 So any time I transition my diet where I'm trying to, and not just intuitive eating or trying to stay balanced, but I'm trying to make moves. I'm trying to lean out or I'm trying to bulk up. If I shift my diet in one direction or the other, I also like to shift the stimulus. I also like to just to maximize the change. Yeah. The program just so exactly. So you maximize, so you, especially after you've been doing this for a really long time, the shifts are so subtle and the gains are so subtle that anything I can do to accelerate, I'm going to do those things. And one of those ways is sending a novel signal while also changing diet. Yeah, initially, I think I misunderstood what your point was. But yeah, I think for sure a lot of people misunderstand the fact that you're trying to preserve muscle in a cut instead of just trying to hustle to burn calories and lose weight, which is the common thought process when they're navigating towards what programs to do and like how to pair their nutrition and all that to it. It's like, how can I get all this off of me? Instead of really focusing on still strength training, still providing like muscle building type programming, but now we're just adjusting our nutrition. You get free access to the RGB bundle. Also, one day left for the huge sale this month, Maps Prime, Maps Prime Pro, Maps Anywhere, normally would retail for $361 right now for the next 24 hours. It's only $99.99. That's it. If you're interested, go to mapsapral.com. All right, here comes the rest of the show. Whether your goal is to cut or to bulk, you should train to build muscle. It benefits both of those. I think when people are, they change their training based on the cutting or bulking goal with their strength training, not realizing that the goal should always be to build muscle, even if you're trying to cut, because at the very least what it's going to do is it's going to preserve the most muscle mass, because it's very difficult to keep muscle as you drop calories. So you want to send a build muscle signal, no matter what. So strength training should always be revolved around that. This reminds me of a lot of the questions we get all the time about like how to pair the nutrition with the types of programs we have as well. And it's, you know, again, the end of the day, especially if your goal is to build muscle, like we got to make sure that we're inadequate surplus for that to happen and giving it proper nutrients. Now, are you saying that at the same time? So let's say I'm going on a cut. Are you saying that my goal should also to build muscle? With the training. With, got it. So that I think there needs to be some clarity, right? So it's like, even though I'm getting ready to go into a cut, you know, so a calorie deficit for an extended period of time, the thought processes, my programming should be written or I should be following something that is trying to build more muscle on my body. Yes, now, I know some people are thinking they're like, you know, when I go on a cut, what I've heard is when you go on a cut, you do a lot of supersets, you do a lot more reps because it burns more calories. And I get the rationale, but that's not why I would have somebody do supersets, for example, if it's a novel stimulus, whether you're in a bulk of calories or you're in a deficit with calories, it's going to build muscle. So the what you want to do is what you want to do to build muscle with your training. Then the diet is what determines whether or not you cut or your bulk because the signal that you send with your strength training is going to at least keep the muscle the most, right? It's going to keep the muscle the most as you cut your calories. So someone may ask, well, why then do people do supersets and stuff? Well, they think it burns more calories, but there is a psychological benefit. I like to do supersets and higher reps when I cut my calories, not because there's some special fat burning properties to that kind of training. It's the psychological piece. Yeah, because I have to go lighter. You don't feel like a wuss because you're having to lift half the weight because you're not as strong. Yes. So if I'm doing supers, I'm going to go lighter anyway, right? But I've done, you know, five by five type training on a cut as well. It was a novel stimulus. And so I said, I'm going to switch to the style of training to keep muscle while I'm dropping calories. It's the most effective thing. What would make me decide is 100% what I was doing before I transitioned to cut. That's regardless of, and I agree with you, like the psychological benefits of going lightweight and supersetting and higher reps when you're in a cut because you're in a calorie deficit. I think there's a lot of psychological benefits of that. So you're not like discouraged every day that you're getting weaker and weaker. But that would be different if, say, I was just running, like let's say a phase three of maps aesthetic, which is a lot of supersets, higher reps, right? So I just came off a map set and then now I'm deciding, okay, I've been running that, let's say, for three or four weeks. And I go, okay, now I want to start a cut. So if I wanted to start a cut, even though I agree, and I like the idea of supersetting straight, I would move out of that because that's what I was currently in. Yeah. So you get a novel stimulus, right? So you would go into like a heavy training phase. That's right. Even if you're cutting your calories. That's right. That's right. And so I think that's the key takeaway for transitioning in and out of. And I like that for going into a bulk. So anytime I transition my diet, and not just intuitive eating or trying to stay balanced, but I'm trying to make moves, I'm trying to lean out, or I'm trying to bulk up. If I shift my diet in one direction or the other, I also like to shift the stimulus. I also like to shift. Just to maximize the change. Yeah, the program, exactly. So you maximize, especially after you've been doing this for a really long time, the shifts are so subtle and the gains are so subtle that anything I can do to accelerate or make those gains look like they're more, you know, I'm going to do those things. And one of those ways is sending a novel signal while also changing the diet. Yeah, initially, I think I misunderstood what your point was. But yeah, I think for sure, a lot of people misunderstand the fact that you're trying to preserve muscle in a cut instead of just trying to hustle to burn calories and lose weight, which is the common thought process when they're navigating towards what programs to do and like how to pair their nutrition and all that to it. It's like, how can I get all this off of me instead of really focusing on still strength training, still providing like muscle building type programming, but now we're just adjusting our nutrition to be more. Plus the side effect of having more muscle, as we said, I don't know, at least a thousand times on the show is a faster metabolism and easier fat loss process. But yeah, if you're going on a cut, your goal should be to build muscle with your training. In other words, do training that you know is either novel or different enough to where this is going to stimulate some growth. Now, you may not and you probably won't build muscle if you're a calorie deficit, but because you're sending a build muscle signal, you'll lose less muscle or at best you'll keep what you've built when you go on the cut. And that's the challenge. The challenge is, how do I keep my muscle as I get rid of body fat? And the best way to do that is to send a build muscle signal. There is no such thing as a keep muscle signal, right? You're either building or you're losing, right? So build muscle, build muscle, drop the calories. And at the very least, I minimize the amount of muscle. Now, we're speaking towards rep ranges right now, but this applies to even like, you know, novel stimulus can be different exercises, right? So I love to do both even, right? Okay, I'm going to transition, you know, let's say I was running a five by five, and then I'm going to transition to a cut, like a great program to transition into is like a map strong where the first phase is 20 reps. Yeah, 20, I'm going from a five by five type of training. And not only am I going to go like, so let's say I'm running five by five anabolic type of style and I go to a cut, I'm going to not only transition out of a five by five very traditional type of training, I'm going to go to something that's a little more unconventional with different lifts that I'm not used to doing, and I'm going to be doing 20 rep range, like that's going to be such a novel stimulus that my body is going to start changing. I love to do something like that at the same time of changing the diet. Now, there are potential psychological benefits from also doing traditional, you know, for lack of a better term, strength training or power lifting style training in a deficit, a calorie deficit. Now that the detriment is what I said earlier. It's hard to be strong when your calories are low, but your energy also tends to be low. So long rest periods and low reps can sometimes make the workout more bearable. I've been in some calorie deficits where I'm getting my body fat down below five, you know, five, six percent where your energy just, it's just not great. And I would do, you know, sets of four reps and I'd rest three minutes in between. And it was easier. Now I wasn't lifting heavy because my calories are so low, but the rest periods made the workouts, you know, more bearable. So you want to consider that for yourself. Think to yourself like, what's going to be novel? What's going to stimulate muscle growth or at least preserve muscle? And then my psychology, and this is something that people don't, don't consider enough. What messes with me the most when I'm training or when I'm cutting or when I'm bulking? For me, bulking never really mess with me because I was a skinny kid. So that's always a good time. Cutting would mess with me a little bit. And if I saw weight on the bar go down, that would, it would mess in my head for sure. It would get in my head and then I'd go up my calories and mess up the whole cup. But if I'm doing super sets anyway, I'm not going very heavy and I stopped paying attention to the weight anyway. So it works better for my psychology. It's not because I had to learn that. And that's really where I do lean more into, you know, higher rep and hypertrophy style training. Cause it's just, again, I can lift a bit lighter weight, but, but again, get a total novel stimulus that I'm not, um, programming typically, but when I'm going to cut it fits perfectly. Yeah, you know, along the, the psychology point you're making with this, it's, I think it's important to even talk about like not just the strength gains that you, you see that you lose sometimes, but also, uh, the way you look, like, uh, that was it. That was the hurdle for me because I was never the guy that I never chased like PRs early on in my career that I was never caught up in like my, honestly, I was, I didn't care that much about how strong I really was. I didn't, I cared about how I looked. Um, and what really messed with my head was when I go into a cut, um, I never would finish it, or this is early on I'm talking about, right? Um, I would never finish it because I would swear I'm losing so much muscle because I would shrink down so much. And so yeah, maybe my waist went in a little bit too, but then like my arms, I felt like my arms got way smaller. My chest got small, all the muscles that I was pumped. Yeah. Cause I'm not, you're, you gotta understand that like your, your muscle bellies are full of carbohydrates and water and flu, right? So you have all this fluid and carbohydrates in there. If you deplete, it sucks that out. And if you're a taller, bigger guy, that's going to be a, that's a lot, right? And so you can, your muscle bellies in the, in the bodybuilding world, we should call it looking flat, right? Cause you're not filled up with all this. So being in a deficit can cause you to have kind of this flat look for an extended period of time. Especially in the beginning when you're, you're, you're losing some body fat, but it's not enough to give you definition. So you just feel smaller. I used to confer, I used to refer to that as like the, the between haircut phase, you know, when you're between haircuts, when it's just like, or it's like that length where it's like, this sucks. It's, yeah, it doesn't look good. It's not ready for a cut. It's like the same thing when you're in this cutting weight is you know, you need to do these things to get to the goal that you want, but you kind of let your, your mind mess with you a little bit because you don't like the way you're looking yet you're heading to a direction you think you want to go to. And so it's a, it's a real mind fuck when you don't understand what's happening. Same thing on the reverse. If you get somebody that's always, you know, with being overweight, put them on a bulk. Yeah. And you, you're like, no, we got to speed up your tablets, put you on a bulk and, and they're like, oh, my legs feel, they feel tighter. My clothes are fitting tighter. I feel bigger. Or, you know, if I would train a female client, her butt would build and she'd be like, my jeans feel tighter. I don't know. I don't know if I want to keep, I'm going to cut my calories. Like, no, no, don't do that. It's really tough to get through that mental aspect. So that's why I say consider that the most I would say with your training. That's the most important thing because that's what keeps you consistent. And in the game is that mental aspect, not just, you know, that the objective results necessarily for the, you know, young, insecure guy, like I was that cared about the way he looked. This is also why I was drawn to carb cycling so much was because then I'd have this day where I would refeed and it would fill my body back out and reassure you and it would reassure me like, oh, OK, and then I would start, OK, stop looking at my days where I'm in a major calorie deficit and I'm depleted and let's let's take, you know, pictures or mental pictures, whatever of where I'm at when I refeed and I get my pump and it's like, OK, that I like. But the days after following that when I have to cut again, I didn't like that. So that's why I like the carb cycling. So it wasn't like this, you know, consistent depletion for a long period of extended period of time. I get to refeed and then kind of see like, OK, this is what I look like when I'm all filled out. OK, I'm still heading the right direction. I thought that was a really good strategy for that reason. Yeah, totally. So I got to tell you guys something funny that happened the other day with with my 18 month old. So do you guys. So I think this might be a dad thing. So if my son cries over something that is like, for lack of a return, silly like he's trying to get your attention or he's like, you know, whatever. And it's hard not to giggle or laugh. You know, Jessica gets mad at me because she's like, don't laugh because he's sad or whatever. But I'm like, he's, you know, he's just doing it because you like get over some ridiculous reasons. Yeah. Like like he woke up and he was kind of in a bad mood and then, you know, I'm getting him food and he's doing this thing where he's kind of kind of kind of crying. And then I kind of laugh a little bit like, come on, you're OK. Right. But then he cries more because I'm doing that. So then I'm like trying to feed him and he's like that I put the fork next to his face with the food. He's like, he opens the bell. Yeah, I'm sad, but not too sad to eat. Yeah. And I'm feeding him as he's crying, you know. And I'm like, I'm trying so hard not to laugh. I remember doing that with little of my kids who was like doing the same thing. It was like easy. And I took the bottom of his jaw and was going. It's like Chewbacca. It's hilarious. It's a dad thing, you know. But Jessica's like, he's going to feel and she's right. I get that too. But I mean, she's right. But so are you, right? Because Katrina and I have the same battle on this. And I think I think there's some there's some value to having levity in a situation like that. Don't you think like I feel like being playful about it and not reacting to every emotional response because they're going to be emotional and react to things like all time. And if you're the parent who's always like overly sensitive because they're crying all the time or you or the opposite extreme where you blow them off. I feel like having some levity around those situations sometimes there's some value to that. Why there's value in having, you know, two parents that bounce out, bounce it out. But yeah, like the other day he fell. He didn't hurt himself, right? But he fell and he kind of laid there and he looked around and then he saw that like, you know, we were looking at him. So then he's like, you know, doing that thing. And I'm like, oh, you know, you're fine. I go and try and tickle them while he's laughing or whatever or crying. It's funny how quickly they're trained to know that that mom is the sensitive one and dad is not. And like those like when Max, anything happens like that with him, he bumps his head. Like I could be, we could be playing him and I, he bumps his head. He'll get up for me, walk across the house to go find Katrina and do this. It's cute though, right? Yeah, no, it's it's adorable when they do it. Have you ever seen the video? It's an old video, but there's this kid and he's like, he's on the floor, kind of crying or whatever. And so the dad, I think it's the dad of the mom is recording him and they walk around the corner into another room and the kid stops crying and then they walk around the corner and then they see the the mom or dad and they fall back down three or four times around the house. I'm on you, bro. I'm on you. Dude, I can't figure out and maybe one of our listeners has gone through this with their kid. But Max is going to this really weird phase that we just like I thought it was gonna be short, but we're going on now. I think a month of him consistently every single night, dude. He's doing this wraps himself in the I mean, we've got now we got rid of the comforter. We're now stripping him down to just like his diaper and either a shirt or his pants. That's it. But as soon as we walk out, he makes like a tent and covers himself and he falls asleep in like the tent and because he's breathing underneath there and the room's nice and cool. So he's cold if he's outside the sheets, but then he gets under there and he heats it all up and then he falls asleep. And then I have to go in like 15 minutes later to pull it off. And he's drenched in sweat every night right now. Every night I have to go in there. And right now what Katrina and I are trying to perfect is. Yeah, like what do you do? Yeah, exactly. What do we do? So the best strategy we have is knowing when he falls asleep. Like first of all, one, waiting till he's completely asleep because I don't want to go in there when he's still trying to go to sleep and then do that because then it just disrupts somebody's up. So I got to wait till he's out. But I can't let him be out for too long because once he's under that sheet for 20, 30 minutes, he starts to sweat. So we're like having to watch the monitor like, is he out? OK, he's not moving. He's not go in there. And I go in there and put the sheets on the like put him in bed, but tuck the sheets in so tight that he can't pull them up. You know, so he's just kind of like a little sardine. I mean, what he does is he goes he burrows his way under. So I'll come in there and he's all the way at one corner. Well, he'll do whatever he can to get underneath the sheets and then interesting. It's so and you know, I've been around kids my whole life and I've just never seen this before. It's the weird. It's the weird. And he's not crying or anything. It's just he thinks it's funny. Makes him feel safe. It's got to be soothing. Like it's really says this thing where I'll put him down and I'll put the like a teddy bear next to him, whatever he'll lay there and I'll leave the room. And then what he does is he he on the mattress. He'll like do this. He'll start like headbanging on the mattress with the sad dish dish. I'm like, what is he doing? Yeah. And he puts himself to sleep like that. I'm like, dude, put some pillows around and make sure he doesn't hit anything. Like what I wonder about that is if those gravity, the heavy blanket, some people really love that just because of like the pressure. So we have one of those. Yeah. So we have one of those too. Like so he's got that. You know, I so I've been playing this game with him since he was little. Of course, Katrina blames it on me. Right. So I've been right. That's how it works in every relationship. Is that any bad behavior? So it's somebody's fault. Yeah. You taught him this. You know, so I put it on. Yeah. So yeah, I mean, I love I started a long time ago where I get to blanket and I tell him, come on, hide, hide, let's hide. And then we get out of the blanket. And so it's like his favorite thing to do is love and we keep up. We keep a big blanket on the love sack. And that's part of part of my routine. I come in the house, wash my hands, go to the bathroom and then he's normally down there and right away. He wants to wrestle. We always end up on the love sack. If we land on the love sack, he knows right away, grab the blanket and he wants to hide. And then he just likes to play underneath the blanket. Him and I, you know, and we're wrestling and tickling and doing talking and doing our thing or reading books under there. Like he loves to hide under the blanket. And so, but it's never made its way into bedtime. It's always been this kind of playful time that we him and I do and we love to do it. And then just recently it's become this thing that he does on his own when he's in there and it was cute and funny the first time, but it's like, oh, shit, he's doing this every night now. And it's causing him to be like soaked. I go in there and I had to like strip all the clothes off of him. And I'm like, buddy, he's found Narnia in there. What are you doing, buddy? Oh, so hot. Why do you like that? Yeah, kids are hilarious. Yeah, random. Did your son do this too when they're little and you like you're changing their diaper or whatever. And if you like turn away or whatever, they run away and they're just naked run through the house. It's the funniest thing. I let him do that. Katrina gets mad. That's another thing. Katrina gets on the meobods. It's the fun. I think it's the funniest thing to like a one and a half or two year old running a house. I chase. Naked butt. Naked butt. Naked butt. Yeah. And then I chase him around the house and she's like, he's going to piss on the carpet. Clean it. Has he done that yet? Yeah, he figured out how to do that. One of the in fact, one of the first times that she was getting on to me about that and I'm like, oh, he's fine. I like came around the corner and he's standing there holding his dick just on the carpet. All right, mommy's right. So yeah, I had a buddy who his son tried was trying to draw like circles and triangles in the carpet with his pee. Wow. Yeah. And so his dad was like he's an artist and impressed. Yeah, I don't know. That's not bad, buddy. We we just had to I told you guys like he was sick last week and he did like the whole vomiting thing. And he said I was sorry and everything like that. So when we did that, I stripped everything obviously stripped our bed down and I cleaned. By the way, the the Euler mat is so easy to clean and stuff. But since I was doing that anyways, I didn't know that there's like you can use either side of the Euler pad and flip it. Yeah. And the side I was using is the side that it looks like that's the way it's supposed to go. But the opposite side, they say if you wanted to get cooler to use faster to use that side. What? Yeah. So it's the reverse. I didn't know it looks upside down. I didn't know that either. I can't remember where I read it. Or by the way, do you know what the best temperature for sleep is? I've just I've been looking up. I can think of gas gas. I would have fifty seven to sixty five. Oh, is it sixty for most people? Of course, it's going to be, you know, variance or whatever. But sixty five. They've identified a sixty five degrees in the room. Generally produces the best REM sleep and in consistent sleep. Is that right there? I just know that's my number. So is that where you like to be? Yeah, I like sixty five's ideal for me. What do you guys say? You're even lower than that. What do you guys say? You're chilly. You're the lowest. I think fifty five or fifty two is the lowest it goes. I go all the way. I usually do it like on the super low and then it as before bad, I kind of bring it up. Have you guys, I asked you this before and I think you, one of you guys started doing this. Have you done it where you get it to slowly warm up to wake you up? I feel like it would make me need to pee. Like real bad. Well, it just wakes you up. Were you afraid of peeing your bed? I will pee before I even get there. Oh, my bad. No, I know. Well, I even like it. I like it too for like weekends when I don't have to get out of my bed right away. And it's nice to kind of lay around and it's actually warm in the in the bed. So it does wake you up though. Oh, yeah, no, it definitely do. I mean, I wake up if I get, if I go up a degree like I'm so we didn't have the the the pad on there for a couple of days while I was washing and stuff. And so I had the doors open. I left the room one night and Katrina was like, you left last night. The door was open. It was I was like, yeah, I still got hot, hun. She's like, Jesus, I was freezing. How are you hot? I'm like, it doesn't take much. Where were we? Where were you shared? Oh, we were in Arizona. Yeah, just recently. What an asshole, bro. We get in. No, we get into this. You guys shared a room? What do you do? No, it's the first thing you do when you get into the hotel. You turn the AC on. Hold on a second. Hold on a second. First of all, there were two rooms. It's actually a big place. And there were like two rooms. But we go in there and the AC is already blowing. It's already cold as hell in there. So I didn't even think twice. It's already on. So I go in and I unload my bag and, you know, change, you know, just some different clothes because we're going to go to the event or whatever. And I'm like, damn, dude, this AC is still going, whatever. So we leave, we do the event, we come back. I'm like, holy, it is cold in here. And then I looked at, I looked at Adam like, did you turn the thing down? He turned it on arctic. Bro, he put it. He put it to the coldest. I do. When I go to hotels, I put it the lowest that it will go. It's ridiculous. Some more that you go down to 50. I know. And maybe that's what it is too, because I can't do it at home. Yeah. I can't run the house that cold at home because Katrina doesn't like it that cold. And so I only... Dude, I'm in Arizona. Bro, I'm in Arizona. I'm like, I have to put like a sweatshirt on to go to bed. It's just too much, dude. Oh, yeah. What is going on? Yeah, I just, I mean, I, so I like, like, because, you know, her argument or like, she always says back, why don't you just sleep with just a sheet? I've never, I mean, I'm like the gravity-bunking guy. I like a little bit of weight. You don't want the monsters get you if you don't have something. Yeah, maybe that's correct. I'm not sure what it is. A thin sheet or what? Bro, Courtney still makes fun of me for having to have the closet door closed. Like, I refuse to have any doors open. Really? Yeah. You don't like this? The monsters are going to get you. Like, yeah! And what? You know, like, yeah, there's a fear there. I don't like my feet being out. Sorry. I don't like my feet being outside the sheet either. If my feet are outside the sheet? Oh, no, actually, yeah. I can't have them like, pinned. No, no, no, no, no. You know, but I don't like I'm not covered. Yeah, you have to have them covered. Yeah, like, something's going to touch my feet. What's going to happen? That's right, yeah. I don't want to do that. Anyway, did you guys hear about the oldest person in the world? Just past the back? Yeah, 119, right? 119. That's crazy. Is that a record? Or like, so it gets weird, right? Because there's some cultures that claim like certain people, but they don't have like real documents of their birth and all of that. So it's like, they're just kind of getting. Isn't that like the DR and stuff like that, that they're like that? Because there's like baseball players that used to, they used to come over and people would be like, well, there's like, 16 years old. Yeah, he's like 25. He's got full beard. Yeah, dude, like, he's the player to play. The elementary, high school, they're elementary like champion or like that. You look at him and he's like. And then they beat the crap out of all the little niggers. He's like 220. Yeah, they're like. No, no, no, this is, she was, she was documented, right? So Japan has good birth records and stuff. So because you're right. There's a lot that are like, oh, they're 120, 135. And it's like, where's the documentation? Let's verify that. But this 119 years old, so she was born in 1903. So let's just consider real quick, like what you see. So much world history she's gone through. Bro, first of all, 1903, maybe Doug, you can look this up. Was Japan operating as like, were they feudalistic in 1903? Like, because I know they went through a period of samurai and all that still. Well, they went through a period of modernization that made them more, I guess, quote unquote, Western. But before that it was very different and they were run very differently. So I'd love to see what looked like in 1903. But she saw the, you know, she saw several pant, like crazy pandemics, right, flu pandemics. She saw World War I, World War II, the Great Depression, like went through all this stuff and was crazy to see all that stuff. So feudalism stopped in Japan in 1871. Oh, okay, okay. So she was, when she was alive, it was gone. But still, very different world in 1903. Now, I don't know how she got this, did you look? I mean, when I hear something like that, because there's people, I would never want to live that long. I would. I mean, so long as I have my health, right? Like I would not want to be. You know, I hooked up to a machine. Yeah, I would want to be hooked up to a machine and bedridden for 20 of those, you know, 20 of those years, that'd be awful. But so do you know how active she was up into her death? I mean, was she a relatively active person or was she bedridden for many years? Well, it says here, so it's what it said about us. It's pretty cool, right? So when she was 19, she got married and helped run a family business selling sticky rice, udon, and Japanese desserts. She had four kids and adopted a fifth. She loved chocolate and soda. That's all I say to you. That's all we get? That's it. Now the oldest person in the world is 118 years old in France. There's a French nun who's 118, who's now the oldest person in the world. But, you know, what you have with someone who lives that long is genetics. Genetics play a massive role in that. Of course. Of course. By the way, they're always women, by the way. Guys don't live, they just outlive us for sure. Is that always true? I know, I know generally speaking, it's true. The oldest men in the world live in Sardinia. Sardinia's got the oldest men. But generally speaking, when you get past 90, like, have you guys ever volunteered a nursing home? Have you guys ever done that as trainers? It's dominated by women, like almost all women and their old women. That's right, that's like that. There's a comedy they made about that. Like, because the one or two guys that are there. Oh, yeah. They have like all of these. Yeah, all the women get all excited. What movie was that, Doug? I feel like you've seen that. I mean, it was Morgan Freeman and Jack Nicholson, I believe, and who's the guy from Fugitive? What's his name? Oh, yeah. He's the other guy that's in it. Tommy Lee Jones. I think it's those three, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I forget the name of it. By the way, that's true. I trained a woman who was. Is that her? Yeah, that's her. I mean, she looks pretty good right there. 119, she looks like she's, I would say, 80s or 90. It looks like it's 117 when this picture is taken. When that was taken, yeah. Yeah, so, OK, so you guys think that in our lifetime, our generation, do you think we're going to see that is this going to become more frequent? I mean, and how much more frequent? Depends how much. I've heard both. I've heard people say like, statistically, there's more people living longer today than they're everywhere. Yes, but extreme age. Yeah, I don't know. Because is that what's stretching it out in terms of offsetting the average? Well, what you have now are more, less people dying at birth. So that changes the average age of death or whatever. And people are living longer, generally speaking. However, I've also read that we can expect the how long people live to start to slow down or start to go backwards because of obesity and chronic disease. Yeah, but that's because we take it as an average, though, right, because we're using, like, I'm more interested in the outliers because I like that I would like to think that we will be some of the outliers of the when you compare us to our peers. Are we going to throw cyborgs in the mix or what? That's just getting started is the name of the book. Yeah, yeah, I never saw that. Jack Nicholson wasn't in this one. Oh, I was thinking of Bucket List. I knew you were on the right track, though. You know, I know you knew you were talking about Morgan Freeman. By the way, this is true. I trained an 83-year-old woman who she was in a nursing home and she used to tell me there were two guys. There were two guys in there in the whole place. And she's like, oh, yeah, they go they date all the way. That's how I think this is. This is right. I think there's literally two guys and one of them is the new guy. The third guy is like the new guy. And they're like, what, you know, this is like this is 75. I trained a guy that was like 75. And he his whole goal was that he could dance better and like have muscle to kind of show off. And so that we just straight trained. And he was just doing it to basically peacock around. Yeah. And get attention. It worked. The stories that this people that they would tell me like like she said she said she would meet up. They would meet up and then they'd like take baths together and stuff like that. I'm like, what? You guys naked in the bed. Yeah, I'm naked. She's like, no, old I am. I don't care if I'm whatever. I'm like, oh my gosh, you guys are crazy. Wild. So if you live long enough, like, yeah, if you don't get the action now, the longer you live, the more odds the better your odds are. So do you not think our circle of friends are us, right? Like you don't think that. What do you think is going to be our? Are we going to fall closer to the 80 range? Or do you think we will land in the hundred? Boy, the advancements in medicine right now are really interesting. And they're really investigating aging, the aging process. So there could be a breakthrough that could get us to the point where we're living where the average person is living to 120, 130, which would be wild. But you know, we have to rewrite so many things. Like right now people retire it. What's the retirement age to get to get Social Security 62? 62 or 65. They're going to have to change that. I mean, they kind of already are. It's becoming more and more popular to work as you get older. Well, if you live till you're 90 and you're healthy, you know, that's like 25, 30 years without working. That when they set that, by the way, the life expectancy was in its 60s. So it's like you retired in the last five years. You died, you know, five years until you're dead. I honestly think the whole idea of retirement is kind of weird anyways. I agree. I don't think the idea of being a big fan of this idea of like, do something you hate for, you know, 30 years of your life so you can then retire and do nothing, do nothing. Yeah, do nothing. I think it was such a bad strategy. Yeah. I mean, if you're going to, if you have to do something that you don't like temporarily during that time, I'm like in pursuit of trying to find things that I want to do for work. You know what I'm saying? So like, we'll do an old man purpose that way. It's like, yeah, what's the biggest struggle for you? Like watching my dad or somebody else who just retired, you know, not too long ago. It's like just getting them to be energized to go do something and it's it's totally both my best friends. Dad's went through like a little bit of depression right afterwards because yeah, my dad remodeled a lot more bickering and fights and stuff. He remodeled the house and did stuff to the backyard and like so many times because he's just at home. We didn't know what to do. Yeah. Then I go to the house and my mom's old school. So the house is spotless. But now it's like level 10 because now my dad's my dad's home and he's like mopping, scrubbing, cleaning. My mom's like, man, he does everything in the house. But it's because you didn't have, you didn't know. She's loving it. But now what he did is he found a group of friends and they ride their motorcycles together. And so now he's got these friends that he goes and they ride with and now there's a good and bad. The good is he's got friends riding motorcycles. The bad is my dad, he likes to go fast. And so he's already had a couple like, you know, close calls or whatever. Yeah. And I'm like, dad, you can't, you can't be racing motorcycle, dude. You know, you guys just reminded me talking about like work and us potentially working for a longer period of our life with that. There's a lot of companies that are and we've seen this. We've talked about it on the show before that are trying to reframe how the work week kind of looks. And we just recently got our, you know, our investor email with LMNT. Did you guys see what they're doing? Well, you're talking about that. What, what are they doing? So they're, and Doug, you can fact check me to make sure. I'm pretty sure this is how I'm understanding it correctly, but they're doing a three one work cycle. So work three, take one off, work three, take one off. Three weeks, one week off. Wait, is it three weeks, seven days a week? I think so. Wait a minute. And then you put, you get a whole week every month of like, so you could go take vacations and you could do like every month. So you work seven days a week. Yes. So 21 days straight and then you take seven days off. Now, if I don't, okay, so here's how I feel initially because I'm trying to think about this. If I don't have kids, I would like that because in a week I'll go do stuff. But with kids, I like to have those days, even with the kids. Now, every, every month you could take a week long vacation. Yeah, but I'd rather have weekends every week with the kids because the frequency, you know what I mean? Like three weeks for kids a long time to not have like all day with them. You know what I'm saying? That's how I, I mean, I could see what you're saying, but. I thought it was really interesting as I haven't heard anybody else doing that. Like we've heard the, the all 21 days in a row. So they do, yeah, if I believe I understood it correctly, it was 21 days straight and then the seven, then the next seven days off of completely. Interesting. Right. I mean, it's, it's worth an experiment. I guess that's how it goes. Like I said, if I didn't have kids, I would love that. I would love it. Oh, I, you know, at first I was like, Oh, that would suck. We're right away. That first year I thought I was like, man, having to work straight 20. But then again, I was like, you know, how many times in my life I've worked 21 days straight? Like a lot of 30, 40 and every time you're on like one of those like little short vacations, man, I wish you could stretch this out. And imagine how easy it would be to grind for 21 days. If you knew at the end of that 21 days, you always had a week off. That'd be really, really interesting. And I, and now I'm sure there's productivity would be the one, the main game. Well, that's, that's what they think is they think that they're seeing people are way more productive. Like it takes a couple of days to get in the swing of projects. So that, that way they can be focused for 21 days straight with no breaks to get, and they get a way ahead. And then they get to take the week off. I feel like startup companies do that anyway, but they don't take that week break. Well, well, they get the zone and they get projects done, but then it's burnt. Imagine if you did it like, what do you call that? Were schools do this? Were there like everyone's on different tracks? So imagine if you have 50 employees. Oh, that's what they have to do. And they, and they, yeah. And then they're all roti. So as a, as an employer, you never not have work being done on your business. Now, if you have a partner, you just have different segments. If you have a partner, you'd have to have a similar schedule, right? Because you have a week off, your wife works normal schedule. Like, what are you going to do? Well, I guess I'll be, you know, I'll go on my own somewhere. So I could see how it could have his benefits too. I could see. And that's a bad thing. And the worst, the worst, the con. Hey, you guys have kids. Where are you going to go? You're going to be like, I'm telling you, I can go fishing. Yeah. No. All right, listen, you know what this sounds like? It sounds like it's scheduled that would attract the single go-getter. That's what it sounds like. Sure. So without, without saying, we only want a single go-getter. I mean, LMNT is a startup. So I mean, that, that's probably what they're, that they want to attract. I do agree with you. It would be a different dynamic to try and figure out for us where we're at in our lives and with our families. Maybe I wouldn't enjoy it that much, whatever. Obviously I'd rather have what we have created for ourselves. But, you know, if I was working for somebody like, wow, that would be an interesting way to, to run my schedule is three weeks on and then one week off like that. I wish I had the article, but I did see something along the lines of like Gen Z having a really hard time coming back to work out of all the generations in terms of like the remote working and now coming back. Like a lot of them, I guess they're having a really hard time pulling that specific demographic back to work. Oh, I'm sure. Wow. I know. So crazy. I mean, come on. Well, they, they, and that age group hasn't built the consistency of working in the first place, right? I mean, we, you know what I'm saying? Different mentality. Yeah. They barely just started getting into the, they got into the workforce. It's a couple of years ago, you know, and already within the first five years they get a, they get a two year break. So they've been breaking as much as they've been working. Breaking is way better. So, so of course it's hard to go back. Hey, and the government's going to send me a check every couple of weeks. This whole work thing's, wow. Oh, that makes sense. Yeah, I don't know. Did you look it up, Doug, to see if they actually publicly announced it? Because that maybe it was just something for us investors to get to see. And we're not supposed to say it. It's an experiment. It is an experiment. Yes. They're going to try it for, well, I think their plan is six month period of time, but if it's not going well, they're going to pull the plug. So, I'm sorry. We're probably not supposed to talk about it. Who knows? Here's my speculation. I don't know. You think it's private? I look, I love Elementor. I think they're a great company. Obviously, we invested in the company because we like them so much. But here's my speculation. You can't legally say we want young, single, aggressive people working here. You can't say that, right? What we can do is create a schedule that makes it attractive to them and not attractive to them. Well, companies have been doing this forever, I think. I mean, that's, I mean, that was the... Because like married people with kids are like, I don't want to do that. You didn't watch the Amber Kromby doc, did you? I watched half. Okay. So the part that I was, there was a lot of things in it that was interesting to me, but the part that I thought was so fascinating was they were, I actually thought that Google and Netflix and Facebook were the pioneers of the campus ping pong, fuge ball, vibe where you just basically live, yeah, you just want to stay at work all day long. Amber Kromby was first to do that. They did? I did not know that. They built this big party. Yes. I didn't know what they did that first. You know what I thought was cool is the way they designed the stores. I didn't even think about this. They put those brilliant, those blinds. Was that not brilliant? So you can't really see inside. You have to go in the store. So you're just curious, you know, made it feel very exclusive. And it made you want to come in there. And then they, I mean, God, they, they structure it to have all the pretty people at the front that are talking to you and stuff like that. I thought it was brilliant what they did with the models. Yeah. So all the, all the pictures. You saw who the CEO favored the most. Yeah. Yeah. I didn't see that. He had a definite type that he loved. So I knew that there was, they had some, they had some drama like that, right, that had came out. And I didn't, I couldn't remember what it was. That's what drew me to the documentary. I was talking to Trina. I was like, yeah, no, there was some shit with the, the founder was doing some. Well, what was weird was like, they tried really hard to whatever they're promoting with the models and in terms of the look and aesthetic and all that, they were trying to mirror that in the stores, which, you know, they could have just had like regular people working in the stores and been just fine, you know, but he's like trying really hard to like have it. Like, you know, the same Zoolander dudes in there. I really wanted Sal to watch this because I really wanted to get into a little bit of a political talk around it because, you know, there's this, this movement of like companies having to be this pressure for companies to be so socially responsible and really, you know, from a capitalist view, it's your job is to make money and to be really good at it and allow the market to dictate. The market will tell you if you're doing a shitty job. Right. And so there was a lot of like outlet, like, you know, backlash from everything that happened with them. It's like, I also think that. That wasn't because of the sex appeal that they're selling? It was that. It was all, I mean, it's a lot of, like, I guess there wasn't much diversity. And so then they got. So the preppy white kid. Totally. That was their targeting. That was their target market demographic. See how old the company was? Yeah. The company's 1800s. Yeah. Oh, I didn't even know that. I didn't eat. I was like, well, I didn't know this. Yeah. And it was, it was, so, I mean, he went over to some presidents that were, that used to shop there. And you know what I will say today, it would be the market pressure might not allow something like that. Right. So, you know, in the past, like, let's look at airlines, for example, airlines in the past would put these attractive girls in short shorts or dresses as the steward, you know, as the people working in the airplane. And, and I don't know if that, that wouldn't fly no pun intended today because people are kind of like, I disagree with that. Like, I mean, I mean, not, I don't disagree with your point, but I disagree with why, why we make such a big deal about that because it opens the door for somebody else to do the opposite. I'm going to be the airline that's going to be super inclusive and let everybody know. I know that. Let the, let the companies out, competing. Well, that's what I'm trying to be more like that instead of having to have this homogenized perspective of like how companies should run. That's how I thought. This is how I thought about the Amber Cromby thing. No, I agree with you. I, what I'm trying to say is I think the market would respond negatively now because people would highlight that. Totally. So I think I think it wouldn't work necessarily unless it kind of slipped under the radar to me that that was a point of bringing this up was because that's I think that's unfortunate. Allow, allow, you know, if they're going to be idiots like that, but that is that is the market. What do you mean not allow? Was it were they were they getting sued? Yeah. Oh, yeah. And to force them, they put in all kinds of policies to force them to have to have this diversity. I mean, you have, they hired a department called the like a diversity executive position. I think we would be that person's job was to create more diversity within the company. There's positions in companies now that that's their job. Yeah. But you know, it's to make sure that actually equal balance of diversity. I get the intent in the sentiment. So do I agree with it. But what happens is you actually create a lot of problems. But a better way to a better way to do that is go create a company that competes with it and that has all the diversity you want. So if this company isn't doing it, you think that's unfair. All right, well, go create a company that has that and competes with it. And there'll be a lot of people that especially in today's and age will be like, I want to go with it. I think you people would be surprised that the market would probably respond in a way that we would we would expect it to. And that was the thing I didn't like, I understand like the most valuable protest of that is to just not put money in that direction. Stop buying the clothes and then like you're teaching them a lesson. It's not like they have a monopoly on on, you know, jeans and t-shirts. Well, then it was like, I mean, the market was demanding a certain look. Think of it this way, right? There was that whole controversy. There was the baker, the Christian baker that want to bake the cake for the gay wedding and they tried to sue him and pass a law. And I thought that was silly. I'm like, he's he's a baker. It's his it's his work. He could say no to you and he could be an asshole. But by the way, Kate, by the way, you can be pro gay and still not for that at the same time too. Sure, I understand that. Yeah. And so I look, I have no problem. You want to get married and whatever. And I've been to my friend's weddings who were gay and it's not a big deal. But it's if he's if he or she is making the cake and they say, I don't want to make it for you for whatever reason, even if it's an asshole reason, that's up to them. But I also think that the market today would respond in a way that we would we would expect it to. And what I mean by that is if you allow the bakers to be open, no gay cakes here. They're probably not going to do very well. They'll serve some people, but they're probably not going to do very well if they're openly like that. You know what I'm saying? I 100% agree. So I think that that and I do think that that's why instead of putting regulations in causing these these superficial. It would auto correct it is my thought. Yeah, totally. Yeah. Because it I mean, but it it was it was pretty much like on the forefront. It was obvious that you know, that was their their demographic, their target. Like they literally had it like outline like specifically what people need to look like, like the whole thing. So we I understand I experience this as a gym operator. And this was a tough thing, right? Like, OK, when I was a 17 year old boy looking for a gym membership, I drove there was and there was probably within a 30 minute drive from where I lived, there was probably 20 something gyms. And my buddy and I, we were 17 year old teenage boys. We went around and the thing that made our decision, OK, did have a basketball court and were the front desk girls hot. Yeah, like that was what I was looking for. Now, I know I'm not alone with those criteria for buying. So because somebody decides to to appeal to me by doing that, now they can get in huge trouble for that. Well, I think I watched Baywatch. Well, obviously, I also think again, markets now are a little different. Like I wonder how well, like Hooters is doing, for example, like Hooters at one point was probably really sex, sex always sells. But I bet you I bet you there haven't done as well because it's not. Well, here's my theory is that I I would love to see that. I don't think I don't think Amber Cromby dies today. Well, hasn't it still around? I don't think that what would happen is just it would open the door for someone to compete with them. Because there's there is. OK, there's a bunch of people that don't give a shit and like going there and seeing the hot kids that are working there, and it is what it is. And they're going to continue to shop there. And then there's a group of people that they didn't even think about that. That's not important. They like the style of the clothes and opens the door for competitors who are not going to be inclusive or exclusive and be inclusive. And that kid's going to go, hey, you know what? I like what this other brand stands for. And they offer competitive clothes just like it. I'm now going to shop there. So it opened the door for somebody else. I don't think it would kill. Look at that. It's Hooters is totally in decline. I mean, what restaurant is not in decline, though, right now in the last two years? Well, I would guess that's a 20-21 article. Yeah, I would guess, though, that it's just, you know, the market, find us something less biased. There are markets change and public opinion changes, right? 30 years ago, going to a restaurant called Hooters with girls or whatever. Not a big. Today, it feels kind of cringy, right? Like, what are we doing here? Well, you know, a lot of big Johnson t-shirts float around anymore. Yeah. Those are classic, dude. Those are classic. I forgot about that. I love big Johnson t-shirts. I can't. I totally forgot about that. I love those. My mom wouldn't let me have them. I wanted them so bad. Well, here, speaking- Remember, no fear, and big Johnson was like the deal. It was the one with the 2x4, right? The dude would have the big 2x4. Oh, yeah. Or like the driver is way too big. Yeah. We know what you're doing. All right. So along the lines of regulation and stuff, I don't know if you guys heard this, but the Department of Homeland Security is now putting together a disinformation governance board or they're talking about doing this to make sure that disinformation in social media- You mean to fuck with Elon Musk? Thank God. That's the real- Dude. You mean to mess with Elon Musk? Dude, it's so weird. You don't want this. Listen, the number one purveyor of propaganda and false information is the government. That's historically true. You don't want to put him in charge of telling you what is necessarily true and untrue. That's not a good idea. It's not a good idea. Now, how will this work, too? Because I mean, he's- What's amazing, what's so great about this deal- Who's on this board? Is that he's taking this from being a publicly-traded company to now a private company. So what are those regulations and rules applied to all businesses or is it going to be just towards publicly- If it's Department of Homeland Security- It'll be everything. And remember, we passed laws after September 11th that allows these sweeping regulations in the safety of the country, right? Quote, unquote. Which opens the door for all kinds of crazy stuff. Oh, God. So they could say, hey, this is for national security. We need to regulate disinformation on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram. And who's going to determine if it's good or bad? Information, we are. We're the guys that- Yeah, we know all the things. I do not think this is a good idea at all. This is like when the Rolling Stones hired the- You know, was it the angels to- Oh, hell's angels. The hell's angels would be their security. Ended up stabbing somebody or whatever. Like, it'll be worse than if we allow markets and these companies to do that. And that's not going to be perfect. It's still going to exist. Yeah, you don't think that's going to get manipulated in a certain direction? I lie. Humans are biased. You need both sides always. Yes. You need that conversation like to continuously happen to know what truth is. You don't know what truth is just because I said so? Yeah. I love the fact that they're going to make this so difficult for Elon Musk and he's still going to kick the shit out of everybody. Well, I mean, I hope so. You just watch, dude. Yeah, they're going to be coming at him. I don't like that. They're going to continue to make it as difficult as they possibly can for him and he still will watch. He will. If he becomes- If he really becomes a target there, he's done. I mean, that's the truth. They've taken out- And they'll do it in a way to where we won't even- We will be supportive of it because- I don't- So Business Week did this stupid post. I comment on it like it was Nancy Pelosi coming out and like bashing Elon buying Twitter and basically saying, I can't believe we're letting this billion- She's my favorite. And Business Week- I know, right? Business Week was kind of taking that- Boy, you should've seen the comments underneath there. Elon has got a following, man, of people that really, really- I mean, I know we've come off that way right of being these massive fans of Elon Musk, but I just- I don't know the guy personally. I don't. For all I know, he could be an asshole. Right. Just like, yeah, like again, if he's principled and he does what he says he will do, you don't see that a lot. Listen, I like the shake-up. I like the shake-up. So do I. Okay. 100% Big Tech is biased in a direction. It's a fact and you can look and see where their employees donate. You can see what gets censored and what doesn't get censored. In their defense though, Sal, I want to make the point that I don't think that's because of their founders though. Jack Dorsey was not like that. I don't believe Zuckerberg was like that. Most of these guys are libertarian type of dudes. They're one free market. It's their employees. I think they've been pressured in that from the loud minority to go in that direction. So, you know, it's kind of unfair to umbrella like Facebook or Twitter or these- Well, look, here's what's interesting. Twitter sells to Elon. The deal goes through, right? So he's about to buy it. The next couple days, all these- Yeah, the scrambling. All these conservative people on Twitter, all these pages, are mysteriously getting 50,000, 100,000, half a million new followers as if shadow banning or their shadow bans got lifted. What I think when you have 18,000 employees, you can't manage all of them. So some of them are going to- They're going to turn the knob here a little bit, knob there a little bit based on what they like, what they don't like, make it so that it's not super obvious. I've been shadow banned on Instagram many times. It was weird and nobody could find me like what's going on. So I don't know. I like the fact- Did you see my RE post, the video of RE from Entourage? It says, Elon Musk walking into Twitter the first day. It's a scene from RE. He's got the paintball gun and he's just firing everybody. Oh, man. That's going to be a good time. I'm excited. I think it's going to be- I do too. Fun to watch. Well, it's hard to argue that you haven't seen a complete bias on all platforms. It's just so blatantly obvious. And now, all of a sudden, it's like there may be a chance to hear other voices contribute to the conversation. It's so weird to me that people are so adamant to stuff that out. Obviously, it's great when it fits your bias. I know this has become very politicized, but the part that I am excited about is I just think he's just brilliant when it comes to building business. I want to watch the business. He's created several billion-dollar businesses. Yeah, and I saw this thing where they compared Twitter, Google, and the average income of the employees and stuff like that. And Twitter compared to all these other tech companies. Oh, it was how much revenue per employee was produced. Twitter was bad. Really bad. Like a bloated company. And so I can't wait to see how much better he makes this company by going in and freeing up some things and doing some real basic smart shit. Just to balance things out so people don't think, look, I'll talk about a conservative that really annoyed me recently, which is Governor DeSantis, who is acting very much like an authoritarian. Obviously, Disney... So here's what happened, right? Disney made some political commentary on a bill that he passed. So all of a sudden now they're changing their status that it's been enacted since 1967 to apply pressure on Disney. Threatened to sue Twitter because of their fiduciary duties, you know, whatever. This is all political power in an authoritarian way. I don't like that either. What it does is when the right does it, then the left does it, then the right does it. I don't like it when it's dominated in one direction. You called this a few days ago as soon as he did it. The minute it came out and we laughed about it, you said, I don't like it. No. And you said, this is what it's going to stoke is the opposite direction and you were right. Today it already came out. The... People are talking about, oh, well, you know who else gets special tax privileges? Churches. We need to look at that as well. So what happens is you move the bar up a little bit and the people on the right when the bar is moved up on their side, they're cool with it because it's what they want. Then the left is pissed off. And then it's time for the left to do the same thing and then move the bar up a little higher. And then we end up here where the bar is way up here and it's like every election now that comes, you know, first it was, oh, the votes weren't counted and then it was... So intense. Russia collusion and then Trump, oh, the fake votes. And it's like every... I'll mark my words, every election is going to be, by the opposite side, is going to be called fake for the following four years to, you know, to take the other person down and it's going to be the game. So we have to call it out. Do you think they'll ever change the way that we do votes? I hope. I hope they may... That has to evolve in the next in our lifetime. It has to evolve. It's kind of crazy that it's been the same machines. Yeah. As long as we have. I tell you what... It's crazy with all the technology that we have around, you know, cryptocurrency and... Oh, you want blockchain? Yeah, blockchain. Thank you. That's what I wanted. Blockchain, like, how we haven't figured out if we can make that protective and safe, why couldn't we make votes like that somehow? The capability has to be there. I'll say a very unpopular position. I think voting should be hard. And here's why. Because most people... It needs to be steps in the way. Most people... I pulled this everybody off by saying you should have to pass the test. Well, no, you know why? You should have basic, fundamental common sense before you get to decide on policy. Well, because most people don't... They don't really know. And they vote for things that sound good or whatever. And so we make it easier. There's more people who don't know. And those same people are the people that are easily influenced one way or the other. And I don't care which way, left or right. That's what... I'm in agreement with you. Like, I'm even okay if I didn't get to vote, because maybe I don't do enough. Like, I don't study enough. You said you have to take a test. Yeah. But then who writes the test? Yes. Yeah, I mean, of course. I mean, you can go down this rabbit hole of like... Here's the deal. It could always be corrupt. There's always going to be people trying to manipulate. There's always going to be evil people. Like, any way you go, it's going to be like that. I just... I do agree that right now, the strategy for both left and right is always to gain the populist vote from the people that are easily manipulated. And it's just this battle back and forth or who can get this vote. And it's like, man, honestly, I'd rather the people that like actually study all these policies and understand history and economics and like how these things influence us were making more decisions. I just hate inconsistency. It's like, you know, you're over here saying it's a private company. They can do what they want. When it's biased in your direction, then somebody buys it, you don't agree with them, now you want regulation. Or, hey, I don't like it when, you know, government does that and tries to tell companies and then when it's your side, that does it. It's like be consistent. That's all. Did you watch the most recent All In podcast where they had the guy, the CEO from Coinbase on? No, I didn't see that. Oh, you didn't see that? Oh, that was interesting. They talked to him because remember, Coinbase was the first company to come out and say... No politics. No politics. And, you know, he did it after they'd already been in business for a while. So there was definitely a little bit of backlash. Like they lost employees over it. I bet it's better, though. It is. And that's what he's talking about. And so what they were speculating on is that this is going to be the future of... You're going to have to decide either one, you're easily influenced by the mob and you're going to go the Disney route or you're going to take a stance like Coinbase and say no politics that work at all. No. Leave it at the door. That's it. So it's going to be interesting to see where companies... Unless your nose is perfectly clean and you're a big company, do not take a position because they'll find something on you. Yeah. They'll come back to haunt you. Yeah. Anyway, Justin, I need to ask you because I know you're now... You're not a big supplement guy, but I know you've been taking whey protein regularly. Yeah. Are you doing this... You're doing which one? The Legion? Legion, yeah. I'm doing the whey protein. The one... What flavor you want? It's a... What do you think? Yeah, peanut butter and chocolate. Come on, bro. So good. I haven't had that one yet. I'm actually eating their cookie dough cookies. I think I've come out before and said I didn't like their bars. Yeah. Do you just do it with milk? Because I also add whole milk, which, you know, that's a lot of dairy, but I'm all about it. Justin's like, I'm going to cut. I'm an almond milk guy. I like to add ice cream. Now I just start throwing ice in there, blending it so much smoother, like I was like, why didn't I do that the whole time? Is that breakfast? Is that what you're doing? Yeah, because usually before I have to go early to train high school kids, I have to get up a lot earlier, so that's my quickest, best option all the time. And I'm trying to get as consistent as possible with eating breakfast, and it's really been paying off. It's given me a lot more energy throughout the day. This was after Dr. Cabral did our test, right? That too. Yeah, that pissed me off. I was like in this catabolic state. Fuck, man. Like, you realize. But, dude, it's like, it's all fat jokes, you guys. I was like, oh, he's cutting. Oh, the constant cut. I feel guilty now. I feel guilty. No, I don't. No, I just skip breakfast. I went because I was like, oh, I don't need to eat breakfast, and I'm like a coffee guy, and it just kept driving me like even further throughout the day. Sometimes I miss lunch. Yeah, yeah. I just got in that habit of I would eat a big meal for dinner for sure, but then would eat smaller meals. And now I'm like, man, I got to really bump my calories and get on top of this. Do you feel stronger? Feel stronger, feel more energetic. Like, yeah, it's so much better. I can't. I'm just stupid that I haven't been doing this. I've been doing dairy, but I use their way for I'll give it to the kids or I'll give it to Jessica. And they like it a lot. It's really, really, I don't know, clean. Yeah, it's clean. It's delicious. I've been meaning to actually tell Mike that he really nailed the flavor profile on the vanilla flavor. So secretly, I've always kept a brand that I've used for a long time for vanilla stuff when I bake with it. And I think I've told you guys this before. I've tried so many different brands and it's splitting hair difference on so many different companies. And the one that I've been drawn to for so long is the one that I felt mixed with food and the flavor profile is the easiest for me to create my own stuff. And I actually, for the first time, I actually used his vanilla way. I hadn't used it before and it was bomb. Now, did you make something with it? Yeah. Like, I make my protein shakes. I'm not at, like, just like you straight water or almond milk and shake it up and just drink it straight. Like, I like to fruit, banana, peanut butter. I use coffee grounds. Like, my favorite mix, like I told you on the show before, is with the, I actually put real coffee grounds of hazelnut in there. I do a banana. I do two tablespoons of peanut butter and then I blend. You guys are so funny. You're all fancy. You guys are so funny. I'll throw some peanut butter in there. I mean, so for me, it's like, I've got a couple of kids over here. It's going to taste super good. Mine is normally at night. It kind of works twofold for me. I'm like water. Not only is it helping me hit my protein intake, if I'm, whoa, it also gives me that, like, you know, my ice cream addictions. So it gives me that feeling of like having a milkshake. Have you ever tried making popsicles with it? I wonder. Protein shake? Yeah. Like freeze it, you know, like, you know, they have those, like sticks that you can make with them. Yeah. We do, we do for max all the time. I wonder if that will be good. Like a protein shake popsicle. Katrina makes these, what's the, what's the, the electrolyte thing that you, when your kids are like dehydrated from. Pedialyte. Pedialyte. She does, she mixes like a three to one ratio water to pedialyte to for popsicles for max. Oh, interesting. That's what he's been having forever. Really? Yeah. Man, when he has a real popsicle one day, he's going to be like, what the fuck, dad? Yeah. We gave him a real lollipop the other day because we're trying to train him to use the toilet. So cute. I forgot to tell you guys this story was so funny. So like, this is what's kind of cool. And I'm like Katrina and I were like high-fiving each other. Like, yeah, I'm so proud of us. We waited almost three years to like introduce sugar to this kid. So it's got so much power now, you know. Yeah. And by the way, we still didn't even get like a traditional super sweet lollipop. I found this brand that's like super low sugar everything, right? But it's more than he's ever had. So we introduced it to him to go in the toilet. We got him to pee in the toilet the other day for the first time and, you know, gave him his lollipop and he was so pumped about it. So yesterday on the way home, Katrina calls me. She goes, your son's been sitting on the toilet for 30 minutes trying to pee because he wants a lollipop. She goes, she's like, he's sitting there, he's farting and everything. He's just trying to squeeze anything out. He wants that lollipop so damn bad. Give him a lollipop for a fart. Fart you. Yeah, I do that for him. You won't even leave the toilet. He's just like, I'm going to sit here until I get it. That's a dad's best friend is just sitting on the toilet for an hour. He's learned it, bro. Exactly. He's doing the dad hack. I'll see you guys later. He's what dad does. No, don't say that. My wife thinks I actually do that. So does Katrina. Katrina will follow me up there and be like, are you in the bathroom again? I'm not escaping. I actually take that long. This is my private time. Leave me alone. Yeah, things are moving. Hey, real quick. You got to go check out one of our partners, Ollipop. They make sodas that are good for your gut health and low in calories. Check out these flavors. They have flavors like strawberry, vanilla, orange, squeeze, cherry, vanilla. I like their, I think it's fruit punch. It's one of my favorites. Anyway, they taste amazing. Each can is like 35 calories. And they have compounds in there that are good for gut health. That's what's amazing about their sodas. They're really good for you. We drink them all the time. Go check them out. Head over to mindpumppartners.com. Click on Ollipop. Use the code Mind Pump for a discount. All right, here comes the rest of the show. Our first caller is Nick from Colorado. Nick, what's happening, man? How can we help you? Hey, how's it going, guys? Yeah, so the question I have is in reference to anaerobic. I guess, I guess you can call it cardio. But it's basically revolving around the muscle stimulus that could come from it. So the overall question is, do you feel anaerobic cardio or explosive body weight exercises, such as sprints, squat jumps, or even hitting the heavy bag with punches or kicks, et cetera, produces a muscle building signal similar to or less than weight training? I bring this up because from personal experience and when looking at athletes that emphasize much of this in their training, they almost always are lean and muscular. Even when weightlifting might not be as much of a focus. But yeah, I mean, obviously I know they burn more calories than average people, but I was wondering if... Let's first... Oh, sorry, go ahead. Let's first address the athlete thing. In fact, I think Sal brought this up off air yesterday. Yeah. We were just talking about how people look at athletes and then, you know, we try and attach the sport or what they're doing to, oh, look at how their bodies look. What they're learning is they already are these, you know, superior, they have superior genes athletically and therefore they gravitate towards these sports. It's not the way they train that makes...I mean, I've met plenty of football players that eat Taco Bell twice a day and touch weights, you know, hardly ever and they look better than I looked on stage. It's a good point because although the sports themselves don't look at the top level of athletes, what you're looking at are hardworking, genetically gifted, specific to the sport that they compete in types of people. So in other words, if I looked at the top level swimmers in the world, you know, maybe I would assume that swimming a lot would give me a long torso, short legs and long arms, right? So we don't necessarily want to look at top athletes and do that, although we can get a lot of people saying about sprints and explosive movements, jumping, that kind of stuff. There's definitely truth to that. That type of cardio is the resistance training or strength training of cardio, okay? It does build muscles. So a sprint will build leg muscles similar, but not the same as strength training. Strength training incorporates the eccentric portion of a repetition, which has a lot of strength training. However, explosive movements do build bigger muscle fibers because bigger muscle fibers contract harder and produce more power. Well, here's the thing is when you're talking about speed, which is really what you're talking about when you're talking about being explosive and having this type of movement activity, you're generating a lot of force. And so that force itself is a factor in terms of being more anaerobic is going to play a factor in terms of how your body responds, but in terms of building muscle, it's not the ideal pathway to go. It does stimulate. It does have a factor in there, but it's definitely not anywhere close to resistance training. I'm so glad you said that, Justin, because that's the thing that needs to be addressed here is that it's really what the athlete is going to be an athlete than doing some of these things like the athletic training that makes total sense to train this way. But if your desired outcome is to look like the athlete, i.e. I want to build muscle and be shredded and lean, therefore I want to do these exercises I hear or see them doing, that's not the best approach. There is a better approach to building more muscle faster and getting leaner and finding it all together, because this is what we see athletes look this way and therefore I'm going to train this way. Depending on the client's goal, I'm most likely not going to use that method of training to get their desired outcome, because what most clients say to me is they use an athlete and they go, I love the way this guy looks. Make me look like them. I see him doing these jump boxes and these ice skaters and cool moves. So let's follow his training. It's like, no, what he's doing is specific to his sport and whoever is training him has got him doing that because it benefits him on the field or whatever sport we're talking about. He didn't go to his coach and go like, hey, I want to be the best basketball player on the court. He's like, I want to be the best basketball player. I just happen to have great genetics and so I look awesome when I do it. So if you're the average person saying, okay, well, what is your goal? What is your desired outcome? Are you trying to be athletic and therefore you want to follow these types of programs or do you have a look you're trying to obtain? And if that's the case, then I would tell you that this is not the best strategy for us to get there. I think there's a lot of value in this style of training too, even for your average person. We've talked about this too, about how we lose this ability over time as we age especially. So a lower risk version of this is very advantageous especially when you're in situations just live situations where you have to move really quickly and your body has to respond. A lot of times this is where people get injuries and it's over the most ridiculous thing like you slip or you miss a step or you're reaching back really fast. So this will help train your body and so I would just say look at it in terms of a phase. You're going to weave this into your training because it does have a lot of value. Now that being said, this isn't going to make you lose muscle. It is a muscle building contributor. Is it going to build more muscle than just strength training? I mean if it improves your ability to lift, then it might right? If it gives you more stability to help you work out, it could but I don't think it's like Adam said it's not like a strategy that but if you're doing cardio and you're doing cardio, that's not going to make me potentially send a conflicting signal and lose some muscle. This is the way to do it. Now there is a right way to do it though, Nick. It's number one, you better have the prerequisite stability and control to do it because it's far more risky doing explosive movements than it is to do controlled movements. So that's number one. Number two, you have to treat it like strength training. In other words, don't do it to fatigue or otherwise you're just doing cardio. It stops being anaerobic. It's now aerobic. So in other words, don't you see people do this all the time. They'll do jump boxes as part of a big circuit and they're so exhausted and it's all about getting tired. In which case, it really doesn't matter what you do. You can jump in place. You're going to get the same result. You want to be explosive with and treat it like a set. So like five explosive jumps and then rest for a minute or two and then try again the goal being to jump as high as you can not jump as much as you can or build stamina doing that. So you got to definitely do it the right way. Now, Nick, now that we're done lecturing you, why don't you tell us exactly what your goal is. Let's just assume this guy wants to do all this shit. So tell us exactly your goal. I want to hear what you're going for. I definitely kind of two full goal. I mean, I definitely want to be going as I'm going into my 40s as lean as I can. I'm very avid weightlifter. I used to be an athlete. One of the reasons I brought up like the kicking and the punching was I used to do boxing in MMA in college and I really, I missed that activity. But overall, I'd say just staying lean not falling into the metabolic effect that you all talk about a lot of going to slow cardio and that slowing my metabolism down but also maintaining some level of athleticism. I don't have the same knees anymore. I was in the Marine Corps for 10 years and my knees are definitely beat down so I can't like really run anymore. So it's like what sort of athletic activities can I do combined with the weight training that I do to remain athletic still remain lean but not mess up my metabolism. So it's kind of a two full question. Okay, I love something. You said something that we didn't address that I think is also important. Another thing that would be important to finding out about my client before I would give them advice is that you enjoy doing this, right? So sometimes I'm going to advise my client to go in a path that I know that there's a faster path to get them to their goal or even a better path to get them their goal but part of their goal is man, I love doing this athletic stuff. Yeah, if you plan on doing it forever you'd better like it. Yeah, I enjoy it. It makes me feel good when I do it. It's fun. I have that kind of and so that's where as a coach I'm going to take my knowledge around building bodies and go, okay, yeah, I know there's a better way or a faster way potentially to get this guy to where he wants to potentially look but he's also saying things like hey, I really enjoy doing this and so to me, I think a MAPS performance is a perfect program for you. MAPS performance is going to give you the athleticism that appeals to you while also still strength training you and phasing you in and out kind of like what Justin said so if you don't have that program, we'll send that to you because to me that's based off of your goals that is like the perfect program and you're going to get a lot of the things that you're looking for in that program. Yeah, we'll send that to you Nick. I think that'll be perfect for you and then when it comes to being lean that's largely a product of diet. I mean the muscle aspect of course makes a big big impact but you're already kind of doing the strength training that's going to be diet. So I really, when it comes to exercising in a way to get lean, really what you want to do is exercise in a way to maintain a faster metabolism and then the other half of that is just it's always going to be diet so no matter what so that's going to be the big factor here. Awesome, awesome, thank you so much guys I really appreciate the time, huge fan you guys talk more about the metabolism than probably anyone else on these podcasts so I really appreciate the insight there. You got it man. Appreciate you calling in, thank you. Thanks, thanks guys. Take it easy. Justin you said something about losing the ability and you know you can hurt yourself that is, I mean that's happened to me a couple times. Me too. That was a great point. Oh yeah dude I told this story before but my oldest was little he was at the top of the stairs and I mean I've been working out forever with weights and I was younger than I am now so I can't even imagine if I did this now but he goes to jump off the top steps because I used to have him jump off one of the steps and I'd catch him. Well he saw me at the bottom goes to jump off the top. I grabbed the railing and launched myself up the stairs and I ripped the railing off the wall, caught him literally pulled every muscle on the left side of my body because of the super hero dad moves. Yeah but it was the explosiveness right because I have the strength but I didn't ever train lots of explosive power so my body didn't have the ability to really control or stabilize so I ended up hurting you know half my body as a result and it's true like you'll get fit and strong in the gym you'll miss a step go to step real fast oh how did I hurt myself I always work out well it's an ability it's a skill you got to train it. Yeah I mean you over correct at that point if you're not familiar with those movements anymore and it's just one of those things that like really quickly like you don't have that ability anymore so to to train it is definitely something that now and I didn't really consider that so we had Joe DeFranco on too I'm like oh my god what a great point so you know that's definitely something that I've been I've been noticing a lot to you know even with my parents and with everybody else I'm like trying to get them to move fast every now and then just to maintain the ability. No I mean I I shared on the podcast a while back it was almost a year ago I think when I jumped out of the back of my truck you know I have a lifted Chevy and when I jump out like it's something I've done probably a hundred times plus and never thought twice about it and I thought my knees were going to explode you know and when you hit the ground hard yeah and really what the awakening for me was I had never stopped consistently lifting weights and training but what I had stopped is a lot of athletic training a lot of explosive type of movements and that naturally just kind of wove its way into my routine because I've always played sports and this is the longest period of time in my life that I've gone without playing any sort of sports well if I don't play any sports I'm also not training to kind of prepare myself for that so I've lost an ability that I just thought I would have you know I thought I would have ever I know better I should know better I wouldn't have it forever but like when I jumped out of that truck I didn't think that I would feel that way it's something I've done so many times but it's you know if you don't train it you'll lose it the body will prune off the ability even if you're a strong person in the gym and fit I mean body fat percentage is good I'm strong in the gym but I don't train that way of movement this is why we you know are such big advocates of certain barbell movements like yeah you can work out your legs with leg presses and leg extensions and you know hack squats and stuff like that but you stop squatting and you'll have strong legs from the other exercises but that skill of squatting which is fundamental it'll start to slip away from you you'll get under a bar or try to squat and you just don't have the same so you know strength and it's all so much of it is a skill that you have to practice all these movements not just have the muscles that contribute to the movements that's the important thing to understand our next caller is Michelle from California hi Michelle how can we help you hey guys thank you so much for taking my question and just for all the content you put out there I was super lucky I was recommended your podcast back when I first became a trainer at Gold's Gym and skipped past all the mistakes I hear you guys say a lot of trainers make and now four years later I'm a full-time mental therapist as well as a personal trainer in a private setting and a bikini competitor so I use all the tools you guys put out to help my clients and myself so thank you awesome yeah so I'll jump right into my question and then maybe give a little background information my question is is it detrimental to make a drastic drop in calories below maintenance in order to obtain long-term weight loss and part of the reason I asked this question as I said I'm a bikini competitor and I'm currently in my off season from competing and the main goal during my off season is to rebalance my hormones because those were super off make sure all my biomarkers are good my sleep my stress my mental health trying to get all that balanced as well as like find out what diet works best for me and the thing is I was at maybe 1100 calories 90 minutes of cardio when I last stepped on stage and I worked in a reverse all the way up to about 2700 calories with barely any cardio that's phenomenal gained a lot of muscle ate a lot of food gained a lot of muscle and made some great progress but as you guys know summer's coming up so I did still even though I'm not competing I still wanted to jump into a cut and immediately my coach put me in a big deficit 700 calories to like 1400 calories some days were no carbs which I've literally never done in my life so I'm just I lost a lot of weight obviously but I'm just really terrified of the idea of like okay once I get once I stop losing weight like what can we do like how much lower am I going to have to go how much like cardio will have to do because I really don't want to stress if I'm not doing a show this year is he cycling you out of that cut like are do you are you is that just a temporary thing or is that like a permanent hey for the next few weeks or months we're going to do this what's it look like so at first I thought it was like a one week see where you're at see how much weight lose and then we'll adjust from there and then one week turned to two weeks and then two weeks turns to three weeks and then I went rogue ultimately and now I'm kind of trying to build my own program but I'm scared if I increase the calories too much now I'm going to gain the 10 pounds that I lost and I don't want that to happen but I do I not having carbs made me like crazy it made me have a headache and all that I really struggled so well Michelle Michelle let me ask you because your original question was is is it detrimental to make those drastic drops long-term weight not lost and you went from 2700 calories to you said 700 to 1400 calories yeah I cycle what do you think like what do you think that this is well let me know because I want to know what your opinion is before I answer because I have a feeling that you might know the answer already and you might just want confirmation well so originally I gave a little pushback to my coach and then tried to see it from that perspective I mean I just don't know so I feel like it is I feel like I've been taught to slowly decrease decrease decrease but I wasn't sure if his goal was to make me lose a lot of fat a lot of weight and then kind of build up into it because you know like ideally I'd love to go and just show eating more than being at my lowest which is what I've done in the past so I don't know if that was the game plan or if he thought maybe I won't lose as much muscle if I do it quickly. Two big red flags here one you didn't know what the plan was that's a crappy coach you should know what you're going to be doing not just here's this and then we'll figure it out so you should already know he should explain that to you. Yeah sounds like he just did a massive that sees that you're leaning out and says oh we'll just stay the course until it's not working. Yeah number two here's another red flag and this one really pertains to you Michelle why are you why are you hiring a coach that's saying this to you when you're a trainer you've been a trainer for four years what would you tell your client like why are you allowing this person to kind of ruin your body ruin your health through an approach like this I think you know the answer that's something you need to answer for yourself like why are you seeking this out somebody do you think he's going to have the magic answer that's going to give you something that has worked for nobody well I'm sure he's I'm sure he touts himself as a professional in the bodybuilding sure but that's not the point right like like what is it Michelle that makes you that made you want to do this and stick to it for a few weeks like that's an important question to answer I think curiosity as a coach and as someone I mean you guys have talked a lot about trying different diets things like that I'd never tried no carbs so I was curious right to see okay how is my body going to respond I realized it didn't work and I did communicate with my coach like hey this isn't working I'm going to try to add carbs I'm going to do something different but I'm I'm curious if it because he there are some people that are still doing this diet so I'm curious as to what I mean that's fair you want to try something out I mean I get that three weeks isn't going to ruin your metabolism so you're okay yeah so I'm glad you said that because that's what I've been wanting to jump in and say right now so we have a good friend Jordan Syed and also Eugene Tau I think I saw did they did this a while back I've seen them both do it on their social media where they tried to address coaches that you know are alarmist about you know calorie restriction and saying that you're not going to destroy your metabolism over you know a week or two of super low calorie in fact and they were making the case for how it could be healthy for you and it's not and they're right like in a short period of time a really really low calorie diet is not it's when it gets becomes chronic when we get into trouble and now what I would be concerned as a coach is if you've you've already been there before where you were chronically under eating and I'm now putting you in that position again I'm flirting with potentially bad behaviors so and this is and that's when you have another level of coaching when they're like not only are they looking at the X's and O's but they're also taking into account what I don't want to do with this girl is I don't want to restrict her so hard that she falls into old patterns again and she just cuts cuts cuts cuts cuts the other red flag is that you know he didn't build in like a calorie surplus day in that time like you could easily see incredible benefits cutting a tremendous amount of calories in a short period of time and then also just like inserting once a week or once every 10 days or so a high refeed I did get a cheat I get did get a cheat kind of day meal every week which was different than I've ever done whenever I compete I'd never get any cheat meal so it was different where he would break up that calorie deficit but how did he explain the cheat meal what is that what do you mean by that as it will often I mean again I'm not competing so I wasn't as rigid but it would be like you know eat 10 ounce steak with 8 ounces of potato or something that was a lot higher in fat, carbs, protein to just boost up and the idea was to kind of re-engage my metabolism or kickstart my metabolism back so it didn't get too adjusted to the low calories how high was he going steak and potato is not like yeah that's one meal so what would that take your calories yeah what would it take this cheat meal or slash day if you were restricting 1400 calories a day let's say 700 to 1400 calories a day what did the day when you decided to get or when you were allowed to get this cheat meal what did that push you up to it pushed me up to probably like 1800 or so 1800 1800 total calories yeah that's still a cut you're coming you're just saying a couple weeks ago you're 2700 a surplus I would take you back to maintenance surplus which would be 27 to 2900 calories for that one day you're not you're going from an extreme cut to a kind of cut is still keeping you chronically cutting so 1800 calories is a 900 calorie cut from what she was having that's what I'm saying you didn't go to a surplus a surplus would be or at least maintenance 2700 so going from 1100 or being super low and then bumping you up 400 or 500 calories is not doing the body is still starving for nutrients you're depriving you're still depriving it from where you were just a month ago so yeah no that's not there's a lot of red flags here on as far as the coaching strategy here the sal pointed out not not even knowing what you're doing I don't think it's necessary for you to have to cut that much not doing like a proper refeed in my opinion like so there's a lot of those things that I'm not a fan of but I do want to make clear that I don't want I don't want to be alarmist with this because I think what both Jordan Syat and our friend Eugene Tao the post that they did I think it was a good post when they shared this that you know it is okay I do this all time where you know I've been eating a surplus for a while I'm like you know what this week I'm just gonna I'm gonna eat real low calorie I mean you can literally fast for seven days yeah nothing yeah and it's not gonna and it's not gonna fuck your metabolism no I mean it depends on the person of course if you're extreme right average yeah context matters but for the average person short period isn't isn't gonna isn't gonna cause that long term it can definitely cause some issues now you're not competing anymore what is your goal exactly you have a specific goal like are you trying to drop a certain percent body fat well the idea I mean I I plan on competing I want to go on the national stage try to get my pro card okay but I also the feedback is always grow grow grow so I want I so I built a lot of muscle and I want to know I want to get lean enough to see where I'm at and see if I can go into a show or if I should get back into a book and build more muscle so that when I get on the probe sure well hey Michelle a three week aggressive cut like you did and then going back to to kind of a small a short bulk that's a great strategy actually that's not a bad strategy if it's only two or three weeks and then you go back to you know to a small bulk that's not a bad strategy at minimizing fat gain or even losing some body fat and then trying to build in that short bulk period so I like that strategy I don't like the long term cut you know I get it before a show I mean when you're trying to get on stage nothing that you do especially the few weeks leading to a show is going to be healthy so I get that but right now you're just kind of trying to see for yourself there's nothing wrong with the alternating approach where you kind of trend towards getting leaner but you're giving your body definitely giving your body time to have more calories and more nutrients and you know kind of preserving some of the muscle that you've built yeah I think there was an episode that I listened to that Adam had actually kind of suggested something like that and it was when I was just starting this and it was like three I think it was like yeah three days of super of deficit and then three days of a more maintenance or above maintenance calorie range and the thing is I've I've been in this kind of deficit and then going up and kind of going back and forth and I've maintained a lot of muscle I mean I think I wrote down that I just hit a PR for four or five for my glute bridges like I'm surprised that my strength is not going down my strength is going up while still in this deficit awesome yeah no I mean that's a good sign yeah that's definitely a good sign so but I would keep those short especially now when you get into show prep that's a little different but for something like this you've already done three weeks I would go back to maintenance all goals ultimately to get leaner then you want the cuts to be a little longer than the bulks right so I would go like three week cut maybe a two week one and a half to two weeks maintenance or slight bulk and then go back to a three week type cut until you and it'll take you longer to get there but it's not going to cause problems but also you know pay attention you sound like you're pretty put together just pay attention to the behaviors that that might encourage it's not you know that up and down with the food if you find yourself feeling restrictive and then bingey then go back to something more consistent because that's going to be most important that's what's going to stick to you past these competitions you know yeah yeah I'm a mental health therapist first and foremost mental health always number one especially when it comes to food habits and living excellent yeah you get it yeah you get it you get it no perfect Michelle is any program we can give you can we give you something to follow I mean I have almost all of them the only one I don't have is PED but I don't know if that's probably not what you need did you get the new one already did you get symmetry yeah we yeah we got it awesome okay good deal symmetry and the two e-books that came with so well if you stop I will give you a hug well I was going to say about the forum would I be able to join that yeah yeah we'll let you in for sure yeah and in fact by the way we have we have quite a few competitors in there and a lot of people that have coached themselves some people that are not some people I've actually coached are in there so yeah there's a great community in there around the competition so make sure you get in there and introduce yourself yeah that would be so helpful awesome we'll see you in there then thanks for calling in Michelle so much yeah I mean I'm glad you said that Adam I mean three weeks right it's not going to do I mean you could literally fast for a week yeah nothing and of course you got to be healthy and all that stuff and it's not going to have this crazy you know detrimental effect on your metabolism but you follow a super low calorie diet plus lots of exercise for two months three months four months yeah now that adaptation starts to happen the behaviors and the trends yeah watch with that yeah the temporary approach you know you can rebound from that pretty good it actually benefits you well yeah in some cases especially when it's consistently for months and the direction you're always going is yes less and less and less like without any sort of interruption of hey how about for a week we run to a maintenance surplus and I think it's as simple as that but I think you hit it on the head like there's several red flags here with just his approach the fact that he's not sharing what the plan is already I mean a lot of these coaches is just you need clarity you need that up front well as they hit the same button every time they do you want to hire me here we go boom low calorie boom extra workout and then they and they stop working lower calorie extra work and they ride that train as long as they can it sounds exactly what he's doing is just like I'm so cuckoos oh she's still seen results she's still strong keep pushing it yeah just keep pushing it more cardio yeah it's just lower eating it's terrible our next caller is Zach from Maryland Zach what's happening how can we help you hey guys really appreciate you having me on and just want to start by thanking you for all of the great information that you're putting out there um yeah when I was first trying to lose a bunch of weight I got all caught up in the trendy fads so guys we got me right on on the right track with fitness so cool really can't thank you enough awesome um yeah so yeah for context I'm a former college football player I played o-line and I've lost a bunch of weight since since I finished playing and you know undergone significant body decomposition by following the NAPS programs so I followed the RGB bundle and I'm currently in phase three of aesthetic um and so this is my first time in you know really 10 plus years of lifting that I'm focusing primarily on getting a pump is sort of the main adaptation um yeah I've sort of gotten it before I'm familiar with it but this has never been the main focus so um my question is that I'm finding that I can find or I can lift greater weights um with the high reps prescribed in the supersets in phase three with good form but it kind of takes away from the feel of the muscles and if I lift lighter weights you know I can really you know focus on that mind muscle connection and squeeze the muscles more over the same number of reps and kind of increase the feel of the pump that I'm getting um so you know my thought is that I probably should do the latter and focus on the feel of the muscles but just want to you know make making that lightweight feel as heavy as possible and do more with it um I want to confirm that that's the right approach and you know whether you have any tips on and how to know that you're at the correct weight for you know not going too light and not going too heavy that you can't like this yeah no you're like I like how you're presenting that you're on point that's that's exactly what you want to do especially with a phase like that when you're doing low rep training focus for yeah yes I mean when you're doing low rep training you know you're doing like five reps uh and you're doing compound lifts it's about the movement it's about movement efficiency maximizing leverage right when you're doing the higher reps bodybuilder style training most part now I know I'm talking to somebody who used to play college football right use you in your question you wrote down that you played college football before you so you're a high level athlete you're probably pretty strong or you have at least the propensity for tremendous strength there's a risk versus reward here when we go with heavy weight the reward with going heavier can be more muscle growth but it depends on who I'm talking to someone like you you're better off making the weight feel heavier than adding weight to the bar you're going to get you're still going to build muscle but you're going to reduce the risk of injury with the higher with the heavier weight so you're better off with the feel especially with the phase three of maps aesthetic so you're you're on point when I train this way if I feel like I can add five pounds or ten pounds to the bar all I do is I try to make the set harder myself so I don't have to add weight I get way better results I guarantee this is a novel stimulus for you knowing yeah knowing like what the training used to look like for football this is this is the perfect opportunity for you to really focus in on a completely different approach to weight training and so you're you're right on point in terms of like really trying to mind muscle connection is is where you want to live and and really I think one of the things that I found myself as as far as like always trying to intensify everything because of the type of workouts I used to do forever you know this is this is one of those things like don't go super fast like really feel it like yeah you know slow yourself down because like because it's high reps and because it's lighter weight a lot of times people tend to like rush their way through it in terms of like the way that I used to approach it so I think that that's one thing like you're already on point in terms of how you're looking at it so I just want to reiterate that yeah I don't have much to contribute to that I think that other than I think great self-awareness I think that men tend to have a tendency to put more weight on the bar than they should especially if you played college football especially if you have an athletic background so the fact that you've got the awareness that you probably have that tendency and you probably should lighten the load and focus on squeeze I think is great man I think I think more people actually men need to do that I think it's really and I'm as guilty of the same thing you get in the gym you start feeling good you know grabbing you know 10 or 15 more pounds add to it because I can you know I get let that get in the way sometimes and I know that I should focus on the squeeze and the form and the technique you're gonna get just as much if not more out of it plus without the as much risk so yeah no I think I think you got the right the right attitude and I think you're gonna continue to see great results Zach you did maps and a ball like mass performance and now you're finishing maps aesthetic right yep yep I'm planning to go to symmetry next this yeah slowing these reps down is made me notice some balances do you have you have symmetry or can I send that to you I do have symmetry well you almost got it for free I should have waited no no worries what about do you have anything for correctional stuff like maps prime like a prime pro do you have that not yet I definitely interested let me send that to you because I think that'll that no matter what program you do what you'll find the maps prime pros gonna help you out especially an ex athlete like yourself there's gonna be certain muscle imbalances or movement issues that you're gonna start to identify especially when you go through map symmetry and prime pro is a beautiful addition that's awesome really really appreciate that no problem man thanks for calling in thank you keep it up man you know I'm gonna say this this is and this is I think generally true obviously depends on who I'm talking to but you know adding weight to the bar is really important when you first start working out later on making the weight feel ever heavier rather than adding weight to the bar becomes more important like the mind the muscle connection body building style type training I say style and quotations I think correctional work and in multi-planar you know movements are crucial that bodybuilder typically don't do but that style of training where you're feeling the muscle connecting making the weight feel heavier but and not adding weight to the bar that's a better longevity approach to strength training it really is once you reach a certain point of strength the risk versus reward just doesn't make sense to keep trying to add weight to the bar unless you're competitive powerlifter I'm just stoked that somebody like this found their way to our programs and found their way to this because this is such a high risk you know individual in terms of coming from a sport like that and eating the amount of calories and the explosive like damaging type of you know activity they're a part of and then go shift completely to regular life that's sedentary and all this like I've just seen so many examples of especially like O-line men D-line men where you know the health problem is just snowball it just accelerates so you know kudos to him for really going through this and getting back on a good path. Oh totally have you trained over-trained ex-athletes in this situation it's so hard to get them to switch mentalities because it's like yeah I mean because for so long that's how you lifted that's how you trained that's how you ate and now you're like no no no slow down feel the muscle like what I can lift more let me go faster let me go harder you know that's why my own my only contribution to the conversation was great self-awareness because I think I think most people already struggle most men struggle with this as it is and then if you're coming from that background really hard to make that that mental shift our next caller is Ashley from Ohio what's up Ashley how can we help you hi guys I did just want to say thank you for thank you to all of you for taking the time out of your day to do things like this it's extremely valuable to people like myself so I do have two questions unrelated one is about fitness and one about nutrition so hoping we can get to both the first one though is about nutrition so I've read quite a few books regarding carbohydrates and sugars and long-term how they affect us with chronic diseases and even in the short term how they affect our bodies processing of fats in the protein that we eat so just per my understanding when we eat carbs or sugars of course our body releases insulin to regulate the glucose in our blood but that also that insulin also stops the fat from being able to freely move in and out of our fat cells basically it locks up our fat and that's what eventually causes weight gain so I do track my macros my priority is always protein I'm always at 125 grams a day or more and I do stick to a very low carbohydrate diet not quite keto but I try to stay under 100 grams a day sometimes it's more like 50 or 60 grams a day and I feel fine with that but I just I don't understand my guess based on all the information that I've read the things that I've learned I don't understand where carbohydrates should really fit into a healthy diet and then that kind of leads me to obviously it's hard to cut out all carbs but fruit I know is good so just trying to get your guys' opinion on carbohydrates and where they do fit in a healthy diet my opinion is this is why the fitness industry sucks because we do this we over complicate something that is much simpler than what we're making it and we try and scare people into a way of thinking or eating to sell my books or to sell my program or to sell my diet and it's unfortunate because you can tell you're very smart I can tell that you understand but yet you're asking a very good question based off of probably conflicting stuff that you hear around carbohydrates and insulin it's like they're not carbs are not bad if you look at the issues with carbohydrate intake what you're seeing is the result of excess calories okay now I'm oversimplifying of course there's healthier versus less healthy foods this is true for fats and proteins as well as carbohydrates but generally speaking if you look at like the obesity epidemic and they've done this right they'll be like oh it's because we're consuming we're fat that's what happened in the 80s and 90s like oh no no it's actually carbs no what it is is reading more of everything our calories have gone up significantly really what correlates strongest to the obesity epidemic and inflammation and disease is heavily processed foods and heavily processed foods are just engineered to make us eat more so the more of our diets that are made up of heavily processed foods the more calories we eat and then that becomes the issue sugar, carbohydrates, proteins and fats don't have lots of negative effects when the calories are appropriate when the calories are high sugars become a problem certain fats become a problem even too many proteins can become a problem when the calories are too high so that's generally what's happening okay now to take it a step further if you look at the studies on longevity you'll find societies where their diets are predominantly or majority of their calories come from carbohydrates and they live a very long time this is just not true now are carbs essential no they're not essential but that doesn't mean that eating them isn't better or going to make you feel better some people feel better on lower carbs or the people feel better on higher carbohydrates this is where individualism or individual body physiology plays a role or even psychology some people enjoy them more than others but no that's not the issue now a lot of times people cut carbs and they feel a lot better and they're like wow this is great what's going on heavily processed foods tend to be carb heavy so what tends to happen when people cut carbohydrates is they tend to eliminate a lot of the heavily processed foods like try to think of heavily processed foods in boxes and wrappers that are fat or protein dominant right for protein dominant what are you going to get jerky like that's a processed food but it's the least or hot dogs I guess probably not great either but most heavily processed foods are kind of carb heavy so it's a result of of that so I wouldn't worry about carbohydrates Gary he definitely can be an alarmist with certain things yes insulin does what you said but that's not the full story not that simple no if your calories are lower than what you're burning and you're eating 65% of your calories from carbohydrates you're going to still lose body fat I mean you definitely want to pay attention to your behaviors like what if that promotes if like sugars are processed foods like you incorporate that into your diet if it promotes the next day you tend to have a higher calorie day again like a lot of times this kind of it's a snowball effect it's something that you can pay attention to remove and it'll affect your behaviors around eating but in terms of the overall detrimental effects it's when you're in a high calorie state that's Justin that's the most important thing is you knowing yourself and your own behaviors now if you have this tendency to over consume when you eat carbohydrates then you might be a client that I'm going to push you more towards a higher fat lower carbohydrate for the behavioral reasons not for the insulin purpose like that's not I'm not that's not what I'm thinking about when I tell my client like hey let's cut back on your car unless you're recommended by a medical doctor because you have some kind of blood sugar issues or insulin resistance in which case you know that might be the case but if you're otherwise healthy no it doesn't do that and again what they're doing is they're looking at what they're doing is they're looking at carbohydrate intake and obesity and inflammation and yes when people eat high carbs you see more inflammation you see more obesity but that's because they're also eating a lot more calories right it's not the carbs it's the excess calories because you can make the same connection with fat and you do something like that which is again what caused all the false information in the 80s and the 90s so it's the complexity of diet is about individual how the individual responds how they feel but the simplicity generally speaking really has more to do with calories are you getting essential nutrients and are you over eating or under eating really that's really what it boils down to okay and that was sort of I guess his books definitely make me feel like all carbohydrates are just the devil and you shouldn't eat them which is why I've come to you guys asking because I have cut out the very heavily refined carbohydrates that process sugars because they aren't satisfying to me and it does have for me it gives me a tendency to eat more of them than I would eat of protein or a fat source and those are easy to cut out and actually makes me feel better but it was mainly more like when it comes to your vegetables and your fruits the things that I enjoy that I know are still good for you just wanted a little I guess reassurance that those are things that fit into my calorie and macro count for the day that those are they're not going to throw me way off track good good and then you had a did you have a fitness question as well you said yeah so it actually just any fitness program but I've been really looking at your guys' programs race motocross ride my dirt bike quite a bit obviously for training so whenever and I've been working out consistently for about three years whenever I have a program I never know or I'm looking at a program I never know how to fit it around my racing and riding schedule so my goals are obviously strength endurance and I do have aesthetic goals as well it feels good to look great so with with moto you don't want to ever bulk up your muscles because it ends up affecting you negatively on the bike so I try to be you know lean muscle mass which is great but when it comes to my workouts I usually try to take a rest day before do more of like an active recovery like walking or a stationary cycle something that keeps the body moving but less impact or less resistance on the muscles and same for the day after I just need a day to recover so with I've been looking at your sexy athlete bundle with something like that how would I work that around my own schedule and my priorities with riding or just with any sport in general I actually wouldn't recommend that for you I would actually recommend maps performance based off of the things you're into like motocross and the fact that you're already smart enough to be doing like these active recovery days leading up and I would do mobility days and I would only train one to two days a week of the foundational days from performance and then the mobility days so the performance is structured where you have three full body workouts a week depending on how much motocross riding you're doing would depend on whether I do that one time a week two times a week or three times a week how many days a week are you doing motocross I mean during the week one at most and that's usually on a Wednesday or Thursday we have to wait for a track to be open on the weekends I try to ride both Saturday and Sunday and one of those days is usually like a race day a performance day one day a week of strength training that's all I would do I've trained a couple motocross riders very demanding a lot of people don't realize just how demanding that is absolutely one day a week of strength training and I would pick a maps performance foundational workout that's it no more strength training it's gonna be too much to add to what you're doing and it'll be enough to get you strong keep you fit give you what you're looking for to help you know improve your performance with motocross more than that will probably be too much mobility you could do as much as you want that's right the mobility do on all the other days that you you can work out so in so you only have one day of really focused on strength training and then the rest of the days that you can make it to the gym and it's feasible or even your living room for that matter follow the mobility days and literally follow the mobility days to the T like basically following the program the only difference on how we would modify the program is like Sal saying instead of doing three foundational days a week you would just do one now because you're doing you said Wednesday Saturday Sunday for motocross yeah and obviously the weather effect said if it's raining and we can't ride I might only get to ride on the weekend or something like that but yes generally the day that I would do the strength training would probably be Thursday so I know you want to have a day before and after but that's kind of impossible to do with Wednesday and then Saturday and Sunday I would go Thursday and then you know Monday Tuesday mobility because you're coming off two days of motocross Friday mobility and then Saturday Sunday do your motocross so Thursday would be the day I would do the strength training and again pick that work out for mass performance okay and then let's say you know like I mentioned it rains and I don't get to ride during the week is it okay to do two days of the yep yep and that's how I would decide that is based off exactly that is if this is a week where you didn't ride as much go ahead and do another foundational day for you again listen to your body right so you you will have you will know better than even we know we're kind of guessing that will be good for you but if you go to two and you actually still feel really sore in your riding or you feel like it's hindering your workout then back off to one if you're doing one and you're feeling great and you want to try to and you still feel great doing to then go to okay I'm just I'm a very small female and I ride a full-size dirt bike and I have noticed immensely how much of a difference it's made with my riding just being strong and having the endurance I have so I'm just ready to to keep that up and I guess sort of take it to the next level so definitely appreciate your guys' thoughts there. Thanks for calling in Ashley we'll send you mass performance okay well thank you I appreciate it you guys have a great day. You too. Perfect. Thanks. Yeah you know I'll tell you what if you if you do a general study and you look at sodium so salt and take sugar and take and fat and take you will correlate all of those to obesity inflammation and disease why salt, sugar and fat are the key components of palatable hyper palatable food so it'll also show which you have to control for this is the problem of studies is they don't know what to control for then they don't know what to control for but what you would do with that is if you saw salt, sugar and fat as you'd say oh they must be eating a lot of heavily processed foods which means also eating a lot of calories and that's why for example sodium has gotten connected to poor health in the past now we know with lots of controls it's not that way right so and you see now you know and it's really easy by the way to sell books and to you know cause a lots of alarmist out there yeah and be like oh it's this cut this out and sometimes it's true usually it's not though and carbohydrates we've been consuming humans have been consuming carbohydrates fats and proteins for thousands of years and there's cultures where people live a long time and they eat a lot of carbohydrates but their calories aren't very high and they're still active and that's the key I mean generally speaking I usually try to just because it's it's something I've noticed with all my clients like they shared it in common whenever they would get in a rhythm of incorporating dessert or like something that has like a lot of sugar in it what followed that was more calories would just introduce themselves into the daily routine and so it's you just got to pay attention to these patterns of behavior and if that's one of your foods or if it's like salt and it's always chips and it's something that you're constantly consuming and just adding you know mindless calories and you're not getting a lot of nutrients from this type of food it's something to evaluate this is why I actually don't like to put a lot of parameters around carbohydrates and fats for clients like I like to go figure out what my client needs calorie-wise hit figure out their protein intake I get your essential fats yes and then as long as the only parameter I have around fat is making sure you get a minimal amount of fat right so making sure you're not below what's healthy and then I let you kind of go back and I will and I actually encourage the client like hey how about this week we we focus on a lot or a lot higher fat intake and lower carbon take keeping calories all the same just manipulating those two macros and then next week let's do the reverse of that and then assessing how did you feel how did you like it was it easy to follow was it easy to make the meals and then I'm taking that information and based off of their feedback and what they're what they're telling me that's how I'm going to manipulate whether we're going to run a more carb heavy diet or a more high fat diet and I think to me that is the the better approach with someone or a client like this yeah no exactly I do the exact same thing and you know with myself it has it revolves a lot around gut health I if my gut health is not that great lower carbohydrates tends to work better but if my gut health is great higher carbohydrates get better performance I get better strength that's me personally right so I 100% how did you know how did you know she was talking about Gary toms it's in her notes oh I was like yeah you guys nailed that I'm like how did you know that I didn't hear her say it just read her mind yeah well you know I have those special he's the one on that was on Joe Rogan and I know Lane Norton came after him and Lane always goes yeah Lane likes to go after him hard of the stuff he I've seen a lot of his stuff some of his stuff is he's an investigative journalist that's what makes him so that's what makes him so popular though is that there's truth in some of the some of the stuff that he says no the investigative journalist I like is Max Lugovir because he really does a good job of looking at data breaking it down looking at controls and not being you know such an alarmist and by the way people love to just discredit somebody like that because they're not a you know they're not going to go through the conventional PhD program yeah and I don't think that's fair at all because they like Max Lugovir they could be more red than some of the nutritionists that are out there it's just their studies that compare literally the same calories low carb high carb what happens at the end very similar very very similar fat loss health parameters blood markers change the individual variances of what determine you know which one's better or not I mean if you have someone with like early stages of dementia you know a ketogenic diet might actually be good for them with cognition is that true for somebody without dementia no usually you don't see that much of a benefit or any benefit so the individual variances where things can get kind of weird but when you look at generally speaking no it's not true that carbs are the devil look if you like our information head over to mindpumpfree.com and check out our guides we have guides that can help you with almost any health or fitness goal you can also find all of us on social media so Justin is on Instagram at Mind Pump Justin is on Instagram at Mind Pump Adam and you can find me on Twitter at Mind Pump Sal