 It's mind pump time. All right, so we're excited in here because the giveaway is exciting. Here's what you get if you do the following and you win the following. So leave a comment in the first 24 hours that we dropped this episode. Subscribe to this channel and turn on notifications. If we like your comment, we'll notify you and you'll get free access to, ready for this, the Prime Bundle, Maps Prime, Maps Prime Pro, great for improving mobility, getting rid of pain, making your body more stable. If you're a trainer, extremely valuable programs, so you'll win those incredible programs by doing what I said and doing it well. Also, we got a 50% off sale going on right now, two very popular workout programs, Maps Hit, which is high intensity interval training, and Maps Split, which is a bodybuilder style split workout program, both 50% off. If you're interested, head over to mapsfitnessproducts.com and use the code DEC50 for that discount. All right, here comes the show. Hey, look, there are no dangerous exercises. So in terms of exercises, none of them are dangerous. Oh, you're gonna get blasted by a dog. Wrong. You know why I wanna say that? Because oftentimes you'll hear people say things like upright rows are bad for the shoulders or if you do a lateral with your pinky higher than your thumb, that's bad for your shoulders or if you do a squat this way. Lamp this way and behind your neck. Yes, and the reality is if you have the required control, stability and mobility in connection to doing that exercise, it is not a dangerous exercise. What makes it dangerous is your body and your lack of ability to control and mobile. You can help yourself, we were supposed to explain all that. Yeah. No, there's actually interesting conversation because there's more to that. You know, I remember being a trainer in the first like five years or whatever and you start to build up a little bit of knowledge and experience and then you go through this phase where you kind of probably think you know it all or whatever and I see this a lot and I see this exaggerated in social media life or world or whatever and you see a lot of trainers and fitness people that like to point out people doing quote unquote stupid exercises, oh, it's a stupid exercise or oh, it's a dangerous exercise or oh, they shouldn't be doing that or they're an idiot or like calling out people that are exercising when you don't even know who that person is and I fell into that trap of being like that, you know, knowing a little bit enough to get me by, to teach others, to get in shape and knowing what is considered dangerous for most people or exercises that don't give you a lot of benefit for most people and so all of a sudden you assume that when you see this person in the gym that's doing this exercise, you go, oh, that's stupid and you point it out but the reality is I have no idea what their desired outcome is. I have no idea what they're training for. It could have massive application for what? For what they're trying to do. Yeah, and it may be ridiculous for 99% of the population but how dare I look at this movement that I think is ridiculous and silly so long as they're performing it in a controlled fashion and they're not going to hurt themselves and I think that a lot of trainers jump to that conclusion that like, oh, well that's a great example of this is the Jefferson curl, right? So if you've ever seen that. That has to be the one exercise that looks like, oh my gosh, you can't do that. Right, if you see a Jefferson curl and you've never seen one before, right? If you see that for the first time and you're a trainer, it kind of breaks a lot of the fundamental rules that you've been taught for good mechanics for bending or hinging over, right? But that specific exercise is not supposed to be like a deadlift, it's supposed to be a different movement and it's intended to strengthen and challenge all the muscles surrounding around the spine and your core and if done properly can be a very phenomenal exercise yet I know that most people I probably wouldn't train that but I looked differently at movements like that in the past I would probably go or even here's another one. Look at LeBron James doing a quarter squat or anybody for that matter. LeBron James is someone famous but see someone doing a quarter squat and then right away we want, I mean, there's pages dedicated to talking shit about these people that are doing movements like that when you don't know what this person does for a living, you don't know what adaptation they're going after. So who are you to judge whether that's a good or a bad movement? Yeah, I think if you're experienced you can watch someone do an exercise and notice that in many cases, oh, they lack the mobility, they lack the connection. I could do that for, I'd say the most part maybe not every single time, but for the most part. But that being said, there's a lot of exercises that people write off because they say don't do that, it's dangerous. The truth is if you own the exercise, it's not dangerous. If you can do the movement well, there's nothing dangerous about what that movement is and that's really it. So the blanket, you know, bad exercise, good exercise, or too dangerous, don't do it, nobody should ever do that. And Jefferson Curle is my favorite because it's literally rounding your back, you're bending over your, but you know that exercise was a staple among so was gymnast and Soviet era wrestlers. In fact, they did the Jefferson Curle with a zurcher position. So they were bending all the way down and it was a rounded back and then round as long as you can generate tension and you can maintain stability and control and strength in that position, like it's a valid movement. And that's the thing, it's like the prerequisites to a lot of these movements, they need to apply. But as far as a judge metal trainer that's in the gym, I do find there's instances where you'll see somebody with terrible form performing a certain type of movement where it does warrant a conversation in terms of, well, you might not wanna keep applying this technique to this specific exercise because it's gonna, over time it on the stress may end up finding its way into your joints, your knees, like your lower back, like there's a better way to perform and do these exercises. So I find value in making sure the quality element is there. But in terms of like your original statement of the exercise itself, there is a biomechanical way to pull it off as long as it's done with good form and the prerequisites are applied. Well, listen, if there's ever gonna be a time in your sport or your day where you're going to move in that range of motion, it makes sense to strengthen in that range of motion, i.e. the gymnast or the wrestlers. They're contorting their body in these weird positions. And so that you wanna be strong in this- You wanna be familiar with it. In this rolled up extended position that you may not normally get in normal life, but if I'm wrestling on the ground with someone, if I'm folded over like a lawn chair, I wanna be strong in that position. In fact, along those lines, let's say you strengthen your body with what's considered traditional perfect form and you never strengthen your body in those positions. That's how you get hurt. And then you get hurt, right? Because you generate all this force and then as soon as you move outside that position, you lack the stability and control to manage the force that you might have generated going into it, and that's how you get injured. This is part of the reason why we see normal people get injured doing the most basic things like reaching back and feeding their kid in the back seat or pulling a weed from the ground or picking up a bottle of shampoo in the shower. These are some of the most basic movements, but because they're twisting and rotating- And they never do that. And they never do that in their training, then it doesn't take much for them to tweak something or to injure themselves. And so, again, you might see someone doing this weird rotating type of movement or motion inside the gym and go, oh, that is stupid or dangerous or you shouldn't do it. But the truth is, if you do that sometime in your day to day and you're not strong on that, you're at risk. Now, a big part of that, and this needs to be made very clear, you have to own the movement, right? So you can, look, I'll tell you what, the most basic movement, a barbell curl, can be very dangerous for somebody who lacks the prerequisite skill, mobility, and connection. A simple exercise like a barbell curl could be dangerous for someone. Barbell squats all the way down can be dangerous for someone or they could be very safe for someone, right? It depends on, do you control the weight? Do you have the stability, the mobility? Are your joints supporting the weight in the sense that your end of range of motion is your spine or is it the muscles that are supporting your spine? This is all very important. You use the example of a gymnast. I had a gymnast that worked for me years ago. I learned so much just from watching this guy because he would do movements, like he would do dips and he would go so low in the parallel dip bars. And I remember thinking, oh, his shoulders have got to be wrecked. And yet he had some of the healthiest shoulders all the time. And I remember talking to him about it and he goes, oh yeah, he goes, I couldn't do that when I first started training. He goes, I had to really build the strength and stability to be able to do that. But now I have so much control in that range of motion. Now if I tried to do that without building up to it, for sure I would have hurt myself. Now it is true that not all exercises are created equal and that some exercises, if your form is off a little bit, the risk goes up quite a bit. Usually it's the compound, the compound complex lifts. But nonetheless, movements, if you can do them right and you control them right and you have the stability, they're not dangerous. My favorite examples are the behind the neck exercises, behind the neck pull down, behind the neck press. Olympic lifters do behind the neck presses all the time. In fact, they catch the weight on their traps all the time. Most bodybuilders would hurt their shoulders doing that because they don't have the stability to do it. Yeah, I gotta give a bit of a shout out. It's, I think his handle is Atlas Power shrugged. But I follow this guy, total unconventional lifter, and bringing back a lot of the really old school movements and barbell movements, you know, bent presses. He does things where he's basically, he's doing like a clean behind his back and he'll do like hack squats and things, you know, with his, with the barbell behind him. Those are old school. Really old school techniques, but it just, for a common person walking by, they would probably be like, whoa, stop, you can hurt yourself. What are you doing? You know, and this guy's like, showed his whole process of getting strong in these old school movements and built himself up to be resilient enough to pull these movements off. Yeah, really the injuries occur and they can occur with any exercise. And of course, like I said earlier, some exercises, if you go outside of perfect form and control the risk goes up dramatically. Whereas with other exercise, the risk doesn't go up so much. But if you hurt yourself doing an exercise, it's cause you didn't own it. That's all it is. Like you either use too much weight for the type of strength that you have. You lack the stability. You lack the mobility. You just didn't own the exercise and that's why you got hurt. That's the only reason you get hurt. An exercise won't hurt you if you own it and I don't care what the exercise is. So you see videos of these trainers and coaches saying things like, you know, don't do side laterals with your pinkies higher than your thumb cause it could place your shoulder and shoulder impingement and whatever. Not if you own the exercise. Now I will agree it's more complex. It requires more stability. It requires different strength and stability that maybe some people own. But that doesn't mean the exercise is dangerous. And again, I like to point to those behind the neck exercises because like behind the neck pull downs, you know in the 60s and 70s that was a staple at pull ups. They would do behind the neck pull ups all day long. In defense of the trainers that used to, cause I was part of this group that used to talk shit about the behind the neck everything and going deeper than 90 and the deep dips and all that stuff. Your national certifications said that. I mean, I remember being at least two or three national certifications deep in a couple of years experience, that's my point. They said don't go down below 90 degrees. I mean, I was literally that guy who was training behind a client when they were doing like dumbbell bench press and letting their elbows would touch my hands. Okay, back up, or their dips, I would have my hand where their chest would hit. Okay, back up. I didn't want them going deeper than that because I thought it put them at risk because that was what we were taught. We were taught to do that. And you know, it's so funny because I don't think I ever thought to challenge that. It just made sense. Oh yeah, you know, that's putting them at risk. Why would we do that? And I can stimulate the muscle just fine by going just down to 90 degrees. But you know, it never dawned on me like, yeah, you stop doing that and you lose the ability to do that. So what happens in real life when you accidentally move in that range of motion? Yeah, we can move like a robot your whole life. Yeah, like you just, it just didn't dawn until way later in my career. Same thing, my first certification was, was not even a national cert. So when I started with 24 Fitness, they had their own certifications. 8X, yeah. No, it was 24 Fitness University. Yes. And I remember when I did, this was 19, I wanna say 97. And I remember the instructor explaining why we should not go all the way down on a bench press. So he said, stop at 90 degrees. And then what he did is he had a towel. This was his example. And it like stuck with me. I'm like, oh my God, that makes sense. He twit, he said, this is what it's like when you go all the way down and he took the towel and he twisted it really tight. And then he started bending it. He's like, this is what happens to your shoulder. And of course, I don't question him as the instructor. Right. So I taught everybody at 90 degrees. Later on, I understood how the scapula moved and the shoulders moved. And I read books on evolution, how we have this incredible mobility and control with our shoulder. One thing we evolved with is these incredible shoulders allow us to throw with accuracy and all that stuff. And I remember thinking, what if I just strengthened that position and was able to move within that? And then I started training that way. And of course you get better results. But it reminds me of when people say, oh, you got always lift with your legs because they're so afraid of their backs. So everything looks like a front squat when they pick things up. And it's like, okay, what you're basically doing is you're trying to remove all potential risk by limiting your range of motion so much. But the reality is, if you do that all the time, you are actually setting yourself up for more potential injury in the future because then that's all you know how to do. That's exactly what happened to me. I mean, I had more shoulder issues, more hip and low back issues in my early mid 20s than I do now 40 years old. Doing everything at 90 degrees. Because I was shortening everything up. And that's what you don't realize too is that not only are you shortening up, but then you're getting really strong and tight in that positions, which is even more. You'd be better off not doing anything and like what, just see where life takes me than to get really buff in the shortened range of motion because then you have all this power and strength, but then you have no control in where the body technically could go. Well, my first introduction to isometrics, I was working at the gym when I had a lot of trainers that were super experienced. And one of the trainers was taking his athletes through just the pure isometric workout where they were in positions, they'd be on the field where their legs super wide out, they're rotated a bit and they're driving either a stick or just their body weight. They're just squeezing and adding tension to these poses. And I'm like, what are you doing? Like it just looks so bizarre that he's taking these athletes through these very specific type of movement, but he's familiarizing them in these positions where they need to be able to drum up power, they need to summon force and control in those positions, which then helps to apply towards the field. So not just strength training, but some days are devoted to being familiar when an instance occurs where they're in that position on the field. Speaking of isometrics, by far the most undervalued piece of training technique that exists today. I mean, it's so, and it's so much more valuable than people give it credit for. When it comes to improving your mobility and your ranges of motion and connection to your ranges of motion, nothing beats isometrics, nothing. So let's say you squat to parallel and anything below parallel, you lose connection. Well, what you can do is you can, without weight, bring yourself down to just below parallel and then use isometrics to connect to that new range of motion. And you can continue to expand upon that. And it's the safest, most effective way to do it. In fact, this is the, and this is a simplified version of what priming is. Priming really utilizes isometrics in this particular way. And then when it comes to building muscle and building strength, if you apply isometrics in this way, you will see tremendous gains through both the isometrics and also the new ability to connect. There's a 15 to 20 degree angle effect. So it actually like strengthens even further than just that position. Yeah, so if you do isometrics at 90, you're going to get strength all the way down to 70 and up to as high as maybe 100. Not only that, but then now you can actually call upon specific muscles that you want to activate and exercises that traditionally aren't for that. You guys, did you see the Brett Kancharis posted a video of this girl doing a butt wave? You see that? Yeah, I did. And you laugh, right? I know I, but there's, you know, this conversation, you get why I'm bringing it up in this conversation. Yeah, she can connect to it. Cause she can sit there without doing an exercise and she can activate all the muscles in her butt. Now, if you can do that, then you, whenever you squat, you deadlift, you lunge, you do anything. You know how to make it a butt exercise. That's right. You can now make that the dominant muscle being activated because you have the capability of mentally contracting that muscle without even moving. Add the movement in there where the hips are having to hinge and you can really start to grab and pull power from there. I guarantee you that's the new TikTok challenge. Yeah, the butt wave. Watch it, the butt waves are coming. Justin does a butt right away. I mean, it's a good first goal for anybody who is trying to develop a specific muscle on their body. Right? You know, instead of us. You have access to it. Instead of us going and looking for somebody who's Insta famous, who has this great butt, who probably did butt and plants and all the exercises they do and just trying to do those movements when you can't even isometrically contract the glutes. Like that's where you start. You know, to your point, that's an easier thing that you can get to and safer. So get there to where you teach yourself to just be able to actually squeeze it and contract it. Now you teach it to work more in the exercises. So here's an advanced way of using isometrics for incredible power. So this is an at home way of, it's an apparatus you could set up at home. So I'm gonna give it to the audience. And in fact, I'm gonna try and find a way to set this up in my garage. So what you do is you put two bolts, really heavy duty bolts into the concrete. Then you attach a chain to it and then make it a long chain so that you can adjust the length if you want. And then you can take a barbell or a metal bar and attach the bar to either side of the chain or chains on either side of the barbell at varying lengths. And you can get underneath it. So you're like, let's say you're in a full squat. So you get underneath the bar, chains attached to the bolts and then with good posture, good technique, good control, you drive, obviously you're not gonna do a squat but you're driving against an immovable object. You could put a bench underneath that, do a press, you could do a row, you could do a curl with varying lengths of the chain. This is an advanced way to use isometrics and I'm gonna tell everybody right now, if you try this, you will not see faster strength gains than you will if you apply this. Now the strength gains come on very quick, then they start to taper off after about six to eight weeks but they still keep coming. But in that initial six to eight weeks, you will see some ridiculous strength gains. And this is an old school technique that strength athletes used to do all the time. I wonder what would be better, that or like, Justin, I mean, I feel like you could do more power what you're talking about but- It's advanced. The dumpy squat was mind blowing for me the first time that you had a- So that's better for connection and priming but what I'm talking about is advanced. So in other words, if you lack the connection, don't go and drive against some chains that are attached to the ground. You're trying to ramp, you're trying to max. Yes. That's what I mean. You could probably push more power out doing it but that also increases the chances of you doing it poorly or something. Exactly, exactly. So that's why I said it was advanced. All right, so speaking of cool advanced stuff, this might not be cool but for a while now we've been observing this drop in testosterone in men. By the way, decades, right? We've been observing this and this is well documented. I've been observing it in every coffee shop. Yes. It's very obvious now. Yes, very obvious. It's really interesting- Could you describe what it looks like? The way they order. Could you describe what it looks like? Yeah, it looks like- Come on, just- You guys know- Gauge earrings with long points. Lots of, yeah, decisions with their attire. Could I have the Frappuccino? You know, I'm just kidding. No, so this has been observed now for a while and there's been a lot of theories as to why it's going on. Well, the most, I guess the theory that most scientists agree probably has an impact has to do with these estrogenic chemicals that were just constantly exposed- Do they think that's one of the main? Yeah. Oh, really? Yeah, that would be the, that's the prevailing theory. Now there's no smoking gun yet. People hate to hear that. They don't believe that shit. Well, there's no smoking. Well, look, BPAs, you know, phthalates, like BPAs, for example, getting banned, right? You can't have them in children's products anymore because we know that it interacts with their hormone system. So basically what they are is they're chemicals that have the potential to attach to estrogen receptors. So it's not estrogen, but because you're exposed to them, you're getting these estrogenic type effects and it can lower testosterone, it can cause estrogenic type effects like, you know, fat gain or feminizing effects or, you know, stuff along those lines. And they, again, there's no smoking gun, but we're constantly being exposed to more and more of these. They're in plastics, they're chemicals. You know where one of the big ones is? You know, it drives me crazy to hear you say that because for the most part, like the pans and like we've changed a lot of stuff, but the two things that I haven't gotten rid of in my house that I know is probably one of these offenders is the glade plugins and scented candles. I absolutely love those. And I love the way it makes my house smell and I haven't given that up. I was just going to say that. So candles are a big one, right? Really? Yeah, because they put all these chemicals in there. It's burning off and you're breathing in, which has got to be worse than like, just touch scented ones, right? Yeah. Yeah, which are the ones I like. The one you like. Yeah, so that, I know receipts are a big one. You know, the smooth, laxie receipts. I remember when Max Lugavere said that. He's like, don't even touch those. It's basically what he said. It's just caked with it. Yeah. But the candles is a big one, right? So we used to, Jessica's a huge candle. I don't think she likes candles as much as you, Adam. You know what's funny? Adam literally can tell you this, like the cost of the average scented big candle. Yeah, they run $18 to $20 at targets for the candles and strips. For the three width. No, I really do. We have a, Hold on. What are the scents? So they're like bubble gum and. No, I'm a, I have this vanilla addiction. So I like vanilla smell for some reason, but I'll do other, I do other stuff to try just to try it out, but I have so many that I have, I have at least one to two candles out in every room. And then I actually have a storage place at my house that probably has 15 to two. So I probably have 500 bucks worth of candles in my house at all times. That's ridiculous. That's how much I like them. I just like the light smell that it puts off. So did you switch? So I know you were, you. I haven't. That's what I was saying. You're bringing this conversation up and you're making me feel guilty that I haven't. So public goods, which I know you get a lot of your problems from. I have most of my stuff through public. They have candles too. They have candles? And they're BPA free, phthalate free. They're essential oils, essentially. And they're not expensive. Pull them up, Doug, where they, how much, okay, so. And they're still scented or they just clean? Yeah, no, no. You can get scented candles that just don't have all these chemicals. So it's not the smell that's putting it off, it's something else that's in it? No, no, no. It's the smell, but the public goods candle uses essential oils and not these chemicals, in other words, breathing in estrogen. I tell you what. Maybe that's why you're getting more candles, the more you breathe in. No, I tell you what about this company. This is, I keep, continue to fall in love more and more with them because I didn't even know they had this in there. That I've told you guys the last time we had a commercial for them that my house is like slowly getting converted over into all public goods. And here's the thing, check this out. 15 bucks for that thing. That's at least, I know it's at least $18 to $20 minimum at Target for that size of a candle right there. Yeah, so it's natural. There's no BPA lead. So what do they use? Like an essential oil? What do they use? Essential oils, natural waxes. The wick is cotton. So you're not going to be breathing in a bunch of. Anna, I like the way it looks too because I like the whole black and white thing going on. That's cool. So I started to get paranoid. That's why I changed out all the shampoos, all the subs, all the stuff in like that I was in close contact with all the time, drinking out of like, aluminum instead of out of plastic. And I just started doing, I don't know how much of an effect it's made, cause it's like, it's just a volume thing over time. I still stand by what I originally said with this stuff. I think it's, I think you're funny and silly if you're the hippie, crunchy person that freaks out about all this stuff all the time. But you eat garbage every day. But yeah, or you have other areas that are much bigger rocks in your life, right? You got a fucking ton of stress and you do other bulls, you do drugs or other bullshit, but then you won't have a fucking scented candle. It's like my buddy, I used to have, I had this buddy once that every once in a while, I'd train him and he's like, and he'd be like, Hey, I tell him, Hey, try this supplement or whatever. Man, I don't know what's in that stuff. I don't want to take that. I'm like, bro, last weekend you took Molly off some dude you bought in a nightclub and you're afraid to take, you know, Citrulline before your workout, but get your, get everything straight. But back to what I'm saying. Like so, but there's been, and I've noticed that there's been a lot of like very subtle changes that I can change. Like it's not that big of a deal for me to change my, they both put off vanilla smell candles. It ain't that big of a jump for me. I didn't know they existed. I didn't know that public goods had this. Yeah. So, so the cool thing is with public goods, all their products are like that. All of them are, you know, earth friendly. All of the prices are great. And you can get smell vanilla and you can get everything. So you can get everything. And then you save money on top of it. Cause you're, you know, they're, you know, I've saved the toothpaste and the soap, the laundry detergent, that stuff gets up there in price. So it's kind of cool to be able to go to a product like this that I feel like not only is it superior, but then it's also cheaper. Are you more aware of this stuff because you're a dad now? Is that what kind of triggered it? No, I think it's our conversations that have triggered that to be honest with you. Yeah. Because you got, you're probably the most hippie crunchy out of all of us. And you talk about this stuff. And so, and at first like, I would think I was a little resistant to a lot of it where I was like, that's stupid. I don't, it's, there's much bigger rocks in life. Like before I go change my fucking candle out, I should probably do X, Y and Z. My thought process has changed a little bit on it because it's like, if it's, if it's a product that like, I am not adamant about exactly what hand soap brand I need to use. I mean, it's not like I'm in love with dial or some brand that it's like, oh, it's so magical. I can't give up my... Right. So, or my laundry detergent or things like that. Like it's not like something that's hard for me to give up. So I don't mind doing that. Like it's not that... Switch it out, save money anyway. Well, I remember even before we had, I forget her name that was talking about testosterone and like all the, you know, the decline of everything in the phthalates. Oh, Carol? Yeah, Carol. I was talking to a doctor before my son was born and they was talking about like a lot of cases of, of this kind of, you know, being transmitted from, from the parents and the mother to where it's affecting the genitalia of young boys, especially. Yes. And to where like, and they measure, and this is what she kind of talked about with us on our podcast was about like the taint, you know, the length and how they measure that in terms of like, it's really bizarre, but like... They can affect it in mammals through testing. And because remember the genitalia is... The length of the taint or how close you're... Yeah, so you get closer to your butthole in a sense. I'm going to be very, you know, vulgar about that. Because remember the genitalia in a fetus, it's essentially the same until the chromosomes tell the hormones to come in and testosterone comes in and either can turn into a penis or become a clitoris. But otherwise it's all, it starts from the same point. So let's say it's telling, it's getting the signal to turn into a boy, you know, or male genitalia, but it's also getting the Xenoestrogen. So it gets kind of a confused signal. And so the genitalia develops a little bit differently. So does that mean... Smaller penis, shorter taint and, you know... Short taint smaller penises. And it's happening, I guess, like in numbers that that's alarming. The longer my taint, the more masculine I am? I think that's what it was. Yeah. I don't know about masculine. Yeah, the longer distance. Masculinity is much more than just alpha or whatever. I think it just means the genitalia is more the way it's supposed to be. I don't know if it makes you more or less masculine. Yeah, so interesting, right? Maybe more virile. I don't know. Hey, speaking of children, can I just tell you guys right now, this is early, so I don't want to be one of those dads where... You have a genius son. He hasn't spoken a word yet. Yeah, you watch your kid, you want a genius son. You know, you have that conversation with your wife, honey, I know. Bro, I'm guilty now, dude. See, I told you. I'm guilty. So Max, not to cut your story out, but you know, Max is into like one of his favorite shows to watch or cartoons is Baby Einstein's. Have you guys seen this? Yeah, absolutely. It's not, it is very... It seems like it was made in like the 90s or earlier, but it, and it starts off with like a Mozart song and then all... Like my son used to watch, I'm older son. Oh my God, he's so infatuated with it. Baby Einstein, what a great cartoon. Oh, and it's just, well, it's teaching them all these different sounds too. So they play like, and it's all old school classical music. And so it's really interesting. There's, it's not super action and the graphics aren't great in it, but he's so... So you're like... I can tell Katrina... I think he's a genius. That's what I said. I said, tell me he's not. Like this kid is not watching bullshit cartoons. Look what he wants to watch. He wants to learn about Beethoven and Mozart right now at this age. He's going to be a genius. I love it. Well, so distinguished. So, okay. You guys know what? My son started pushing that little sled around and just loves it. And now he runs with it and he whips that thing around and I'm like, honey, I'm like, he's like, he's kind of strong for a little baby. I don't know. So anyway. He's going to be a monster. She sent me a video. So we have these... I saw the loaded box. So we have these boxes that we put like Christmas decorations and stuff away and you know, wrapping stuff and we store. Well, anyway, she sends me this video of him driving this box around the house on the floor and he's having a great time. And I'm like, man, that box, it's a big plastic box. It's relatively heavy. And I see him like it gets stuck and he'll like, pull it back and like drive it. Anyway, I go home and I find the box and I pick it up and I'm like, this box weighs probably more than he does. So I'm like, let me see. So I get him in front of it and he gets so excited and he starts driving that thing around the house, pushing into chairs, pushing the chairs with it. And I'm like, I sat down with Jesse. I'm like, honey. Grunting. I think I got, I think the right genetic mix hit this kid. I think this is going to be a... You were at, at least for me, you're at my favorite, like one of my favorite times. Like when you hit that like one year mark, it felt like, I've just said this before, it felt like Twilight Zone for the first six months. Then you fart. Then you start thinking where that came from. You do sometimes. Then you start thinking like from six months to a year. It's like, okay, this is getting better. We have a routine down now. You've got stuff like you're in the swing of things. And then year one hits, and here come all the milestones. Like you used to like, oh, he's saying a word. Oh, he's putting two words together. Oh, he's walking now. Oh, he's running. Oh, he can jump. But like, this is where it all starts from here on out. Like it was, I remember like every day would be fun. So we taught him certain signs for sign language so he could communicate with us. And he's starting to try to say words like he says bye-bye and mama, but he doesn't say much, right? He's only a year old, but he does the signs. And so one of the signs is for food. And so what he does is he'll put his hand to his mouth like this. That means food, right? And this kid can eat like he can eat. Now he's not, he's obviously burning it off. I don't know where he puts it, but he eats like a little machine. And if we're kind of like putting it off or like we're busy, he'll walk up to us with this stern look. He'll grab my face and he'll make eye contact with me and then he'll take his hand and then he'll do it to me. Like, food, motherfucker, feed me some food. Feed me, man. Yeah, dude, I'll start laughing. All right, calm down. I'm sure part of it has to do with the food that Jessica prepared. She literally makes tri-tips. So she'll get the grass-fed tri-tips. He's like a little cape, man. She'll make them, then she'll blend them. Then she'll blend them with vegetables like zucchini and broccoli and asparagus and then sweet potato. And this kid just throws it down. I'm glad you brought that up because one of the number one things I get, and we can address this right now, so I don't have to keep responding to so many DMs around it, is people always want to know what I'm feeding Max on a regular basis. He eats exactly what Katrina and I eat. Unless Katrina and I are eating something bad, then we don't feed him that. He gets it. But we literally make our food. Like, and she normally makes- Irish whiskey? She normally gives or makes a pretty good size to where we'll have leftovers. And then she just portions off his stuff, these little containers. And it's sweet potato, rice, yams, bison, ground beef, turkey, I mean, chicken. He eats all of it, man. Beal, he eats everything that we, whatever we have for dinner, we just portion off whatever we're having over to him. And he eats it all. We introduced him to fish and sushi really early. Is he like that? He eats everything. And so it's like, it's not special. I'm not doing anything. I use, I do use a Serenity Kid stuff every now and then. So like if we're on the go and we're not, and we're trying to feed him my kids. Have you ever looked at other, well, I'm sure I know you did. You look at other baby food. Oh yeah, it's all sugar. You're like, no wonder you switch your kid from like, you know, this baby food to real food and they don't like anything. No. My kids don't like anything. Well, I wonder why you were giving him candy for, you know, his first year and now he's not gonna want to eat regular foods. I see where parents get caught in doing that because they, well, one, it's always start, or at least what I've seen, it starts with everybody wants to see the reaction, right? All the family wants it. Oh, give him a candy. Give him a cookie. Oh, like legit candy? Yeah, yeah. So they could see the crazy reaction that they do. And then they realize, oh my God, how much he or she loves it. And then they use it as a bribe tool, like as a way to get them to do things. Oh, sit down, you do this, I'll give you this, I'll give you that. And then it's like, once you open Pandora's box, dude, it's a wrap that kids gonna want. Speaking of candy, I'm so mad at you for bringing in a box of blowpops. A box of, listen, where's the box? Katrina, it's over there. It's over there. That's not even half of them. Bro, it's a big ass box of blowpops and I've eaten four this morning. I never even asked her what the logic behind why she did. So for my party, for my forrest, she did like a sweet table and it was just like all the treats and she had all those blowpops and they've lasted, nobody's eaten them all. Would you say you're trying to make it popular again? Yeah, yeah, I'm trying to bring it back. I told her, I've been having one at least a day right now. But you suck on them, which is weird. That's weird, I think it's weird that you take a, who takes a blowpop and crunches it on the first bite? Fucking mandos. You brought an LL Cool J, dude, remember? It always used to creep me out because he'd be like on a music video and he'd be like. Yeah, licking his lips a million times. I'm like, ugh, then stop. You know that some shit, no, you know for sure, at one point in his life that some girl said, oh my God, when you lick your lips. And that, it was it. That's it, that's like every guy, every guy that does something corky and weird. One girl talking about it. I believe one hot chick said something to that guy. It said, man, when you do that. That's true for most guys, but LL Cool J is a famous, you know, good looking, fit, wealthy dude. Yeah, but it probably. He could do anything. Don't go forward, don't you believe that? Maybe, I'm sure. I believe that. Dude, speaking of the kids too, like I don't know if I told you guys, but like my youngest is like a total trend setter. Is he really? Yeah, like I picked him up a few times and it's funny cause I do remember that was a bit of like what my personality, I would try to like get whatever the other kids didn't have, you know, like whatever was cool at the time, I would try to like find something totally different and try to like create my own thing. And so it's just, I've noticed that like sometimes he went to class one time with a total Mohawk and I'm like, dude, that is a bold move. Yeah. That's a serious move. The other day he wore like a, like a sport coat and like. A sport coat? Yeah, and then he put on some Felix Gray glasses and he just went in with his hair all slicked. So what grade is he in now? He's in third grade? Third grade, yeah. Wow. Third grade he's doing that? Yeah. That's a big deal in third grade. Oh yeah. Seriously, like third, fourth, fifth, sixth. I was like this, I was totally like that. I remember you and I talked about this. When we first met, I remember that was one of the things that I liked about you. Cause I was like, ah, that's how I was. I was always a buyer. I know, I connected with you like that. Cause it's, I mean, I'm not like a huge fashion guy, but I definitely like to find things that like nobody else has or like I could be unique somehow. So what, did you get feedback on the glasses and the sport clothes? Dude, like the kids were all asking him about it. Like, you know, why are you wearing those? And like he kind of like, you know, and he says that it's good for him when he's on the screen, you know. So I've at least like sort of doctrinated him with that. And so it's, I'm going to be interested to see if this becomes a thing like within this class of like the other kids are going to be like, all of a sudden wearing them and then he'll like not wear them once they all wear them. Your son's got an affiliate code. Yeah. I'll throw it to him. Yeah. I feel like we're invested in them. I'm all for that dude, that's where it's at. That's all it takes is one pop, popular kid. Yeah. To make it cool to do it. Making it trend in the schools. Yeah, forward slash Everett, you know. Use code Everett50 for, that's hilarious. Hustlin' dude. Hey, speaking of discounts and this kind of stuff, I found an old Milton Friedman clip. So Milton Friedman is- That you hadn't watched? So there's so many clip, there's so many videos of him talking to universities. Like they're long and sometimes they're drab on. And so I guess I haven't seen every single one. I thought I'd seen everyone. I thought for sure you have. No, and maybe I did see this one. I just forgot this particular point, but he was speaking at, it looked like he was speaking at a college and he was talking about inflation. So here's the interesting, so Milton Friedman, my favorite economist of all time. And he was really popular during the 70s and 80s. So during the inflation of the 70s and then after when we tried to correct it, and we did correct it with rising interest rates. And so some of his talks were around inflation. And what's cool about a lot of stuff that, well, all the stuff that Milton Friedman says is it's still applicable today because the laws of economics don't change. So it's really cool because you'll see what he says and he says he'll warn people if you do this it's gonna happen and just what's gonna happen and sure enough all that stuff happens, really cool. But anyway, he talks about inflation and I didn't even think about this. So inflation was blowing up in the 70s and he says you may think that if prices go up by 10% and you increase your wages by 10% that you're in the same place you were before. He goes, you're not. Oftentimes making 10% more puts you in a brand new tax bracket. So now you're actually paying an additional 5% in taxes. So you're actually making less money. I didn't even think about that. You might think that if prices go up by 10% and your income goes up by 10% you're in the same position as you were before. But you're not. You're pushed up into higher brackets of the income tax and on the average, if prices go up 10% and your income goes up 10% your taxes will go up 15%. Think about that right now. That's how they're trying to justify it for a lot of people because wages are going up right now like crazy everywhere. Everywhere's having because there's jobs that are needed but people aren't wanting to go back to work because they're making money staying at home. So the only way that they can entice people to come to work is by raising the wages. So then you got everybody who's like, oh okay inflation's going up but who cares because now I'm making $5 more an hour than what I was before. Well oftentimes actually if you look at the numbers the new wages don't match the real cost of new products especially things like gas and food which often are included in their numbers. I mean gas alone. So where do you stand all this stuff like that? I mean at what point do I get to say that I was right on this one and you were wrong because it was about it being a bubble that's been going for now or do you get to just keep saying it's an inflated inflated inflated bubble and then eventually. Here's the deal. Like the Peter Schiff move you're just going to creep on a crash. Well here's the deal. Nobody can predict the infinite bubble. Nobody's going to predict when the market's going to correct but I think if you look at, first of all if you look at the smartest people some of the smartest people in investments right now are pulling out, they're selling. I mean Elon Musk sold a ton, right? Bezzo sold a ton. Like these guys who usually make pretty good calls well Buffett, Buffett is now pulled out quite a bit of money, right? Now they still have lots of holdings in the market but you can tell that they're looking at things and saying this isn't looking good. Well yeah a lot of those guys especially like Elon I don't know about Buffett a lot of those guys are in tech stock and tech stock hasn't made sense for like the last decade. Like it's- What drives the market? It's well so yeah and it's there but they're getting like 15, 20 times evaluation. It's like crazy inflated numbers. It's all speculative and it's not like real hard data that's like supporting okay this company's doing X it's growing this much it should do that this much. So people are just speculating on the future of what these things are and how much they're dominating and how fast they're growing and so they're basically buying stock on where it should be in 10 years from now versus like looking at it year to year. So I think that they're probably pulling out of a lot of those stocks because look at how fast those ones can go the opposite direction. Look what happened with Zoom. Look what happened with all the eye buying stock. Like anything that's like tech related right now is on a crash. Yeah well a lot of things are but you know with inflation what you have is let's say the government needs to raise you know a trillion more dollars in taxes. Well they can either raise everybody's taxes which is very unpopular probably not gonna get reelected or they can print a bunch of money. They're the ones using the new money first. So now they can pay for all their projects and pay all their special interest like if you look at these spending bills by the way look at the percentage of them that actually went to people with like we need relief and then look at the percentage that went to special interest. It's ridiculous right so it's a massive discrepancy but it's an easy way for them to tax people without people realizing it. And then on the other side what I just talked about with Milton Friedman I didn't even think about that. If you raised everybody's pay by 10% you would put because we have a progressive tax code right our tax code works. It's not flat. It's not like everybody pays the same percentage. It's if you make this much you pay a low percentage and the more you make the greater the percentage of the amount that you make you end up paying. House always wins. So exactly. So you make 10% more and everything's 10% more expensive. You're like oh I'm in the same place except you're spending now 5% more or 10% more in taxes. In reality you're worse off than you were before because of the tax liability. Well especially if you're a W-2 employee right? I mean if you're working a nine to five type of job or you have like a standard salary and you go up 10% you're really affected by that. But I thought that was really interesting. I had never thought of that. I didn't even think about what and I don't know what those numbers look like It's just crazy how many people think that inflation is like innocuous. Like it's not gonna affect them substantially. Well what's crazy is in the 70s Well the rich people that are pushing for it doesn't affect them that much. Well that's what they wanted to do. That's why they don't give a shit if milk goes up 3X gas prices go up 2 or 3X. Yeah rich people don't care if their food costs go up 30%. As long as their assets go up 150% especially. If you're wealthy enough to where you're investing 10 to 20 thousand dollars per month in stocks and bonds and assets. Like what do you care if your grocery budget just went up a couple hundred dollars. It's especially when all those asset prices are going through the roof with inflation. And what they did in the 80s to stop the inflation is they jacked up interest rates and there was like a two year recession but then everything corrected and then we had the boom of the 80s with the deregulation of the Reagan era and all that stuff. Today we have such massive debt that if they raise interest we won't be able to pay off the service fees on the debt. So they basically essentially we don't have any tools to handle massive inflation. So it's like what do we do? We raise interest rates. So now what does that look like? What does that gonna end up looking like which is kind of speaking along those lines I don't know if you guys are noticing that. Oh first off did you guys see that we what do we do with the Beijing Olympics? We essentially said we're gonna boycott sending over representatives over there. Did you guys see this? No I didn't know that. Yeah I just saw some article about that. Yeah maybe Doug can find this and basically the leader of China is like we don't care or whatever. And then I'm seeing in the news the anti-China propaganda now starting to people are beating the drums even the left which typically was kind of silent on it. Yeah so I don't know what they're planning on doing. That is so great. Yeah so the White House announces the US diplomatic boycott of the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing. So there's and now I'm seeing the news on all sides start to say things about China whereas before you had kind of maybe the right saying stuff about China left was kind of silent. Now the left is starting to kind of come out. So it sounds to me like the propaganda starting for something. What is still avoiding you know calling the new variant what you know the following letter should have been. What exactly is a diplomatic boycott? What does that mean? We're not sending athletes there either. Nobody like what's. We're not contributing to the fanfare of the games is what it says there. So I'm not quite sure. Does that mean like we're not going to promote it? Like I don't understand are athletes still going to go there? Maybe Doug can find exactly what it says. I believe athletes are still going. They're just not we're not sending any representatives for the country as far as you know the political type of representation. So that's why I'm asking what does that mean? What does that mean? It means we're not doing it. And so we're not athletes are going over. So that's where I'm confused here. Like what does it sounds like? It just means that we're not going to promote it over here. I think this is like a it's like a symbolic. I think it's symbolic gesture. Yeah, which by the way, don't it's isn't nothing. Like if you on a public stage announce you're doing so even if it doesn't mean much what you're saying to the world is we don't agree because what they're saying is the reason why they're doing it is because of the human rights issues in Hong Kong and with what's that group of people in China that are that they're Uighurs. Thank you. They're taking them and they're putting them in concentration, you know, reeducation camps and stuff like that. Yeah, I heard about that with Muslim concentration camps that they've, you know the world's been criticizing them about that. What's happened as a result of that? Like I know that there's been it's been brought up a few times. Well now we're now it looks like we're all officially saying, Hey, this is a big issue. Whereas before it was kind of silent. Yeah. So it sounds to me like they're bringing up the either they're doing the propaganda thing to prepare for the midterms so that they can get people to pick a side or whatever or they're preparing for something else. And oftentimes what you'll see and you'll see this in the media is when the government is about to take a step they prepare by getting public support with new articles and shit like that. So this will be interesting. Well, let's pay attention, I guess. Yeah, let's let's let's end up seeing. Soon they're going to be in the metaverse. That's where all the Olympics will be like everything else. We won't even go anywhere or fly anywhere. We'll just get on our VR goggles. How are we going to see her? It's coming. I saw actually every almost every day. Now I don't know. I keep watching all the stuff. I'm so interested in where it's going. Tender is now moving into the metaverse. How's that work? I have fucking no idea. I have no idea how any of this stuff works. You date in the metaverse? You can bang your alien dragon fantasy. Yeah, but there, I mean, it seems like every day I see a new big company that is moving in that direction. It just seems so weird. I mean, I feel like there's so much money and hype around a lot of stuff right now. This is where I do feel like a bubble burst is coming or a correction is going to happen. Well, do me a favor. In the last 10 years, name one market that would have lost your money. Yeah. You could have invested in stamps, baseball cards, the stock market, real estate. You could have invested in used cars or cars even now, you know? That's annoying to listen to your friends. Like, oh, I just, I invested in crypto yesterday. This is why you see all these people on social media who are now these investment experts. Oh, this is what I, well yeah, because right now you could swing a bat in the dark and you're gonna hit something. Something's gonna work. Yeah, so that's why I'm a little bit like, hey, this kind of seems like a bubble. No, especially with the NFT stuff. I mean, I feel like everybody is jumping on this and buying random NFTs for random companies and stuff, but who was I listening to? I think it was, I mean, Gary V pushes it pretty hard. I mean, and he makes a pretty good case for like people that have like a network, like for example, we have a network of people that are pay attention to us. It's like you're giving them a portion of the company, right? So if you give them these NFTs, you know, they invest in it, they're investing in you because as long as you continue to grow, those things drive up. So, you know, it gives the ability for your early adopters and supporters in whatever movement it is that you're doing, their ability basically to invest in you in your own digital way. I think we still have no idea what that's gonna look like, right? Yeah. And we have no idea. I think, I like what you said before. I think a lot of these big sales are people laundering. That's what I think. I thought that was the best. Did you see, I did that yesterday. Did you see my story? Yeah, I said that NFTs are the new drug dealer flex. And so I just thought, oh, you got the fucking grape ape. Oh, he must have, you know, that's a $10 million deal he just did right there. But he's moving big weight, you know what I'm saying? When you put that on your phone, you show girls. I, you know, I saw, they, I follow some of these NFT pages, right? And this kid was like at like a concert and his backpack was, you know, one of those digital apes. So he's walking around and it's again, it's like a flex. Like if you are you, if you're in that world at all and you're paying attention to it, you're, you kind of know what the real expensive ones are. And so if you see somebody with it on their backpack, you're like, oh, shit, that's like 10 grand right there. Hey, speaking of tech, Justin, did you see that NASA? Did you see the NASA dart? Did you see this? Dart? Dart, it's called, I think, Doug, maybe look this up. This isn't the one you brought up the other day where it's got kinetic energy. No, that was really cool. That was cool. NASA dart, they're starting to work on a concept where if a meteor is coming close to the earth, they could fire off a rocket and hit the meteor and put it off course so that it won't hit the earth. And they're calling it. Okay, now is this like a dummy missile in terms of it not exploding, right? Cause you don't want to explode a meteor would shower us with little ones. Why can't we shoot like four satellites up and make a giant like web trampoline? Yeah. That's totally, that's so science-y. No, no, I mean. Why can't we just put rockets on the earth and move the earth out of the way? Well, that's a good point. I haven't thought of that. No, so yeah, you don't want to nuke a meteor cause now you have four meteors. Well, we don't want to go out of orbit. That's why I say we use a big trampoline so it hits the trampoline. No, there it is right there. So I guess it's launched off of a satellite and the goal is to hit. So you want to hear my theory around this? Okay, so it sounds great, right? Oh, we're going to spend a bazillion dollars to potentially, you know, save us from a meteor. I think we want a diplomatic reason to put a fricking super accurate missile on a satellite and other countries are going to be like, well, you can't do, well, no, no, it's to save us from a meteor. We have missiles in space. Yeah. And we can shoot moving rockets. Or excuse me, moving targets. So hitting China is going to be super easy. Just FY. Of course. That's what it always amounts to. Any kind of new toy is just about like, who's got the biggest coolest toy and who can, you know, do the most damage. Hey, real quick, you got to check out one of our partners, OliPop. Now they make sodas that taste like the great sodas you had growing up as a kid, except very, very low in calories, very low sugar or no sugar. They have compounds in them to help with gut health. In fact, you can consider these sodas, gut health supplements. They're phenomenal and they taste good. I love them. And of course, because you listen to Mind Pump, there's a discount. So if you're interested, head over to drinkolipop.com. So drinkolipop.com forward slash Mind Pump and use the code Mind Pump for 20% off. All right, here comes the rest of the show. First question is from Anthony Otto. What are some tips for improving your bench press or other lifts without a spotter? Oh, good old bent. And I used to think I needed a spotter with bench press all the time. That's because I would train to failure so often that, you know, you miss which rep is failure and then that's it, you're stuck. Right. You don't want to be left in the situation where you got to roll the bar down your stomach and then just totally smash it. I just wanted to put some 45s on there and I couldn't do it without help. You know, that's how it's just trippy tough. You want to know what's funny? I know we're going to answer this question, by the way, but this is something interesting. The early days of bench press, in fact, you could see this in pumping iron. The bars on the bench press that held the barbell were close together. So you would grab the barbell on the outside of the bars, which meant you couldn't load one side at a time. So it literally was designed for people to load both ends at the same time. So it's like they literally designed it originally for. So you needed two people. Yeah, Doug remembers, right, Doug? I do. You know, I got those weights at Sears, I think it was back in the day, they were like concrete and plastic. Yeah, yeah. And I bought a bench with these two very narrow bars and I put that thing on there and the thing was so unstable, it was a disaster waiting to happen. Now, were the commercial gyms like that too? I know that's, if you were to, if you just bought a at home bench set up just two decades ago, it was like that. Yeah, no, the original ones were. I mean, very quickly though, they figured out, oh, if you put them on the outside, it's much more stable. You know what I used to do with those, Doug, is because I had the same problem, is I would move the barbell way over to one side so I could load one side, then load the other side and then slide it over. It was like this whole pain in the ass. All right, so let's answer this question, right? So bench press, here's a general piece of advice and then I'll give you something a little bit more advanced and specific. First off, one of the best ways to increase your lifts is to do them very frequently. But there's a caveat with this, which is you can't do them super hard very frequently. So in other words, let's say you wanna improve your bench press, maybe once a week you have your traditional hard bench press workout and then you can bench press another three days a week but you're not going as intense. You're either focusing on speed, so you're going explosive with the push or you're focusing on form and technique or you're doing tension, so where you're holding it at the bottom, right above your chest, maybe that's a sticking point. So basically frequency, lots of practice, but again, modify the intensity. And then the second piece would be, this is something I discovered much later on, it's a great, great tool, is variable resistance. So like adding resistance bands to the bar so that the bar gets harder the further away you push it from your body which makes it harder where you're stronger. That's an advanced technique but it's one of the best ones I've seen. We kind of covered all the bases but in terms of your sticking point and kind of focusing on the weakest part of the lift and generating more force within that. And this is something that a lot of power lifters are known to focus on to really get them through and progress past some of their limitations but staying there and like doing pause reps where we're squeezing down when we're generating more force in that low position of the bench really makes a massive difference and just like increasing the grip strength and control will add more security stability within that exercise itself too which will then allow you to shuttle more force and increase your strength. So I feel like these are all kind of generic answers and the truth is this is really the depends situation because yeah and it is always right but like I'm listening you guys give tips I'm thinking of my, I'm going through my head of like my journey of like bench pressing and like there were very pivotal moments in that journey where I saw leaps, right? So like one of the first leaps in my bench press was actually moving to high reps. I never moved to high reps. Like I literally was- Just changing the phase. Right, I was a kid who trained in the six reps was to build muscle everything that I read was around there. I wanted to get stronger. I wanted a heavier bench press so it made sense that I was lifting these low reps to do that but simply moving to the 12 to 15 rep range which I thought was only for people that wanted to get lean back then my bench press shot up. Another one was I talked about on the show earlier about not going past 90 degrees. I was never doing anything like that getting really good at really deep body weight dips made a difference. I've talked about on the show before getting good at my incline bench. For many years I neglected incline bench because I was terrible at it. And again, I just wanted to get good at a flat bench press because that's what all we all compared when someone said, what do you bench? No one says what they incline bench. They say what they flat bench. And so I just wanted to get good at that. So there was a huge discrepancy in my weight that I moved on incline versus flat bench. So I made it one year a goal to get just good at incline and in getting really good at incline ended up increasing my bench significantly. So it really does depend on what you potentially are neglecting. Now you guys gave good tips for like sticking points, added resistance with bands and chains if you've never used some of these things. But I feel like those are all things if you've already done all the stuff that I've mentioned. Like if you haven't addressed your programming and if you're neglecting good exercises that really build the strength. I get some people think that they want to get a good barbell bench so they don't ever fuck with dumbbells. It's like, that was another thing. That's a big carryover. I really got good at dumbbell benching and that carried over into my barbell bench. Because independent loads, yeah. No, there's lots of different things that we're just kind of spraying spaghetti out there. And like you pick what might make the most sense in terms of what you can apply that maybe you're neglecting within your programming or you're not addressing things. Like for me, my limitation was I would get shoulder pain, I'd get impingement. And so my shoulder wasn't tracking properly and so I had to address that mobility wise and add more rotation, add more of those type of drills to add security in my shoulder which then provided more of a stable situation where I could load my body signal that, hey, everything's accounted for so I can now apply more force, which was huge. And then the other thing that I noticed that drove a lot more strength was focusing on leg drive. And so that was another thing that provided a lot more rigid security throughout my body. I was able to distribute more force and get my body more involved past just my upper body, my torso, including that leg drive and that tension and strength that I could summon from that increased my bench as well. You just named another one that was a big leap for me was when I was introduced to like priming and understanding how important that was before going into the lift. So I too was... That's by the way, that's an easy way to add like a wrap on almost everybody's bench press. Right, right away. Like just getting myself into the proper position. So I had this tendency of the shoulders always rolling forward when I started to do like a band row or prime my upper back, right, before so I could hold myself in that retracted position when I go into bench. That made a huge difference. So I feel like there's a lot of things that you should kind of check. And then Sal, you mentioned another huge leap for me. Frequency, you want to get good at bench press? You want to get good at anything and you only do it once a week, do it two or three times minimum of a week. Just practice it and don't go to failure on it. Practice get good at that movement, right? So if you want to get good at the bench press. Strength is as much of a skill as it is your muscles contracting harder. That's right. And that's what it is. You're practicing the skill of the lift and you just get better at doing that lift. Justin, you mentioned leg drive. I want to emphasize that for a second because that one made zero sense to me for so long. It does to a lot of people, yeah. I never understood. I'm like, you're on a bench, you're pressing with your arms, you're doing nothing with your legs. What the hell does driving your legs into the floor and tensing up your legs have to do with the press? And people are like, oh, you're more stable. I'm like, well, I mean, I guess, but really what's going on, I don't know. Then I realized, oh, you're just, your CNS fires harder when all of it fires versus when just- There's no radiation effect. Yeah, so like, the example I always give is if you squeeze something as hard as you could with your right hand, but had to keep everything relaxed, including your face, and then you tried that again, but allowed yourself to tense up your whole body. You'd see like a 10, 15% increase in strength. So when you're pressing off of a bench, driving into the floor and tensing up your legs and your lower body just creates more of a central nervous system firing signal and just allows you to press more. Here's another one. Now, some exercises have a lot of carryover to other exercises. And so sometimes just getting good at something else, and you mentioned some of them at them like dips and incline presses. Here's one that's not so obvious that has tremendous carryover to the bench press. It's actually one of the exercises that probably in my experience, again, this is general, so everybody's different, but generally speaking, has some of the best carryover to the bench press. Overhead press. Overhead press. If you're stuck at your bench press, sometimes, and I've had, I've done this before, where I didn't even focus on my bench, I focused on my overhead press, and then right away would see a gain in my bench press. Not a bodybuilder military press, a full range of motion. Yeah, down to the upper chest. Overhead press, you're right. I mean, another great one, you get good at that. I remember that, getting good at that carried over into my bench press. So I don't know, there's a lot of things that we just listed off, and I think the thing that you neglect the most out of all the ones that we said, I would say probably, and by the way, even though you guys gave chains and bands first, I actually think you checked the boxes and all the other ones before. Oh yeah, if your programming sucks, that doesn't matter. Right, like if you're not doing frequency, you're not doing the exercises that we talked about, you're not manipulating rep ranges at tempo we didn't address. Or you're training too hard or over-training. Yeah, shoulders aren't tracking properly, they're not stabilizing. Hit all those, and then, if you've checked all those box enough consistently, then playing with cool tools, I think, like we mentioned, I think are of value. You know what's funny? If you're watching this right now, try this. I bet you at least 50% of the people watching this will increase their bench press by one rep or five pounds by doing the following, and it'll happen right away. Prime your shoulders with either a prone cobra or maybe like a suspension trainer W, or something like that, right? Do some of that, prime and connect, then go bench. It's the strangest thing. You'll all of a sudden see that small increase in strength right away. You didn't build more muscle. All you did was turn things on differently and get things to move a little bit better. So I dare everybody to try that. I bet, like I said, 50, I would bet about half of the people watching this would see their bench press go up by five pounds. That was one of my Friday fitness tips, like I don't know, a month or two ago, I agree. Next question is from Andrew Beth. Are there any common situations where a caloric deficit would not result in weight loss? Yes, now here it is, ready? First of all, if you're in a calorie deficit, your body is making up for those calories by burning tissue. But how can you not lose weight from that happening? Gaining more water weight. This is where you may see your weight stay the same because you're holding more water, even though you're losing body fat or even muscle. That being said, if you are in a deficit, your body has to make up the difference, okay? So let me explain this very simple science, because I know there's people in the wellness space that deficits don't matter and which is not true. That's so false, it's ridiculous. This is like one law that you can't get around. It's literally a law of the universe where energy cannot get created nor destroyed. In other words, it gets transferred. We can't just create it out of nothing. Shit, if there was a way to do this, we would have infinite energy and become interstellar being there. It would be awesome. Yeah, it doesn't work. So here's the deal. Let's say your body's burning 2,000 calories. So that's how many calories your body is burning right now, 2,000, and you take in 1,500. How did your body burn 2,000 if you only took in 1,500? It took it from itself. It burned its own tissue. Usually, body fat can come from other tissues, but it's usually body fat. So if you're in a calorie deficit, you will lose tissue. Your body is taking it from itself. But if the scale doesn't go down and you're like, what's going on? And you know for sure you're in a deficit, it's water. And this one really messes people up. I can't tell you how many times it would mess up clients of mine because they come back and be like, oh my God, I gained two pounds or three pounds or I lost three pounds. I ate like a crazy over the weekend and I lost three pounds. What does this mean? Or vice versa. And it's like, okay, let's give it a few weeks and see if it sticks. Because I don't know about you guys. My body weight could fluctuate five pounds in one day just from water. So this was something I always knew, but I didn't communicate it a lot until I went through those three years of competing. And I had to track and measure. And I was so diligent about everything so consistently. And I saw, holy shit, how much? So I actually got to a place where I was fluctuating nine pounds in the night. So I would go, now mind you, I'm doing a gallon and a half to two gallons of water. You're a big dude, lots of muscle. Yeah, 230 pounds. So that's a lot for the average person. But it is not that far off like three to five pounds. The average person easily can fluctuate. And that is a lot. Three to five pounds in a night. North or South could really fuck somebody up. Totally. That's busting their ass on losing weight. And then they get on the scale the next morning, hoping that all that hard work they did the last two days is gonna show and it goes up. Talk about really discouraging for somebody who's on a weight loss journey. And then talk about what a terrible signal for them to be sent to then adjust what they're doing. And this is why I became a thing that I started to communicate a lot about. They would all of a sudden change their calories. And what does that mean? It's a fact. So then that person freaks out that day, they cut their calories even more. So maybe reduce it another 500 when they didn't need to. They get on the treadmill now for an hour later on that day. And they totally send their body a signal that they do not need to send. And they just make it more difficult for themselves in the future. And so you gotta be careful of allowing a day or two of fluctuating upper. And then you add in things too. Like when, you know, if you're on your period, that's gonna change. It's you add in a day where you just drank a little more water. You add in a day where you had saltier foods. So you had higher sodium intake. Like all these things can make a difference on how much water you would stress. You have a stressful day at work. So your body starts to retain a little bit more water. So all these factors can manipulate how much water your body ends up holding in a day or not releasing. And a lot of times people allow that to dictate what they do nutritionally and exercise-wise. And then they just make it worse for themselves. This is the number one reason why extremely low carb diets became so popular. It was not the only reason, but it's the number one reason because you see very fast initial weight gain with a low carb diet. You don't retain quite as much water. Yeah, when you take the carbs. Oh, right away. Every three grams of carbs that you intake your body holds on to three ounces of water. So you take somebody who's eating three, 400 grams of carbs every single day and do the math. That's how many ounces of water their body is not holding on to now. I'll lose easily if I cut my car. And I don't eat a lot of carbs anyway, but if I cut my carbs, I'll easily lose eight pounds within a week on the scale. But I know it's water. I'm not burning eight pounds of body fat in a week. So definitely it's definitely important to consider that. But again, deficit or surplus, me, by the way, when people say it doesn't matter, either A, they're totally negligent, ignorant and idiots or B, they're confusing what may be happening. Cause yes, you can, you can adjust, you can change how many calories your body burns, which then makes it no longer a deficit or no longer a surplus. And then they'll come across me like, no, calorie surplus or deficit doesn't matter because I ate the deficit. I didn't, I haven't lost anyway. Well, your body adjusted, it's burn. So again, the deficit or the surplus, that ultimately it will make or break whether or not you gain or lose weight. So what you're saying is we can't create energy from nothing until we get a Tesseract. Yeah, totally. Next question is from Matthew Garcia. What are the best body weight exercises to build a stronger core and when to program them? You know what I'm gonna do right now? I'm gonna give my favorite advanced core exercise. This is advanced. So you need to be really strong and have good stability, but I'm gonna give one of my favorites away. This was an exercise I saw Bruce Lee doing back in the day, yes. And then, so Bruce Lee, I was like a huge Bruce Lee fan when I was a kid. I mean, enter the dragon, return to the dragon, you know, return of the dragon, excuse me, Chinese connection, like great, I loved him. And he was really muscular for that era and he did all these exercises. He did dragon flags, which were really cool. And then here's what solidified it. Rocky did it in Rocky IV. That's the one where they're doing the montage where he's getting ready for the Russian and he's doing them on the thing. Anyway, that exercise, you know, if you're strong enough and have the right stability, nothing builds my core. Like literally, I'll do seven reps of that and nothing will build. There's a picture of. And there's lots, so most people won't be able to do this, but there's actually, you could do like a regression to this. Like there's regressions that you can do like almost like a reverse crunch to a lifting your hips off. So your knees are just slightly bent and kind of, yeah. Or you could even do like where your legs are straight but you know what I'm saying, right? Where you're, you kind of roll the spine up and they keep your legs. Instead of maintaining that. Yeah, instead of maintaining it, like the dragonfly is really advanced but there's definitely variations of this to progress you to get here that the average person could actually do that I agree have tremendous value. Now I'm gonna back out and I'll give you some of my favorite, one of my favorite basic exercises. I love reverse crunches. It's one of my favorite exercises. I would have clients often start with it because it was harder to turn into a reverse crunch into a hip flexor sit-up than a forward sitting crunch or sit-up. So I'd have people lay on the floor or on a bench, they would anchor their upper body, bend their knees, tuck their knees so everything's kind of nice and tight and then just roll their pelvis backwards off the bench and it's a great way to really work the, you know, the muscles of the core. Highlight is a simple exercise, the perfect sit-up and just because I can, you know, you can sort of highlight the connectivity between like each one of your abs and like really focusing on bringing that stern down towards your belly button and getting that, you know, that sensation and that crunch and feeling there in the core and really isolating it. And then another one, well, I was gonna bring up levers like for like an extreme version of what you're talking about with the dragon flags but you can do that with a pull-up bar and sort of work your way up with that. Again, to your point, you can bend your knees and you can kind of slowly, it's more of an eccentric type of a move where you're really stabilizing your entire body. The other one that's really a lot more simple than that is the hollow body position and that's basically, like a lot of people do planks and they're familiar with planks and that isometric position in terms of like stabilizing the spine, getting your core activated. Well, you know, flipping on your back so now your legs are just slightly up, your toes are pointed, your arms are behind your head and your fingers are pointed. It just helps to kind of connect the entire body at once. So if I can, if I have that ability, that translates so well to basically any position I put you in. So perfect sit-up was the one I was gonna say and I just think that that lays the foundation for like every other ab exercise you're going to do that having the ability to articulate your spine like that, slow and control. Not only is it extremely challenging but it's so beneficial to everything else. The other one that I'd add in there because, and I thought for sure you were gonna steal both from me, Justin, is to, I like a cable wood chop, you know? I just, because you can load it quite a bit. Very functional. Yeah, the rotational strength unit, the anti-rotational strength that comes from it, very functional, I just, there's... And rotation is rarely ever trained in core workouts. So those would be like my two favorite or I like what you did with the Dragonfly or like a regression of that, like those. And then where do you program it was the rest of this question? Well, typically either on a day it's on its own or at the end of a workout, and here's why. Now I know if you have a weak body part it's important to prioritize that body part and work at first in a workout. The problem with the core and doing that with the core is you need it to be stable for almost everything that you do. It's not a great idea to start a workout with core, fatigue your core, then you go on to work out your legs or your back or upper body and the risk of injuries tends to go up. So typically at the end of the workout, two or three days a week, maybe six sets for core. I would incorporate some rotation, don't neglect rotation and some kind of a, you know, rolling forward or rolling back extra. Physioball crunches are another really good one. You got to do them right though. Active planks is another really good exercise, but something that targets the abs so that you're bringing the rib cage and the pelvis closer together. So that's any movement that does that. So that could be a crunch, a reverse crunch, could be a perfect sit-up. And then something with rotation and the cable chop is a gray or bands. You know, that rotation is so important. And if you watch people's core workouts, they almost never include rotation either A because it's not a popular way to train your core or B because they're misinformed and say, and they think, oh, if I work my obliques, I'm gonna get a bigger waist. Got your bid. So stupid, that's so dumb. Please train your obliques like you train the other muscle. They're very important and the stronger and more defined your obliques are, the better your core will look. Next question is from Nate B. How do I increase compliance with my clients? Oh yeah, this is, you know what's funny? Of all the questions I get from trainers. Don't learn from the government. Beat them. Yeah. This has to be one of the more common ones. You know, versions of this, right? Like, how do I get my clients to do, you know, what I tell them? How do I get my clients to eat better? How do I get my clients to show up more at the gym? Okay, so here's what I would have said to you 15 years ago. What I would have said is you have to inspire them. You have to motivate them. You have to, you know, really present the case really well and get them to do what you want. Call them every day. Hey buddy, you know who it is. We planned this. You were supposed to be here with me? Yeah, I'm right here. Come find me. And then I realized that that was a terrible strategy because although if you're good and I was great, so one thing I'll say is I can sell an idea very, very well. This is something that I've always been able to do pretty well. So I could get my clients to buy in right away and I was really good at this. But I would get them to buy in with inspiration, motivation. That would wane either because they weren't working with me anymore or because it wanes because that's just what happens. And then they would stop. And I realized this is a failing strategy. I can motivate them all day long. It's not gonna last forever. My goal is to get this person to do things forever. So what I started to do was meet them where they were at and I would inform them, I would support them and whatever they could commit to, I would do the best job of providing the best service and value. And then what would happen was magical. They would slowly improve their compliance on their own. Some people it would take a year or two. Other people it would take a few months. But I had so much success by telling my clients, here's what, okay, here's what'll get you where you wanna go. Oh, you wanna start there, that's no problem. We could do a lot with that. And then I would be that guy. I'd train them, support them, I'd be honest with them. Oh my God, why am I not losing weights that well? It's because the diet part, I'd be honest with them. But I wouldn't force them, I wouldn't sit there and try and inspire and motivate them and drive them to do what I wanted. And then little by little they'd come to me and be like, hey, Sal, I wanna do this thing with my nutrition. Hey, Sal, I'd like to show up to another workout or hey, I've been doing this other exercise on my own. And little by little, these people magically did all the right stuff, took a little longer, but it stuck, it stuck forever. Well, isn't the difficulty in the beginning is that you're reliant a lot of times because you're a business model of bringing them into the gym. And so it's like this urgency and this hustle to have them in front of you, have control. A lot of it is a control issue, I think, that a lot of personal trainers have in terms of even this word compliance. It's this assumption that they're gonna be doing all these things that you're telling them and you're the biggest part of the piece in this entire puzzle of them moving forward. And it took me a long time to pull myself out of that entire equation. And to do what you're talking about in terms of providing the right kind of information, being available constantly, making sure they know that they can rely on me. But guess what? If you don't show up, it's completely on you. And I actually flipped my business model on its head so that way they were in that same understanding that they know that I'm gonna be there. I'm gonna be professional. I'm gonna take them through when they're ready, wherever they're at, what they're willing to commit to. I'm definitely gonna be there if they don't show up. That's something they have to wrestle with themselves. This is their journey. This is entirely in their process. I just wanna keep reassuring them. I'm gonna be here. I have the tools for you to get through this on the other side. It's basically, instead of being there casting the fishing rod for them, I'm teaching them how to fish and do this all themselves and then removing myself. Way more successful. Yeah. I'm gonna piggyback off of what Sal said, but probably say it a little bit different than the meeting them where they're at type of deal. Is anytime you learn something new, whether it be a sport or a new habit or behavior, it's like part of what makes people wanna keep doing that is the experience that they have from it. And normally if it's a positive experience that they have, they're more likely to come back and do it again. Like if you go play a sport for the first time and you get your ass handed to you or you don't like it, it's a miserable experience. You fail at it, you fail at it. It's really tough to get up and wanna do that again. That's the same thing when it comes to working out. And so what I wanna do is I wanna create a ton of small wins. So it's kinda like the same thing that you're talking about, Sal. But when I set these goals, I'm gonna set things that I know that they can get, they can accomplish. So we can just start adding up all these little wins so to give them momentum and to encourage them to wanna do more and comply to more things that I'm gonna throw their way. If you lay something out and it's this super complex, hard tons of workouts, tons of diet and calorie stuff to follow, like, and you give them all, there's a small percentage of people that, okay, they get that and maybe the engineer mind that really likes that and they're like, okay, I got all the details. I know exactly what to do. That's not most people. Most people are not like that. Most people look at that and go like, oh, it's like sitting down with a kid, trying to teach them football for the first time and you're teaching them all these defensive schemes, all these different stances, how to throw those this and like you're teaching them like 50 things at once and you're like, oh my God, this is overwhelming. It's like literally give them one thing, one goal you're gonna give them right now that you know is an easy win that they can accomplish either that day or the next day or within that first week and then you build upon that and what you'll see is if you can build that momentum, you'll see the compliance start to go up versus trying to throw everything at them at once. It's 100% and when I pieced it together, I mean, I had a client once that I remember when she showed up, she was referred to me by one of my other clients, that was a doctor and she came in and literally, this was the first words out of her mouth. I introduced myself and she said, I don't like to work out. I'm here because Dr. So-and-So has told me numerous times I gotta come see you. I'm only gonna work with you once a week. I'm not gonna do anything on my own and I'm not changing my diet. Those were the first things out of her mouth when she met me. Old trainer Sal would have blown her out the door. Well, you're not gonna do what I say, you're not serious, whatever. Instead, I said, no problem. There's a lot we could do with one day a week, definitely more than what you're doing now, which is zero and she looked at me like, really, I can only have to come once a week. I said, yeah, absolutely. If you're not working at it all now with once a week, there's a lot of stuff that we can do together. Now, here's the interesting part about this story. After about two years or through the course of two years, this woman met with me two more days a week, started working out on her own, started working on her nutrition, became a certified personal trainer. This was over the course of two years because I met her where she was and I provided her a ton of value. It also reminds me of, I have a family member who was very talented at soccer when he was a kid, but his dad was a very high level soccer player in Italy. So when he was a kid, his dad was like, super soccer coach. No, you gotta do it this way. You gotta do it that way. And he'd bring him to all these games and he just overbearing. Well, this family member of mine hated soccer because of it and quit when he was 12. Later on, at the age of 30, he looks back and he goes, man, if my dad was cool about it, he goes, I would have gone to college and had a scholarship and I would have loved it. But he made it such a shitty experience that I ended up quitting. Now he's a dad himself and he's different with his kids. So think of it that way. By the way, the advice that we're giving to the coach right now works when you coach yourself. Okay, this is the important part of this. When you're trying to coach yourself and get yourself to do this new thing, okay? It's the same thing. Say to yourself, what is a small challenging yet realistic step that I can take right now or in a state of mind that is not motivated? I'm gonna start there. Do that and then watch the natural progression happen from there. If you do everything all at once, your chances of long-term success are less than 10%. That's statistically true. So less than 10%. So whatever advice we're giving to this trainer right now, apply it to yourself for better long-term odds of success. Look, if you like our information, you gotta head over to mindpumpfree.com and check out all of our guides. We have guides that can help you with almost all of your fitness, nutrition, and health goals. You can also find all of us on Instagram. So Justin is at Mind Pump, Justin. I'm at Mind Pump Sal and Adam is at Mind Pump Adam.