 I'll just talk forever. I'll just talk your pants off. Really? What's going on ladies and gentlemen? Welcome to another time of Cactus Time with the Zen dudes. With the Zen dudes. Cactus time! Welcome back to another episode of Ask the Zen dudes. You guys ask us your questions related to health, fitness, happiness, and jump rope and we answer them. If you would like to ask questions in an upcoming episode you need to get in the community which means that we click the link in the first line of description in our four week challenge. Get in there now! And if you want a preferential question answering you get in the dojo because we go dojo and then we go four week challenge. The questions. So the people who are in the dojo we answer those questions first then we move on to the four week challenge. If you guys like these and you want to keep doing more of these please give us a thumbs up below by a subscribe. Ladies and gentlemen, the buzz that is going around jump rope and just getting lean, thin and having fun is huge right now. So again, Brandon and I want to send a huge thank you and shout out to the community for all the love that you guys have been giving us. Also, all the people who have been making transformations and most importantly having a great time doing it. Carlos! Carlos! This means for you guys. This episode was brought to you by Crossroads the best jump ropes on the market. They are the most durable. There's a reason we work with them y'all. It's because they're the best. Lately in our videos we've been using a speed rope, a heavy rope and the agility set. The staple rope that we always use is the agility set because it's like the most regular one. Not too thin, not too thick. You know what I mean? You know what I mean? We're in the middle like big bear, small bear. Yeah. Medium bear. Yeah. Medium bear. Also we'd like to shout out to our other sponsor Athletic Greens. We use their green juice supplements. We take their BCAs and we're fasting. We drink their protein after our workouts. All the Crossroads stuff, all the Athletic Greens stuff is linked below. If you want our kick ass products, check them out. Today, we have asses and dudes. And I want you to also know on the YouTube channel all week long we are introducing you to the Getting Lean Protocol. And this Friday we are going to bring it all together by introducing our new product called the Dojo. The Dojo Fitness Dojo. We're going to be giving you every workout you could ever need, whether it's body weight, weight lifting, jump rope related. Also we're going to give you the information to create a nutrition plan for yourself and the recipes, all of this kind of things. All of it. Accountability, motivation, us in your ear, pump up music. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Every goddamn day. That is like the most important part of it guys. So of course we're going to give you all the information you need surrounding workouts and nutrition, lifestyle, but really the biggest part that we are excited to give to you guys about the Dojo is just the accountability and access that you get to Brandon and I on a daily basis. Because honestly guys, we're not the first ones to give you fitness information. The information is out there on Google. You can find other workouts. You can find other people who know more about nutrition than Brandon and myself. But why would you come to the Dojo? Because you get someone telling you all the time you can do this. And we make it fun. And it's just most importantly, what we realize is over the years if it's not fun, it's not sustainable. So it's going to be fun. And so you're going to want to keep doing it. Real quick, I'm trying to have a meet up in Los Angeles, preferably in I'll be staying near Venice Beach, preferably in Venice. Oh, who's in LA? I want to jump some rope. I want to film a video with you in the video with me and we're jumping rope and having fun. Venice, I'm thinking like the 23rd. It's a Thursday. Now sh**, I got to do it on the weekends and people can come. It's probably going to be on the weekend. The 25th, which is a Saturday. First question of the day, our boy Matthew Javier, Zendu Fitness Legend asks us, top three desired Zendu Fitness destinations after Columbia. What's the most blatantly, oh, you asked two questions. Matthew. I'm sneaky. I'm sneaky. That's okay. But they're both good questions. I can't answer them both. Alright, first question. Top three destinations after Columbia. Go. Ooh, first ones that come to mind, dude. Dubai. We keep talking about Dubai. Dubai, Tokyo, Cape Town, South Africa. Ooh, nice. For me, it's going to be Mexico City. Ooh, damn, I forgot that one. Dubai. Okay. And Seoul, Korea. Seoul, Dubai. I like all these places. Yeah, we should go to Seoul. Let's go to all of them. Alright, next question is, what is the most blatantly, sad that you know, ready, set, banana? That you have to eat specific foods to look a certain way. You just have to eat the right amount of calories and macronutrients, although the contents of those calories and macronutrients matter, and yes, you must get micronutrients, but the biggest lie is that calorie macronutrients don't matter and you can just eat healthy foods and look awesome, not true. Can I just say the same thing? Cause like, I was at dinner the other night and someone was like, you must just eat vegetables. You never eat anything. I'm like, I eat cartons of ice cream. But then I just fast, you know, the next day. And you do eat your vegetables, disclaimer. Of course. When you does eat your vegetables cause a bunch of people are going to comment below and be like, I eat my vegetables. I eat my vegetables. I eat cartons of ice cream too, alright. Next question. Is there a good alternative to peanut butter for protein shakes? I'm allergic. All in butter. How about coconut oil? That's my recommendation. I love coconut oil. Yeah, that's all I gotta say about that. Next question. If I do, our boy Marcus asks if I do intermittent fasting, 16 hours of facet, 8 hours of eating, I do not want to take any supplements, BCAAs, whatever. What's your best advice to not lose muscle mass? I'm doing the getting in course at that moment. Go. Dude, to be totally honest with you, the amount of muscle mass that you lose from fasting is grossly overestimated. Even if you're not taking BCAAs, guys, as long as you're hitting your daily intake of calories and macronutrients, you're not going to lose a ton of muscle mass. If you're a bodybuilder, it matters. If you're just trying to look lean and sexy, it doesn't. Just focus on calories and macronutrients. And let me add, me personally, I'm taking branched enemy acids, BCAAs, because I'm working out like two to three hours a day. Sometimes you're unboxing and Dan does a lot of dancing and walking, so we supplement our diet sometimes because we move so much. If you're just, you know, doing a normal exercise routine that's in our course, you may not need to take any of these supplements. So, yeah. Modo says, do you use any kind of device to weigh how much you eat before putting it into my fitness pal? No, but if you're just starting out with food, it is imperative that you do weigh your food and track it meticulously because what we're trying to do is build self-awareness to figure out estimates of how much you're eating. So, for example, I don't weigh my food anymore because I've weighed salmon so many times and entered salmon into my fitness pal so many times that I can look at a piece of salmon and pretty much guesstimate, okay, this is six to, like, seven and a half ounces of salmon. Therefore, this is going to be the macros. The goal with tracking macros is to track them so you build yourself awareness and can estimate not so that you have to physically do it forever. Exactly what Dan said. Really, in the beginning, it needs to become a conscious thing so later down the road it becomes unconscious. So, when you're looking at a piece of meat and you've never done this before, you don't know how many ounces it is, you don't know how to enter it. After doing this for three, four, five, six months, you'll know it becomes unconscious and life gets easier. You're going to know. Next question. Modo, you just have two good questions. Any books that have influenced you greatly? Yeah, Napoleon Hill's Think and Grow Rich. That book helped to show me that, like, I can be in control of my emotions and the way that I'm, like, perceived in my interactions with other people is a matter of how I treat them and not how they treat me. The Biology of Belief by Bruce Lipton was a huge book for me. It basically talks about the science of energy and how positive energy actually can help improve your health and negative energy will break it down because it's the difference between being in, like, a fiber flight state or, like, a healthy growth state. So when I read that book, I really understood how important it is to not just eat healthy and move my body, but feel good and happy and force myself into positive emotional states if I want to be a healthy dude. Bam! Daisy Chang asked, she's planning to buy the cross-rope, uh, the Plus package, which has four ropes. She wants to know, is this sufficient for me as a semi-beginner? Yes. Although technically, like, to be totally honest with you, I would even just buy the agility set because you don't need four ropes when you're starting out. If you just start off with the agility set, that's going to be a basic rope. Sorry, I should rephrase that. Either buy the agility set or buy the heavy rope because that by itself is also great for beginners. I just suggest buying the agility set first because it's like the main basic jump rope you can use for almost any workout. Get the basic form down with that and then worry about buying more ropes later. I would say, if you want the Plus set, get it, but minimum effective dosage, get yourself the agility rope and the heavy rope. So it's a starter set. Yeah. Just start. Just start skipping. Sophie asked, do you use an app to meditate if yes, which app? Go. I used Headspace for like a year and loved it because it really got me into that mindset of, so it's the Headspace app, really got me into a good mindset of understanding meditation and how to drop into that state of flow and like get all the chaos out of my mind, but I don't use one anymore. Again, I think it's something that could be important to you if you have trouble staying on track then an app would be great for that or you could just like learn the principles of it and then if you're good at taking like practicing things then you can just kind of meditate on your app. Me personally, I've been using the Wim Hof app because I've really been fascinated by all the research that's coming out around like the hyper ventilating breathing and what happens to your immune system just to let you know quickly it helps boost your immune system so you're less likely to get sick. So I've been using that Wim Hof method app. Tam Vier asked, what are the battles you fight with yourself on a day-to-day basis? What are you doing to improve that? I'm ready. Go. Ooh, great question first of all. Daily battles, staying patient. Holy shit. That's probably my biggest one. Staying patient. I think Bren and I both share this quality. Like we want Zendu Fitness to have a million subscribers on YouTube like yesterday and we want everyone in every country in the world to be jumping rope and we want to be on the front of like a fitness magazine being like, you know, not looking like a typical fitness person like change the fitness game. So the biggest struggle I fight is the balance of just always constantly remembering to enjoy the process while still, you know, trying not to focus too much on the future. Yeah, Dan and I are basically the same person so I have the same thing. I just am so comfortable with what we're doing but want to continue to expand and go bigger and more and faster and so for me it's just being patient and being like, you know, right now it's awesome and as much as I want to create all this great stuff in the future understand that this moment is as good as it's going to be. Corey asked, what should my heart rate be while I'm exercising? He added other parts of the question but basically just asking what should my heart rate be when I'm doing jump rope or other body weight exercises? What should your heart rate be? Fast as hell! Yo man, you should just go as hard as you can go. We tell everyone who wants to wear the Fitbits and figure out all these numbers. Don't worry about that. Just in your own mind go as hard as you can, okay? Push yourself as hard as you can. Find where your own failure point is. Alright, Troy asked, yo, this sounds horrible but since I'm living a healthy lifestyle now, sometimes I think a little less of people who aren't living healthy lifestyles. How can I get over this mindset of I guess judging people and how can I overcome that? Dude, the only thing I would say to that is that first of all, that's a very, like, everyone I think who gets fit goes through that, like having some sort of resentment for people who aren't trying to better themselves because it says more about you than you don't have the body. It says, it sends signals off in your brain like this person isn't trying hard enough or they're not good enough. The way I deal with that, guys, is basically, like, you have to understand that, like, fitness isn't the most, like, fitness at one point in time wasn't the most important part of my life. Like, some people, they need to discover it on their own and if they're into it and want to make a change, that's fine. But you can't let other people's choices affect your opinions of them. This is a very interesting thing because I want to address the fact that, like, when you experience these feelings of thinking less of someone because they're not exercising, it's actually a fear within yourself, like, thinking to yourself, like, man, I see a version of myself that I used to be that I resent a little bit and that's what's coming up in you and that's where those feelings of resistance come from. So recognize that and, you know, feel more empathy and patience and love for that person because it's cyclical. Once you give that love and you feel that love and you recognize it, it's going to come back to you. Someone asks this all the time, what do you do when you want to tell someone to basically exercise because you care about them but you don't want to hurt their feelings or have them think the opposite, like, oh, I'm definitely not going to do it now. It's to just lead by example and just be so open and loving that they're like, dude, whatever you're on, you're on the exercise thing, like, I want to be on that because I love, like, your just attitude. It's working for you. Brian asks what supplements do you use? BCA's Green Juice Protein. Boom. Link below. Yo, Laura asks, how can I get better at double unders, triple unders? How do I get better faster? Yo, Laura, what's up, girl? So the way you get better is you just practice. You just keep doing the thing and follow the double under tutorial on our YouTube channel. Practice. Deliberate practice makes purpose. Purpose? Perfect. Perfect. Perfect. The answer to that question is just, like, go check out the tutorial and practice it right. Don't just try to do it and go through the motions. Really deliberately try to do your best form possible every time and you're going to improve much faster. St. Greed wants to know, yo, what should I wear when I'm jumping a rope? What about my undies? Oh, man, dude, you got to wear Nikes and sweatpants with holes in them, baby. Whoo! Oh, man. No, actually, sneakers are ideal. Compression shorts for underwear, which is like the tight shorts that keeps you drunk, hug your junk, you know, makes them feel all special. And, like, you guys use mesh shorts. We obviously wear a lot of sweatpants, even though some of you make fun of the holes in them. Go to hell. Michael says, are you both trust fund babies or only you, Dan? Man, trust fund, baby. I could not be further from a trust fund baby, my parents. My mom's a school teacher. My dad is a blue collar carpenter. Everything that I've had in my life I have worked for. I mean, trust fund, baby. And all seriousness, guys, to address this, because I think this, you know, I know he's, like, probably kidding, but this does bring up something super important. Brandon and I, our parents have, they don't have money. Brandon and I have built everything that we've earned in our life, for Zendude Fitness from scratch. So I say this because as Zendude Fitness continues to grow and a lot of people say to us, like, well, you guys, when we make YouTube videos, like, yes, that's all that we do. We make our entire living from this channel, but the f*** if we did not work for it. Like, we work for all this sh**. And so all of you out there who don't have any money and are sitting here saying, I'd love to do what the Zendudes do, but I can't, because I don't have enough money. I don't have enough resources. F*** that. Regardless of the amount of money that you have that your parents have that your family has, whatever, you can do exactly what we're doing and you can do, to that matter, anything that you want to do. It does not matter what background you come from. Boy half asks us, yo, are you guys still skating? Or Dan, you still skating, man? I'm still skating. All my rollerblades. It's looking super cool, you know? Yeah. Sort of. Not really. All right, Kiki asks, whenever she works out, she gets a crazy lower torso ache for 15 minutes. What's she doing wrong? What can she do about it? It sounds like she has a cramp. Dan, what would you recommend? I think you got a cramp, my friend. I mean, when you have a cramp, you just have to work through it. When you don't move your body that much, you get into a new exercise regimen, you experience things like cramps. So don't eat a lot right before you work out. Jeffrey asks, why don't we curse on the show? Or if you do curse, why do you believe it out? Straight up. Like, Brandon and I, we use things like f*** time. But sometimes, when you're putting something on a major media platform, where we intend to grow a really, really large audience, some of those words can just trigger, like, pain in some people. And they just feel bad. So, you know, they don't need to hear them, but if you hang out with us, we're gonna tell you to f*** off a lot, you know? F*** off. Go f*** yourself. No, we want to reach to the most amount of people possible. And we understand if we say bad words, sometimes we're gonna set people off. And we need to get them in the community first. Give them some love, so they understand when we tell them the f*** themselves. We're just joking. Alright, Camille is asking, sometimes you want to eat a lot more food than you should. How do you restrain yourself from overeating? Don't. That's it. Don't. Look, guys, you can buy a bunch of books on strategy and diet tips and, like, things you can do to trick yourself into not eating. Don't f***ing eat. If you have a certain number of calories that you have to hit to stay lean and getting lean is that important to you, then just do not overeat. Don't eat that handful of peanut M&Ms at midnight just because you want it. You have to save yourself at some point. I'm not standing for this anymore. I'm not gonna overeat. That's the simplest answer I can give you. Gustavo asks, yo, I'm noticing a lot more fat reduction on my upper abs versus my lower abs. What are the best exercises to help with this? What ab exercise should I do? Jump rope workout, et cetera. You can't do spot reduction, which is lose fat in particular areas of your body. You have to lose body fat overall, which is eating in a calorie deficit and doing the high intensity jump rope workouts. But the only thing I would say to that is if you want to build the muscle in your abs out, just like you would any other muscle after you've already lost body fat, leg raises, where you're sitting in a little thing like this and you raise your legs up into a 90 degree angle are my favorite because they build your lower abs. Those are fantastic. Really just put in the work. I would say three, four times a week. Hit your ab muscles at least four sets. You're gonna start to see some growth there and then just continue to lose body fat. I'm gonna ask, does jumping rope really make you taller and jump higher? If you live in India, it does. Type in Zendu Fitness, get taller and you'll see it. Yeah, yeah. Well, I don't think it does. But it does help you jump higher. Yeah. Because you're building your explosive strength in your legs by doing jump and we actually made a video on that one too. We made a video on that one too, ladies and gentlemen. It's called increase your vertical jump by jumping rope. All right, Adrian asked, what is the reason for you guys moving to Colombia and living there and what do you expect from this experience? Keep doing the thing. Cheers from Romania. We made a video about that called cost of living in Colombia and the month of December we did a vlog every day of us living in Colombia. Basically, Colombia is an awesome country and you should check it out but if you want more information check out this video's blog. All right, Miki asked us what are your own fitness stories, who are your role models, the people you inspire, other YouTubers? Hmm. Well, my own quick story is that I was working in corporate America for a big software company. I lost 70 pounds through, not all at once, but lost 70 pounds over a few year period jumping rope and then became obsessed with it because I had this technology to just like get out into any park in the world wherever I was visiting or traveling to at the time for work and I could just jump rope and get an efficient workout in and I loved it. That's my own fitness story. That's why like we decided to start Zendu Fitness. In terms of like idols, I don't have any really, I mean, if I thought about it really hard, I'm sure there's a few like, like Casey Neistat, that guy's totally an idol. But other people, I have random ones. Like my idols are like Hunter S. Thompson to LeBron James, Jim Carrey, Jay-Z. Yeah, and my fitness transformation was, I was a college football player and I was a big dude, defensive lineman and I basically was hypertensive and just didn't have a body that was comfortable to live in. So I was like, I'm gonna lose this all. I lost like 40 pounds through like grit and like, you know, eating six or seven meals a day, cutting out my social life, just doing the stuff that it wasn't fun. And then I met Dan, I started jumping rope and I found out, whoa, this could be really fun. So yeah, I met Daniel Sung and he talked to me about jumping rope. So I started skipping and after like a year or two now, I've lost the final like 30, 40 pounds. No, I lost another like 20, 30 pounds and now I just found a way to keep doing fitness stuff in a fun manner. Yeah, you look good, man. Yeah. You look good. That is it. Ask the Zen dudes cactus time. Thanks everybody for tuning in. Remember, if you got a question and you want to post it, post it again next week. We don't have time to answer all of them, but if we didn't answer yours, it's probably because we did it in a previous episode or we have a video on it. Or we didn't get to it. So ask it next week. Ask it next week. We love you guys. Zen Dude Nation, we're out. Doses.