 In this episode of Mind Pump, the world's top fitness, health and entertainment podcast, we answer fitness and health questions asked by listeners like you. Now the way we open the episode is with introductory conversation where we talk about ourselves, current events, sometimes we mention our sponsors. So I'm gonna give you the rundown of what happened in today's podcast episode. We started by talking about a sex game gone wrong. Uh-oh, somebody messed up. Our favorite. We talked about mommy, no balls, Andrews. She loves that nickname. That's a good time. I talked about how Trump signed an executive order affecting social media. This is unprecedented, kind of crazy. We talked about gyms and restaurants reopening. I talked about how coronavirus probably can't get transmitted that easily on contaminated surfaces. That's from the CDC. We talked about creatines health benefits. Believe it or not, creatine doesn't just help you build muscle. There's actually some health benefits. Now our favorite place to buy creatine is Legion. They have a product called Recharge. Check it out. It's creatine monohydrate with L-Carnitine for recovery. And Legion is a great company making great supplements. Very transparent in their labels. Here's your mind pump discount. Go to buylegion.com. That's B-Y-L-E-G-I-O-N.com forward slash mind pump. Use the code mind pump at checkout. Get 20% off your first order. If you're a returning customer, you get double rewards points. Then I talked about red light therapy and its effects on healing injuries. There was actually a study that showed that people who use red light therapy healed faster, which is quite remarkable. Amazing. Anyway, our favorite company for red light therapy, they make the best. They make the red light panels that you see in studies. They're the legit ones, not the fake stuff that's all over the internet. This company is called Juve. They make the best red light products. And of course, because you listen to Mind Pump, we got a hookup for you. Just go to juve.com. That's J-O-O-V-V.com forward slash mind pump. You'll get a free maps prime program with the purchase of $500 or more and free shipping. By the way, they offer financing on all of their products. It's 0%. So it's like free money. It's pretty cool. Sweet. Then we got into the fitness questions. So here's the first one. The first person wants to know, what are the top three exercises for blasting belly fat? Blast it. So we talked about that. The next question, this person says, look, is it normal to feel sore when you're moving into a new phase of training? The third question, how much protein do you guys recommend and how much do each of you consume? And the final question, is there a scenario, if any, that a vegan diet would be more beneficial for a fit and healthy individual, then one that includes animal products. 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There's two I's there. And use the code HIT50. That's H-I-I-T-5-0, no space for the discount. And it's t-shirt time. Ah, shit, Doug. You know it's my favorite time of the week. Oh, we lost his voice again. So much energy. We have five winners for Apple Podcasts and two winners for Facebook. The winners for the Apple Podcasts reviews are Running Man 567, G-Milf 3R, K-Smithers, Mark M-U-C-91, Tabby Prank, and for Facebook, we have Daniel Loewenstein and Marilyn Milan Shively. All of you are winners. Send the name I just read to iTunes at mindpumpmedia.com. Include your shirt size and your shipping address and we'll get that shirt right out to you. I read a crazy story the other day. From Australia. Okay. Usually you don't hear crazy stories from anywhere other than Florida. You can always tell what he's gonna say some punch like because he's already like crazy. I know. That's the timing. You're a slower. Yeah, you're a dead giveaway guy. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Listen, this is a real story, okay? So two men snuck into a bedroom with machetes. So they had machetes, they sneak into a bedroom middle of night because they were hired to carry out a stranger's sexual fantasy of being tied up in his underwear and stroked with a broom. This is true. Wait, why did they need machetes? Because this was part of the fantasy. He hired two guys to break in his room with machetes. Machetes tie him up and then stroke him with a broom. This is what it says. The problem was they went in the wrong house. No, they didn't. So they broke into the wrong house with machetes and got arrested. But they got acquitted. They're from Sydney, Australia. They got acquitted because they made apologies and they left at the startled victim. Oh man. I feel like I saw that on a TV show. Like somebody used that as an excuse for breaking into a house that, oh, I was, I'm into SNM. What is the, no, we go back to brushing them with the broom, what are they doing? Like, he's not like. This is what it says exactly. I know I heard, but what does that mean? The sexual fantasy is to be tied up in his underwear. Got that. And to be stroked. Stroked. With a broom. What is stroked with a broom? Yeah, so it's like a. No, I picture brushing with a broom. Isn't that what you do with a broom? Or sweeping. That'll be rough. To be swept or brushed with a broom. Swoop. Just as gotta. Like a swoop. Not like a. That's too much. Yeah, ow. It's more of a. It's more of a. Yeah. All the way down. That just screams like rash. Like mealy. That's what it means. That's what stroked with a broom is. I mean, let's put it this way. Well, you stroke a guitar, right? Kinda. You do. Yeah. One stroke. Yeah, so you know. Let's say, let's just put yourself in that situation. Would you want someone to on you? Or would you prefer the. Yeah, you want one. Nice. Swoop. If you had to pick. You guys say it like it's like. You've done it before. I mean, it's obvious. It sounds really, really enticing. Never done it, but I have a clear option. There's a clear choice for me. Well. Stroked. I mean, does this happen in his childhood? Like what? Like what? What does it become? That is his thing. Humans are. We're just so weird that we do the weirdest. Find the weirdest stuff. Can you top that? Like just keep coming up with these like every podcast. I'm afraid. I'm afraid. Where are you getting these? I don't know, I love them. Send them to me now apparently. Yeah. I get them sent to like. Check out this messed up one. Yeah, I get them sent to me in my DMs and people are like. Oh dude, I heard you talk about whatever. Check this out. This guy banged a battery. Yeah. Whoa. Ow. Remember when I had my doctor friend come in and talk about like the weirdest things that they've had to take out of people? Yeah. They had batteries and. Didn't he say that was like common even? Didn't he say they have them more than once? Yeah. Dude. So when I used to train. I had a proctologist friend that told me all this stuff. No way. To him too, right? Yeah, yeah. Toy cars and all that. The weird thing was. Tell me how you guys became friends. That's a long story. Justin's like, look, I'll train you for friends. Like, don't tell anybody about this. Your parties, whatever dude. Just don't talk about it. Yeah. When I used to train this doctors and stuff, once we get to know each other for a while, we would talk about this stuff. And the thing that always surprised me was how that they were repeat visits. So like somebody would come in this week. Oh, I slipped in the shower and I got hot wheels up my butt. And then they'd come in like a month later. And it was always the same thing. Oh, I slipped in the shower. He told me it was like a lot of carrots and cucumbers and like. Whoa. Yeah. And then he's just like, so he's asking, he's like, oh, weird. And it was the same story of they fell in the supermarket. Obviously a vegetable. On it. And he's like, okay, but it's, it's, it's peeled. Wait a minute, explain yourself. What if you, what if you're going grocery shopping and this is what that really happened. This is a one in a trillion up chance, but it's a chance. Hey, it's possible. Whoa. Go. Oh my God. Oh, I can't tell anybody. No one's going to believe this. No one's ever going to believe this. I don't tell my wife. Like they get pulled. Like they're shoplifting, like they're scanning them. Where is it? Where's the item? I don't know. Fuck no one's going to believe me. I did slip in the grocery store. I fell on it. Okay. Damn it. Anyway, hilarious. Yeah. People are weird. You know what I mean? Yeah. So, hey, dude, that story you told about your, about your balls coming through your shorts. Oh yeah. I had so many people message me. It's, they pulled on a bleak muscle. Yeah. Oh no. That's when I know that something like, a lot of people are telling me about you, you know? Oh yeah. Yeah. No, that was, that was funny. I just knew it was funny when I was like, in that situation, it was so ridiculous. This turn, I don't know what it is, but like balls are part of the conversation in my house apparently these days. But like we're talking. You wonder why? Well, I think, yeah, I wonder why. I must have done this. Because they keep bringing it up. You put your finger on it, huh? Yeah. They're like, mommy, you don't have balls. Like they're like fixated on this fact that's just, so they're starting to call her, mommy, no balls. Really? That's her nickname. I was like, dude, that, like I was dying laughing. I'm like, that's gonna stick, you know? Mommy, no balls, it has a ring to it. How old were you when you first got your first gym membership? Because I got a follow-up question to this. Okay. Like what age were you the first time? 16 or 17. Yeah, I was probably 15, 16. Yeah, okay, so same here. Were you guys as traumatized as I was when you walked in the men's locker room the first time? Yeah. Got all the naked guys. Yeah, because you don't see that anywhere, you know? And you're not, you're not prepared. Yeah, they ain't like trying to hurry up, you know, to cover themselves. You're not prepared to see what happens with the aging process in that area. You know what I mean? Exactly. So you walk in and you're like, oh, that's, fuck. I know. That's gonna happen to me. Yeah, and I did that to my kids early. So that's my fault. Daddy, are you sick? Yeah. What's wrong with you? Why is one newer? Dude, you guys hear about Trump's executive order that he signed? No. So he signed an executive order, so here's what happened. Okay, he did a tweet and Twitter censored his tweet. Now, these are private platforms and organizations that I believe have the right to post and do whatever they want in terms of they can censor your stuff, they can not censor your stuff. Yeah, they're a private company. Totally up to them. However, they're also simultaneously protected from lawsuit, like, you know, when you, what is it called when you write something about someone and it's, is it libel? What's it called, Doug, when people get- Slander? Slander and stuff like that, right? They're protected from that because they also position themselves like, like the phone company. Like you can't sue the phone company for something you said on the phone because they're just neutral. Right. But what he said is you're not neutral. If you're- Not if you're actively censoring people. If you're actively censoring, then you're gonna be like an editor in which case then you can become liable for lawsuit. Either you have to let it all out or pick a few pick and choose if you're held responsible. You can't have your cake and eat it. So they did an executive order, which says that they can't, they can't censor or if they do that they're liable for, they're open for lawsuit now. Wow. Now, you know, at first I had mixed feelings because I think that these organizations are private. Interesting. But he makes a great point. No, no, it's interesting. Because if you're protected, because the phone company and other places they're protected by the law from lawsuits specifically for that. But these companies can't be protected if they're gonna be doing that. Yeah, not if they're acting just like any other news publication that has an agenda and they're like, I don't like what they're saying here, but they're allowing, you know, something that's completely, you know, an opposition to that to happen. Like that's not fair. Yeah. So kind of creates, it's really unprecedented. Mostly because these companies and social media organizations in general are relatively new. Yeah. But oh boy, that's an interesting. That's gonna shake things up a little bit, sure. Did you guys see what's going on with UFC Gym? Oh. Dude, you didn't see that? I sent it over to you guys. I know you saw it, right? Because we were talking about this. Tell me we didn't call it perfectly. Well, UFC Gym going almost 5X. So they're saying the fees will go up there and literally in the email says like a boat, they're going towards a boutique like gym. So they're gonna try and reduce numbers and charge a little bit more premium. A lot more. Yeah, a lot more premium. I think their memberships are on average 30 to $40 a month or something. Some people are gonna pay like 150, 200 bucks a month. No, they'd say they'll increase, yeah, I guess you're right. Increase by 99 to 129, I think they said in that range. Oh wow. But they're gonna maintain the square footage and everything. Oh yeah, no, that's changing. But you know, towel service, maybe child cares free. Like you're gonna start seeing. Plus it's gonna be slower. Yeah, yeah. So you're not gonna work out in there. It's not gonna be nearly as crowded. I like that move though. Well, I mean. That's the only move. For a consumer, I would still go there. Here's the thing that I think is crazy is, I don't see any other way. Leave it to Mark Mastroff to be the first to come out probably and because that's a, talk about a scary ballsy decision you have to make. Definitely. But truth be told, I think it's the only decision. So do I because your two options are, and both options you're gonna lose members, option one, try to keep everybody at 25, 30 bucks a month, but now limit, severely limit, how many people can come into your gym, space equipment out, close it throughout the day to clean or whatever. It's a nightmare. You're gonna lose tons of members that way. The other option is to raise everybody's monthly dues, in which case you're also gonna lose a lot of members. Everybody has adequate space. You know, it's just a little bit, I mean, I feel like the vibe in general is better in that direction than the other end, trying to conform to all these new regulations and standards. Right, and here's my opinion. I'm a fitness enthusiast. I value fitness, right? So I don't mind spending 150 bucks a month on a gym membership, but I'm gonna put things in perspective for a lot of people, okay? Most of us spend more money on our cell phone bills than we do on gym access. To me, if you use the gym, it's very valuable in spending that much. The only reason why gym members are so damn cheap is because there was a race to the bottom, which started sometime in the late 90s, early 2000s, that brought the prices way down and just packed them full of people who, you know, don't really care. Well, because the model was built on them not showing up. That's why, now it can't be. Now they need the members, they're gonna need the base, but here's the thing though, if you have a problem with the price, then buy at home equipment. That's gonna keep blowing up. Yeah, I mean, because then if you wanna really save money and it's about money for you, invest in a PRX type of rack that you set up and set yourself up within a year and a half time, you've paid what you've paid in almost any normal gym membership, and then you have it for life, if that's your issue. Otherwise, I'm with you, so I don't mind the rates going up at better service. I mean, I would like if my local gym offered a towel service. I actually prefer that. I look for gyms like that because I like clean equipment, I like less people, I like, because I value it. I really value the time I spend in the gym. So now here's a second part of that. Once things kinda quiet down, because at some point they will, at some point, the virus, people aren't gonna be scared of it, either we have a vaccine or we learn to live with it or whatever, at that point, because this is in response to the regulations and to consumer behaviors. At some point, this may open up gyms coming back into the scene and doing the whole low price model again. At some point, once things quiet down, I could see new players coming in and being like, hey, 20 bucks a month. Well, it'll be, you know, who I'm watching closely is Planet Fitness, because they're the extreme version of the super cheap model. And what percentage of their members would stay around paying 100 bucks? I'm curious. We can speculate all day, but we won't know until months have passed by, but I mean, $10 is pretty damn low and there might be enough people that are just like, eh, it's just to have it, to have it, what's $10? I mean, how many things are you guys paying on auto right now that you probably forgot about three months ago? That's, you know, $4.99 or I do that all the time. Oh, an app I want and I want it right then and there and then I forget to cancel it and then it's hitting me for like six months. I mean, some of these people, I'm sure are gonna have $10 memberships and not even sweat it, so they might make it out? I don't know. You're also seeing a lot of gyms sell a lot of their equipment. You're starting to see these gyms do fire cells on their equipment because they're closing down. So which I mean, it's sad, you know, that does hurt me. I really, really have a lot of love for the brick and mortar, you know, fitness space, but on the flip side for people who are having trouble finding equipment, because it's kind of hard to find, you know, you're probably gonna have some opportunities to buy some decent equipment from gyms closing down. I know some gyms are staying afloat by renting their equipment. Have you seen this? Yeah, I have seen that. Yeah, some gyms are renting their barbells, dumbbells, cardio. Yeah, our friends at the Santa Cruz Power, they did that, like where they're renting out all their equipment and stuff. So people went in there and still were able to use their machines or, you know, they would take, you know, some of their barbells and stuff at home and use them for a while. Yeah, so I mean, I think of all the industries, the fitness space is gonna get hit. I think fitness in restaurants, but I think fitness will get hit harder. I really do. I think people crave going out and eating out enough to where, and plus you can order in. Yeah, I think a lot of people are doing that. I mean, I don't know, trying to think who's closest to us. You know, we know the owners at Luna, but I haven't spoken to her lately to see what they're doing. But I feel like, I mean, my restaurant consumption really hasn't stopped. It's about the same. Maybe it's even higher sometimes I feel like. You're just ordering in. Yeah, I'm just ordering in because we don't do very much right now. There's not, we can't go out on weekends or public or something like that. So a lot of times we order in like a, you know, nicer restaurant food delivered to us. So I can't be alone. I can't be the only person that's doing that. So I would think that some of these restaurants are doing better than we would probably assume they were doing. I ordered yesterday, we ordered some Mexican food and was really, really good, called them up and, you know, told them I enjoyed their food or whatever. And they said, where's your location? And they said, oh, we don't have a restaurant or a kitchen. Oh wow. Yeah, so they're a kitchen that makes food and they do both what are they called farmers markets and they deliver through like DoorDash and stuff like that. Oh, interesting. Which I thought was- Where did you find that? That's a great model right now. It was on DoorDash. No kidding. Yeah, so and I didn't know this. If you go on there, you can't tell, right? It's just your logo. Right. I wonder how many people are doing our restaurant. Well, I told you about the- Yeah, Chuck E. Cheese. I told you about the Chuck E. Cheese move, so yeah. But there's people over here hustling out of their kitchen. Why not? No, it makes sense. I'm sure they had to go, obviously. I'll be honest. I mean, that is the one part of this whole, I can't like look forward to it more. Like I used to love just, you know, spending time on the weekend, like going on a date, like on a real nice restaurant. It's like, dude, not having that sucks. Yeah, I can't wait till that, that, you know, at least some of the restaurants that we look forward to just hanging out and like having good service and good food right fresh. Cause dude, it's one thing to get it, but also in a box and plastic and materials and then transport, it like tastes like shit after time it gets to your house. Yeah, I'm funny at the point now where I'm like, let's just go for a drive, then we get to come. I know, we just drive. I do a lot of that, dude. I do that all the time, dude, just to get out. Yeah. Walks and drives, it's like all we got. Well, you know, reports are coming out now. I know the CDC said that COVID is actually quite difficult to transmit through surfaces. So they're saying, you know, you don't need to wipe down your groceries or whatever. It's quite difficult to get it that way. They're saying the main way you get it is if you're around somebody who's sick and you're around them for a while. And then another report that came out that said that it seems like people build in a robust immune response to being infected with COVID, which is good news. That means that it's likely that if you've had it once, you're not going to get it again or the odds are really low, which is really good. Yeah, what are you guys feeling amongst your family and friends? Like, do you guys have still a divide of people that are like, open this shit up and we're gonna go out and then other people still freaked out? Or like, where are your family and friends at? I think it's a lot less. It's a little more flexible. Like even with neighbors and people around, we'll see it, parks and stuff. I mean, there's some people that are still real ultra worried about everything, but I feel like it's lightened up quite a bit. Like I don't see as many people with masks like constantly everywhere they walk. Yeah, yeah, my family's pretty much over it. They just want, yeah, they're in the position where they're like, look, we know the risks. Now let us take the risk or not. It's up to us, open, let play. Cause you know, and for the listeners who don't know here in California and in the Bay Area, we're still slow, I mean, it's still slow to reopen. I know cases are kind of still climbing in California. I know a lot of that's coming out of LA, but we're still not back to where we were in terms of things opening. So my family's pretty much like screw that or whatever. Although for the older people in my family, everybody's very careful. So nobody's making physical contact with my grandparents. Yeah, it's responsible. I mean, that's how it should be. We're keeping the family part, we get together small, below, under 10 people, which for my family's quite challenging. It's pretty funny. I'll invite like a few people and then one for each party. Why not? You invite me. Oh no, next thing you know, they're like, hey, can I bring so-and-so? What if I bring them? I'm like, no, just us. Let's just keep it down to eight people. Anyway, dude, I was reading more about creatine. I really think creatine is gonna be the next big, not muscle building, performance supplement. It's been that way for a long time, but I bet you creatine is the next big supplement that the everyday person just takes, whether they work out or not, because of all the stuff that I've been reading about it. So I was looking up health benefits of creatine and remarkably, there are lots and lots of studies on the health benefits of creatine, not having anything to do with strength, athletic performance or anything like that. So there were studies that showed that it benefits people with neurological disorders like Parkinson's and other types of disorders, actually have, they actually benefit from supplementing with creatine, lowers blood sugar. So they're showing that this may actually be some, people with diabetes may benefit from supplementing with creatine. And then you know how I've talked about the cognitive boosting effects of potential effects of creatine? In older people, that's actually pretty pronounced. So the way, and this is just for the listeners, the reason why this is, the case is because creatine improves or increases the amount of ATP in your body. And ATP stands for adenosine triphosphate. And this is one of the main sources of energy for all of your cells. So if you have more of this energy, your cells operate better and you just, all of your functions seem to benefit. Of course, it's extremely safe or whatever. And I'm sure I'm gonna get DMs from people who are gonna ask me where to find it. Legion is one of the companies we work with. They make a good one called Recharge, which has got the creatine monohydrate. It's crazy to see like where it started and how they're trying to push and promote creatine forever. And like how the, it was so new that they were scared that it was gonna have all these negative effects to it. And we even had people coming in and warning us about all these potential things that sounded like side effects for steroids and things. And just to see like how it's progressed and how people have kept using it and they kept studying it and seeing like all these benefits that you wouldn't even have thought like down the road. It's pretty crazy. You know what I did, not really intentionally, I just was wanting to do the sauna after my workout. But you read a study a while back and I wish I remember what it was or who we were talking to, but you were talking about that there may be benefits to taking the creatine right after the workout at the same time doing the red light therapy. Do you remember that? No, so that was my own speculation. Okay, that's what it was. I thought it was something that you read on here. So post-workout. I happened the other day and I was thinking about it, I'm like, oh, I wonder if I'm gonna feel like a super charged feeling. Yeah, I love red light, like post-workout. That's like one of my favorite things. Well, yeah, actually I have something on that. I'll touch on that a second, but first let me talk about what I was doing. You have to rub it into your skin. You have to sprinkle the creatine on it. What? Yeah, it's really good. You need to get it for a second. Yeah, you have to get it for a second. Pour into powder. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Really? No, no, no, no. So creatine, you uptake more of it post-workout, but it's a small effect, so it's not gonna make that big of a difference. Otherwise you could take it any time, but if you wanna be super specific, take creatine post-workout. The Legion creatine recharge also has L-carnitine in there which also amplifies, helps with recovery. Now, the reason why I speculated it'd be good with red light therapy is because red light boosts your cells, your mitochondria's ability to use ATP. So it makes sense to me that if you take creatine and use it at the same time, you might get an amplified effect. But you brought that up, so I wanna talk about, I actually wrote it down because I didn't wanna forget. So there was a study in South Korea on red light therapy. And so they did a 15-month study treating 395 sports-related injuries with red light therapy. And they showed significantly shortened recovery times with red light treatments. Now in 2018, I didn't know this, the National Association of Sports Medicine endorsed red light therapy for treating injuries, pain, and strain. So it speeds up tissue's ability to regenerate. Now we know about that on skin. Does it say at what rate in comparison at normal? It said significantly. So I don't know exactly what that looks like, but if you're a high-level athlete. Oh, that's exciting, man. Getting you there three days faster is a big deal. Oh, that's huge. If you're any kind of aspiring athlete to have one of those units at your house, I would have killed for something like that. Any recovery aid that actually is legitimate and has scientific backing behind it is something that you should invest in. Yeah, now the problem is when you go online and you look up like red light therapy, there's a lot of crap out there. It's just like red light bulbs, you know what I mean? Or... Oh yeah, it's a big obstacle now. They're just gonna burn you. They don't concentrate the energy in the right way. You're not getting the... So what you want is you want the red light that they use in the studies, which is relatively expensive. It's high quality. Yeah, you pay for what you get. Yep, and we obviously work with Juve and that's because they use the same types of red lights that they use in studies. So they're actually legit. So have you guys been getting as many DMs as I've been getting ever since your last two Instagram posts? Oh my gosh, which ones? Oh yeah, yeah. No, I mean, it's definitely gotten more intense as of late, like the last few days. Yeah, and I have a really hard time. I had written something that I didn't post it. I did a video and then I didn't post it and I'm struggling right now with putting anything out in relation to what's going on because I don't like a lot of what I see and then I also don't want it to be misunderstood how I convey that message. Well, we talked about it and we waited and so I've gotten lots of DMs also. I know you have two Justin. We're in a position where we have a lot of listeners and they wanna know what our stances are and our opinions. Based off of what we all said and talked about and I know you guys very well and I wrote something out because I wanted to make sure that we represent ourselves the right way that's accurate and honest. I'll read it right now so people kind of get an idea of where we stand. So we have gotten lots of DMs and the truth is at first we wanted to say, we didn't wanna say anything. We wanted to kind of keep it to ourselves because this is a very serious and charged situation and we're seeing lots of people on social media, influencers and celebrities giving their opinions and to be honest, most of them seem fake. This is why we wanted to kind of be quiet for a second and if you're a regular listener of Mind Pump, you know how much we value integrity and authenticity so we gathered our thoughts, okay? So here's what we think. Like most people we saw the video of George Floyd and we were totally appalled and discussed it completely. It was a clear display of a terrible abuse of power, clear. Now days later we saw videos of small businesses getting destroyed and of innocent people being attacked for defending their businesses and properties. We also have tremendous respect for the good men and women in blue who keep us safe every single day and that's all we're gonna say about it and it's not because we don't have more to say but because we think actions speak louder than words so we're gonna put our money where our mouth is. Now here's what we did. We put together a t-shirt that reflects our 100% opinion and every dollar of profit that comes from the sales of this t-shirt are gonna go to two organizations on top of that, we're gonna match the profits with our own money to double the donation. So the first organization is the non-profit Center for Policing Equity which works with objective data to address and change discriminatory practices. Those need to change. The other organization is our local police department because we believe that most cops are good people who wanna keep their local community safe. Now the shirt is gonna say peace, love, unity now because we are against violence and we firmly believe that there are more good people than bad people out there and if we all stick together peacefully with steadfast unity, we can make real change. Our first question is from Adam Hayes Fitt. What are your top three exercises for blasting belly fat? I love blasting things. It's like my favorite pastime. Okay, so I feel like this is a trick question. Here's why this is a good question. Splasted. And we've covered this in many previous podcasts but it's been a little while since we've talked about this. You can't spot reduce fat loss. But you can blast. You can't. Hell yeah. You can shoot yourself with them. No, no, you can't spot reduce. Meaning, let's say I'm 30 pounds overweight but I don't mind how my whole body looks but I really don't like how my legs look. So I just want my legs get leaner. I can't dictate where my body's gonna burn body fat from simply by training that particular area more or doing something special. The way your body burns body fat and stores body fat is largely due to genetics. Hormones do play a role. So like women whose hormone levels tend to be off, they might store more belly fat than normal men. The opposite, they may store more fat in their hips and thighs if their estrogen levels are high but it's not a huge, huge effect. It's mainly dictated by genetics. You can't train your abs and burn body fat from your abs. It just doesn't. It's gotta get it from everywhere. Doesn't work that way. Now that being said, we can pick three exercises that we'd like for your abs, right? These aren't the, what'd he say, blast your abs. Belly fat. Straight off an infomercial. Just imagining those graphics where it just shows like this gun and lasers like pew, pew, pew, pew. And they're gone just like that. So I love a perfect sit-up. So I love to teach that. Serene did a video not long ago on that. So if you're not on our Mind Pump TV on YouTube, make sure you check that video out. I also like just a standard reverse crunch and then full lever. So if I'm picking three that are my favorite, those are three of my favorite. Yeah, now doing great ab exercises aren't gonna burn more body fat from your midsection. I mean, you burn it from everywhere, but having more developed abs will, can contribute to the illusion of looking, being leaner in the midsection. Because as the abs develop, they show up more at higher body fat percentages. This happened to me when I really first learned how to really train my abs properly. So my body fat didn't go down, but I looked leaner in my abs because my abs stuck out more. I love long lever, physio ball crunches, my favorite exercise for midsection. I love active planks. If you do active planks properly, that really builds the muscles of the midsection. That really got my abs to pop out as well. And then my third exercise would be reverse crunches, love reverse crunches. Yeah, I like decline crunches and sit-ups and I like rotational moves, mainly because of the functional aspect to those. And I think that we just don't get enough rotation in general in our workouts. And so this is a great place to do that, is any kind of trunk rotation, whether or not you're keeping your hips from rotating with you or you're trying to keep them anchored down so you're anti-rotating across. Either way, you're gonna get that transverse abdominals, you get your obliques. So I'm really a big fan of those. And any kind of isometric, like you mentioned, planks or things like that, but also just carries for me were great in terms of stabilizing weight and really activating the abs isometrically. All right, next question is from Mickey M. Fitt. Is it normal to feel some soreness when going into a new phase of training? Or does that mean you took the workout too far? These days, if I'm consistent, almost every single time I do get sore and I don't get sore very often, but the times I may get sore, it's because I moved into a new phase. So it's pretty predictable. Like if I change the rep range from low to high or I go from straight sets to supersets or even just changing the exercise, let's say I'm practicing barbell squats and getting really good at them and I train them for a long, long time. And then I think to myself, I'm gonna go on a run of Bulgarian split stand squats. The first week or two of doing them, I tend to feel sore. And I just think this has to do with the fact that your body's not used to it. And you're gonna, anytime you're, when your body gets really good at something, it gets very good at it and it also reduces the damage that whatever you're doing can potentially cause. That's part of why you get good at it. Your body's adapting, trying to prevent damage. So when you try something different, it's a new skill, new movement, and you're more likely to cause damage. Does that mean you overdid it? I don't think so. If you're sore for like two days, three days, yeah. But if you're sore for like a day, that's normal. And this one is a really hard question to answer because it really depends on how sore are we talking about. Like I'm sore right now. I've been really inconsistent the previous two or three months. My consistency's ramped up the last couple of weeks. And so I kind of feel sore all the time right now. Between whatever I'm hitting, I definitely am, I was just telling you guys the other day, I was like, it's been a while since I even did ab work and it didn't take very much. And like my abs are super sore from what I thought was very little work. So there's definitely gonna be that if it's new or changing the phase, you haven't done an exercise that exercise in a long time, you're, you know, 99% of the time you're gonna be sore. But if it gets, I look at it for myself, like if it's debilitating, if it keeps me from doing normal movements or like it's, I'm so at sore to the touch, I know I way overreach. Like I don't mind feeling a little bit of soreness like I worked out. That's a, I think that's a really good feeling because you, in order to adapt and keep growing, changing, right? We wanna feel, you wanna be overreaching or stretching a little bit. But the common thing is that I think most people hammer themselves and they really overreach, you just barely kind of wanna overreach, right? So being sore a little bit, okay, but you're the only person that can really gauge how sore you feel from this workout compared to what you normally feel like. Yeah, I think that's why it's nice to have a coach taking you through programs initially because they do a lot better job of gauging that. If you're unfamiliar with what that looks like because personally, I've definitely had to go through a lot of hellish workouts where I totally overreached and realized that, oh my God, like that just hammered me. I can't do that and replicate that again. And so it's like going through that myself then I know what signs and things to look out in the workouts in terms of whether or not this is gonna be like adequate amount of load or reps or volume and then also see how they rebound the next time. Well, you guys, I'm sure do this and I do this at least now. I'm so aware of what that feeling feels like in the workout that for example, I had the other day, I was like, you know what, I'm just gonna throw 135 on my back. I'm gonna do walking lunges for five sets. That was gonna be my leg training for the day. And I got into like by set three, I was like, oh shit. Yeah. Yeah, like so. But calm down. You're familiar with the feeling. I already felt like I could tell how pumped I was. I could tell how tight I was. I could even start to feel that burning sensation like I'm gonna be sore from this already. So even though I had written down that I was going to do five sets, I didn't because I knew that this was going to be enough to definitely get my body to adapt and change. There was no need for more. It's because I think a big problem is people go into a workout or they'll try a new phase or change it. And what they're trying to do is see how much they can take. That becomes the mentality. I can do more. I can push more. That's the wrong mentality. What you wanna do is go into it thinking how much do I need to do to get my body to respond? That's all. If it's new, you don't need to do, you don't even need to do as much as you were doing before. So in other words, if I'm, here's what happens to me. Let's say I'm training and it's five weeks and I'm in a low rep phase. At the end of that five week period, my intensity is pretty high in that low rep range. Then when I move to a high rep range, I don't match the same intensity that I had in my low rep range. It's a lower intensity because it's a new stimulus. And I can feel it. I can feel it in my body. I go easier than I was before. And it's because I'm going into the workout with the mentality. How much is gonna be required to get my body to change versus how much can I do? How much hard, how hard can I go? Next question is from Josem279. How much protein do you guys recommend? How much do you each consume? The protein, the magic macronutrient. So protein, I'm gonna speak generally and then I'll speak more specifically. Generally speaking, studies are pretty conclusive. There's a lot of studies on this. And what they find is for an athlete, for somebody who wants to build muscle, for someone who wants to maximize recovery, build strength, prevent muscle loss while dieting. So all those things. You wanna consume about 0.6 to 0.8 or one gram of protein per pound of body weight. Okay, so if you weigh 100 pounds, that would be 60 to 100 grams of protein. Okay, so 0.6 to one gram per pound of. And this is, now this is true for non-obese individuals. If you have a lot of body fat on your body, don't use your weight, use your lean body mass as your gauge. Now that being said, there's an individual variance when it comes to protein. I've worked with a few, not a lot of clients, but I've worked with a few clients where when they started to push the protein, their digestion wasn't good, they didn't feel good. And so these clients did better on the lower end of that scale. And then I've worked with other people who just thrive off of protein and who push it even above one gram of protein per pound of body weight and seem to do great. So at the end of the day, you really gotta listen to your body. But the studies generally do show that a high protein diet is superior. Well, I've also met people that are like in myself where if I'm not eating protein, muscle falls off my body. It's just, it, my body- It just falls off. Falls right off, dude, it's- Worrying? Yeah. Under the couch. I mean, it's not, it's hard for me. I don't know if it's because I grew up eating a ton of sugar and carbs and that was the main source of calories for most of my life. Although I like to think that I've trained myself to be like meat first, protein first type of eater, I still find myself, if I'm not tracking diligently or really mindfully going after protein, I under eat it. I mean, just the other day, I had a pound of steak, I had four eggs, a piece of beef jerky and something else that had protein, that's still under. That's still under 150 grams. So that's, you know, four different sittings that I'm going after protein, still not enough protein to hit my 180, 200 mark. So, you know, and for me, I know as soon as I fall off of that and I'm not making effort to do that and then you add in the fact I'm not going to the gym and lifting is consistently and then muscle just falls off my body really, really quick. So, you know, it really does depend on the person that I've noticed other people who, you know, my ex who was a competitor, I mean, she could eat 800 calories and 40 grams of protein and that girl kept muscle on all the time. Like she did nothing. It would took everything out of her to just lose a pound on the scale. So everybody's body is different and so you need to figure out if that is it. But I tell you, it was a missing key for me. It was a key for a long time that I really didn't focus on when I began tracking and like said, okay, in fact, I remember going through a phase where I was like, all I'm gonna focus on is protein. I'm not gonna worry about my carbs. I'm not gonna worry about my fat. I'm gonna just make sure I hit that one gram of protein per lean body mass and see what happens. And I tell you, you know, I never put together a streak like that and my body was another one of those, you know, paradigm shattering moments we always talk about on this show. That was one of them for me. Yeah, for me, I found about 130 grams of protein a day is pretty good, which is not a ton. When you can, right now I weigh about 200 and maybe 10 pounds. I've gone as high as 240, 250 grams of protein. My digestion goes a little off when that happens. You start to get the, you know, the notorious. Well, you're throwing more shakes in at that point, right? Yeah, and you get the notorious, you know, bodybuilder farts and all that stuff, which is not a great sign. Not fun. But again, about 130 grams of protein is good for me. If I go a little higher on that, I'm good. When I start to go below that, I start to notice that, you know, I'm not as solid. I'm not recovering as fast. So that's my number. Yeah, I'm just constantly seeking protein in my diet alongside, you know, fats and vegetables and cheese. Which you can't. That's the decorative truth. Fat and cheese, dude, fat and protein. It's a beautiful thing. But yeah, I don't really do as well on carbs. So I use carbs more as a way of like planning out the fact that I'm gonna have a more intense, like endurance filled type of a workout where I need a little bit more in the workout. So then I'll up my carbs for the day or, you know, the day before to give me adequate energy. But other than that, I'm just really manipulating my energy with carbs more than anything and staying pretty consistent with the amount of protein I eat. Next question is from Andrew Beth. Is there a scenario, if any, that a vegan diet would be more beneficial for a fit and healthy individual than one that includes animal products? Okay, so generally speaking, and this is the, no, the studies are pretty good on this. Okay. If you're allergic. No, the studies are pretty good on this. People tend to have more nutrient deficiencies when they avoid meat. There are certain nutrients that are very difficult to find in vegan sources. Some of them, some people would say are impossible to find. So most people do better with a mixed diet. This is also based on my own experience. I have very, very few people, I've trained people for over 20 years. There's very few people that I've seen that do better all the way vegan and very few people I've ever seen who go in the opposite direction. Most of my clients always did best health wise, being able to maintain it, performance, fat loss, muscle building, you name it with a kind of omnivore type diet. Now I did have some clients, not a lot, but there's only a couple I can think of right now that did better vegan. One of them was, that really stands out was a doctor that I trained. Is a great guy, super smart dude. He did a lot of endurance type sport, hired me to build some of his strength. And he did one of those donation trips, those doctors without borders, where he donates his services. And sometimes it takes you to weird places and you gotta live differently and live among people or whatever. And he had to live in a community that ate mostly vegetable foods. And so he inadvertently became vegan. And when he came back, he's like, man, I never felt better, I have more energy. Now he granted, he was eating healthy before. He, it wasn't like he went from bad to eating healthy. He went from omnivore to vegan. I didn't believe him. At this time I was a little bit more of a zealot. So we threw meat back in, sure enough. He started getting more negative symptoms, took it out. And he felt amazing. And so I told him, well, you gotta listen to your body. I think there's always an individual variance. You're always gonna find people that do better eating one way versus another. But generally speaking, most people in my experience do better with a blend. And I think too to say healthy or healthy like that, it's not fair, right? Somebody could have an intolerance to something, right? And be still considered healthy. It doesn't make you unhealthy. But constantly hitting that intolerance, getting your immune response, that's unhealthy. And so that, but that's just it though. Like there's a lot of people out there, like a question like that is you're like, hey, if all things are equal and people are exactly healthy, then yeah, most of the research is gonna point somebody into a more balanced diet. But what we don't know, because we're finding out more and more, especially about the gut, that a lot of people have all these intolerances and issues going on that it could be red meat. I have had clients like that. I had clients that, we just cut red meat out. But then they could have chicken and fish and everything else like that. And they did phenomenal. So it's rarely ever either or. And I hate that we try and do that, right? Why do we have to like make it into a, either you're in this camp or you're in that camp. It's like, figure out what foods agree with you and don't agree with you. And if you can find a way that there are certain meats that do serve you and other ones don't, we'll cut out the ones that don't serve you and keep the ones that do serve you in. It's hard because versus saying that you have to go all vegan because red meat doesn't agree with you. Yeah, didn't you eat eggs and figure out that it was really the egg whites that you had the biggest problem with? Yeah, yeah. I mean, these guys make fun of me, but when we make breakfast, I'll make like a huge sunny side up, like eight eggs in a pan and I'll cut, they'll see what'll be left over will be circles cut out of the egg whites where I'm cutting out the yolks. I identified for me that egg whites, I haven't intolerance to them. When I eat a lot of them, I start to get skin rashes, my digestion is off, but egg yolks are fine. Now you should explain to people why that, like we talked the other day about gut permeability and the theory, what I mean, I would think and I'd like to hear you, it's your own body, right? What do you think is why egg whites is yours? Well, I ate a lot of eggs growing up. Eggs are a great source of protein and nutrients and cholesterol and choline, all phenomenal for muscle building. So growing up, I would just eat a shit ton. I mean, I used to eat, I would eat a dozen eggs in the morning, no problem, right? Throw them into shakes. And the problem is, is I had other eating practices that caused inflammation of my body. So my gut was kind of probably constantly inflamed. Well, when your gut's inflamed, the protein particles travel through the gut when they're not supposed to, your body recognizes these particles as foreign invaders because it doesn't belong there, it's supposed to travel through the lower intestines or other parts of the body. And so you mount an immune response. So what ended up happening is, I would eat eggs all the time and all of a sudden I'd eat eggs and I'd get digestive issues or I'd get rash. I didn't connect the two for a long time until eventually I cut them out and noticed, oh wow, I feel much better. And then I thought it was all eggs. And then I read an article that talked about how when people have a food allergy or food intolerance, it's often the white and not the yolk, so the white has antibodies in it, this is why they think there's more intolerance to egg whites to protect the yolk. So cutting them out, I feel great. Well, you guys have watched the show Naked and Afraid, right? Yeah. Okay, so if you watch the show, I mean, there's been vegans on there, there's been different vegetarians and people have problems with meat. Inevitably the ones that last towards the end, they end up eating a piece of meat because their body is almost revolting against them. And so it's just hard for me to see thriving on just a plant-based diet, given that circumstances. Now in the new world, we can get away with that because of the way we process things and the way that we present it to where our body can digest it better. But given the fact that you're in nature, you have two options, I just don't see you thriving. No, no, you can't. And again, because we live in the modern world, you can go to the grocery store and you can have access to an incredible variety of fruits and vegetables and nuts and seeds and they can compliment each other and all that stuff. But at the end of the day, at the end of the day, it's up to you, it's up to your body. There's a huge individual variance. And I understand that this can be hard for some people, our food is our identity. I mean, the whole cultures around food, we're very proud of food. So I'm a vegan, or I only eat keto and it's like it becomes your religion, that's silly. Here's the other thing. Your body may work well eating a particular way now. That doesn't mean it's gonna work like that forever. Context changes, stress changes. You may develop an intolerance, you may develop bacterial imbalances that make eating and digesting the foods you eat now a problem. So be open-minded, listen to your body at the end of the day, I think that's the best advice that we could give. Look, we record mind pump on video as well as audio. So you can watch us on YouTube. You can watch and listen to the podcast on YouTube. It's the Mind Pump podcast on YouTube, check us out. You can also find us on Instagram, you can find Justin at Mind Pump. Justin, me at Mind Pump, Sal and Adam at Mind Pump, Adam.