls? Yeah, massive ice walls. That nobody's seen. Yeah, yeah. Well, or that people have seen, but it's the biggest- We're just a spinning pizza disc. Most elaborate conspiracy theory of all time. Like every pilot and like boat ship captain is in on it. You know what I mean? When you get to the end- They're just really going back and forth. Yeah, FBI calls you up like, hey, you've reached the ice wall. They're not gonna tell anybody, okay? Yeah. We have- We have some smart people here. We've screenshotted the porn pages you look at, so you're not gonna tell anybody that you could fall off the side of the Earth. Anyway. Oh, I gotta tell you guys about a couple new studies that came out on resistance training. Oh, yeah. New? Yeah. You know what I love about studies, some of these well-made studies, is that, well, you know what? I'm gonna read you guys the study and then I wanna hear what you guys think the results are, okay? These rats are people. No, these are people. It's the resistance training. These are exercise people. What were the rats doing last time when we asked him? Playing. Rats are playing with you. Now these rats are lifting dumbbells? No, these are not. Yeah. This is a human study. So there's three groups, okay? The three groups are following the exact same workout. So the exercises on one of the days, I'll give you one of the days as an example, bench press, dumbbell fly, cable triceps extension, back squat, leg extension, okay? So that's one of the days. The next day would be lat pull down, dumbbell reverse fly, bicep curl, seated leg curl. So those are the two workouts. They're gonna do them twice a week. So you know, workout A, workout B. All three groups are. Yes, rest, workout A, workout B, okay? What are our variables? Now, here's the variables. Workout, group one does four sets of every exercise. Group two does six sets of every exercise. Group three does eight sets of every exercise. They trained with a relatively high intensity, so apparently everything was good. Which group, Oh, interesting. Do you think had the most gains? Now let's count that for a second. Yeah, that's total. You gotta pay attention. That's eight, that's, you got 16. But remember, the body parts are only being worked twice a week. Twice a week, with some exercises, there's dual things. You had like, didn't I hear chest fly with bench press? Yeah, a little bit. But mainly it's like one body part twice a week. But yeah, you're right. So yeah, and if you have someone do an eight, eight, that's 16, potentially 16 to 32 sets on it. My guess without just that information alone, I'm gonna guess the one in the middle. Close. Got the best results. Close, it was actually the most, the higher volume. The highest volume. The highest volume. Now, okay, in how short of a study too. Well, that's a good question. I should pull up how long that study was, but it's 2018 study, which is pretty cool. And oh, I should say this, the groups were intermediately trained, so they were not beginners. So they did have some experience lifting weights. But the higher volume, the higher volume group built muscle. And if you think about it, when you look at it on paper, Adam, it's not a ton of volume if you really think about it. It's a decent amount of volume, but not a ton. But it was superior. The middle volume group did better than the lowest volume group. So volume definitely makes a big difference. Well, I've been making that case for some time on this podcast. I know, I know. That measuring that is like one of the single best things that somebody, and here's the thing that I find interesting about measuring volume is just your behaviors, what ends up happening. If you don't track it, and you've never tracked before, and then you begin tracking, one of the things that you start to realize really quick is that you have these natural ebb and flows where you're higher one week, lower the next week, and then over the course of one month or three months, many people that are stuck in plateaus kind of average the same amount of volume week to week, even though they may have a high week for two weeks in a row, and then like a moderate to low. But when you look at it as a whole over the course of two or three months, you kind of find this homeostasis for volume, and you just kind of hover around there. Yes, you change exercises, maybe switch programming up, maybe you hired intense days these days, but overall, you kind of hover around the same. And the single best thing when I was competing to like guarantee change in growth, and my physique was gradual, increased volume week over week over week, and just a little bit. And being very methodical about that, I'm gonna start off with the least amount of work to elicit most amount of change, and then every week I'm gonna make sure I give a little bit more volume. You said the intensity was pretty much shared in each group, the same efforts exerted. It says they went to failure. Now here's the thing though, studies, when they go to failure, it's basically when form breaks down. So they don't treat failure the same way people in gyms tend to treat failure, but you can rest assured it was an intense workout. But you asked a great question, Adam, you asked how long the study was. I found it. How long? Eight weeks long. Now it makes perfect sense. Totally does. Of course it does. So if I had a year-long study of this exact same thing, what I think would show the most amount of results is starting in the amount of volume that group one is at, then progressing to group two. Graduating. Then progressing to group three, versus any of those staying at one for the entire, even the highest volume, because then if you looked at total volume for the year, group three would still have more volume over the course of the year, but I think that there would be, you would see more value, and you would see more gains if you progressively worked up to that over the course of a year, then jump right into it with that much value. Yeah, because the wall that they would hit. Yeah, because they're almost at the peak already. They're hitting 32 sets per body part per week. In eight week period, that's probably going to elicit decent gains. For sure. If you have some experience, a beginner's going to probably overtrain right away, but just somebody who's got some experience, great. But how hard do you think the wall's going to be that they hit after five months, six months of doing 32 sets per body part? I mean, the wall's going to be as hard as the one that's around the earth. That doesn't let us fall off it. Yeah, that thing's holding strong. All right, so I have another study on training failure. So this is on lifting to failure. And this one involved experienced lifters. So these were lifters who had a decent amount of experience. It was around on average eight years of experience lifting three times a week. So they're big dudes who've been working out for a little while. Now they both did workouts. The only difference between the two was one group took their every single set to real failure. And the other group stopped just short of failure. Who do you think got the best progress? Over what's the how length? What's the length of study? I'm going to find the study for you. Cause I got to find that. Well, you're going to run in the exact same problem. Again, if it's in a short eight week or less window, the people that went to failure every single time are going to probably see the most results. But if we stretch that over the course of months, you know, three months, six months and beyond, I would speculate the group that came short to failure. Now I can't find, I'm trying to look how long it was, but typically these studies are done for eight to, you know, for two to three months type of deal. So I'm going to assume that's what it was. But yeah, going to failure resulted in less gains. Oh, less even. Wow, even in a short period. Well dude, that's interesting. I mean, going, okay, consider this. Going to failure sometimes, and even bodybuilders like Dorian Yates who talked about this, going to hard failure sometimes is more intense for people who know how to work out, oftentimes than for beginners. Because when you're experienced, you can push your body. And you're going to fail in every single set. That's just another study to study the support what we talk about, which is going to failure is just, it's too much intensity most of the time for most people, even if you're experienced sometimes. You're pushing outside your ability. Totally, absolutely, totally. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Anyway, I saw you in the sauna yesterday, Adam. Was it to get your cold to go away? Yeah, I mean, I haven't worked out now for over two weeks. I have intentions of either today or tomorrow being the day one. I've been kind of waiting till I completely recover. I was actually doing, I had a bunch of calls that I had to make with partners and stuff like that. I was doing all your calls in the sauna. Yeah, well, because the infrared, this one, like you can- It won't melt your phone. Yeah, no, so I could totally multitask and do that and I know obviously, ideally, I'm in there doing like meditation and relaxing and stretching, but honestly, I was going in there more because I wasn't feeling good and kind of sweating it out and I always feel way better afterwards. So, I used to, I feel so bad now because I used to point people in the wrong direction. I would get, when I would manage gyms, I would have members come in and ask me about the sauna and they would say things like, oh, you know, when I'm sick, I can come in here and just kind of sweat it out. I've always heard that, right? And I'd be like, no, it doesn't do that. It doesn't help you get better faster. That's a myth or whatever. Just feels good. I used to push people away from it. Well, it turns out I was totally wrong and it really goes back to how your body reacts when it has an infection. What happens when you're sick and you have an infection? You get a fever. Core temperature rises. You get a fever. And this is common among a lot of animals. Even cold-blooded animals, when they get ill, they move to warmer places to warm their bodies up. And scientists now know why that happens. Now, first off, your body temperature going up slows down the replication of the virus or bacteria. So it actually kind of prevents the bacteria and virus from replicating quickly. But it does other things. It actually activates immune cells and creates conditions that are more favorable for immune cells to travel through blood vessels and do what they're supposed to do. So they've done studies on animals where they don't even give them an infection. They just raise their body temperature and then they'll monitor these immune cells and they'll find that the immune cells go up. So just the heat alone boosts your immune system. Stimulates your defense system. Right, it's like a fake fever, if you will. And this may be why I brought those other studies up before where they were, these are really well-made studies where they show that people who use saunas regularly have significantly less colds and flus because they raise their body temperature up. I know this is only anecdotal, but I literally in the last probably, I don't know, I'd say three months or so, I've been the most inconsistent with my sauna use and like my hot cold contrast, which I was doing really consistently for a while there, and my vitamin D supplementation, those two things. I got, I ran into my vitamin D a little while ago and I just fucking busy and got around to ordering it and keep forgetting, forgetting whatever. And then I just hadn't been using the sauna as much as I was using it a while ago. And sure as shit, I got fucking sicker than a dog and I hadn't been sick in forever. It's been so long since I've been knocked down, especially knocked down as bad as I got knocked down right now. Dude, you mentioned vitamin D. Some researchers think that that's the reason why there's a flu season to begin with. Because you wonder like- Because of the deficiency? Yeah, like, because it's kind of weird, right? Why, and in the past, they would say things like, oh, we're closer together. We're indoors, we're, you know, so we're spreading disease more or whatever. But that evidence is a little weak. There is some researchers that believe that it's because of the lack of sun exposure are already kind of low vitamin D levels, because we tend to be indoors no matter what, get even lower. And if you think about it, the peak of the flu season is like February. If I'm not mistaken, maybe Doug, you can look that up. I think it's like right around February. Yeah, it's always in the winter for sure. It is. And so it's almost like you've had a couple months of less and less sunlight. And then vitamin D levels go down, down, down. Now you're primed- Leasing more susceptible. Well, especially somebody, I mean, when I tested my vitamin D levels, I was low and that was like in the summertime. So I was already somebody, what was it say? Yeah, February. February is one of the highest months for the flu. If you look at that graph right there, it kicks off in December and look at February. Oh, that's crazy. And it makes sense because you're in, in many places of the US, for example, October, November, December and January are all kind of darker months. So you're not getting a lot of sunlight. Vitamin D levels are dropping. By the time you hit a deficiency, it's probably January, February, boom, the flu. So my advice, if you haven't been sick right now is to be doing your hot, cold contrast training. So sauna, cold plunges and then test and see if you have low vitamin D levels and then start to supplement potentially if you have lower levels. You know what the problem with testing for vitamin D is you go to the doctor, you ask your doctor for prescription for a test and they're gonna say why. Use every well test. Oh, right. Yeah, that's simple. That's right. They do vitamin D testing on them. I mean, that's where I, I mean, you mentioned that for my psoriasis way back when, even before we were working with every well. But I mean, that confirmed it, man. Once I, when I took that test and I was already supplementing with 5,000 I use already and still tested low. So for me- How long were you supplementing for when you took that test? That's a good question because it was a while ago now. It was when we first started working with everyone. We've been with them now for over a year. So I can't remember, Sal. I know it was at least a few weeks that I had already been supplementing for them with it. It takes a while to build up vitamin D levels. Right, right, right. So I know it'd been a little while. I don't know how long to be honest with you though. But I mean, just the simple fact that I was taking it and I know I had been taking it for a little while at least and I was still testing low. I was blown away by that. Well, I take in real, I wanna be clear here. This can depend on the individual. So what I do may not work for you and it may actually raise your vitamin D levels too high. Having levels of D that are too high are not good for you either. You wanna be- That's why you wanna test. Yeah, that's why you wanna test because if you're already super high supplementing is gonna make you not healthy. But I was supplementing with 5,000 IUs between four to 5,000 IUs a day for a long time. I mean, years. I've been taking cod liver oil forever, which that already has at least between one to 2,000 IUs in the dose that I take. Then I'll supplement with an additional 2,000 or 3,000 in capsule form, at least for a year, the cod liver oil longer than that, probably four or five years. So I've been supplementing with vitamin D for a long time. I got tested, I did the Everly Well test and I was in the perfect amount. So what does that tell you? That tells you that I needed to supplement that whole time because of the lack of sun exposure that I get. So now along those lines of medicine and all that stuff, do you guys know the connection? You guys know Stanton's are, right? Stanton's are drugs that, you know, they prescribe to people to lower the cholesterol. It's to lower cholesterol. I thought Stanton was blood pressure too. No, blood pressures are like, I think calcium channel blockers and stuff like that, but beta blockers are regulate heart rate, maybe even calcium channel. But anyway, Stanton's prevent the liver from producing as much cholesterol as it normally would. And so it lowers your cholesterol levels and it does so reliably and very effectively. They're some of the most popular prescribed drugs. They keep lowering the threshold for when you need to get prescribed Stanton's, in my opinion, probably to increase the amount of consumers that they can prescribe them to. But anyways, did you guys know the connection between Stanton's and mental health issues like depression and even in some cases, changes in personality? No. Yes, there's a, and that's actually one of the well-known side effects of taking Stanton's, which I kind of knew, but I didn't know that it was established. I thought maybe it was like- Isn't that most depression medications they're finding? It's like it totally changes your behavior on some level? They, yeah, but they're totally different. So antidepressants, the most popular types of antidepressants work with serotonin in the brain. And what they do is they increase circulating levels of serotonin in the brain through preventing it or reducing the reuptake of it, right? Which makes sense, because then what happens, your body gets adapted to you taking something exogenous and then you no longer are probably producing it at normal natural levels anymore. So I would assume that if you're not on it, that's where the depression comes from. Or I think we, I think it is, it may help with depression, but we don't completely know the effects that increasing levels of serotonin in the brain will have on the body. And could that change your personality? Oh yeah, changing. You know, that's what we're trying to do with depression. We're trying to lift the depression. But anyway, statins have been shown to reduce cognitive ability and there's a depression risk with statins because cholesterol is so healthy for the brain. It's essential for brain. In fact, your brain tissue is the most cholesterol, one of the most cholesterol dense parts of your body. If you take your brain out and you analyze how much cholesterol is packed full of cholesterol. Part of the building block of the cell, right? Yeah, dude, so you got all these people on statins. And so, you know, what I would like to look up, and I'm gonna try doing this a little later, is I'd like to look up the percentage of people who are on statins who are then later prescribed antidepressants. Because I bet you that number is, I wonder if that number is alarming. How many people take statins off to take depression? Yeah, so like, because statins are typically prescribed to people over like 45, 50. So in that group over 50 is the higher, they have the highest rate of antidepressant. Well, nobody's motivated to test that, right? Because that's a whole industry, the way they can find numbers, they give you the solution to that, which is in this pill form, which will lower that cholesterol number substantially, but the side effect may be depression. Yeah, so here's a pill for that. Yeah, so now I'll give you this. You guys are trained people in advanced age. Do you guys ever get a list of their medication? Do you have to? Oh my God. Dude, it's substantial. Do you remember the first time that you had 20 pills? Yeah, like multiple times a day. Yeah, I remember the first time that happened. The irony is that you end up, you have one or two things going on with you and you have to take a prescription or two for that. But because of that, you end up having to take three other prescriptions, the counter or the side effects of what those are taking. That's how they get to that like 20 pills. I will never forget, there was a woman that I trained, she was 82 years old, and this is when I started to really figure out that I enjoyed training this group of people. So she comes in wonderful lady and as part of my gathering information, I asked her for medications, not because I'm a doctor, but just because I wanna look and see if there's anything that contraindicates certain types of exercise, things I need to work out for, plus I would contact the doctor, let them know that I'm training this woman, is there anything I need to know or whatever. So she brings in this list of medications and it was three pages long. It was a printed, she printed it out on her computer. And there were drugs that didn't seem to make sense. So I said, oh, this is, why do you take this laxative? And she's like, oh, I take that one because this other drug makes me constipated. Yeah, why do you take this anti-anxiety medication? Well, because this other drug tends to make me feel anxious, you know, why do you take these sleeping pills? Well, ever since I started to taking this other drug, I've had trouble sleeping. And I couldn't believe how many of the drugs were there to counter the other half of the drugs. You just become a chemistry experiment. It was insane, the amount of medications that they were on. It was just crazy. And that age group, every time I trained somebody over the age of 65, they'd bring me a list of their medications. It was always at least one, usually three or more. That was the more often than not. No, we had to bring something up that, you know, anytime that we're wrong, you know, we always shed light on it, right? And it's not often. Were we wrong or were you wrong? It's not often, is it? Well, actually happened occasionally. I think we, you know, I think, Oh, no, you're looking at me. What do they do? I definitely, I'm pretty sure that we were all. Could have been me. I think we were all in agreeance on this. And that was in, you know, we were taught, we always talk a lot about streaming services. We talk about Netflix and Disney Plus and all that shit. And one of our expertise. Right. Yeah. Absolutely. This is why we're wrong, right? This is not our expertise. We do much better. We throw a fucking spaghetti on the wall. Much better predicting shit in the fitness space, right? So we should stay in our lane. But, you know, we like to have fun and speculate on other. Well, that's no fun. Other industries. And one of the things that we speculated on was, like the box offices, like movie theaters. And I was reading actually an article this morning that said that this is the fifth year in a row of them doing $11 billion in box office in just the U.S. worldwide. So they're doing better than we thought. Well, what they are is they're maintaining, right? So they're not losing. I think we predicted that. Well, I'm glad we're wrong on that. It's only a matter of time that they would be closing down. And we were talking about all the ways they were pivoting by showing football and MMA fights now and there. And now everybody has the luxury seats and they're serving food. So, you know, it's not dying. It's maintaining. So it's interesting to me that it's still producing that kind of revenue. I think. That's great. Well, look at the movies that they're producing that are making all the money. They're all superhero films and fantasy type films. Yeah. It's funny because a lot of the Hollywood, like, directors out there talk a lot of shit about that. They're like, oh, it's just none of it is art anymore. It's all like theme park movies, you know? And it's like, yeah, okay, you know, you could make that argument for sure, but people fucking love it, you know? It's like, again, like this is one of those things that's like give people what they really want or challenge them. And we haven't seen a lot of movies out there that challenge people. Well, before any streaming came along or anything like that. But I mean, I used to, I don't know if you guys are the same one. There were movies that like, I used to say it must see it in theater and there are other movies I didn't care about. And the ones that were must see were the action crazy, what loud, you know, explosive action type movies I had to see inside theater. The others, I always said, oh, wait, it comes out on DVD. You know what I would like to see? I would like to see how many tickets that is because the price of movies keeps going up. So what if the revenue is big and flat because they're not selling more tickets. They're just selling more expensive tickets. Oh yeah, I mean, that's, but I mean, that's just that smart business pivot, right? It's like you, okay, we're gonna get less traffic. That's a fact. There's more people staying home and streaming but how do we not die as an industry? Okay, let's find clever ways to increase the dollar amount per person by including packages and higher price point because we were offering different services. And that's exactly what they've done. At the end of the day, I mean, that's what makes a very good industry is that they have found a way to handle this new onslaught of a generation of people that don't go to movies because they'd rather stream at home and stay in Netflix and chill and they still have managed to maintain. Now, you know what? It may be novel too right now the streaming because it's so convenient and everything's at your house but it's a totally different experience when you go to the theater. Everybody's there laughing, like you kind of react based off of everybody else's feeling. It's like this group feeling, as you're watching what's in front of you. So a lot of people still really enjoy that. I also, you know, very good point and it's like a date and an event, right? Like nobody's like, you know- Something to do? Yeah, it is, it's something. And maybe it's because having a son right now and watching so much television. I've watched more television the last six months than I have probably in the previous 20 years maybe. And I feel disgusting sometimes after a while. I really do. You just never left your house. No, I really do. There's a problem. A series like Gets Me, right? It sucks me in. And then I binge it, you know? And then I look at the clock and I'm like, holy shit, like I watched here. I've just sat here all day. Yeah, five hours, like five hours glued to like the same fucking show and I feel dirty. Yeah, I feel dirty afterwards. I do, like no one's ever, am I alone on this or what? I'm still in my jammies. And so I think there's, I think that's, I can't be the only person who feels that way when they get sucked in. You're like, I've watched five hours of TV, I feel gross. Let's go to the movies and watch TV there. Let's go do some production. Well, I mean, what I think we may see, and this was to Justin's point, that it's, you know, the streaming thing at home is still novel, right? It's still novel, it's competitive more and more. But eventually, and you see this with some streaming services are going back to the old model of releasing one episode per week versus the, here's the whole season. To prevent the shame. Yeah. You know, I'm right. I mean, you drip you your drug. Yeah, I can't, I can't be the only. Exactly. No, I really do think that, man. You know what I remember that? I don't know if this still happens, but part of me thinks it doesn't happen as much anymore because it's different or part of me thinks I just don't know what happens because I don't go to opening days for movies anymore. But I remember when I was a kid, when certain movies would come out like Batman. Remember when Batman came out, the first one with Michael Keaton? I remember the line being like out the theater. Oh, it's so crazy. Does it still do that? Oh, yeah. Yeah. It depends on the movie, yeah. I remember that like Jurassic Park was like that where we were just around the block and we had to wait forever. I mean, I think almost every time a Star Wars comes out, it sells out. This is the first time, so the last year and the year before that, like for the newer like relaunch of it, like I went a little bit later because I was like, I don't want to go when everybody's like, you know, it's super crowded, crazy, whatever. And so like this year, I was like, no, I'm gonna do it like right, like the screening before it's even launched, you know? And like I want to get there like with all like the super fans. And it was so much better. Was it really? It was so much better, dude. Everybody really fucking wanted to be there. They're not going there just like, oh, I don't know if this is gonna be any good. You know, like that kind of bullshit energy. You know, it's like, you know, I'm wearing my robe. I got my lightsaber, you know? Like there's people like Princess Leia buns, you know, they're cheering, it's throwing fucking popcorn. It's a totally different experience. We went to go watch Boss Lady. I think it was called, don't watch it. Boss Lady? Terrible, terrible. Is that recent? Yes, dude. Is it a cartoon? No, it's a movie. I don't know if it's called Boss Lady or the big boys with Salma Hayek plays this, this like CEO of this makeup company. It's supposed to be a comedy. You get roped into watching some interesting movies. You know why though? Because I liked, I'll go to any movie. I love the movies. I love sitting in a theater and chilling or whatever. Like listening to Inya when you work out. Yeah. The notebook too, so it's rare on the floor. Along the lines of more things we were wrong at, right? Everything I was reading this morning, I swear like, fuck, we were wrong there again. We talked maybe like six months ago about Pokemon Go and how it just like, it was a one hit wonder. It exploded and then we never heard about it again. Wrong. Made $894 million in 2019. Which was more than their launch. So it's bigger. It was bigger. Is that because of worldwide sales? I guess. It has to be. You know, and all the, I'm sure you have all the stuff that they made off of it. Like I'm sure there's coloring books and toys and all kinds of other bullshit around it. So, but man, $894 million in 2019. Yeah, it's still, it's still a viable business. That's crazy. Yeah. It just like came and went like, for a while there, you almost saw kids out there everywhere with their phone, just like kind of scanning areas. I remember it became a problem because like people were walking into different parts of like private land where they weren't supposed to be in. People were, you know, like getting in trouble because they're trespassing. No, it would be really interesting to see, I don't know where. It's gotta be worldwide sales. That's what I think. Yeah, worldwide. I think Chinese kids started doing it. Seriously. I thought they were first. They weren't they first and we were second. Were they? I thought so. I don't remember to be honest. Maybe Japanese. But I mean, but here's the thing. I mean, I'm sure continued app sales and people, you know, whenever we saw it, I guarantee we weren't the last country to get on board. So I'm sure it got other countries adopted later on and that probably drove a lot. And then what all of these things do like surprising, it becomes a big, you know, like a good example of this is you guys remember, I know, well, maybe you guys don't because you guys don't have young enough kids anymore, but you know, the shark to do to do. You know, baby shark. Yeah, baby shark or whatever. Are you showing your son that? He hasn't seen it. Oh no, he has seen it. I think. Like he said to do to do. Yeah. Shark to do to do. Don't do it. Don't do it. But that is every listen every listen. I mean, what a phenomenon that becomes, right? It blows up first on something like YouTube. And I think I think it's like one of the few videos. I think it's even in the like hunt either hundreds of millions or billion views. It's crazy on how many views. But from that, I mean, they have now, if you go to like Target or, you know, any of the toy stores you've got, they have a whole line of products around that. And now there's all these different sequels to it. It's, it's insane. They're on do to do shark. Oh, look, there's a Pokemon. Oh, there you go. By the way, that movie, that movie was called like a boss that you should not watch. So let it go. Okay. So what does that say there Doug? It looks like Asia, Asia Pacific. Yeah. Asia Pacific is definitely the biggest user of Pokemon. Now, does that include, so Asia Pacific. Is that shocking? Does that include, so that's Japan. Does that include China? I would say so. Interesting how it continued to dramatically climb. So the US, it looked like it flattened out a little bit or grew a little bit, but not big. Still a little growing. Bro, US went from first year, launched 27 to 67. It's still three weeks. Yeah, but I'm looking at the like previous year went from 60 to 67. So not, but look at Asia Pacific. Yeah. That went last year. Gangbusters. 240 was at five, 240 to 300. I mean, that's, look at that growth right there. And is this just the app, Doug, that you're looking at? Yes. Right. So I mean, who knows what they did revenue on other revenue streams too. That's a number of active users of Pokemon Go worldwide. So combined, that looks like you're looking at over half a billion people playing one thing. Dude, here's another viral thing I just don't understand. So I know like, I don't know if it's in Japan, Korea or China, like there's this whole like, you know, proper way to eat. Like it's not like, I've talked about this. You can talk about where they just get really super messy and just like slap their face with, eat weird, huge bowls of food and they smack their lips. And there's like, eating normal and then all of a sudden they're just like slapping all over their face. There's a name for it. There's a name. What's it called? Do you know what it's called? You bring it up and you don't know the name of it. I don't know. Shame on you. Like you've never done that. I get it. I get it. I get it. Hypocrite. Yeah. Yeah. Only one of us actually reads it. That's another one. Yeah. We need somebody to know it. I did. I talked to, it's like some of the most viral YouTube videos are these videos. Yeah. It sucked me in. That's just mind blowing to me. Where they just eat loud and it records the sounds of their. Yeah, they slurp it in and it's just like all over the face. So there's an actual phobia against mouth noises. I forgot the name of it, but Jessica has it to a small degree, which I feel bad for because she's with this guy. Yeah, I know. I'm the same way too. Like I get, it's hard for me when someone's smacking their lips like crazy. Dude, I was watching this video on raising kids and I thought this was a really fascinating thing to kind of bring up. And at first it shows this little kid who's freaking out because I forgot what I think they didn't have their blanket or something. And so mom and dad are just there. Just there letting the kid freak out, hugging them when they want to hug, kind of making sure that they don't hurt themselves as they lose their temper or whatever. And you watch in this video and after about a few minutes, I think it was like three minutes of this kid screaming the kid puts their thumb in their mouth, walks over to dad and gives them a hug. And so then the video talks about how to handle your kids and their strong feelings. And they said, one of the worst things you could do to a kid is make them feel bad for having their feelings or not feeling accepted. So like your kid gets real angry and you're like, hey, you can't get angry in this house, go in your room or don't cry, whatever. They said that that actually doesn't help a kid evolve the way that they feel things. They said, what you should do is allow your kid to feel and acknowledge it. I can see that you're sad right now. Of course, don't let them hurt themselves or others. Let them feel it and then discuss with them when they're done. And I've tried this now with my daughter a couple of times. Now my daughter's older, she's 10, but she'll get really angry about certain things. And I've tried this a couple of times and it's like a hack. It's like an incredible hack. Like I forgot what she got so mad at but she'll get mad if like- Well, instead of trying to fix it or like doing something- Or fix their feelings, right? So I don't remember what it was. She, I think with her socks didn't match or something like that. And she got all like, ah, you know, losing her temper. And I'm like, wow, it looks like you're really upset. I can see that. Yeah, but I said, okay. I said, listen, you let me know when you feel better and let me know what you'd like me to do. And so she did, she lost her temper, got really pissed off. Then she finally, she got calm and she came to me and she's like, I'll just wear these other socks. Now, had I told her, you're gonna wear these other socks and you're gonna stop freaking out. It would have lasted, you know, 30 minutes. Now, I wonder if that works similar to like what I do right now. I mean, Katrina hates this when I do this. But I don't know, I just, I feel like I don't want to, one, raise my emotions too. I also don't want to allow him to train me by things, by screaming or crying. So, you know, there every once in a while like right now Max is teething, right? So he will throw like, just at nighttime sometimes he'll just all of a sudden throw this crazy tantrum and he's kicking and screaming. And you could tell he's just, he's hurting, he doesn't want to go to bed, all the above, whatever. And normally it's pretty easy. Katrina and I rarely ever have to go up to put him back down to bed. We let him cry for what they call the 10 minute method. He cries for 10 minutes and then we go in there and we console him and then put him back to sleep. And he normally goes down unless like he's having one of these fits and he had one of these the other night. And, you know, we have the monitors you can hear and see everything. So she's, you know, even though I go up there, I know she can't stop but stare and watch and listen to everything, right? So I'll go up there sometimes. And if I, and first thing I'll try and console him. And if I notice he's just pissed and throwing a fit instead of like trying or getting frustrated, I'll actually just lay down on the bed next to him and just let him fucking cry. Yeah. And just scream and cry. But he knows you're there. Yeah, and I'll be rubbing his chest. Hey, it's, and everyone's gonna say, it's okay buddy. And I just, and he's crying and she'll come in and she's like, what are you doing? What are you doing? Let him have his feelings. He's fine. I'm right here. I'm not leaving him. I'm not yelling yet. I'm not doing anything. I'm just allowing him to get it all out and just know that I'm right here. I'm not, and most importantly, what I think that. And you'd make sure it's not diaper. It's not. Yeah, yeah. Right, right. I know it's all none of those things, right? And what I think happens a lot to parents is because I can trust me inside, I feel it. You get frustrated and you want to escalate, right? You want to be upset now that they're upset and then it turns into just no good. So it's really me keeping myself calm and like, hey, this is his only way of communicating right now. He's trying to express whatever. But I also don't want him to think that every time he throws a tantrum, I come to his beck and call and then do whatever he wants. But then I'm also there for him. So I don't know. This is an area where her and I kind of go back and forth on how we do things. And I do that and she. Well, the fact that you're there is different than leaving him and letting him cry. Right. Totally different. And that's what this video showed. This little kid was losing his shit. And the dad, when every once in a while, the little kid would like, you know, try to bang his head on the wall or whatever and the dad kind of puts his hand there to stop him or he wants to throw something. He grabs it. No, don't throw that and just lets the kid feel it. And then you can see the kid afterwards kind of process it. And like I said, I've done it a couple of times. Again, my daughter's older, but it makes perfect sense. Adults are like that too though. Yeah, I think the fear is that, you know, that pattern of behavior is going to continue, which, you know, you don't realize they're kids. All this stuff is new. They're figuring it out. All these feelings are brand new. And, you know, like we project our own, like, well, I would never, you know, scream or cry. Like we do that a lot. I even catch myself with that, you know, every now and then like, why did he react like that? That's just like, that's crazy. Like, but they're still figuring out how to cope and how to, you know, properly conduct themselves, you know, in situations. And so, yeah, it's definitely something, you kind of have to pull your own self out of it, let them work through it, and then, you know, hopefully like they build that knowledge themselves. All right, our first question is from Stephen Baldwin. I started doing Dave. Is he a real Stephen Baldwin? Well, he is a real Stephen Baldwin, but I don't think he's the actor. I started doing daily stomach vacuums for the first time about a month ago, and have seen significant results in a short period of time. My question is, what other unique or forgotten exercises should I be doing that will have similar benefits and results? You know, it's, I'm glad somebody- I like Alec Baldwin actually. Yeah, I'm glad you guys posted this question because there's an exercise that I think is going to become forgotten pretty soon. We've put it in quite a few of our programs because we all value it, but I just don't see people doing it almost ever. It definitely wasn't being done when I was managing gyms. And even now, when I go and I work in gyms or workout in gyms, I should say, I don't see people doing this exercise almost ever. And that's a pullover, just a dumbbell or barbell pullover. I almost feel like this exercise is going to become, and you know why I think it's going to become forgotten? Because it doesn't necessarily target a specific, it works so many different muscles. It's not like an isolation movement for too many other things or for too many things that I think that's why it's falling out of favor. I love it. I like that, I like that point. And I think that's a good thing to talk about. And the reason why I think it is because it's an area where, if you are somebody who is young now and you have no problem reaching above your head and picking things out of the cupboard or whatever that, that's great, but it becomes an area that's very common when you train people in advanced age that can't do that. And I would speculate that if you did a good job of continuing to do pullovers for most of your life, this would be an area that you would stay very connected to and probably wouldn't lose that ability. So I like that one. And it gives you good shoulder mobility. It works the lats, it works the pecs, it works the serratus muscles, which are the finger-like muscles on the side of the rib cage. I fell in love with pullovers. Well, I first started doing them because when I started working out, they were a big Arnold Schwarzenegger-like to do them. And then because Mike Menser did them in his heavy-duty workouts and I became a fan of his. But I've always done them since because I've always gotten great results from them. Either in my chest workout or my back workout, I've just always felt great results from them. And I think it makes my torso feel more integrated together and strong, especially the barbell version. I almost, I never see anybody do barbell pullovers. Yeah, I don't know. I mean, it's tough to think like, I was thinking about like maybe a windmill as being an example just because it is like a forgotten exercise that is kind of, it's coming back on some level, but it's like only people that are really into kettlebells or into unconventional training in general, which I feel like the general public could benefit from this exercise more than anybody. The simple fact that just being able to stabilize your spine and rotation and then also like the hip-hingeing aspect to it, holding something overhead. And so, lateral, like part of that in terms of stabilizing the QL, like all these types of things that are involved in this particular exercise. Like you really have to take your time with it and be able to brace your body and be able to have control over your T-spine and all these different things. So I think that it also, it helps to benefit the way that we're sitting all the time and the way that we're always protracted and that it's sort of like, it helps to embolden your spine and the function of it and protect it better. Yeah, I agree, the windmills are great exercise. And really if you wanna find some of the best exercises that people don't do anymore, go back to look at the lifting, the exercises that were popular in the 30s and 40s and maybe even the 20s among strong men and bodybuilders. And what you'll find, so I said the pullover, right? In those days, a pullover was one of the main exercises. In fact, it was one of the most popular exercises. Not only was it not forgotten, but it was like the bench press, like everybody did some kind of a pullover. Everybody did a windmill. And the reason why they did a windmill was to get them to be able to do what's called a bent press. The bent press is a side, it's like a shoulder press, but you're in this kind of windmill side position. And if you train this, you can get tremendously strong. I mean, I know Eugene Sandel was able to do a bent press, that's a one arm bent press with something like 300 pounds. Well, it's partially it's the raw strength of it, but it's more it's learning the technique of how to stabilize it more by retracting your shoulder and being able to lock it in position. So now it's like, you know, you have this bulletproof shoulder that now I can then, you know, also use, you know, more integrate more muscles in the lift, you know, along my, you know, obliques and all the way down to my hips. Well, I love that because as we get older too, for sure one of the first things we lose is like rotational strength because we just don't do it. As a kid, you play and so you're all over like the transverse playing and you do that naturally playing on the playground or playing sports. But probably one of the first things that people lose is rotational strength. And I love the women. I was gonna suggest the Turkish getup. We had a debate, I think with one of our good friends who's really, really smart about, you know, he cracks on the Turkish getup. Now, of course he's young and super, super strong and hasn't probably dealt with a lot of elderly people. And I think of just the ability to get up from the ground like that and to just in your point with like rotational strength and be able to lock the shoulder in a place and stabilize. Like you kind of get all of that too with a Turkish getup. And I think, I mean, how many of you guys or how many times have you guys trained a advanced stage client and the workout was like teaching them how to get up off the floor? Sure, that would be a whole workout. Right, so and it's fun because you can really, as you get good at it, if you're younger and you're not 70 and thinking like that, you're just, hey, what's a great movement that has lots of carryover and benefit. What a fun exercise to progress and get to the point where you're really strong, where you can hold 100 plus pounds over your head while you get up off the ground. And man, yeah, it's not gonna make you have the best, the heaviest bench press or deadlift or squat in the gym, but the overall control, body control that it takes to do that and what that has for overall health carryover and feeling good, man, I love that. Yeah, no, Turkish getup has a lot of value. I don't know if I'd consider it forgotten just because it was forgotten. And then people started doing it because it was a popular movement among Turkish wrestlers and grapplers. And nobody did it. I would say it's forgotten. You think people start doing it? When's the last time you saw someone do it in the gym? Well, I'll tell you what, way more now than 20 years ago. Well, what's way more? Once every six months you see it? Yeah, still. Yeah, right, I mean, once every six months for guys who live in a gym to see some of the trainers doing it. The ones that are all about kettlebells, they know all this conventional training. It needs to be done for sure. But what I mean is 20 years ago I didn't even know what a Turkish getup was. You know, and I was a trainer. It was something that, here's another one that I don't see too many people doing. You'll see martial artists do it sometimes but there's a lot of value for just the average lifter. Now we used to call them dive bomber push-ups. I'm not sure what other names there are for them. But these are push-ups on the ground. You take a wider stance and you lead with your head and then you kind of scrape your chest and stomach on the floor and then press your upper body up. And the finishing position looks like in yoga they call it up dog. And then you go back to your butt being in the air and then you do it again. You do what's called a dive bomber. Yeah, these actually have like a little wooden handle that like was made. If you look it up, I know they're like trying to bring that back in terms of like some of the old unconventional type tools. And it's literally just a bar that you hold and that's the exact movement you do over it. Next question is from that fly guy. I'm a hard gainer and have read your hard gainer guide. My issue is still getting enough calories while not eating junk. Would you recommend a weight gainer if it's from a great company like Legion? I feel like this is like one of Mike's guys that works for him. Yeah, I feel like we got infiltrated. Should I try a weight gainer like this great company Legion makes for you? So a hard gainer guide is available for, it's still available and it's free. So it's basically a guide that helps people who have trouble gaining muscle mass. That's at mindpumpfree.com. Now, here's the thing with eating junk. I know how hard it can be to eat adequate calories to gain muscle when you are somebody who burns a lot of calories, either because you have a fast metabolism or because you have a very active life. I know the struggle. Now, those of you who don't know what that struggle is like, you're listening and you're thinking, oh, I would love that. That's such an awesome problem to have. I wish I- Grass is always greener. It sucks. It's hard. You're feeding yourself and feeding yourself and you're not putting on muscle and it's like, I can't eat anymore. So there are certain tricks of the trade that will help you do that. Now, part of that is seeking out hyper palatable foods. Now, this doesn't mean you eat junk food necessarily, but junk food definitely has more of a place with a hard gainer than it does with someone who's trying to lose weight because junk food does a very good job of getting you to eat more calories. It's tasty. So it makes you want to eat more. So the kinds of junk food that I like to eat when I was trying to gain that isn't super unhealthy is like I would make my own french fries and I'd use olive oil, for example, put them in the oven. Hyper palatable salad, it's salty. I could get my carbs and starches that way. Or I'd make a bowl of rice and put a bunch of soy sauce in there and maybe some butter or something like that. Give me some extra calories or cook the rice with bone broth to add the proteins. So there's definitely some value into eating things that are hyper palatable when your problem is not eating enough food. Now, is drinking your calories a good strategy? Absolutely. Actually, one of the easiest ways to boost your calories when you're struggling and you're hitting what you feel like as you're ceiling is to drink your calories along with the stuff that you eat. A weight gainer is one way to do that. You could make your own weight gainer as well. You could use things like whole milk. I prefer that. But here's the thing, protein sources tend to be an issue. How do you increase the protein content of making your own gainer? Typically, you'd use a protein powder. Unless you want to do what I did a few times, which I only did it a few times because it was gross, which is blend up chicken breast. It's just disgusting. Well, I used that part of the monster mash thing, like the vertical diet. No, no, not in a blender. I never had a lot of success with weight gainers. And I did all the, in fact, most of the time whenever I take a weight gainer, just to give me the shits afterwards. I felt like I was horrible, horrible gas. I just drank that and I feel like it literally just came out. Like 30 minutes later, that's how I felt. Now, I've actually never used Mike's weight gainer, so I don't know what it's like. But here's my strategy when I was bulking. And this is really new for me. I mean, really close to when I was just doing this, right? So when I was competing and trying to put mass on and I was training at the volume, I was eating north of 5,000 calories. And that's really hard to do, all clean. So I had my targets of what I wanted to hit from all whole natural foods. So it was about 35, in order to get my protein intake, a good amount of good vegetables and greens in my diet, I needed to hit roughly about 3,500 calories of whole natural foods. And then when I allowed myself, that's when I would allow myself to go outside of that. And so I know Sal was giving examples of things that you make. I was lazier than that. I would order five guys and fries. Like that would be how I pile on the calories later on to hit my 5,000. I'd go 3,500 of eating clean, my made prep meals. And then once I hit my target, then the way I rewarded myself was I would allow myself to have more, you know, palatable foods that I really, really enjoyed. So. Now, I got, I pulled up. So I didn't know he even had a weight gainer. The products that I'm most familiar with from Legion are Pulse and their protein powder. But he does have a weight gainer. So here's the difference. The weight gainers that we took when we were kids, because I took those same weight gainers at them and the same thing happened to me, they gave me the, you know, they gave me liquid poops. What, how many calories was your, were those weight gainers? Oh dude, some of them were like 900, yeah, 900 calories. Packed full of just sugar and shit. Yeah, yeah. The one serving of his gainer is 370 calories. Okay. Oh wow, it's not even that high. No, it's, it's definitely like a small meal, but it's, and this is why I like Mike. He doesn't make shitty, you know, he's not trying to make shitty products. He's just higher fat probably. Well, 51 grams of carbs, 38 grams of protein. And then the ingredients are, are, are good. The protein is coming from, you know, whey, casein. And the carbs are from things like potato starch, oat flour, you know, he's putting flax seed in there and stuff like that. So not a bad, not a bad choice in terms for, especially for convenience, cause making your own can be different. Drinking calories definitely is a good strategy though. Here's an easy way to do it, by the way. If you want to do this simple, simple, simple, how do I drink more calories into my diet? If you're not intolerant to dairy, if you're totally cool with dairy and you could drink milk, drink a glass of whole milk with every meal. You know, that's easy. That's an easy way to add like 500 calories to your whole diet. With breakfast, lunch, dinner, and your meals in between, drink water and at the end of your meal, take a big glass of whole organic milk. And just drink it. I mean, in the bodybuilder community, I mean, this is how we all fall in love with peanut butter, man. That's how I like it. Peanut butter is the jam. My homemade, my homemade shake. Peanut butter is not the jam. It's not the jam. Peanut butter. No, my homemade shake would be a whey, and I used almond milk. I didn't even, I could have got more calories if I used whole milk, but you know, too much dairy does bother me. I can have some of it like my whey protein I can handle, but lots of milk, ice cream. If I'm doing too much dairy, it definitely affects me. So I was using almond milk, which is hardly anything, but man, and whey, which is not a ton of calories, but I've got in there, I've got two tablespoons of peanut butter, one tablespoon of Nutella. I add in like a quarter cup of egg whites in addition to that. And then I used to take hazelnut ground coffee and then pour that in there and then blend that all up. And man, that's, it ends up being a pretty high calorie shake still and it's phenomenal. And you throw a banana in there too for an extra 120, 130 calories. So here, this is what I did. This was what I did back when I, and that shake, that shake did sound delicious. Here's what I did when I was a kid before I could, this is when I could have milk. I can't do this now. It would totally destroy me. I wouldn't need to anyway. I don't have any issues bulking anymore. I'm older now and for whatever reason I can gain weight far easier than when I was a kid. But I would, I did the milk thing, right? The whole milk. So, and I looked at the macros now. One 16 ounce, which is a big glass of whole milk, right? 16 ounces. That's 272 calories. Wow. 14 grams of fat, 20 grams of carbs, 14 grams of protein. So you tell me if you add three glasses of that with breakfast, lunch, and dinner, you're looking at almost a thousand calories in its milk, you know what I'm saying? And it's got protein, fat, and carbs. The problem is some people like you and I can't digest it that well. Yeah, well you remember that? There was a, I think there was like a little thing that was going around for a while. I know there's articles around that that we're talking about all the post-workout shakes and talking shit about it. And they were talking about how one glass of milk is just, studies show that it's just as valuable as someone going about it buying something. It's like the same macros. Go ahead. You know what I was thinking of was the whole rocky thing where people would start taking raw eggs, I totally fell into that for a while trying to be savage as possible and gain as much weight as I could. I would throw raw eggs and just every shake in my mouth and try to make that work. I did the same thing, but have you, did you actually drink the eggs by themselves? Yeah. Did you ever crack them and drink them? Yeah, I did like three to four. I would put in a cup and just down the hatch. I did that one time. It's the worst feeling in the world. So slimy. One more note though. I want to say this. Yeah, I have something I want to give this person. Oh, okay. So sometimes when you're a hard gainer, it's not because you're not eating enough calories. Sometimes your workout sucks. It's true. And if you send, here's the thing. I tell you what, I used to, I had this debate with someone a long time. We're like, no, it's just about calories. It's okay. If I gave you anabolic steroids right now and you had no extra calories and you did the same workout, do you think you gave muscle? And they said, well, yeah, you probably would. You gained a little bit of muscle. So there's a lot of signals that tell the body to build muscle. The only one is your workouts. And if you're not gaining muscle, sometimes it's because your workouts are not effective. Well, a lot of times, a lot of times people are following. I mean, how common is that? That you're following kind of the same type of a routine. Yeah, I change up the reps or the snap. But people typically kind of gravitate towards like the same type of routines. But I want to give some other really good tips that helped me, because this was like a fucking decades. I was, this was a struggle for me. I'm so glad. I'm so glad I didn't know you back then. We would have killed ourselves. Oh, I'm sure we, and we, and I've done it all. Everything from setting alarms in the middle of the night. So the things that worked the best for me later on, after all the things that I tried, I learned that if I ate stuff that was really high calorie, so a lot of times what happens if you, you know that you need to have junk food or you need to add more, palatable foods in order to hit that calorie intake, I would make the mistake of doing that for lunch. For example, I'd have like a big quiz nose and chips and like a soda or something for lunchtime. Problem with when you eat those really palatable foods like that and you stuff yourself is then you're full for like four to five hours. And when you're trying to eat 4,000, 5,000 plus calories and you're trying to gain like that and you're struggling and you get, and you eat something that satiates you for that long, you get behind on the calories, you can't. So I learned early on that if I ate leaner, whole foods, natural foods early, I found I could eat every two hours. So my body digested it fast. I was ready to eat again. And I, even if I wasn't starving or hungry, I could eat again another good 3,500 calorie meal like every two hours. And this is where the every two hours thing has value. When you have to try and eat 4,000 calories, dividing that up in just two or three meals is fucking daunting. But if it's broken up in these like 500 calorie meals every few hours, it's a little bit easier. So that strategy worked really well by eating leaner, cleaner, whole foods throughout the day so I could consistently eat every two hours. And then like I said, if I hit my targets, if I stayed to, stayed the course, I ate all my meals that I prepared, my reward to myself was, oh, now tonight I'll allow myself to have the burger or I'd allow things like pizza and the diet or I allow these shakes that have Nutella and peanut butter. I would allow these types of hyper-palatable foods to pile on later on to make sure that I hit the caloric intake. That really works. You're right, you're right. And you don't want it to backfire either, right? Eating too much junk food, your health starts to go south, your digestion goes south. You can kiss your gains goodbye. So always consider health. You wanna gain as healthy as possible because that's gonna give you the longest road to good lean gains. If you do it in an unhealthy way, it's not gonna work for very long. It'll backfire, it can backfire many times. I did it to me once, one time I ate a whole bucket of KFC chicken because I was trying to bulk or whatever. I can't eat KFC chicken ever again. I eat so much of it, gross me out. And I remember that whole day, nothing else. I didn't eat much the next day because I messed up my digestion. Fat just dripping down your arms. I smelled like chicken the next day. I was sweating, no joke. I've done the same. And people are like, did you just eat KFC? Like, dude, I ate it yesterday. Next question is from Catherine B. Fitt. What is the minimum macro calorie intake you would like to see an individual at before they enter a cutting phase? What would you consider ideal? This is different from person to person. I mean, we can go general, I guess. Yeah, I think I picked this question when we were going through them because I think it'll create a good discussion. But the truth is, this is very individual, right? But there are some general rules. It'd be very common that I would get a female client that was coming to me that is only 10 to 20 pounds overweight. And they come to lose weight. And then when I look at their diet, because what happens when they hire a trainer or they seek someone like me out, they've already been trying lots of things on their own and they've been frustrated. And now they're coming to me as like, okay, I'm finally gonna pony up the money to invest in a professional to help me. And the unfortunate part is I've got them after they've already fucking yo-yo died a bunch of time, they've already been restricting calories. And they come to me and they're like, hey, I'm only eating 1,300 calories a day and I can't lose this last 15 to 20 pounds I'm trying to lose, you know, what do I need to do? And that person, I don't want to cut from there. I like to get most of my female clients above 2,000 calories at least. And that's a very gray, generic answer. But I feel that that falls in the category of anybody from about 130 pounds all the way up to 200 plus pounds. I want them above 2,000. As a female, I want to get them to where they could eat 2,000 calories, not put on body fat, even if we're just staying the same, we're not losing any weight, but we're strength training, we're able to consume 2,000 calories and not put body fat on. That's where I want you to be before I start to pull you back, at least that before I pull you back to the other direction. I mean, in an ideal world, I'll use Melissa Wolf as an example, since she was the last like real competitor that I coached and she's only about 120 pounds, I moved her all the way up to 2,700 calories before I brought her back down. So the truth is, the higher I can get somebody's caloric and take up, maintenance calorie intake up before we cut, it just gives us lots more room to work with on the way down. And it hopefully ends up happening, and like in her case, getting on stage to compete, ripped as shit, and only having to cut down to 1,800 calories, which is a very happy place for a lot of people to be at. So you got to keep that in mind that wherever you are, currently right now, that if you're at a place where you already feel like you're not really eating a ton and you want to start cutting, you know, you're going to land in a place that you're going to feel like you're always restricting and you don't want to be there. Yeah, the individual aspect of this is really how comfortable are you at the calories that you're going to settle at eventually? So how comfortable would you be maintaining your body weight at 1,500 calories or 1,300 calories or 2,000 calories? That's an important question to ask yourself, because some people are okay. Some people don't have big appetites and they're like, yeah, I'd be fine, you know, living off of 1,400 calories. So the amount of calories that you're consuming basically will keep you at the same weight. That's what maintenance calories means. So when you're dropping your calories to lose weight, eventually when you get to your ideal body weight or body fat percentage, now you're consuming your maintenance, but you've had to cut to get there. So what you don't want to do is start at, you know, 1,500 calories, get down to 1,000 calories, now you're where you want to be. Now you gotta live at 1,000 calories all the time. It's a very, very difficult thing to do. And very, very common. This is what happens a lot of times. It is, but for some people it's okay, but usually not, usually isn't okay. So I typically, I'm right along with Adam, I'd say for women, I like to get them above 2,000 calories. It's awesome if I can get them at like 2,400 calories. For a man, I'm trying to get them above 2,500 calories, usually around 3,000 calories if I'm happy. I was just saying for a man, I'm looking for north of three. Yeah, and when I get to that point, then I can start to cut the calories and get them to get their bodies to burn bodies. And keep in mind, I know there's some tool that's listening right now that's fucking, oh my God, that's so, this is generic advice. No doubt, there's many variables. How much that person is moving, how much lean body mass they have, their training routine. I'm talking about regular activity, you exercise a few days a week, you have a normal desk job. And we're trying to give you an idea, all right? So this person, I mean, we're doing our best to answer this question without knowing all those things. So if you know that you're somebody who's probably in that extreme, it's like, if you're a female, it's probably good to be somewhere north of 2,000 before you start cutting, especially if you know that you have, you know, and that's another thing that matters too, like, are we cutting for to lose five pounds, or are we cutting to lose 30 to 40 pounds? Yeah, because then you got a long way to go. Right, so the bigger the number that you need to cut and restrict, the higher you're gonna want your calories at currently to before you come back the other direction because, you know, it's only gonna take a few weeks before the body gets adapted to that new caloric maintenance. And so you gotta keep that in mind that you may have to restrict multiple times. It's not like, you know, a lot of times people, they have a goal and they're like, okay, well, if I restrict calories from, you know, 2,000 to 1,500, I'm gonna, and I just be consistent with that, I'm gonna lose weight. Well, yeah, you're gonna lose weight, but eventually, and this doesn't take but a few weeks, maybe a month or two tops, the body then adapts to that, and then. Then where do you go? Yeah, then where do you go from there? And if your goal is something beyond 10, 15 pounds, you have to know that that's going to take you a longer amount of time. So this is, you know, a hard one to answer and be specific, but give you some general things or things that we think about before we decide. Now the best way to help this is lift weights. Lift weights get stronger, build muscle that tends to promote a hotter, faster metabolism. It also reduces the metabolic slowdown that can happen when you're reducing calories like Adam's talking about. Lifting weights is one of the best insurance policies you have against those things. And it's also one of the best insurance policies to ensure that you have a fast metabolism, which in today's day and age is a massive advantage. Next question is from Rebecca Munchrath. With my schedule, the only time I have available to go to the gym is either early mornings or really late evenings. I've always had my best feeling and progress in the gym during midday. Do you have any tips for success at these new time of day workouts? So number one, accept it. So just accept the fact that you're gonna be working out at a new time and it's not gonna feel ideal. It makes it a lot easier. I work out oftentimes at six a.m. in the morning and by no means am I feeling as strong or as driven or aggressive at six a.m. as I would be at. Noon. Noon or one o'clock, which is ideal for me. And for a lot of people. So I just accept it. It's a morning workout, whatever. The other thing is this, over time you start to get used to it and you actually get better. And you'll acclimate to it. Yeah, you actually get better at those types of workouts. Your body starts to perform better. In fact, coaches for high level, super high level athletes, start to time heavy hard training practices right around when. Game time when they compete, yeah. Yeah, because your body actually starts to get good at adapting and saying, okay, we're gonna perform at a high level at this time. And so then, you know, your game is at seven. So you train at seven, you practice at seven. And the truth is, it's whichever one of these two you're going to be the most consistent at is what all studies show is the best. The different, I mean, this is a long, long question. Or we get asked this question all the time for a very long time I've been asked this. Is it better? And there's lots of studies that have came out to try and show, oh, this happens in the morning if you do this. And at the end of the day, none of it matters. What matters is what would you be the most consistent with? Now, personally for myself, if I had to choose one or the other, because I'm the same way too as Sal, I would way rather be noon or one. If I had to choose morning or evening, I have to choose morning because late evening workouts, fuck my sleep up. It gets my adrenaline going and night times are already hard enough for me to come down at. And so maybe once or twice, I could get away with an evening workout. But if I'm consistently doing that, it makes it really tough for me to fall asleep. Now, if you don't have that problem and you sleep harder because you work at nighttime, you could be someone who's like that, then that might be a great strategy for you. But if it's like me where it fucks your sleep up, then as much as I hate to get up extra early in the morning, I would have to make that sacrifice, get up extra early to do my morning workouts. Yeah, I wonder about that. I wonder, because I've heard of people that work out all the time late at night and then they can go right to sleep after that. I wonder about the quality of their sleep though. For me, I would definitely have to choose the morning because for me to expend that kind of energy and get myself amped up like that because inevitably whatever you're doing, like after that I have this charge of energy that promotes and propels me the rest of the day. So to expend it all at the end of the day, the one benefit to that is you're already alert, you're awake, you feel like, I feel stronger towards the end of my day or sometimes right in the middle of the day specifically. So that's, the benefit for me is like feeling that I am strong in those movements but to then interrupt the sleep thing, knowing how valuable sleep is in the whole building muscle process, I don't know. Plus at night, there's just way more excuses. I just find that my day takes over. If I wake up before the day starts and start my workout, it's the first thing I do, I'm far less likely to miss my workout. If I leave it at the end of the day, like everything's there. You're exhausted today. Yeah, stuff starts to get in the way and I just ate dinner and I'm full or I'm tired or the kids need this and then before I know it, workouts not gonna happen or I gotta leave everybody to go workout and then they're complaining or whatever. Whereas if I wake up before everybody, can't say anything, I'm gonna do my workout but whatever, it doesn't really, here's a bottom line. The workout that is the most effective for you is the one you're gonna do. Okay, that's the bottom line. So working out in the morning might not be ideal for you but if or at night might not be ideal for you but if you're gonna do it, if that's gonna make you consistent, then that's the day, that's the time. Then that's the time that you pick. You don't wait for those unicorn times to work out when you feel you're strongest and best. If those happen almost never, you're gonna get terrible progress. Your body's not going to respond very well because of the inconsistency. And with that, go to mindpumpfree.com and check out all of our guides. The hard gainer guide is there but we have other guides as well. We have fat loss guides and guides on building your arms or working your midsection. Make sure you go check them out, mindpumpfree.com. You can also find the three of us on Instagram. You can find Justin at Mind Pump Justin, me at Mind Pump Sal and Adam at Mind Pump Adam.