 Hey everyone, welcome to Mind Pump. In this episode we talk about why dips are better than the bench press. Yeah, I just said that. In the second half of this episode we answer four questions from our Mind Pump media Instagram account. Questions like, how do I get a Christmas tree back? Also, what is an ideal number of sets and reps in a workout to build the maximum muscle? In other words, what is the sweet spot? Finally, do you have friends and family that are either getting into fitness or are really into fitness? Well, we have short clips that you can share with them at our Mind Pump Clips channel right here on YouTube. Go over there and subscribe and share the clips. All right, enjoy the show. Parallel bar dips are better than the bench press. Oh yeah. Ooh, clocked eight. What? No, let's go there. Oh, you didn't tell us that. For overall, if you look at the whole picture, for overall strength, overall muscle development, carry over to the real world, dips are better. They're just a better exercise. I'm pretty sure I can get behind this. Wow, I don't know if I can. Yeah. You know what it is. Sell me, please. Well, I want to hear your- I want to hear your- I want to hear your- Strength, I would say, in terms of translation of usable strength, I think that you can make a good argument for that. Yeah, so exactly. So it's got a greater range of motion than a bench press. Okay. If you do it right, you're going to get better shoulder stability and strength. It's closed chain, so you're manipulating your body weight. So it's like a pull-up versus a pull-down almost, not quite, but almost, right? I mean, the only downfall is the loading, right? So you're going to get that from bench press. You're going to get like a lot heavier. Oh, I just did them today loaded. I got a belt, you know, one of the belt chains. Well, yeah. I mean, you have a chain loaded. I'm just saying in terms of like, you know, really increasing the load substantially, I- Yeah, that's where I'm- I don't see myself- I'm trying to think of what the most I ever loaded my dips were. Well, think about it. You already have your body weight. You're already going to have 200 and whatever, 20 pounds, 230 pounds. So a hundred pound loaded on you, it's going to be 330 pound press. Yeah, I don't know if I've done a hundred pound dip, the body weight dip. So today- I think the biggest I normally do is like a 45 pound playback. I haven't done that in a long time. So I've done- Actually, no, I've done more with the kettlebell. You're right. Well, okay, fair enough. We'll say like, okay, yeah. I mean- Now I want to go test it. Now I want to see- Well, so I haven't benched 300 pounds in a long time just because of the way it was my shoulder and pec insertion. But to, you know, the other day I did a total of 300 pounds on the bar dips. Now that's- Sounds like such a weenie excuse when you say it like that. I know. But that's- I haven't done it because of my pec insertion. I know. What are you going to do, bro? How? Raise your hand if you've had five injuries in the last two weeks. That's a low blow, bro. No, it's not. He started it. That's a low blow. No, you know what? No, you know what? You're right. However- My uvulus. But I did load the other like a week ago. I loaded a hundred pound weights around my waist, which is over 300 pounds on the dip. And I did like two reps, which was hard. I guess you're right. Yeah. I mean, I've done that with like a hundred pound kettlebell like attached and, you know, adding- I mean, I wasn't- I'm not 300 pounds, but you know- Close. Close. I think it's- you know what it is? Is the bench press gets a lot of value because of the bodybuilding aspect of it. It's probably a- it's a better just chest exercise. Okay, yeah. That's a- and that's probably the people that are going to probably jump on this and get all crazy, right? Like no way you're going to say that- Yeah, when you talk about aesthetics, then it gets- But you said the table, right? Yeah. You said overall. Yes. So overall and just overall muscle. I mean, everything from core stability to shoulder mobility to chest, shoulders. Triceps. Yeah, triceps. Forearm and grip stability. Yeah, I mean, I could see- I could see you making the case for that. Obviously, if you were- if I'm coming from a bodybuilding perspective and I want to develop my chest. I mean, I think dips are one of the most underrated things that you could- For chest. Yeah, for chest. For sure. But I would still rank the barbell bench press- You know what's funny is that there's- with the dips, I did not notice this with bench press, okay? So with dips, what I noticed, and as long as I was careful with how I overloaded it over time and I controlled the stability and I worked through appropriate ranges of motion and then increased my ranges of motion appropriately. So that's all, you know, let's remember all that, right? My shoulder stability got better over time as I got stronger with dips. That's not the case with the bench press. Yeah. Well, you'll notice with the bench press, if you only bench press- Diminishing returns. Yes, over time, you actually start to get shoulder stability issues and you have to throw a bunch of other things in. With the dips, it was as if the dips were themselves improving my shoulder stability. I just think it's the angle and the range of motion. Now, you got to do it appropriately because you could overdo it and you could, you know, go through a range of motion, you don't control and hurt yourself. But it's just a healthier- I think if you do it right, a healthier exercise. Yeah, this reminds me, I was trying to make that argument a long time ago for ring dips, just in terms of like if I was to increase the difficulty of an exercise, it has like a really good transferable strength. In terms of addressing the stability of the shoulder joint in general, like ring dips is hard of an exercise as you can do in terms of that and having benefit to it and not having that sort of a detrimental effect because it was on that level for me for bench press. Inevitably, I'd hit this point where, you know, I would feel almost like a breaking point like I was going to lose, you know, shoulder stability. I was going to have some kind of a breakdown where it may lead to a strain and injury like something and then I would have to kind of back off either regress or, you know, move on to a different type of an exercise. So like in terms of, you know, having that constant benefit, I think, you know, dips do you have that? We can't understate the value of novelty too, right? I mean, I had a question asked in my story yesterday and it was like, you know, is squat the best exercise, overall best exercise this time? I said, I mean, it is until it isn't. Yeah. I mean, it's one of the better exercises where you're right. It is until it isn't, but if all you do is only squat and you never do a Bulgarian split squat, like now Bulgarian split squat is the best exercise for you. True. So if you were a traditional barbell bench presser all the time and you never go over and do weighted dips, oh my God, like huge, huge value. You know, it's funny too about the bench press. If you look at like, I love going back and looking at old-time strong, you know, they would call them strong men, but there were women that did as well, but mostly men, old-time strong men and the way that they worked out and what they considered to be feats of strength. The bench press didn't enter into those types of competitions to wait later. They didn't even have bench presses set up. They would have a bench. And if you wanted to do a bench press, you'd have to lay back and do it. And so nobody did a bench press. The number one exercise to demonstrate your overall strength was anything over your head. Anything over your head. And then it was like a hip lift, right? They didn't even do squats. They would do like a hip lift or a bent press. Dips and pull-ups were always in the fray because that was gymnastics. Those were old-school exercises. So these men and women developed these incredible physiques with almost exclusively without the bench press. And that includes developed shoulders and chest. What's up, everybody? Here's the giveaway for today. Maps, PowerLift. Here's how you win. Leave a comment below this video in the first 24 hours that we dropped this episode. Also subscribe to this channel. Turn on notifications, do all those things. If we like your comment, we'll notify you in the comment section that you won free access to Maps PowerLift. Also, we got a sale going on right now. Maps Symmetry and Maps Strong. Both 50% off, only happening this month. If you're interested, you want to learn more or you just want to sign up, click on the link at the top of the description below to get yourself set up. All right, here comes the show. You know what's funny? I was thinking about some of those old pictures. Have you ever seen the one where they're lifting a literal bench full of people over their head? That was their bench press. Bench press. But yeah, some of those features strike completely different goals that they had. It is, and if you think about it again, a bench press, I'm not saying it's a bad exercise. It's almost every program, from not every program that we have, it's a great compound lift, so it's not bad. Oh, I love the bench press. I think it gets a lot of praise at the expense of other exercises. And because of that, other exercises become underrated. And I think parallel bar dips are underrated. Now, they're not poorly rated. People will still consider them a great exercise. But people typically don't list them in the top, definitely not the top five, but maybe not even in the top 10 when people list exercise. They belong up there. I mean, pull-ups are usually up there. Why not dips? It develops the upper body very well. And then I'll point to gymnast. I've done this before, but I'll do it again. Now, of course, there's crazy genetics, so we're looking at the top gymnast you're looking at. People who are genetically predisposed to build muscle and have incredible strength, all that stuff. But if you look at the development of the upper bodies, they look like amateur bodybuilders. They don't do bench presses. They might do some push-ups, but they do a lot of dips, a lot of ring dips. And they have very developed chest and shoulders from that exercise. Do you think the bench press got more popular because people had limitations in their mobility and range most of their shoulder and the stability? So they started avoiding dips more and went more towards the bench press? No, I thought the evolution of the bench press came from sport. Wasn't it designed for linemen and football first? No, football players didn't use strength training until way later. Well, I mean, like fully train it, but I thought that inclined bench press I thought was initially designed to help linemen come out. No, it was before. So this was before football would be the first sport that used strength training. Yeah. Of all the sports are the first ones that embraced it. Pull that up, Doug. Let's see. I don't know. Let's see the origin of the barbell bench press. Yeah, bodybuilders were the ones that popularized it because when bodybuilders hit the stage, this really massive developed chest was like this big thing. And what a lot of these guys did is they bench press. Plus, you can load it. Yeah, but who introduced it? I mean, I feel like... It didn't become a staple in bodybuilders' routines until the 30s or 40s or 40s? No, I know, but you're saying what's made it popular. I mean, where did it even come from? Like, who decided we're going to... Here it is right here. George Hackensmith. There you go. That's a floor press. So, but what about the bench press? Okay, so Hackensmith... I don't know if you guys know who Hackensmith was, but he was one of the craziest strongmen of... I mean, he was at the turn... Look at the picture of him. Look at that picture of that guy. This is before... This is in the late 1800s or early 1900s. This is before supplements existed. Look at the build on that mousse right there. Yeah. I mean, and of course, he didn't lift weights full-time. He had a job. It says he was... He doesn't look strong. He doesn't look like a bodybuilder at all. It says he was the father of the bench press. Now, he did a floor press, but is it the bench bench press, like we know, where you have a bench with a rack on it? Yeah, I don't know about that. And it might have been one of those things that was invented but never really widely used until much later, because I know it was widely used much later, but it may have been invented way before that, right? Interesting. Yeah, so... Yeah, maybe Doug... Yeah, we'll have to come back to that. Yeah, who invented the... Maybe the bench press you'd want to put on there. That's what he did. Yeah, he did that, and that's what came up. It came up with him first. Well, Doug, I'm going to send you another... link, because I want you to pull this up. I know Justin's going to find this freaking amazing. Well, because I mean, I've also made the case a long time ago that overhead press in terms of like usable functional strength I think has way more translation than bench press. Oh, yeah. I mean, you got to support the weight at the top and... Yeah, that's one of the first things to go in terms of strength. I wish I did that more when I was younger. Totally. I wish I... You know, it was always a hard exercise. I remember like the first time doing it, I'd be like, oh, this sucks. Bro, who would you rather tangle with? A guy who could bench a lot or a guy who could overhead press a lot? Who's going to throw you around a little bit, right? Oh, yeah. Okay, now look at this guy. Doug, scroll to the last picture or the second to last in the last picture. So look at this guy right here. I love... They lift like cannonballs. Okay, I love looking up old feats of strength because they just blow my mind. So this guy is a French weightlifter, Ernest Cadine was his name. This is 1923 when he's doing this. So the guy's 5'6", small dude. You can see he looks built, but today he wouldn't even get too many likes on social media compared to all these physique that we have, right? Yeah. Do you know how much he's pressing at the end there with that one dumbbell? What is it? 211 pounds. No way. That one dumbbell at the very end, that's a 211 pound above his head with one hand lift at 5'6", in 1920. This is definitely not... There was definitely no steroids. Nobody was using it. There's a video I know of our friend, Robert Oberus pressing a big heavy dumbbell. Oh, the Thomas inch dumbbell. Maybe Doug, you can look that up. Who decided that they only have one strap? You know? I've always wondered that. I'm the strong man. It's like, you only got the one side. Like, you don't have the full one. What is that? You know where I think that came from? I'm going to speculate. I think I'm right, though. Like a loincloth or something? I've been wearing it a lot lately. Yes. It was... They used to... Whenever they would do caricatures of cavemen, they would have them with this like one strap, like animal print type of thing. So strong men wanted to present themselves as like these cavemen or whatever. Animal skin coming across or something. Yeah, that's probably what it came from. What's the Thomas inch dumbbell? This is like a feet of strength that not too many people can do. We've got to get one of those, man. Why? Why? It's just cuts. We have to roll it across the feet. It's like the sword and the stone. We have some like 300-pound sandbags out there that's never been moved. Yeah. I mean, that's a good point. Who's idea was that? That wasn't my idea. I think it was yours. I was on a kick for a while there. You know, it's so funny, too. Like, talk about, you know, how quick you... It's a very specific type of strength to be able to pick up a really heavy bag like that. I have a video on my Instagram. Rounded back strength stuff. Yeah, I have a video on my Instagram like that goes way back. Like, I don't know. This is like six years ago with that. And I was lifting it up on a... Oh, I remember. Yeah. And I was doing as many as I could in like... And I think... Or as fast as I could get 10 or something like that. I can't remember what it was. But there was like a thing going around in our gym where people were like racing to see the time on that and to get it up on that. You know, I was smoking 10 of those, you know, pretty well. And I have a hard time picking it up once, right? Just getting it up. Well, you know what it develops? Just through pure novelty. It develops the shit out of your biceps. Because you have... I mean, how often do you have... You got to be careful not to tear them if you don't train up to them really hard. Yeah, like, your biceps are lengthened. You have tremendous tension. Then your scapula and upper back is rounded and tensing. So all those muscles that almost never get that tension and that rounded position. And it takes... I mean, and you have to have some leg strength because you're pulling 200 pounds plus your body weight up off the floor in a deep, squatted position. Oh, yeah. Or deadlift position. I love taking that and then tossing it overhead so you do some kind of like... Oh, God. Clean jerk. Yeah, well, I'm not doing that with over 200 pounds. Speaking of old-time strength... Throw it over your shoulder. Maybe, Doug, you could look up Paul Anderson. You guys know who Paul Anderson is? He's one of the greatest American... Well, greatest Olympic weightlifters of all time. But he was an American. And he was a farm boy. So I want to say he competed in the 1940s. And the ways he would work out... What's great about Paul Anderson is he changed... He's one of the pioneers of how weightlifters worked out back then, weightlifting weightlifters. Just remember the Soviet Union was... They had the Iron Curtain, so we heard nothing from them. Look at the pictures of this guy over here, by the way. Oh, yeah. Look at the size of this. He's a beast. He had like wagon axles. He would go in his barn and he would squat. And he couldn't afford weights. So he'd fill up these 100-gallon drums full of concrete, or he'd get big like tractor wheels and stuff like that. And he would squat and drink milk that he'd do this all day. All day. He's got insanely strong. Doug, look up his record lifts. Now, he did one called a hip... I think it was called a hip hoist or hip lift, where he's kind of doing a bridge. So he's on his hands and on his feet, but he's like... Like he's doing a bridge on the ground. And then they put a strap around his waist and then load it. And I believe it was... If I'm not mistaken, 6,200 pounds. Oh, my God. He was able to do this bridge. More than Brett Contreras, for sure. Yeah. Maybe, Doug, you could find some of his top lifts, but I mean, incredible feats. What's the time or the era when it was this? 1940s, I want to say. This is the 40s? Yeah. Oh, 1965. Alright, there are squats. 1,200 pounds. Bench press, 628. There they are. Yeah. Clean and jerk, 440 pounds. A 1,200-pound squat, bro? Yeah, I don't know. I don't know how they measured that. But... Okay. According to Anderson himself. Okay. But... Dude, I got a huge fish. I got a huge fish. Yeah. Some of them were obviously in competition. So, his 440-pound clean and press. Have you ever seen the clean and press from back in those days? So, you know how technical they are now, right? Like they pop it up and they get under the bar and they snap and get it. So, the bar didn't even move. They're just getting their body underneath it and pressing. No, they're like muscling it up. Bro, his was a clean and a strict press. Yeah. 440. And dress shoes, by the way. He came out there and like the kind of shoes you wear to a wedding. You know? Yeah. It just pressed it up. Well, they liked it because it was flat. I know. Yeah. It's pretty crazy. Cool study on strength training. In fact, Dr. Rhonda Patrick posted about this. Strength training, I think we're in that phase right now where it's kind of getting the limelight, which is pretty cool. So, there was a study that examined men in their 70s and resistance training. Obviously, the study shows that it increased strength and size in the muscles, duh. But it also increased muscle re-re-innovation. In other words, the connection between nerves and muscle. So, why is this important? Because the loss of nerve supply to muscles is one of the main reasons why we lose muscle mass and function. So, this is a study showing that the connection to your muscles, right, another part of the central nervous system, how much it develops through strength training. And these are not college-aged males. These were men in their 70s who did this. Pretty awesome, right? Yeah. So, okay, now let's speculate a little bit. Do you believe that there are certain movements that would generate more of that than other movements? Oh, I would 100% think it would be the big gross motor movements. Yeah. I mean, I would think the same thing, too, because we're dealing with the CNS. But so, you would think that an exercise that may show up on an E-stem, say a hack squat, which would show the muscle more quad being activated, would be less than a potential eater squat. I think so. You know what we don't do is we look very closely at the target muscle, so the acute direct effects of an exercise. So, like, you know, leg press and squat on the quads. But what we don't look at are the systemic effects throughout the whole body. Anybody who's ever done barbell squats for a long time will tell you, in fact, there's an old saying in bodybuilding, add 100 pounds to your squat and you'll gain a half an inch on your biceps. It was like this saying, something along those lines, you get this kind of whole body effect from these exercise that demands so much on your body. So, although the direct effect on a specific muscle is probably the same, I think you get more of a systemic effect from some of these exercises. And when we're talking about the nerves and how they connect to our muscles, I would have to, I would strongly think that it would be these big compound lifts that require stability and balance. Yeah, the louder the signal you'd think especially those compound lifts that would affect, you know, that connectivity between nerves and muscles. I can't wait for us to put more and more of that research together so we see the whole come back full circle of everybody that makes it easier to put the E-stem around the one muscle and isolate that study. And so that's like a lot more manageable. But yeah, to get other studies like that to find out the systemic effect would be way more interesting. We'll have to start a new channel on YouTube called Mind Pump was Right. Again. Actually, you know what's funny? We're entering into the golden age of strength training studies. Studies are coming out left and right on strength training to the point now where mainstream medical associations are talking about its value and its benefit and how soon the conversation is going to be, not that all forms of exercise don't have value. Ideally you'd want to do lots of different forms of exercise for health and longevity. But I think what they're going to start to say pretty soon is that that'll be the primary form of exercise they recommend to people of age. I think that's going to happen. You should write a book about it. Absolutely. You should let people know. I did. Anyway, so... Anyway, I want to talk about how you're wrong. We don't ever get to talk about it. You've been wrong a lot lately. I want to point that out. What's a lot? Well, a lot lately. Two out of two. The last two things. The pump behind the scenes. Big titties now. No, we don't know yet. We don't want to talk about big titties. So we obviously talked about the teacher in Canada that put on the prosthetic boobs and we went around saying, how ridiculous is it? And I said, I think it's a massive troll. And he argued with me a little bit about that, whether it is or not. I said, no, I'm almost certain that it's so absurd. This guy has to be trolling. So far we hadn't heard anything about that. Well, that episode went live. And of course, our audience is amazing and there's always people that are searching to prove one of us right or wrong. And I got a bunch of DMs and people sending me this TikTok video of a guy who used to go to school there who knows obviously students that are still there who wrote like an email or something to him saying like, this is a massive troll. This guy is the furthest thing from woke culture. In fact, he's been anti-woke culture and the whole staff there doesn't like him because he's this guy who is the opposite of that. In fact, he's been caught saying sexist comments and stuff like that and making jokes in his classroom and stuff like that. And so this was his way of trolling the faculty because he knew... Like you're trying to fire me. That's right. He knew they could... And they still can't... And the rumor is that they can't fire and they can't do anything about it. And so they're trying to get him to get transferred into another Providence. So that's the end... And the more I thought... Providence. Providence. Providence. Thank you, Doug, for correcting me and not waiting until the show's over. The audience just said, Doug lets me say stupid shit all the time and he knows I was wrong. And then afterwards, he tells me, why the fuck you not correcting me when I... You're batting 100 for, say, stupid shit. Yes, there's the other one. And that one I've ashamed of. I'm like... Batting 100. Oh, batting 100. I did it again after he had corrected me and I was out here with Katrina and I said batting 100. Doug says, 1,000. I don't want to detract this, but I'll have to bring up my Star Wars information again at some point. I'm getting fucking roasted. Oh, we'll get there. Don't worry. I knew you were going to get hit with that. We're all failing today. I know. Sorry. Sorry. I won. I feel like I won. But I did not think about... And let me ask you guys, so the thing that kind of dawned on me after this person sent this to me and I was just like, of course, of course. I should have known that. But when I think about high school for me and I think... And I know I think they've done this. I know in colleges it is obviously... I think it's like 90% liberal, 10% conservative for professors. And when I think of high school, if I thought back to all my teachers, what they leaned left or right or whatever, if there were any right-leaning teachers, they were shop and woodshop and metal shop. Yeah, for sure. For sure that. And I'm like, of course. You know what I'm saying? This is a woodshop teacher. The likelihood that he's like a super woke left dude. I doubt it. So we looked at the... I watched what you sent. It's still speculation. So unfortunately we don't have evidence, right? By the way, what's funny to me is you make fun of Justin and I for being conspiracy theorist. But you are too just differently. You're talking about... He's like the cultural, social conspiracies. Everything anything has to do with celebrities or media is a conspiracy. Like Will Smith planned it with what's his name? Chris Rock. Okay, so I'll give you that. I'll give you that. I do... But here's the deal. We're worried about the government. Yeah, real conspiracy. So... I thought those fake ones. That's those fake ones. So this is speculation. Now it's... Here's what I think is funny about the whole thing. We live in a time now where we don't know. If that happened 15 years ago, it would be like, oh my God, it's a funny joke. Yeah, it would be like obvious. But now it's like, I don't know. Like you're making... Like it sounds logical that he totally could be doing that because, you know, given that circumstance and that situation, it's like you'd... Let's just say you're a teacher in that environment and you're frustrated with everything that, you know, you're allowed to say what you're not allowed to say, then you're just like, well, maybe I'll just lean all in what they think, you know... And then they can't fire me. Yeah, and then they can't fire me. So now here's why I think it might not be a troll job because I think that the school would do due diligence in the sense that if he went from nothing to that all of a sudden, then maybe they would be like, well, we know you're a troll. But they have their hands tied, though. But you still have your hands tied. If I wake up tomorrow and say, I can't tell them that's not as an enemy teacher there, and I say I identify as a woman, like you can't be like, oh, because it wasn't dated back to four years ago, this doesn't fly. Well, no, no. But here's what I... So I read this too. And again, none of this is confirmed, but I did read that they had a history that this person was going through transitioning periods. No, I haven't seen or read any of that. You said that, but I didn't see none of it. Okay, I'll find something. Because I did read about that. So in other words, this was part of it. So like first he came to school in a wig, and then it was like a process. It wasn't just one big life. Well, maybe that was his process, though. You know what I'm saying? I mean, look, here's the way... I mean, if it happened over two or three years, and then I believe you, but if it happened over the course of this year... Well, here's the way... Shows up in a wig first, and he's putting makeup on, then he does the process. I mean... I mean, that would be the ultimate troll, right? Here's the way I look at it. I don't think it matters. I think it's highlighting the absurdity of how far we go to try to appear to be inclusive for whatever, to the point where we let people get away with shit that you would never... Well, you guys remember the story of the guy that was down in LA that went in to get a Brazilian wax? Oh, yeah. Right? Did you hear about that? Yeah, so it's like... He identifies as a woman. Okay. Went down to get wax, and were like, we don't wax testicles. We don't wax... Yeah. We don't wax to soothe them. Now, they lost. I'm a woman, so you need to provide the service to me. But the estheticians were like, Yeah. I don't wax... Exactly. That's not on our chart, right? You don't remember that? Now, that was real. Yeah. And they sued the esthetician, the place, but they lost, thankfully. Yeah. They did lose that. Okay. But that was a real deal. That's funny. Could you imagine? But I mean, I just see that. Like, this is like being pressed, you know, like how far... Like, what are the lines? Like, at this point, what are the lines? You know what's gonna happen is people are just gonna be smart about how they present something. So, someone's gonna come in and be like, I'd like to get waxed. And then we'd be like, you know, I have no training in waxing female testicles. I'm sorry. Yeah. So, now what are you gonna do? Yeah. You know? Sorry, my training is only on female vagina. The thing that's stupid is that you're gonna have... That's probably how that's gonna get solved. I know. Is you're gonna have to jump through some stupid hoop. Like, this is the verbiage we have to use now to be inclusive, is make sure that you say, even though we don't do that service, but when they do come in, you need to say it this way. Yep. It's so dumb. I don't know. It's all in sign. All right. So, speaking of dumb, Justin... Good transition. You were our go-to. I don't like where this is going. You were our go-to Star Wars guru. Oh, man. And you fucked up. Dude, I had a brain fart. And then you kept saying and or and like, I was like, what's Princess Leia's home planet? Like, I just couldn't... Like, it didn't process. I'm so mad at myself. Did your fans get... No, it was Alderaan. Dude. And so here's the thing. Everybody was hammering me about and or. And I'm like, do we even bring up and or in that? I don't think so. I know that's where the Evox, where the Ewoks are. I know that. Duh. Everybody knows that. Yeah. Everybody knows that. Andor is where the Ewoks are? Yeah. Andor is the name of the character in the show that was on Rogue One. Endor. Endor is where, you know, the Ewoks were in Return of the Jedi. Yeah. So that's the planet. The best characters in all of Star Wars. Yeah. So, I mean, I blame Star Wars now for like, you know, making them too close in names. Oh, okay. Yeah. So what do people say to you? I can't believe you didn't know, like, that Endor is where, yeah. So like, I'm just getting all this like nonsense. But our Star Wars fans, I guess they are, right? They're like super, like the super fans are really crazy about details. Dude, I mean, there's literally like Wikipedia, like, like Wikipedia. So, it's a thing. Yeah. Look it up. I didn't know that. Yeah. So, I mean, you have like a legit website. Yeah. It's like all the definition. It's like, every single character, every single place, like that's the thing. Bro, if I ever walk up and I see you surfing through that, I'm going to punch you to death. Hold on a second. Just know that that's coming. Doug, click on images. See me at a convention, like, turn off a turn off. I will have to go through that, bro. Just to stay relevant. Hey, Doug, do me a favor. Click Wookie, turn off safe search and click on images. Let's just see what pops up. Because I have a feeling there's some weird Star Wars shit up there with Wookie's. Yeah. The fact that you know that, I'm sure there is. It's disturbing to me. Not that I know that. It's disturbing to me. There's some like, I'm nervous to do this. I didn't even know that was a thing. What do you turn off? What did you tell them to turn off? Safe search. What is safe search? So Google, if you click on images. You're such a dirty old man. No, I'm not, bro. Everybody knows this. This is what he knows. Everybody knows this. Nobody in here knew that. No, I didn't. Don't lie, Doug. I didn't know that either. I didn't know this. Your safe search is already off. What are you talking about? When you go and click on images, you'll have, first off, you're Google, and I don't use Google anymore to say track everything. Fuck you guys. But if you did, you can make it. That's not even the reason why you don't use Google. You can make it search. But you know, the data gets transferred over to Safari from duck.go. I realize that too. No, it doesn't. Yeah. What? Yes. Son of a bitch. I know, because I was trying to like clear history. I'm in my Google search right now. I want to know what you're talking about. So click on anything. Click on a word. Yeah. I'm on Wookie now, but I don't know how to turn off safe, turn on or turn off. Oh, I can't see your screen where it says image. Okay. Put something up. Now what? No, no, no. Here. Let me see your phone. You can't walk me through it. I can't remember, but you definitely can turn off. Like you can make the searches moderate, safe or off. In other words, it'll pull up anything that comes up. I did not even know that was a thing. Yeah. Did you know that? No, I didn't. You're the only creepy fuck that you got in here. Only one. Everybody knows that. I didn't know that. There's three of us. There's five people in this room. Everybody. Two of you knew. Andrew knew? Andrew knew. I didn't know. No. Look at bro. Bro. Everybody knows. Wow. Look at that, huh? Is that all the Wookie pictures? No, I wanted to see the, I wanted to see the web. I was like, what do you mean? Like what do you think we're going to find? Oh, nothing. Just when you do that, would you put it away? He's so like, fuck, this didn't go the, this didn't go the direction I wanted it to go. Yeah. Like, cause here's a, okay. So they have like a burlesque show. Yeah. They did. Do you see that? I heard about it. Yeah. So it's, it's got all this like scantily clad girls dressed up as storm troopers. And, you know, they do reenactments of like some of the movies. So I'm definitely like trying to plan it. Okay. So, so since we went here, cause it's how is there, is there like a crazy like, you know, Star Wars, sexual fetish thing? Yeah. Yeah. Sure. It seems something there isn't. Yeah. I don't know. I don't know the name of the character, but it's like the one that's in Jabba's house. I don't search. Bro, there's people, it's not about searching. It's the internet. People have sex with cars. Did you know that? There's people that, yes. I definitely know you're the one I'm going to come to. Yeah. I was on that show taboo. Yes. There was this guy. Oh, you know, I saw God sod posted about that. It made me laugh. I saw him. He posted. Dude, that show taboo was that on HBO, but it was like back in the day, like weird kinks that people had. So strange. Yeah. It's funny. It was fascinating to me though. You know what's strange to me? I've seen Doug using the Organified Glow lately. Well, hold on a second. Which is weird to me. Look at his face right now. I know. Have you guys noticed? Look how illuminating. Beaming. We had to change the lighting in the studio. I felt he was doing it. He was in the back doing it by himself. I felt like he's like a shame that he's got a pink bottle. I am a little bit ashamed. It's a little bit of a trap. Actually, you know what? My vanity exceeds my sense of shame. Hey, I have a theory at him. Dude. So I looked at old pictures. I mean, he does look the best. Well, I looked at old pictures. Yeah. Okay. And so when we started Mind Pump, you and I don't look seven years younger. We look 20 years younger. Doug's been using these interventions without us knowing. Doug looked older back then, looks younger now. I think he's sucking the youth out of us. I think he's pulling our youthful energy out. I believe that. That or he's really good about using all these little products and just tell everybody that he's doing it. I use everything. Come on. Hey, how did you hear about glow? You told me you got a bunch of reviews, right? Well, no, you guys brought it up on the show and you said that some people were using it and were getting great results from it. Well, I better do it too. You know, even though it's a little bit of shame. Hey, speaking of our sponsors, I did think of a downside to one of our sponsors, Magic Spoon. We had that guy call in. This can be a great commercial. I know. We had that. No. What do you mean? We had that guy call in and he's like, remember that caller and he's like, hey guys, whatever. Oh, I want you guys to know I saw Magic Spoon bought it for the first time and I ate the whole box already. That's not supposed to work. Yeah, it's delicious. But also, yeah, you got to kind of manage yourself. It is dangerous because I've actually, I've done the whole total calories on the box and it's not like great. I mean, you could, you'll do way more damage having a treat, eating, eating like a pine of ice cream. Have you been a whole box at once? Oh yeah. Dude, so okay. I've done it too. Yeah, yeah, I have to. A whole box? Let me ask you, Adam, do you have different, you have different size bowls specifically for that, right? Because I don't have like a big one. I'm like, I don't give a fuck bowl. You know, I have like the medium bowl and I have the like the one I'm like trying to like manage myself. I don't ever eat out of a sissy bowl, dude. This is a sissy bowl. I use table serving bowls for all food, bro. Dude, really? Yes. I'm double meat and double serving and almost anything. You try and fit a cup and a half of rice and 12 ounces of meat in a fucking sissy bowl. You can't fit that in there. That's awesome. That's at most one cup rice and six ounce serving. That's what Katrina eats out of. I don't eat out of that. I eat out of a man bowl. It's like this. Obesity bowl. Sometimes it's a little kid bowl. I do. I eat all. Myself like contained, you know. Yeah, I know. Bro, you know what you just made me think of? One of the first times I tried to track calories because I'm like, you know what? I know I'm trying to eat more to gain because I was always trying to gain. I'm like, let me start tracking calories. I don't know how I came up with this 5,500 calorie diet but breakfast was, it was a 10 egg scramble. Two slices of toast. And then I used to eat a punch bowl of Cheerios and it was almost an entire box. And I would do this for breakfast. I just remember that. How do you guys think I felt going to school after eating that, by the way? Oh, it was not good, bro. Captain noises over there. Would you say that was like the worst breakfast that you ever like? Just too much, dude. I was like, my mom would drive me to school and I was in the back. I think I was like a freshman and I'm in the back. I'm in the car and I'm like fighting. You know, trying not to throw up the whole time. We didn't last it to like third period. And then I was like, time for lunch. I had like seven sandwiches in my bag. Dude. How not to do a bulk. You know what I mean? Don't do it that way. We would do anything to get gains back. Hey, did you guys see some of these, have you guys seen some of these posts on people who post a lot on social media? There's been a couple studies have come out. Posts on people that post a lot on social media? No, no, no. There's studies about people who post a lot on social media and then there's study on people who follow lots of celebrities on social media. What do you guys think they found? So people who post a lot on social media, who like to post a lot of pictures of themselves working out, fitness, that kind of stuff. Yeah. I mean, there's all those things. Higher rate of mental disorder. Sure. So there's a higher rate. What do you guys think that is? I have some theories. Well, I mean one, you're constantly comparing yourself to everybody. If you're on there posting every single day, and you're also obsessed with, and I mean even, like this is like something that you almost like instinctually do. You can't help but post something and then go back and look like, oh, did it get more likes than usual or less likes than usual? So I could see how somebody could obsess over that. Yeah, you're too worried about how it's being received. Yes. You know, like if people like me, like, oh, like, the whole time you're just, your mind is completely somewhere else and you're never really like present anymore. Like you're scatterbrained. The part that I think is really interesting to me is, I 100% believe I'm the person who's like, I give a shit what people think about me. I think I would hope that you guys would agree that that's the type of person that I am as far as my, but even I find that I could get into that, right? I could go like, oh, it sucks you in. Yeah, it is. So if it has that kind of a pull on a person like me, I can't imagine somebody who is weak in that area. Well, so here is, where you're not confident, where you don't, where you do really give a shit about what he thinks about. I mean, it's just a trap. Agreed. I was thinking about this a lot when I read this particular study. So I thought, well, that's obvious. And I thought, wait a minute, is it the cause or the effect? In other words, are people with more mental issues more likely to post and want validation through social media, or does the posting and social media validation requiring cause more mental issues? That's what I think. I think it's both. Oh, I think there's a feedback. Oh, okay. Yeah, I don't disagree with that. I think it's both. I don't think it's either or I think people who have a tendency towards that post more, and then the more they post, the more it feeds into that insecurity, that wanting validation, that comparison, that I'm not good enough. And then that makes you post even more and you go down this kind of death spiral. You know, it's moving in the other direction though, somewhat, right? Okay, you always like the trend is like, what are the young popular kids doing? And it's becoming less popular. And maybe Andrew, because Andrew's younger and also has younger kids. You can correct me if I'm wrong here. But it seems that now like, like really popular younger kids, it's not cool to like post every day. Like you don't put on your wall. You don't do that. You can do stories and do shit like that, but you're not. How do you know this, by the way? I don't know. I just pay attention. I fall out more people than you. I fall out of high school kids. Pay attention to young kids. I was gonna say, how do you know this? One of all the high school kids. Adam rolls up on a high school. Hey, come here real quick. Hey, what's cool right now? Can you tell me what's cool? You know, I don't know. I just know. Actually, I'm asking. I'm asking Andrew. Am I right or am I right? Am I right? I'm definitely out of the scene. Oh, wow. 26, but judging based off. Well, actually, let's start with this. Were you cool in high school? Yeah. Okay. So you're, you're, you're credible. You're a credible source here. So I can't ask Sal these questions. Because now what? Almost 10 years ago. Yeah. Oh, shit. Yeah, I'm 26 now. Bro, he's 10 years out. Yeah. But he's still got a better post than any of us in here. Yeah. I mean, so, you know, we can just look it up by the way. We have, we have the ability to look up anything we want. We just do that. Yeah, but how would you do that? Our kids, okay. Our kids posting are, are, is the younger generation posting more or less on social media? See the reason I don't think that's a fair, because those aren't the, the cool kids representative are a smaller percentage and they start the trends and then that's when everybody falls. Yeah, you're definitely the authority on cool kids. So. Well, if you, if you, if you, if you Google something like that, you're going to get the, the masses. All we can do is speculate, right? Like, in terms of like the platforms. We got kids out there. Can someone call a kid in here? We'll be Kyle or Dylan or something. We do hire kids because they're cheaper. You made it sound like we got a bunch of children out there. Hey, if we want this company to last longer than 10 to 15 years, we better have some young people. Bro, our youngest employees in their mid, in the mid 20, no, I guess my son would be the youngest, but he's not very young. What are you talking about? Kyle and Dylan are younger than that. They're younger than my son. No, not younger than your son. What are they in their early 20s? Yeah, they're super young. What are they? What's the ages? 21. Yeah. 21 is yours. That's something that's fresh out of high school, dude. They know. Are you trying to find something done? Well, I don't know if this is exactly the answer you're looking for, but users between 18 and 25 years old are the only age group to see a decrease in social media use since 2019. Wow. We found something that you're an authority. What? You're like three in a row wrong and I'm right on this. I didn't say you were wrong. Give me the tally up here, Andrew. Give me the tallies. Hold on. This guy's been touting. This guy's been touting. He's right all the time for fucking years. We don't know the boob thing is true yet or not. It's going to be true. Okay. I mean, even maybe even you feel confident. I'm probably right on that. I feel like it could be, but I'm not going to go 100%. Now, if it was orchestrated by the government, I would say it's definitely true. For sure. Yeah, it could be an Illuminati thing. I'm listening. It's using his boob. Yes. My point of bringing that up. I know we kind of went off on a tangent and teasing each other about all this stuff, but I really do think that the pendulum has swung really far that way. I think younger kids coming up are actually aware of some of these stats. Yeah. You know, I think, I think they're becoming aware of this stuff and it's, and it is just becoming less cool. More and more people are realizing like, oh, there's so much fake social shit out there. Or everybody's, It's just not as normal. What's the terms basic and what's the term? Andrew, come on. Help me out here. No, no, no. When someone's like trying hard. Oh. What is that? Oh. Extra. Extra. Look at Doug. Hey, you know, I know things. Yeah. So, and that was, to me, that was the beginning of that was, like the younger generation calling out people that are just extra. Like, oh my God, so extra. You're trying to look cool. Now, you know what the younger generation uses a lot of? Just off of my experience with my, I would say my daughter. Comparison is this conversation right now. We're going to be talking about my drip and all that. Like I'm out. Wow. I'm out. That's out. Nobody says that. No. Yeah. They say that. Still. That's the kids are saying that. Really? Yes. Okay. Well. My, my, so my, you know, my daughter and her friends do a lot of, they don't do a ton of social media. They do a lot of YouTube. So I think YouTube is now become their primary source. They do a lot of it or they watch it. They watch it a lot. Yeah. Yeah. No, I agree. So I think it's just a little bit of a conversation about stuff with that. We did that. Mm-hmm. I mean, I don't know. We're selling a bunch of boomers when we fucking say shit. When we make fun of it, but did we do, yes we did. Hold on. Lingo and slang has been around. Yeah, but did, no, no, no. I didn't use this increase that we're not familiar with. What's good slang, Google, from groovy? Yeah. No, give me something from your era that was like something you used for a long time that we don't use. A word that was popular is sweet. Everything is sweet. That even made it into, we're not that far off. You've got your sweet out. into Lee. We're not that far off. Yeah. I remember. And another one. Oh, cherry. Cherry was another one. Oh, that's cherry. You don't remember sweet cherry. Sweet. Yeah. I remember saying sweet. Yeah. I remember saying sweet like in sixth, seventh grade. So that was probably high school for you or whatever with that. Right. Interesting without that far. Interesting. Well, I don't know. You may be right. More. Jesus Christ. Doug, you're that old? Yeah. Wow. What are you? You could have babysat me. You guys don't remember? He went to high school in Mesopotamia. Yeah. It cost two shekels. Yeah, I had to take those big, you know, stone tablets everywhere. It's horrible. I mean, it's, it's, uh, you had a sleek shot. I mean, what, what is that? What is that phenomenon that causes that? Right. Would you, my, my theory around that is that when you're young, you don't want to be saying the same things that your dad and mom are. And so you come up, you reinvent new slang that you're only hip to when your friends are hip to. So they're intent, they intentionally try and keep you. The most hilarious one for that was like when you saw, when people start to use jiggy with it. Oh, remember that? That was the most cringe thing I've ever seen in my life. Well, that was all because of the Will Smith song that came out. Yeah. Right. That was that. Well, I mean, you just wait to your kid. That's how culture works though. Right. So you have someone who was extremely famous at that time who says something or does something first. And then, and because they have millions of people paying attention to them. That's how that, well, you just wait. First off, the nineties is in style now, which means we're officially old, right? When that shit comes back around, right? But you just wait to your, you just wait to your kids in junior high. You know, I'll drop my daughter off and she'll be like, we'll be listening to music together. Before she gets out of the car, she turns off the music. She don't want to make a noise or make it a style, dude. Like, so I just took my kids to go get cuts from Vicki. And, you know, Ethan's kind of going off and thinking on his own terms, like, I want this haircut. And he's like showing me and Courtney all the haircuts he wants. And it's like Backstreet Boy haircuts. It's like, you know, part in the middle and it's like all these, you know, like every sitcom you saw, like back in the day, the nineties, like they all have this like specific kind of hair. I said, you guys, a picture of my daughter's shoes yesterday. Jordan's old, the old school Jordan's. Well, yeah, that's that's I mean, those those are never been out of style. Yeah, those have gotten more popular. In fact, old, I bet you that you could look this up. I bet you more Jordan ones are sold today than they were originally. Yeah, then they were originally for the first 10 years. I would agree. That's how popular the Jordan ones are today in comparison to what they were. Even 90s music is big right now. My kids are listening to everything from the 90s. Whenever we're because at night, we, you know, we dinner together. Finally in my 90s were cool, bro. Yeah, I'm all for that. We do dishes and they put on nirvana. They put on Metallica. My kids are putting Metallica on like, what the hell is going on here? I'm so proud. Oh, Metallica smashing pumpkins. Like, we're all listening to 90s music for bringing up Metallica. What happened? Adam already knows this. Don't chime in. I won't. OK, so you know the load album? Yeah. Right. Do you remember the cover of it, Doug? Can you pull it up? I don't know. You know, the Metallica cover. So it's got like flames, right? So it has like these flames and it's it's let us see it. OK, it's somewhat like, you know, I I I I don't know. I mean, artistically put on there, if you will. OK, so there's a story behind this, I guess. So and. Oh, there you go. Yeah, so yeah, this looks like this looks like flames, you know, and it's got a cool kind of vibe, too. But so the artist that did this, right? I guess, you know, like what that consists of. So that's actually like the artist's giz. What? And his blood. Yeah, well mixed. You know, why would he mix that? Right? It's so James was like he found this out later. Like Lars, like love, he's like, oh, like it was all about it. And like they're doing the Reload album and James was like, no, he's not doing that for this album. It was like Adamette that they used a different artist or style. But I didn't know that. Like that's I always looked at that like, oh, these are interesting. Oh, flames for that. I was like, that's terrible. Yeah, I was actually having a conversation with my kids about metal because we were listening to music and I was showing them the different levels of metal. So we'd start with like Metallica, but not all Metallica. We started with like, you know, like I'm a man. I'm forgiven. And then I got to, you know, masters of puppets, you know, puppets. And then we got to and then we went to sepultura and, you know, so there were levels where my kids are like, I like this about this. And then my kids are like laughing. They're like, I don't understand this, dad. Like go this way to get it. You'll understand when I'm with them. No, I like, I love Metallica. I'm you guys are more Pantera, although I do have Pantera in there and I will occasionally listen to it. You know, what's an album that I just saw again because I was having this conversation with my kids. You know, and I always forget that this group is one of the best groups to work out to. Godsmack. Godsmack. I've been on Godsmack for a minute. Oh yeah, I've been listening to them again. Love them. It's funny. They're pretty good. Yeah. I mean, I just found this band. Their name is Botch and it's they have one song and it literally blew my hair off. Dude, it's like so heavy. Dude, speaking of hair. Too heavy. Yeah. Oh, dude. You can listen to the thing that blows my like. And we all like that. We all like this music. And I definitely, you know, get it into a heavy deadlift. You I all throw Pantera and stuff like that. I fucking love rage. I mean, I love that music. But I have to be in the right mood for that music. Yeah, Justin can be driving to work for it. Eyes barely open at fucking Pantera. I just can't do this morning. I can't do that. Dude, when we go into the airport, sometimes at six o'clock in the morning, all of us, and he's driving and we got to listen to some. I'm like, bro, I'm just not ready for this. You got to at least ease me rock wise, like at least give me unforgiven inner Sandman and then take me there. But like, I can't just come out the gates with that. No, he meditates like that. Exactly. It is. It calms me down. Speaking of hair, by the way, I got to tell you guys something very interesting. So as Adam has pointed out many times off air, yes, my hair is starting to thin. What happens as you get older? Bro, I've been hella nice not to get you, bro. I've been so nice. You're waiting until it's obvious. I know, and I've been waiting for you to like to sting me really bad one time. Because that's like a... Well, look, I'm 43. This has been a slow, long process over the last seven years I noticed, but you know, I do my things. It's karma, dude. I use my herbs. Karma's jumping out. Bro, I told you, I knew this was going to happen. But anyway, so you know what I did? I bought, because I'm like, let me try Minoxidil. So this has been over the counter. It was originally... I don't know if you guys know what Minoxidil was originally researched for when they found out the side effect was hair growth to lower blood pressure. So it was a blood pressure medication. One of the side effects was hair regrowth. So of course they marketed as hair for that, right? Because you got way more market viability. Anyway, I used it like two or three times. I'm like, let's just see what happens. You got to use it for like months to notice anything. And I started feeling like shit. I was getting dizzy and I felt weird and I didn't connect the two. And I was telling my wife, I'm like, man, I feel horrible. I don't know what's wrong with me. I feel like something's wrong. And you guys know me, when I start to feel sick, I think like I'm going to die. So I'm like, honey, make sure you have everything in order or whatever. But then I'm like, I wonder if it's that. And I looked it up. Sure enough, one of the side effects, potential side effects of that is you could absorb too much through the scalp and it can cause like dizziness and lightheadedness and all that stuff. So I had to toss it out. You just brought something up that I mean really. I wanted to ask you guys. Maybe Doug could look it up if you guys don't know. The origin of vegetable oil. Do you know it? I don't know if this is true. Do you know what it is at all? Do you have any guesses? The origin? Yeah, like what was it made for originally? Machinery? Yeah, lubricant for like engines. If that's true, I don't know if that's true. That is true. Fact check me, Doug. That is true. And then they figured out how to make it not taste so shitty through processing and then they could use it in food for food. Isn't that kind of crazy? I know. I guess some petroleum based like sweetener that they were able to kind of reduce down all the way and break down to where they could, it was like an artificial sweetener. I don't know. I mean, I know petroleum is based for so much shit. Dude, they just, I mean, at that point it's just chemistry. But isn't that kind of weird though? We made something like to lubricate like engines and cars. Yeah. And now we're putting on salad dressing. Well, if I'm not mistaken, I think aspartame was originally designed to be like rap poison or something like that. No way. I think so. No way. I think so. I might be making shit up right now. Maybe. But yeah, vegetable oil. Did you fact check me yet, Doug? I'm trying to find this and I'm not about it being used for industrial uses. What are you getting at? Original, Doug, just look up. Vegetable oil was originally used to lubricate engines. That's all. Turn safe search off. I'm just kidding. I don't remember where I read it, but you just reminded me when you started talking about that. They figured out how to make it so that it wasn't so it had a neutral flavor and they were able to sell it because you know why. Isn't that a biodiesel fuel? Like they'll use vegetable oil. Yeah, but that's different. The lubricator. Yeah, but what they did was is because like when you take grapes and you make wine, the grape seeds you throw them away. So a lot of this stuff was tossed and they used it for industrial purposes and they figured out, oh, we could sell this as a food product. Yeah. And that's kind of how- Repurposing waste. I mean, it's been the game forever. I mean, that's how croutons made it in your salad, right? Oh, it was like the crust. Yeah, it's the crust, the leftover. So it just was like, would age and get old and then somebody, you know- Bro, do you want to know something gross? I had a buddy that worked at a pizza place that we used to eat at when I was a kid. I don't know if I want to hear this. You do. I do not. They take the bread, right? And then turn it into croutons? He's like, bro, don't eat here anymore. I'm like, why? He goes, the leftover bread that people don't eat, they take it and they turn it into croutons. Now I know it gets cooked and all that stuff, so I'm sure it's- You could do that? I don't think you can do that. I think they did though. Yeah, I guess they can't be legal, right? No, no, no. Saves a lot of money though. Margins on those croutons. You sell the same shit twice, like MLM, scheme and pizza. Hey, man. Nothing goes the way. Yeah, bro, that's crazy. That's a real thing. Yeah, that's what he- At this restaurant. I don't know if other restaurants- It was like a bomb pause. Yeah. But we used to go there all the time. You know what? I bet it was hella good too. It was so good. I bet the croutons were hella good. Everything was good. They had good video games there too. I mean, when you think about it, your point, they cook it at such a high temperature, I bet you, any sort of burn- Yeah, any potential bacteria- Yes, it's theoretically, of course. Right. But you don't wanna go- And when you think about, yeah, anything you think about, it's probably your less waste, you know? So I mean, I think it's not a bad idea. And if we were in a country or a world, a time when food was scarce, you would actually- Oh, then you wouldn't give a shit. Yeah, that was a community of people, and that was their food. Like, you'd want hundreds- Dude, restaurants are so weird. Like, I look back and I'm like, always, like, meft at what I saw, you know, all the time. And like, you'd see people that like, I have a thing about other people's foods. Like, ugh, I don't, you know, touch other people's food, but like, some service had no shame to their game. Like, they'd be going back, you know, in the back to clean up, and they'd just be eating. Everybody else is already eating food. What? Yeah. Yeah, no, I've heard that. I've heard that all the time. And I was just like, ugh. Wow, what'd you see there, Doug? The thing I'm seeing is that vegetable oil should not be used as a lubricant. It leaves a residue. But what it has been used for is like biofuel. And this is fairly recent though. So I can't prove what you've said, Adam. When you're behind somebody, it smells like french fries. Damn it. That's what I get for not saving the air. Oh, Adam, you're- Never, never saving the air. You were batting a hundred there for a second. Well, you know, it wasn't even in my notes to bring up, but Sal brought that up, and I'm like, oh, that's such a great transition. You see that? Yeah, it's my fault. It's my fault. Captain deferred. Sal's fault that I didn't have that. Hey, you know what I wanted to tell you guys? It's really funny. You are, because you were getting to this, I mean, I felt like once your son gets to like that, one and a half to, from then on, I feel like every week it's funny. Yes. I feel like every week there's something that he does or not. We are now at the phase where he's obviously talking when saying a lot more. He'll repeat anything you say or whatever. But the newest thing is just like, he will like say a sentence that I've never heard him say before, like all at once, you know what I'm saying? Like for the very first time, it just comes out of nowhere. I'm like, I didn't even know you knew that. So it's so funny to watch him to do that right now. And he's on this thing where you cannot say anything to him without him, like you can't describe him. If you describe him like good boy, tall, anything, you can't describe him without him being like, no, I'm Max. I know I'm Max. I'm like, OK, yes, you're Max. I get it. I'm just telling you, you're doing a good boy. You're doing a good job. No, I'm Max. That's so cute. Yeah, I know. I really says this thing now where he wants, he's so into cars that he has to watch me drive off. So he sits, if I leave, he goes to the front door and he sits down real patiently. And he just watches me drive off and I honk the horn. He goes, beep, beep, and I honk and I drive off. So cute. It's the cutest thing ever. Now, do you guys have certain things with your spouses that they can just do with your child that you can't or vice versa, something that you can just do with them, but they can't do? Oh, that's a good question. He prefers me to feed him. Oh, interesting. Yeah. Oh, that's interesting to me. He likes it when I feed him. So there's that. But I can't think of too much. Does Max have his own? No, oh, there's certain things. And the only reason why this is top of mind for me is because it just happened like two nights ago where I came out and she looked at me and she got like this dirty wound. She's like, it makes me so mad. You can do that. And I was like, she's like, I can't do that. I cannot. He wants to cuddle with her and stuff like when she's, when we're tucking him in and I can literally walk in there and say, OK, it's time for bed. Good night. I'll sit there for like two to three minutes and walk out. And he's still awake. He'll pop up. You can see him on the camera. He pops up. He sees me go in. He closes doors with that. And then he lays his head back down. If she does that, he'll cry for her. He'll get up and he'll follow her out. And she has to be touching him the whole time. So there's many times where she'll be in there for 45 minutes an hour after we've read. And it's bedtime. And maybe he's a little restless. And so she can't get out. But if I go in there and do that, I can be in there for a couple of minutes. And he could still be wide awake when I leave. But it's like I kiss him and say, hey, that's it. It's time for bed. Dad's going to bed. And then walk out. You know what's so great about that? What you just said? Think about what he's getting. Because there's value in both, right? Absolutely. Think about how great it is that he gets both. He gets the value from you, which is, OK, well, I got to do this. I got to learn how to self-soothe. And then he gets the value of I want empathy. I want hugs. And when I feel like it. Well, and there's great in both, right? So obviously, it's nice for me. I get an easier time doing that. But then you know what I lose out on is when he wants to come and cuddle, he wants mom. So there's been times where we had a busy couple of days, right? And I didn't get home till really late. So I had very little time before his bed with him. And then he actually came and crawled in bed at 5 o'clock in the morning. And I sit up and I'm like, oh, come to dad. No, just A-limes over you. Yeah, for like a minute he'll put his head in and he'll. See you later. Yeah, bolt on me. You know what I'm like? Because she's the nurturer. She's fostered that. Which is also what makes it difficult for her to get out, you know, and to let go of him and not touch him. That's so great. Like I feel this is why I feel for single parents because they have to balance all of that. You have to try to be both. You have to balance all of that. Like when do I push? When do I pull? Like, man, it's hard. When there's two parents or multiple people helping to raise a kid, you can, you know, one person could be a little harder, one person could be a little softer, and the kid gets the balance of both. So we had Stan Efredin on just recently and we were talking about like training kids and all that. And so I was like inspired. I had already been kind of working with my kids in terms of like, I see this shift in their interest in weight training and like seeing what I'm doing in there. And then also like, because they're, you know, they've been going through gymnastics and really working on body weight and all that stuff for quite a bit now. And Efred's been really curious about what I'm doing downstairs. And so he comes down and kind of watches me sometimes. So I had the opportunity the first time ever to teach him something. Oh, cool. And so I got to teach him how to deadlift and we did that with kettlebells. And so I had like a 50 pounder. And so we started with that. And then he did it like so easy. And so I just grabbed my 80 pound. I'm like, well, let's just see if you can do this. And he's only, I don't even know how much he weighs. Probably like 70 something pounds, right? And so he just rips it up like nothing. And he's so proud of himself, you know? And he's like, I was like queuing him the whole way and I videoed it and everything. He caught his very first deadlift. Yeah, it was pretty great. I love that. And the best part about that is that, you know, the way you got to introduce that, that he came down to Sarah's to see what you're doing, not like the dad who, that has to be such, and I'm not there yet, right? So we'll see. Like one of the challenging things I imagine is when there's something I want my son to do, but then I also know better than, I mean, obviously I've experienced that a little bit with the sports and like trying to get him to do that. I know better than to like force it down his throat because then he'll reject it, right? So I have to be like, try, hey man, I'm playing ball over here. Yeah, exactly. He's like, cool dad, not interesting. Meanwhile, Raylis is like throwing everything. I know, I get videos of Sal's kid like this. Yeah. I'm like, oh my God, I did not get to come hang out. We got him. You know, that's why you got an uncle. Well, what I do notice about my son that is like me, I was a very late bloomer. And so I, he thinks, I mean, he spoke late. He's talking later. He literally, I have a video of him riding around. Like we've had one of those Strider bikes forever. And my best friend's son, who's a year ahead of him, shit, two years, when his son was like one, as soon as his kid could walk, he already thought it was cool to be walking around on the bike. And then like by the time he was two, he was going down hills and then putting his feet up on it. Like, I mean, Max has been like, nah, like, and he's just now get, he'll grab his bike and he'll go run around the house and stuff like that. You know, he's over three years old now. So he's just been kind of, so there's still like hope, right? That's how Katrina always runs. Just, you know, wait, he'll, he'll eventually want to, or he'll find interest in it, but yeah. No matter what he's going to do though, you're going to find it's going to always make, you know. Well, yeah, no, I mean, I, the things that he, I mean, he loves puzzling. He's into the music. And so, I mean, I have. He's got all the creative sides. Yeah, for sure. Right. Hey, check this out. Look, you're into health and fitness. That's why you listen to this podcast, but maybe you enjoy the occasional glass of wine or beer you're connecting with friends. You know, there's perfectly healthy ways to consume alcohol, but sometimes they don't make us feel too good. Well, check this out. There's a company called Zebiotics that makes a probiotic drink. It's genetically modified and patented by the way. So you cannot find this anywhere else. And what this probiotic drink does is it helps break down acetaldehyde in your gut. What's that? Well, that's some of the negative byproducts that are produced when you drink alcohol. And if it gets into your bloodstream through your gut, if it buy, if it goes through your gut, your liver doesn't break it down, goes through your gut, gets in your bloodstream, causes all kinds of issues that can wreak all kinds of havoc. But if you take Zebiotics and then drink alcohol, you break down the acetaldehyde and you don't get that stuff in your system quite as much. Check this company out. This stuff really works. Go to Zebiotics.com. That's Z-B-I-O-T-I-C-S.com forward slash mind pump. And then use the code Mind Pump 2-2 for 10% off your first order. All right, here comes the show. First question is from Saksham Nigam. How to get the Christmas tree back, especially the lower back, lower lats? That was a question for Justin. Yeah, put some lights on you. He's like, what the hell is that? What the hell is that? So for people who don't know what they're referring to, and this was a... This was cool the first time you ever built a back. You have to see this. This is bodybuilding, right? So bodybuilders made this popular because it really developed muscles and they also got really lean. And what happens is when you bring the arms back and contract your lats, you'll see the insertions of the lats and the erector spinae in the lower back. So hopefully we have a picture up of what this can look like. And they call it the Christmas tree. But really what it is is you're looking at a well-developed lower back, lower lats, and low body fat percentage. So if you want this look to your lower back, you gotta have muscle and you gotta get shredded. You have to get really lean. I would say the most important in this specific one is getting lean. I mean, that's gonna be the hardest part. You have lats and if you just get shredded, you're gonna see and the more pronounced the lats are, the more pronounced the lats are and the more shredded you are, the more pronounced the Christmas tree. How lean, you definitely have to get single-digit body fat for this for most people. I don't get, well, I get pretty lean here pretty easily, I would say. So for me it's like seven percent. So when I was competing, my low back factors, I don't know if anybody's competed, maybe they have friends that in the competitive world, like that's your buddies that are all competing and into that, like the way you check someone real quick is they're low back. They're low back right there, because that's like- Justin loves this one. You go up to your buddy and you check his low back. What do you think about that, Justin? I'm gonna put my ornaments on you. What the hell kind of friends here? What's happening? The point of me bringing that up is that, that's like one of the last places for body fat on men to typically go. And so yeah, and so it's like this badge of honor to have seen the Christmas tree on your back. It means you've got to a serious, low single body fat percentage in order to even. And you have to have it develop back. So the combination of having it develop back and getting shredded. So if you're a guy and you want this, you're probably gonna have to get at least the five percent body fat range, not the kind of leanness that I would even consider for most people healthy. Now that doesn't mean you can't do it in a more healthy way. And it doesn't mean you can't get there and then get out of there. I definitely think staying there would be not a good idea for most people. You start to notice hormone issues and all that stuff. I also think there's a bit of a genetic component here too. Like so I had like a pretty crazy Christmas tree when I was competing because, and a lot of that was because I had such a tiny waist. And I had really wide shoulders. So the more exaggerate that is, the more pronounced this is gonna be. So if you have like a, if you have boxy hips and you carry extra body fat on you, it's gonna be a little bit harder to get to this place. It probably has more to do too with your lat insertions, you know, low. You have to be more specific, yes. Yeah, so low lat insertions. So long muscle bellies. It's typically what you'll see with bodybuilders. It gives them this bigger look, for example. And you can have lats that attach high or attach lower. It doesn't affect performance. You're still gonna perform, you know, you can still perform great either way. But bodybuilders typically have long muscle bellies. So low attachments of the lats. And so when they're developed and you're lean and then you do your, you know, where they squeeze their shoulders back pose, you'll see this kind of shredded low back area. And again, you combine that with the erector spinae. But if you want this, you're gonna have to get shredded. What does that mean? You're gonna have to track. You're not gonna get down to 5% body fat without really counting things. It's just not, you mean you can get down to 10%, 11% without counting, just doing a good job with healthy eating and good training. When you get down to 5%, like you're gonna have to start counting calories. It's less about the, I know that this person is looking for them an exercise like, you know, do low back, who do good mornings or low back extensions. Like it's not that those things won't help, you know, develop the erector spinae and stuff like that. And same thing, same pull ups and dead lifts. All those things build your, but what is gonna give you that? Like if this person that's asking this question, if you've been working out for a few years consistently and train your back consistently and you get shredded, you'll have this. You'll have it, yeah. Look up Flex Wheeler Christmas Tree, low back. Let's use that picture. Cause that's a really, really famous, Him or Dorian Yates, they have the really famous Christmas tree look on the low back. How are they working on their Easter eggs? That's what I wanna know. Next question is from Eric Rabbe. What is your favorite way to strengthen knee stability? I can squat conventionally in the 400s with great form and depth. I recently tried Bulgarian split squats and was shocked by how unstable my knees were and how low I had to bring the weight to maintain proper form. So this is not what you think. Great equalizer. It's most likely to deal with the ankle or the hips where the instability is at. This is not what you think. So the reason why you feel it is unstable in the knees. So first off, look at the knee anatomy. And really the knee doesn't rotate. The knee doesn't bend laterally. Yeah, it flexes and extends, right? So, you know, and yeah, we can get deeper into the anatomy of the knee, but it just bends and it, so it flexes and extends. That's it. You can't twist it. You can't bend it laterally. But what can twist and what can bend laterally? Well, the hips and the ankles. So when those are unable to stabilize in those directions, if your hips are having trouble or your ankles having trouble stabilizing twisting forces or lateral forces, then what you'll feel are the lateral ligaments or the meniscus of the knee, because now these ligaments are trying to prevent your knee from twisting in half or bending laterally. And so it's gonna feel like knee instability. But it's not knee instability. It's hip and ankle for the most part. Now you can have knee instability if you have imbalances in your quadriceps and your hamstrings and maybe your patella, which is your kneecap, is tracking improperly and that stuff. But that's probably not what's happening based off this question. Squatting four hundred pounds of great form and depth, then I go to Bulgarian split stance squat. What's happening here? One leg is in front of the other and I'm probably getting lots of lateral tension, right? My knee wants to go out one way or the other or maybe rotating. Maybe even my hips are a little unbalanced and so I'm feeling this twisting force on my knee and my knee doesn't do that. So what's feeling the pressure? My meniscus, my lateral ligaments, those are the things that I'm feeling and it's gonna feel unstable. It's not gonna feel right. Well, yeah, the simpler way to say this is that when you do Bulgarian split squat, the ankle and hip are challenged with stability. When you do it bilaterally, both feet on the ground, you have that, you have way more stability with both feet on the ground. Especially if that's what you train. Right, so you're not challenged very much there. The minute you go into a split stance like that, now both are being challenged. Both ankle stability and hip stability are being challenged and this could be as simple as good priming movements before. So if you actually prime those two areas really well, like the stuff that we have in Prime Pro and then do maybe a little bit of strength exercises for it, which you're gonna get that by doing some priming movements. Lateral sled drags, sled drag's my favorite now. This is what people don't realize, the body has these governings, like these checks and balances to be able to allow for more force production, more strength and it won't allow for that if there's instability there that's glaring and it's obvious it's gonna reduce that substantially to keep you safe and manage you appropriately that way because so if you're in a stable environment, you're gonna be able to do a lot more weight and be able to overcome that because your body will produce enough force to overcome that but in that situation, you're not gonna be able to do as much weight because it's already all those factors are moving against you. I love the questions like this because this is the part of training that I really enjoy is. Yeah, cause for them intuitively it's their knee. Well, I feel it in my knee. They have no idea it's hip and ankles. Yeah, and here's the thing that happens, right? So this where injury occurs is when people ignore this. The instability is there but then they know they're really strong, they can squat 400 pounds. So doing 20 pound Bulgarian, that seems so sissy so I'm gonna load it and they still load it instead cause they know they have the strength in the quads and the glutes and the hams to drive more up than their body weight. And so they assume that they can just keep stacking on but what they haven't addressed is the stability in the hips and the ankles and now something's gotta give. And your body's already trying to tell you cause it's all unstable and wobbly. It's trying to give you the signal like you don't have good hip and ankle stability. Now get more stable and strong from doing those come back to your bi-loaded squat. Wow, like what a difference in how much more weight you can lift. It's literally like if you've ever driven a car and tried to go as fast as the car will allow you and then you hit the rev limiter. A lot of cars have a rev limiter. They can go faster than the manufacturer will allow you to. So you'll drive and you're like, oh my God, I'm going fast. And then all of a sudden the engine kind of shuts down. Your body's got rev limiters too. And one of the rev limiters is, and this is one of the main ones is we're not gonna let you lift more weight than we think is safe. And if you don't have stability that's what your body's gonna do. So you're not gonna be able to lift as much on a Bulgarian because your body's rev limiters are kicking in way early. Now you go past it like Adam said, injury. Now I hurt myself. And by the way, when I hurt myself, it's my knee. And so it's gonna continue to reinforce. I have a bad knee. Correct. It's gonna reinforce the idea that it's my knee. No, it's probably not your knee. It's probably the joints around the knee that can rotate, that can bend laterally that don't have the strength to support you in those directions. So those ligaments were doing it and those ligaments gave out and now you got hurt. Next question is from Luca Curran. Can you do too much low intensity cardio? I'm currently in a muscle building phase averaging around 17,000 steps a day and my strength is going up, but my weight is the same. Should I decrease my steps or not worry about it? If you wanna gain, decreasing your steps, you'll probably gain. I mean, 17,000 is a lot. You could bring it down to 10,000 and still get plenty of steps. I'm 17 years old, six foot and 115 pounds, is that right? Yeah. That's what it says, yeah. I would definitely decrease the steps but I would also bump my calories way through the roof. If lean, lean. Yeah, I would bump the calories. I would reduce the steps. But the main question is, can you do too much low intensity cardio? Yeah, you could do too much of anything. Well, why I'm pointing out that he's six foot tall and 115 pounds and he's doing 17,000, he's probably, where it's detrimental to someone like this, this person's probably potentially trying to build muscle, I would assume. Yeah, because they wanna gain more weight. And doing that many steps, you're burning way more calories. And you're probably having a hell of a time eating enough to actually put on weight. So here is a case where, even though we encourage our audience for the, generally to walk more and more activity, here's an example of where is exception to the rule. I would tell this kid to stop, stop moving around. So if your goal is to build muscle and put weight on, because you're 115 pounds and six foot tall. Yeah, just lift weights. Yeah, lift weights and do not go out of your way to add more activity and steps in the, I mean, I wasn't this extremely, but I was like, I think I graduated high school at 135 and like six foot. So I get it. And I played basketball and like, one of the first things that put size on me was just stopping playing so much basketball because I was burning so much. Yeah, it's interesting. He's gaining strength at the same time too. But yeah, for him to wanna gain size and that being a calorie issue and him like doing like adapting to such a high amount of calorie burn, that's definitely something to manipulate to then gain the size. Well, at 17, part of what he may be seeing in strength gains is just the CNS adapting to it. It's all neural adaptation. Yeah, yeah, it's mostly that. Which eventually can lead to muscle if you feed yourself. Right, exactly. That's just it. But he'll probably stay stuck this way until he gets to a place where he's actually consuming more calories and he's burning every day. And so that's the question is about his scale weight is staying the same. And I'm assuming that why he brought that up and gave us his weight is, I'm trying to gain some weight and am I potentially doing too much less? Like, yeah, you don't need to be doing any real cardio. When I was 17 and I had been working out already at this point for a few years, I think it was 100 and I wanna say 170 pounds, it's about six foot. And I had to eat. Did you graduate in high school at 170? No, I graduated high school one, closer to 190. But I had to, I was 185. Yeah, but I was obsessed with building and gaining. Wow, you guys are so much bigger than I was. Yeah, yeah. Bro, I graduated high school at 135. Yeah, but you didn't really lift, you played lots of sports. I mean, I started to lift a little bit towards my- It was mainly in your 20s though when you went in. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I was- I mean, I still grew out of high school, so I graduated like at six foot. That's also true. I went to six three. I got to six foot by the time I was a freshman and that was it, I stopped growing. Oh, see I was five three as a freshman. Wow. Five three as a freshman and then I got, I shot all the way up to like five, 11 my junior year. God, I mean, it would be hard for you to gain weight because all the calories probably when you're growing your height at that point- And I was a super active kid. Yeah, and all I did was lift. And, but to gain weight, I had to consume north of 3,500 calories easily. It just wouldn't happen unless I ate a ton of food because of that age. So the reason why I'm saying this is for this kid right here who's, you know, wrote this question, look at how many calories you're eating every single day and bump them by at least 500, maybe closer to 800 calories a day. That will make a huge difference in the weight gain. And you have to do it consistently. Here's the key. Some kids will do this and they'll do it for like three days and then they'll fall off for two or three days like every day, day in and day out. All the high school kids they train. Yeah, they're just terrible at the consistency factor. Next question is from William Break. What are the indicators that I am training with the right volume? Okay, so you're progressing, you're getting stronger, you're getting better at your lifts. And then here's the biggest one. You feel good. Yeah, just say you don't have aches and pains. You feel good. You're not sore. You're not lethargic and burnt out and tired. You don't need tons of pre-workout just to make you, you know, get you through the workout. You feel super energized. You feel healthy and you feel good. Now here's the challenge with that. This is, I still get challenged with this to this day. I'm 43 years old, I've been doing this forever. When I feel good and I feel energized, the first thing I think is more. Let me add more because I feel so good, I could do more. That's a huge mistake because then you start to go down the other side, which is the point of diminishing returns and then negative returns. I actually will start to get less for time spent and then I'll push to the point where I start to get backwards with my progress. So those are the main things. It's like, you gotta feel good. The other challenge that people have with this too though is actually applying too much volume right out the gates. Right? Yeah. And we haven't said on the podcast a long time, I've been on here many times saying that, you know, our goal is to do as little as possible to elicit the most amount of change. So if you're just getting started and you're trying to figure out like, how do I know I'm doing the right volume? Well, the right volume is as little as possible to elicit change. So if I'm actually doing just a few exercises and my body is slowly building muscle, I'm burning fat, I'm getting fitter, I'm getting stronger, leave it until you sort of see that progress slow or stall and then increase volume. And that was something that I didn't understand for a really long time. I always went to the whole, if I feel good, I could do more, do more, more will get me more muscle when, again, it's not like that. It's like this fine dance that we're doing. And if you are applying too much volume too soon, you may not see the negative things like the joints hurting and maybe even stalling of progress yet, but you're doing more than you need to in order to elicit change. And so keep that in mind. It's not about how much you can do to get results. It's about how little you could do to get results. Literally, that's what it's all about because doing more or going past the point of ideal means you're gonna get less and worse results. And then you combine that with the fact that you're using more time up in the gym, wasting more time in the gym. It's massively inefficient. It's a terrible approach to exercise, but it's a tough one because, again, when you feel good, especially if you love exercise, you think, well, I can do more. By the way, before you add volume, because I know you said that, Adam, like you feel good and your progress starts to stall, add volume. There's a lot of things you can do before you even add volume. Change the exercise, add the load, make the exercise itself more intense. Adjust your rest periods. That's it. All the acute variables you can manipulate. Before adding volume. Before adding volume, yeah. So, yeah, I mean, I think that you guys pretty much nailed what I was gonna say anyway, so. Well, I mean, I think we're this kind, adding volume is one of the simplest, quickest ways to build muscle. It's the best formula for that. Like, in fact, I didn't become like a big volume tracker until the competitive days because that's when it really started. Like, when I had to go show over show and if I was gonna win, I had to improve every single, and that for the first time in my life, I had to get that crazy about it where I was. Now, what's the, those are the formula that you used. What was it? It was weight times sets, reps? Yeah, sets, reps, weight, multiply all of them out. That's your total volume. Yeah, and I did that per muscle group, right? So, if I, and then what I would do is each show I would go, okay, I'm gonna try and improve. I would maintain the rest of like, maintain my volume on the, on my other muscles. And then the one I'm focusing on, I would drive volume up and I would creep it up over the weeks leading into my prep. Was there a number of volume that you would aim for? Like, you're not gonna do a crazy jump in volume. No, like 5%. Very little. Okay. As long as it was going on. In fact, the goal was always to, every, because here's what I found was interesting. So the goal was always to make sure I at least hit the same volume, if not just a tiny bit more. Tiny bit. Yeah, because what I had found when I first started tracking just like with nutrition and you like, so you have some eye-opening moments is that I was like, wow. And I've brought this up a long time ago on the show. Like what I found is that we in our heads we think we're progressing volume a lot of times. And it's like, you just have a good, you had a good week. But then when it ends up happening, is it correct? It's interesting how when you're not tracking you're not paying attention, how easily you kind of fall into homeostasis or you fall into like a volume you like. And what I found when I first really started tracking diligently, I was like, oh, I actually kind of do this. I'm not doing this, you know, or even like this again. And that's what I was so, what I wanted to do was like, okay, here's the beginning of my training. Here's my total volume. And it doesn't matter the number, right? Cause I don't remember what my trend and it depends on how strong you are. Cause obviously weight and rep, weight's gonna go up, right? If you're stronger at the total volume you move really matters on where you, just like our diet. Where am I at now? And then how do I tweak from there? And so I figure out, okay, this total volume on all these muscles gives me this physique. Okay, I want a better chest. So now the training protocol in the next three to four months, I've got to maintain the volume on everything I'm doing and slightly increase it just a tiny bit on my chest week over week. And when I was tracking, again, what I had saw in the past was I would typically do this where now the goal was to just barely. Now one thing I want to add, cause again the formula for those of you that missed it, it's weight times sets times reps. Now that's within an appropriate or reasonable rep range. And the reason why I say that, so I would go five to 15 reps is where I would stay within because you can mess with this formula by doing like a hundred reps with a lightweight. Now it looks like you're doing tons of volume, but a hundred reps is not really muscle building, right? So cause you kept your reps within those reasonable ranges. Yes. But within that, then you would do the formula. Well, what I really did was I followed our like maps protocol as far as our foundational training. And then this is, I mean, this is how we built aesthetic. Yep. You know, I was following a very maps, anabolic type of protocol, but then the way I modified it was increasing volume on specific muscles that I wanted to. And that is the birth of maps aesthetic is was basically how I would go after. Now obviously in maps aesthetic, we kind of lay it out for people. But we know that it's gonna calculate to be more volume because we're adding these focus sessions days. And so that was the logic behind that programming was that is how I approached getting ready for a show is I had my foundational training and then if I wanted to move, change body parts, I would just slowly increase volume on those one to two areas per show. Look, if you like Mind Pump, head over to mindpumpfree.com and check out some of our guides. These guides are free and we have a lot of them 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. Adam is on Instagram at Mind Pump Adam. And you can find me on Twitter at Mind Pump Sal. This one's really important and that is to phase your training. If somebody trains for a full year doing a bench press and they're always aiming for five reps, if you compared that person to a person who did bench press where they did three or four weeks of five reps, but then they did three or four weeks of 12 reps and then three or four weeks of, let's say 15 to 20 reps. And then they'll throw in some supersets. At the end of that year, you're gonna see more consistent progress from the person who's moving in and out. And less injury, that's another thing. You'll see less injury as well.