 You can't get the full picture of something when you just look at individual parts. So especially things that are complex. When we're talking about how the human body adapts in response to stresses, like exercise or how it adapts to nutrition. For example, human metabolism is probably the second, mammalian metabolism is probably the second most complex thing we've identified in the universe besides the human brain. So we're trying to identify like how the body adapts to exercise and nutrition, all that stuff. Multitude of factors. To get a full picture, you can't look at one study. You can't look at two studies. You have to look at a lot of studies. And you also have to consider the opinions of experts who've been working in a particular field like that for decades. And you have to take all of that. And then you might get- See how it all interacts with each other. And that's still not far enough. And then you have to account for behavior and psychology of people. So much. Boom. We're back. It's time. Here's the giveaway for today's episode, MAP Strong. This is a strongman-inspired workout program. By the way, if you don't want to be a strongman, doesn't matter. Great program. Builds lots of muscle, lots of posterior chain work. One of my favorite non-bodybuilder style type workout programs. And you can get it for free, but you got to do this. Leave a comment below in the first 24 hours that we drop this episode. Subscribe to this channel. Turn on notifications. If you do all those things and we read your comment and we like your comment as the best comment, we'll notify you and you'll get free access to MAP Strong. One more thing. We got a sale going on this month. We have a workout program bundle that's 50% off. And we have an individual program that's 50% off. Here's what they are. The starter bundle includes MAPs Antibolic, MAPs Prime, and the Intuitive Nutrition Guide. Now that bundle is normally discounted. So what we did is we took an additional 50% off. So it's a huge sale. And then the program that's on sale is MAP Split. This is an advanced bodybuilder style, body part split routine. High volume. It's great for body sculpting, body building. If you're advanced, it's a great workout program. That program is also 50% off. So if you want to sign up for either one or both, go to MAPsFitnessProducts.com, click on the one you want, and then use the code MAY SPECIAL for the 50% off discount. All right. Here comes the show. All right. So I'm going to start today's fitness tip by reading a proverb to all of you. This is an Indian proverb. And believe me, this actually applies very strongly to what we're going to talk about. So here's how it goes. A group of blind men heard that a strange animal called an elephant had been brought to the town, but none of them were aware of its shape and form. So out of curiosity, they said, we must inspect and know it by touch, of which we are capable. So they sought it out. And when they found it, they groped about it. The first person whose hand landed on the trunk said, this is like a thick snake. For another one whose hand reached its ear, he thought it seemed like a fan. Another person whose hand was upon its leg said that this must be a pillar, like a tree trunk. And then the blind man who placed his hand upon its side said the elephant was a wall. Finally, one of them felt the tail and described it as a rope. And one of them also felt the tusk, thinking that it was a spear. So what does this have to do with fitness? Can I tell you something? Two things. One, I've never heard that before. Isn't that cool? Two, I love you, because I know exactly where you're going with this. This has to be related to our forum little discussion that happened. Totally. Yes, totally. So, okay. So it's an ancient proverb, because essentially what it's explaining is that you really, you can't get the full picture of something when you just look at individual parts. So especially things that are complex. So this is a simple thing. It's an elephant, but they're blind and all they know has had a touch. And so each person comes and gives their contribution. Now, when we're talking about how the human body adapts in response to stresses, like exercise or how it adapts to nutrition, for example, human metabolism is probably the second, mammalian metabolism is probably the second most complex thing we've identified in the universe besides the human brain. So we're trying to identify like how the body adapts to exercise and nutrition, all that stuff. It is a multitude of factors. To get a full picture, you can't look at one study. You can't look at two studies. You have to look at a lot of studies. And you also have to consider the opinions of experts who've been working in a particular field like that for decades. And you have to take all of that. And then you might get... See how it all interacts with each other. And that's still not far enough. And then you have to account for behavior and psychology of people. So much. You have to factor that in because that's ultimately what we're trying to do here. So you have to paint the rest of the picture of this and explain what happened in the forum where we were kind of going back and forth and you... We had a kid. I don't remember his name in there. We should call him out because for that reason, made a comment about the programming. And I knew right away without him even saying any further like who he's falling on social media because there's a lot of people in our space, very smart guys, very fit guys, very experienced guys that love to use studies to make debates and arguments all day long on why this is better than that. Yes. Now, here's a big issue is that in our space, you have different camps of people who form different opinions. And one of the camps is the study camp. I do want to be very clear. Studies are extremely valuable ways of uncovering the truth. They're not the only way because we're talking about something that's very complex. And studies also can be... It's amazing resource, but it's only like that one small piece to the... Well, they could be very limited. For example, when you look at a study, there's a few things that you want to consider like the sample size importance. How many people were in the study? Let's say it was 10, 10 people and we divided this into two groups and we tested two different training modalities. The odds that two or three of the people in one of the groups had like superior muscle building genetics is higher because it's a small sample size. So what if that happens? What if one group had one guy with like bodybuilder genes, which are super rare, right? But let's say there's one guy on one side and then you do the cumulative at the end of it, the results and you go, oh, wow, this method built way more muscle than this method, right? So that's sample size. Okay. And then you can add in this is that it's in a controlled environment where they're running it for six to 12 weeks and another factor plays that 90% of the population wouldn't consistently follow that or do that because behaviorally speaking, yes, which doesn't take an account in that study. No, that's that's where you get like the experienced people who go like, you know, here's an example like what if there was a study that said it compared like 10 different forms of cardio and they said of all these forms of cardio, the one that burned the most fat was swimming in a lake at 5am, right? Okay. What is that worth? Nothing for most people. Most people aren't going to go swim in a lake at 5am for cardio. The most effective form is the one that you do most consistently, right? That's what an experienced coach would say. Another one is who is in the sample? Look at the studies, especially fitness studies, 99% of them or maybe that's too much, but I'd say a vast majority of them are college aged males. Do you think the results could change if it was women or if the age group was different? Look, I've trained people for, for decades. If I trained people between the ages of 20 to 30 versus 40 to 50, uh, is it, am I going to get the same results? Are training modalities going to change and which one's going to be more effective and what I need to focus on more on this group versus that? That's a big difference. Yeah. The methods applied. Is it repeatable? Yes. Can you take that same study with a whole new host of different, uh, applicants and it has the same result. Like this is, that's what science is trying to really discover is like, you know, how many times does this, uh, a result happen within this controlled study? You're right. And another one is the length of the study. This one's interesting for fitness, right? So let's say it's a 12 week study and let's say they're comparing, um, a leg press to a barbell squat and they take, uh, let's say 20 college aged males with some fitness experience, which we don't know what that really means, but usually it means that they've, they've done sports or something in the background in the, in the, in their past. And they compared leg press to, to barbell squat and they said, Oh, wow. Look at this. Uh, in 12 weeks, the leg press built 2% more muscle or was equal. Let's say it was equal. Here's the problem with that. The problem with that is that a barbell squat is a far more technical exercise that requires more skill. And this has happened to me all the time. When I would train people, especially new people, especially beginners, it would take me two or three months before we could do squats in a way that built muscle because it's a high-skill exercise. Now leg press, I could sit someone on it, load it right away. Yeah. Almost right away. Or within two weeks I could start pushing weight. So you're not getting a full picture. Uh, now in my experience, just using the same example, a barbell squat over time, over years and years and years, just keeps giving you returns. Whereas a leg press, yeah, you, you get some returns initially cause it's easier to learn, but then it starts to slow down. Whereas the squats continue to, you know, to kind of have that, that pay off. Um, another one is controls. What, what if we don't control their protein intake? Just protein impact, how much muscle you build, or what about sleep? Yeah. What about, you know, stress, you know, all these different things. And what if the study was observational or survey based? We surveyed, you know, 50 people who work out, asked them what they're like, so these are the things that you want to consider. Now, I'm not saying that again, they report their own diets. Like, it's like, you know how inaccurate that is having clients, like how they would report, like just, Oh, I forgot about all these things. Oh my God, written down. You're not getting the full picture. And so, so when you look at a study that says this isolation exercise builds as much muscle and the quadriceps as this compound lift. And okay, that's one study. Maybe you found two or three like that, but consider all the stuff I said. And then don't ignore the what you're going to hear from people who are experienced, who've actually worked with people for years and years and years. Cause what are we all considering? For example, I'll give a great example. Here's why I like full body workouts over splits for most people. The main reason, if you work out your body, your whole body, three days a week versus doing a body part split, I know over the next year, two years, three years, the average person is going to miss, you know, two workouts a month, let's say three workouts a month. Right. It tends to be the body part they don't want to work on. Now, if you miss a full body workout, you're still hitting your full body. And so over time, the full body workouts, one reason why they tend to be more successful is you don't, you don't end up with these lagging body parts because of your dresses, everything. Yeah, it addresses everything. So this is the stuff that we need to consider. And, you know, again, when you're, when you're passing, making these judgments, especially let's say you're, you know, this is a hobby of yours. You like to read studies and listen to that. You know, here's what happens. This happens to a lot of kids too. This is a lot of people that hobby. Well, you know what it is? Is today it's, and it's so prevalent today in comparison to 20 years ago, because now anybody can get on YouTube or Instagram and follow a couple of people that claim to be experts. And now all of a sudden you think you're an expert. Or yeah, especially if it confirms your bias, of course, if you're, if you're a kid, you know, I just want to build a lot of muscle. And then you listen to mind pumping. Like, oh, I got a squatting deadlift. Like, I can't really do those well. Those are hard. I got to work on mobility. Then he listened to some other guys like, no, man, you know, these exercise build just as much muscle, muscle, leg extension, hack squat. They're better for hypertrophy actually. Yeah. And in fact, you know, you're like, yes, I don't have to do all that hard stuff. And I only want, I really only care about how I look anyway. So you get that confirmation, you know, bias that's going on. So you got to consider all that stuff. And when you're talking about adaptation, I'm telling you right now, it is very complex. Also, the other thing too, is that there's like general truths. But when you break it down to the individual, it's not always true because we're so different. Everybody's so different. And to be more specific to the person that we're addressing or the conversation that we're addressing, that's, that was the thing, whereas that the maps programming is subpar for hypertrophy. And the reason why they think that is because, and they're referencing some of the Instagram people out there that do the post of these exercises are better for hypertrophy than these compound lifts. And the case that we've been trying to make on the show, which I mean, when, when someone debates this, I'm like, you obviously haven't listened to that many, that many episodes because I feel like we've addressed this before 100 times. Yeah, we've, we've gone over why, why that is. And it's because of the big bang that you get for your buck for with compound lifts in comparison to that. All this stuff. Yeah. Not just hypertrophy. Right. You, you have to factor all those other things in there. It's not that simple, like a control, a controlled study. And then therefore, oh, okay, I'm going to skip doing barbell squats and all I'm going to do is leg extension and leg press now, because those are technically better for hypertrophy. I'll give you a great example. If you talk to a, uh, like an Instagram diet, you know, influencer about how to lose the most amount of weight in 60 days. And then you listen to one of us talk about how to burn body fat. You're going to get two different answers. Why? Because one person is, what they're worried about is how to get you to lose as much as much body fat in 60 days. We trained people for a long time. I don't care about how fast you lose body fat. I care about if you can keep it off for the rest of your life. So my advice is based around that. When we're invite, when we're creating programs, we're like, for example, let's just say using a multitude of, of, of machines adds 2% more muscle than using free weights. Here's why I'm not going to put a million machines in my, in my programs. Most people don't have access to every single machine that I'm a listen there. Most people have access to free weights. Also, if you're tall or short or you move differently or whatever, free weights follow you machine, you have to follow the machine. So if you don't consider any of that, um, then you're not getting the full picture. So, and it's, this just happens a lot. In our space, but especially when there's complex things like diet and nutrition, um, and exercise and, you know, all the stress, like very complex pain, very complex, you're not going to get the answer by reading a few studies or listening to one person who specializes in the body building fanatical, ridiculous community. You know, there's a bit of a bias there going on too. So. Well, the problem with most, most all these studies too is they're, they're done in such short windows. Yeah. So little, so little can be actually measured in six to 12 weeks, like you can get an idea of something, but like to your original point, if, if we were to take, so we actually followed a kid, okay. And same exact kid or the same two kids in the exact same situation, same body types, let's just pretend they're twins or whatever. And, uh, you know, and one decides to follow all those stuff that they hear is like these, these exercises, these, uh, isolation exercises are better for hypertrophy. And then this person's going to do all these boring, you know, compound lifts that we talk about all the time and you follow that person over a year or two years time. I'm still going to put all my money on the person that's following the compound lifts. Now they may get a slower start because of the learning curve to your point. It may take them, it may take them two, three months before they can even really load the bar. I mean, it took me a long time before I could really get after a squat. Right. I spent almost a year fixing my squat before I could start to load that sucker and see the gains really start to compile. So if you were to take in me for a six month study, I would have shown leg press and leg extension was better for my legs, but that's not the case years later of lifting. You take, take two people who've never learned how to type properly, but who type all the time with the, you know, the hunting pet method and you have them compete on speed of typing, but you take one of them and say, we're going to teach you how to type properly and you have to use proper typing techniques for the first three months, he's going to get smoked by the guy using this method right here, but after, after he really starts to master the technique of typing, he's going to surpass and hit much higher limits with the speed of typing, right? That's what we got to consider. So look, we're not interested in short term results. The ceiling is much higher. It is. And here's a deal. Short, the short term, there is no problem with short term fitness. There isn't. People lose weight all the time. The problem is not losing weight. The problem is not getting in shape in 30 days. People do that all the time. It's keeping it, right? That's the challenge. That's what we talk about. So when we program our programs, like if you don't, and here's a problem, and this is, I told that kid this, I said, you're unconsciously incompetent. I didn't mean to be, I wasn't trying to be rude, but I'm like, you don't know what you don't know. So you're, you're coming in with an opinion, but you're also blindfolded. And so you're just parroting one thing that you've heard. And yeah, to your point, to what Sal said, to a bias that you already want to hear. Exactly. That's half the problem. I would have loved to hear some of that stuff as a kid because it's that's hard. Yeah, I was lucky, by the way I ran into power lifters who told me otherwise, and because I was a kid and they were jacked, I'm like, I'm gonna do what they say. But had I not ran into those power lifters, I would have read an article and I would have been like, oh, squats, they don't build. I mean, I could build as much muscle doing leg extensions and leg curls and in the leg. I'm doing that. Well, this is somewhat, I mean, again, I didn't read this with you guys. And so, you know, I could totally see, you know, where you're coming from with this. This is somewhat similar to conversations I've had with these kids. We just did a lift-a-thon on Friday, and it's basically it's the reveal of all the hard works January. And it's like, you know, some kids are getting a little bit frustrated and this and that because they want to get the beach muscles and want the hypertrophy focus. They want all these other things. But I'm like, you've got to trust the process, trust the process. And guess what? You know, we get to the day where we're now we're going to display and go for our max lifts and it blew their mind how much they could lift in comparison. That's so awesome. So before, and it's like, you know, it's all of that was foundationally driven strength and was addressing things that they didn't even know I was addressing. Right. And it's like, I'll have to sit there and explain all this stuff. I have those years of experience and that foresight as to what I see in terms of imbalances, what I see in terms of loss of power, leaks of power. And, you know, they don't it's at that point where you just have to kind of concede sometimes and be like, I got to trust that this result is going to happen. Yeah, dude, when I did when I was a kid, I remember when I did judo, my dad brought me I was 12, the first like, I don't know, like two months, you just learn how to fall properly. And I'm like, I just want to throw people. I want to learn how to choke people. And, you know, it's not always sexy, man. No, since it's like, you don't know how to fall, dude. You don't learn how to fall. Let's say none of the other stuff is going to matter. So yeah, I know it's funny. I know it's funny we have to have these conversations, but it's good because it's a it's again, you don't know what you don't know. And so it's it could it could be easy to to judge or create an opinion without realizing the complexity. Yeah, but I know, I mean, I didn't engage. I wanted to engage and I took a deep breath and I'm like, I'm not going to engage this kid right now. But I think the part that annoys me is that do you think that we haven't read all those studies? Yeah. Do you think that we're aware? Yeah, do you think we're unaware of that? You know, because this because some other guys touting it on Instagram or YouTube, you don't think we read those studies too or what? Like I pay attention to all those people, the most those most the studies they're pulling from are years old. So it's not you see what I eventually said because he listed some of the people he's heard this from. And I'm like, I'm not going to say their names. I don't want to call anybody out. But I'm like, all right, I said here's do this. If you want to listen to anyone else other than us, here's two people that I think have great advice. They're very science-based, but they're also very experienced. They understand the whole picture. Joda Frank, Joda Franco, Brett Contreras, yeah, OK, fitness stuff, right? You look at their fitness stuff and they know they have a better idea of the complete picture because they look at the science. They Contreras, I believe. I'd say Lane is up there too. Lane Norton. They're heavy on application. I'd say Lane, Lane's up there too. Yeah, yeah. Very heavy science-based and yet, but when it comes to lifting, they understand a lot of them. Yeah, but Brett and Joe specifically have trained people over and over and over again. Yeah. And so when you talk to them, you hear, you'll hear a lot of stuff that we say. That's not why I like them. It's just that they have the experience, you know, not just the studies. Yeah. Anyway, I got to tell you guys a hilarious story this weekend. So, Jessica and I had a weekend away. Oh, you went to the sanctuary, yeah? No, no, no, no. We went somewhere else. We were at Half Moon Bay. Oh, Half Moon Bay. Was that like a change of plan or was it OK? Gorgeous up there, by the way. It was like, it was sunny but cool. And where did you stay? It was a nice weekend. Ritz? Oh, you did. That's a beautiful one. Gorgeous, right? It's on the cliff. Fire, right? Have you been there? Yeah, yeah, the fire pits on the cliff. Spectacular, right? So, we go there and it's a special thing because, you know, the babies, this is like one of our first times away and she's finally, I don't want to like... Don't you kick yourself. I don't want to dare, yeah, but she's her like extreme nausea, I think, is over. She still gets some of it, but not like it was where she was like bad ridden or whatever. Yeah. So, we're like, let's have a nice weekend so my mom watched the baby so we go up there and we have this incredible dinner. It was like a seven course like tasting menu and, you know, so we're like really having a good time. I'm drinking, enjoying myself. Anyway, we go to bed and you guys know how I've been trying to get leaner because I'd snore at night. Keeps her up and it's kind of, you know, like this is like a thing, you know, it's like a battle and you don't want, you don't want to have to sleep in a separate room from your wife, right? So, trying to fix it by losing weight and I hadn't snored for like four days. So, I'm like awesome. So, we go to this, we go there, we have this dinner, I drink. I don't know if you guys know this, but alcohol and... Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So, we go to bed and throughout the whole night, she'll like bump me or like wake me up, you know? And I'm half awake. So, you know, she wakes me up a little bit and then I'm annoyed too. So, we're kind of back and forth this whole night, right? So, finally, I'm like, oh, you're making too much noise. Just keep making noise. I say to her and she's like, I'm doing that to prevent you from snoring because then you snore and I can't sleep. And so then we get this little argument. Go back to sleep. I must have started snoring again because Jessica gets out of bed and she goes, do you mind if I take the covers? And I said, yeah, I usually don't sleep with covers. I'm like, go ahead. Where are you going? She's like in the bathroom. So, she takes... But she did not sleep with the bathtub. In the bathtub. No, she didn't. She did, bro. She took... She goes right to Ritz and she sleeps with the... Bro, bathtub. They have a big tub. Yeah, at least it's a nice bathtub. She takes the covers. She takes everything, goes in there and closes the door. So, now I'm sleeping in, you know, with no covers. She's in the bathtub and we're both kind of like annoyed, right? And then I started getting a little cold, you know? So, I'm like, oh, man. And then I started feeling bad for her. I'm like, she's sleeping in the bathtub. Like, she's pregnant. Like, this is messed up. So, then I go in there. I'll sleep in the bathtub. So, I would never fit in the bed. So, I go in there and I wake her up and I'm like, honey, I'm like, just come into bed. I'll try to sit up in bed so that I don't snore as much. I convince her, she comes back. I'm sitting up in bed. Then, you know, we get a little argument again and the boy is like, oh, dude. But she was so like, she was good. She handled me well. Because she had every right to be annoyed, you know, with the whole thing and the fact that she went in the bathroom. It was really nice. Even though I took it as like, you took the covers. But, oh, bro. Now, has she tried to do like earplugs? Because I know some- She won't because she makes her anxious because she wants to hear if she hears the baby or whatever. Yeah. So- That sucks. I know. I know. You can't really win in that situation. No, but it's because I drank, dude. Doug and I were in Utah right this last week and Brooke was showing us this house. And had you ever seen a house that had that? A snor room? Oh, no. I've never heard of that before. Yeah. So she actually was like, she was showing, it was a custom home. It was like this crazy like $5 million plus home. She was showing us that one of her friends was building or whatever. And she was showing the layout. And then it's the master bedroom. And then you go through like, I think the bathroom or closet. And then there's a room that's like sealed and it's called, they call it a snor room. And for that exact reason- That's where you get punished or what? No, I think that, well, no. For the exact reason. Like husband snore like that. You send his ass to the snor room. I'd never heard of that before. I don't know about you guys, but I do not like sleeping separate from my wife. It feels weird to me. Does it feel like we're married? So I'm like, I'm not gonna sleep in a different room. I'm just gonna get leaner. I don't know, there's some way to, because I can't be keeping you up all night. Well, I end up right now a lot in the other room. Actually last night, I guess, Katrina left and wants to slept with Max in her room. But when he comes, like he's been sick so much. So we let him in the bed when he's sick. And then he's like kicking me, coughing on me. That's how I got sick again, because he was coughing on me all night long. So a lot of times I'll start in bed with her. And then around one or two, he wakes up or something, he'll come in and then I just like half asleep, walk to the other room and end up sleeping like that. So it's been kind of our life for like the last year. So it's so funny though. I go in the bathroom and she's like, curled up. Did I get the sound, dude? And I felt like the big, I felt like the big, cause I got, I was a little annoyed. Cause you know when you're half asleep, you're not really irony of being at like the Ritz too. You know what I'm saying? You're at like the super fancy hotel and she's sleeping in the bathtub. That's good. Check that off is not one of her favorite places now. But A, the food was incredible. Oh my God, they do that. Cause I like, I like, I'm not, you guys know some of the big things person. I don't spend money on things, but I'll spend on experiences. And so they bring out like these little, and you know what's funny is if I, if I took my, like my grandfather or my dad to a restaurant like that, they would hate it because that's a small portions, but I love that. I love tasting a little bit and then waiting and you know, taking two or three hours for, for dinner was a lot of work. It's very Italian of you. Well, you know, no, I'll tell you, you know, that's how they are over there though. Like over, over, no, you get a lot of everything. No, no, no, no. I mean like the, the taking time between meals. Like a meal is like a four hour experience. I'll never forget going over there how like weird that was for me. Bro, you'll see your waiters in between. Just like take off. Yeah, they'll take, I'll go smoke outside. Yeah, yeah. Bro, what are you doing? Go get my food. And like between each like serving is like a half hour. It's like we're to be here all day. My grandfather one time went to a restaurant like that and he's old school, right? And they brought out one of the dishes was three, just three ravioli. You should have seen my grandfather's face. I thought he was gonna like kill someone. It's like, what the hell? He gets up and he goes to the back and starts complaining. Where's the rest of my food? Who gives, why you only give me three ravioli? I'm like, no, that's not how it works. That's just a tasty ravioli. Yeah, that was always my perception of these high end restaurants. They just give you these tiny little portions. I was like, don't get it. I don't understand it. And then once you get older, you understand the palate. You're like, wow, this is fantastic. Did you do anything with your family this weekend? Yeah, well, we spent some time going to the beach and getting a lot of sun and stuff. Was there a lot of people out there because the weather was so good? Yeah, I mean, it was pretty packed. I did have a pretty cool experience because so you guys remember when I was talking about my trip, when I went to Salt Lake and the kids were competing in gymnastics and then I wasn't able to get these medals because like, you feel like it was like way later and I felt like terrible. And I was like, you know, like just talking about it. And I guess, so this guy Craig Ornes, he runs his own trophy business and does like rings and class rings and all this kind of stuff out of Iowa. He was like, hey, man, I just wanted to make these for you and send them to you for your kid. A listener? Yeah, a listener. Oh, that's so cool. I was like just totally taken back, man. That was so cool. I want a trophy. Yeah, yeah. Just a random trophy. And he was going to do them for the lift-a-thon thing I was throwing together too but unfortunately they didn't kind of come in time but like the medals for the gymnastics came and so I had them and I was like, oh, I got to do something like cool to set this up for Everett. And so he actually had his friend with us, one of his good friends, we took him to the beach with us. And so I was like, oh, Everett, stay there. He was up on the rocks and I'm like, I got something for you. And then like did this whole like ceremony, had like put it on him and he's like, yeah. Like I had him like some pics of him, you know, out there with that. But it was just really cool because he, it's cool he received it well too because he could have still been like a little shit about it. Yeah. This isn't the real trophy. He knows you won. Yeah, I know. But still, I mean, it's cool that his name on the back and everything to the events. And so, dude, he was so pumped about it. I just like, I seriously, I can't like say enough about our fans. That's great. Dude, you just reminded me something. It's so shameless for me to do this but you just, because you said that about our listeners and I know we have a bunch of listeners that actually have 3D printers. So my truck's here today. And I don't know if you guys even noticed my, my center of my hubcaps are out on all my, on my truck. Have you never know so far? Okay, so I lost the center hubcap that covers the lug nuts on one of the four tires. And it just looks stupid with one missing. So I've pulled them all off and I've been trying to, you can't, they discontinued it. Can't order anywhere, can't find anything. And it dawned on me the other day, actually Katrina brought it up. She said, don't you guys have a bunch of people that do 3D printing? And I'm like, oh my God, it's such a, it's just a piece of plastic. So what did you send them one and he called it? Yeah, I should be able to do it. So if you are a listener and you have a 3D printer, of course I'll pay you, it's not a big deal. Like I, because I can't order it, I can't buy one. I've been meaning to bring it up on the show. I actually meant to bring it so I could show it. But I mean, it's literally like this, this big around and I can send that out first. So, you know, DM me or message me, get a hold of me or whatever. That's awesome. Yeah, yeah. Did you, when you guys were kids, what did you like better, a metal or a trophy? Did you guys have a preference? Trophy for sure. Yeah, trophy. I wasn't a metal guy either. You know what I hated the most? A ribbon. Do you ever win a ribbon? What is that? I threw all those away, dude. A ribbon's so science fair or 4-H. That's why. Yeah. Science fair or 4-H. The blue ribbon, it's like, it's not very sporty. Or it's also like, oh, here's your ribbon for participating. What the hell is that? I don't need to participate in it. Ribbon or whatever, it's so dumb. Yeah, I like. Trophy's first metal guy, it was like buff. Swinging a bat or shooting a basketball or something. I love that. When you get a trophy, I don't care what sport you played, whoever the person displayed in the trophy, they were always jacked. Yeah. And you wanted the tallest one, right? There's the smaller one. Yeah, the taller one, the tall one that's just like. Dude, I got a trophy. I mean, it's not as big as some of the, I've seen some crazy trophies, but it had like two layers to it. So it's like, killers, another layer or whatever. Pillars on the sides. I was like, ah, this is the best trophy ever. I think this is one of the biggest ones I've had. I don't think I ever got any. All the soccer and basketball. Oh yeah, you got bronze guy. Yeah, the USA one, and that's bigger than the regular show. So if you do like a regular show, the guys, I don't know about that big or whatever with that. So the USA is a bigger. Are they still giving, they're still giving kids participation trophies, huh? A lot of places. I mean, yeah, but I don't, my kids learn to like. Kids throw them away. They don't care. Did you know what else is fun? Unless they earn it, it's like so stupid. It doesn't mean anything. I, who was it? It was my, I want to say, it might have been my daughter. She was playing basketball when she was younger and they didn't keep score. So they don't keep score of the game. Kids just play. You know who keeps the score? Kids. The kids keep the score. They know who won. Every time. What are we doing? Why are we not keeping score? After the game, you know, my daughter comes up to, we won, you know, 25 to whatever. She has more ideas. They think it's a nice idea to inclusive and whatever, but it takes out the whole like meaning of the sport and the merit of your efforts. So like what you're doing is really just cannibalizing the sport. It's also counter human behavior. And you know what you don't teach kids? When you do that, you never teach them how, cause working together. You need to learn how to fail too. And win. And that you suck. There's a skill in winning. You know what, we talk about this a lot about this with kids. But you know, this, this bled into business and adults. I mean, I remember when I was at 24, the thing that got me to finally leave that company. So I went through eight different comp plans in less than 10 years, right? So basically every year, a new comp plan. And every time the comp plan would come out, anybody that's ever been through that in a company, it's always geared to help the company. That's why they, they restructure it. But for the first six of those, they still always dangled the carrot enough like you. So if you were like, so it was like this, the original comp plan, if you were in the top 20 percentile, you crushed. And then the next comp plan comes out. It's like, well, as long as you're in the top 15 percent, you can still crush. Then the 10, like it kept doing that, right? And so, and I always found a way to stay in the top and make really good money. Well, the final comp plan before I left, it put a ceiling. It didn't matter. It didn't matter if I was the 1%. If I was the best in the entire company, I had a, I was not going to continue to get paid more. So why do that extra bit to push? Exactly. But the idea and the concept was to try and bring up the DNC players up by incentivizing them by paying them more for basically doing the same job. How good did that strategy work? It didn't work. That was a terrible strategy. I know, it didn't work at all. It always sounds logical. Like, yeah, people try to explain it. Well, but you know, why doesn't it play out like that? Well, here's the deal. It's because they're the loud majority, right? They're the 80%. So they're the 80%. They're constantly, you think of a company that has 10,000 employees and you've got 6,000 of them bar, oh, our salads are not paid enough. Yeah, so what do they do? They took the cream off the top to help feed all the bottom and bring everybody up a little bit. But it ends up. But that's the wrong way to do it. I know, it is. Initially, it makes the majority happy because they got paid a little bit more. But what you ended up doing was you discouraged all your horses. And you also get rid of your top performers. And you get rid of your rabbits. Yeah, your horses. Yeah, the people that were pulling that company up, they all go find other places to go make money. Yeah, no, no. And in tech, I forgot who said this and this is actually a true statistic. A super high performing engineer, like one is worth, I think more in terms of production than like 20, I was like a ridiculous number, like 20 or 30 of your standard. You've shared that stat before and I would make the case that that's the same in almost every profession. Most, you're probably right, right? I mean, think about your experience, okay? And I mean, I always had somewhere between on the low end probably 12 to 15 trainers and the high end 25 trainers working for me. And it was three or four that like, I could literally turn over the rest. Yeah, right. And hire brand new person. Keep those top three or four. Keep those top three? And we would be trucking along just fine. Yeah. Because they were the bulk of the revenue stream and they were the real talent. And not only that, because there's another way that makes them more valuable aside from their personal production themselves, they also have the skill sets to train the new players that are coming in. So I would imagine that engineer stat that you bring up all the time is similar. Look, I don't know about you guys, but every great production team I've ever been on always had a superstar and that's part of the reason why other people rose to the occasion, you know? I actually had a, speaking of winning and losing, I had a good teaching opportunity for my daughter recently. So my daughter, my oldest daughter, she's 12. She's hyper ambitious, like very, very ambitious, very hardworking. So awesome. It is, but what's the dark side of that, right? Is that you can overwork yourself, stress yourself, dust off. But I know you too though, you would always rather have a kid or an employee that you would have to pull back. Of course. Than you constantly. It's just different, right? Oh yeah, definitely. And so she ran for student council and the position she ran for, she's in sixth grade. She was running against the seventh grader. So the odds that she was gonna win are very low because it's hard, you know, you don't know how it is when you're a kid, like a grade above you, they're gonna get more attention, more votes, that kind of stuff. But she was super prepared, did her speech, got her posters, like, and really impressive. Like, I don't think I would have given a speech in front of the school at sixth grade, but she went up and did it and did the whole thing around for it. I don't think I would have done it. But anyway, she didn't win. So she, which the odds of her winning were super low to begin with. She was so upset, right? Yeah, because that's my daughter, she's so, and I had a nice conversation with her and I said, you know, because I always call her champion. And they said, you know why I call you a champion? I said, it's not because you win all the time, it's because you don't give up. And I said, you know, you either win or you learn and we had this whole conversation about it. And I also told her, look, you did your best, the odds were low, but now you can pick up from this learn and then try again next time. But this is what life is all about. You're gonna, and every time you lose, you have the opportunity to become much better. I said, and I told her this too, I said, you learn way more from losing than you do from winning, which is true. Although there's lessons in winning, you learn way more. I mean, every loss I ever had, I way more learning came from and growth came from that. We had this whole conversation, but I felt so bad. She was so upset because she put, she worked so hard. Yeah. You just want nothing, but. But she's, dude, she's an animal. Now comparing the two, you're two kids, you're two oldest. Do they both handle loss and frustration completely different? How does Domenico handle it when like? I mean, he doesn't like it either, but he's less of a perfectionist in that sense. So I think he kind of, and he's also older, so he's kind of handled some of this as he's, because he's, you know, he's gonna turn, geez, he'll be 17 this year. You know, he's learned some of that stuff as they go along. Also ambitious individual, but he's just older and I think he kind of gets it a little bit. He also gets frustrated. Especially if he really puts it out. That's what I mean. Like, I mean, I don't know if you can still remember, like remembering when he was her age, like his first like failure or struggle, like did he handle it like her or did he handle it in a different manner? Do you remember? I'm trying to think right now. He would get upset. He would definitely get upset. You know, she's funny though, because so he measures things differently. So they both have an element in me. Like my daughter has the hyper ambition and my son can also be very meticulous about an understanding about practicality. So he'll do something like, well, if I score more than 75% on this test, it's not gonna affect my grade. I can't go up another grade. So he'll do it like that, right? He'll do the math. He'll do the math, right? Whereas my daughter's like, the reports due Friday, I have to turn it in on Monday. Like, why? Why do you have to turn on Monday? Because I have to. Like what? You have to turn it in on Monday, it's due Friday. So that sense, they're very different. But I was grateful for the teaching opportunity. I just felt bad because I know that she, you know, she really put a lot into it type of thing. But man, sixth grade, going up to speak in front of people. It's huge. I know, dude. That's a pretty, no, no, not in sixth grade. No, it took me a while to pick that up. I remember, I remember sixth grade was about when you start doing the speeches in front of the class and I actually never liked that stuff. That's your most self-conscious too at that age. I didn't like it until junior college. I had a good experience in junior college. I had a decent, one of my better teachers in junior college for speech. And that was the first time I actually didn't mind getting up. But I still don't. And I passed on one of the last things that we did. I still don't love doing that. Dude, it was fourth grade for me. It was very vivid and like. You say traumatized? Oh yeah. I was literally traumatized. I can see it on your face when you said it right there. He's like, I remember exactly what day it was, 1989. I was wearing the blue shorts with the red. Had my bangs up like this. Did y'all say it? Oh my God, bro. Tell the story. I want to hear it now. I was like, so this, this literally did like traumatize me. I bombed so bad. How have you never told this story to us? He did once. He did? Yeah, he froze. A long time ago. Cause yeah, I froze. I was trying to describe something that was not in my wheelhouse. So this was like how to cook something. And my mom like just helped me come up with an idea. Cause I couldn't think about like being able to teach the class how to do something which was the assignment. So I had to get in front of the class and then like describe, okay. Something, you know, I could have just stuck with sports which would have been a way better idea. So you had to tell a descriptive speech. Yes. And your mom gave you the idea, let's do a recipe. Let's do a recipe and then have that so they can eat it and they're going to be all happy. You know, like such a mom idea. Okay. Yeah. Like I'm going to throw this right on her and throw her under the bus. Cause let me hide and try. Everything makes sense right now. Anyway, continue. And then so I'm, so she's in there too, which was even worse. And I'm like speaking in front of the class and I'm like trying to remember all the details and like, I don't remember and then I'd be looking over it for help and she's just like, like trying to like mime it to me. This isn't working. And then I just like literally was like, I was like, I don't know. And then I just like walked out of the class. Oh no. Like I lost my shit dude. Yeah. Wow. And everybody was just like, didn't know what to do. You know, cause I obviously like I just, I freaked out. That was fourth grade? Fourth grade. And that's a, at that age? Of course. But judging me, you know, and all that, that stuck with me dude, all the way up to college. And that's why you became a bully. For sure that was part of it. That's why he definitely don't like doing this thing. No, that's why I don't do the speech thing. Dude, I'm not like interested in it. And it really is like something I've had to work my way out of it, but like even starting a podcast, like all that stuff, like, it's like just what I say means something. So this is, so I've had this conversation at least a hundred time with my kids and I tell them this, I said, I don't care what space you work in. I don't care what profession you have. Practice speaking in front of groups because it's the number one fear that people have. Whenever people list their top fears, one of the top fears is almost always speaking in front of large groups. So if you can develop, you don't have to be great. If you're just not afraid of it or you're better than most people, you'll be valuable in whatever you do. And it's true. This is the cool part though is like, so we talk about the differences of my kids and like how like Everett's probably like more of my personality but fearless, fearless for, I was, I sat in on one of his presentations like he was doing for this author of a book that he was reading. I bet you were more nervous than he was. And I'm like, just dying. I can't just, I can just picture you, bro. Like, look at, living vicariously doing a fucking stomach turning. I'm like, oh God, dude. It's all happening again. Can you not see him being like that with his kid on the first time he had to speak like that? Did he crushed it? Oh, that's great. That's awesome. Crushed it. Like, I was holding him back. I just like was, I was like, oh my God. I need help because I don't know how to not cry when I see my kids do some shit. I'm always like in the classroom and I'm always like. Well, especially something that where they overcome something that you know has been a battle for you. Huge, yeah. Your kid, you know it's your DNA right there. Something you battle with your whole life and then they overcome it. I'm like, damn it. He's gonna be so much better than me, dude. Like, cause he's like, dude, he's hilarious. He's come out with jokes all the time. The other day like, so Courtney like puts him to sleep and she was like, I love you to the moon and back. You know, it's that kind of thing. He's like, I love you to Uranus and back mom. And I'm just like, that's amazing, dude. Like, I love it. He just comes up with like crazy stuff all the time. Speaking of things that are terrifying, I know we weren't supposed to bring this up, but I'm gonna try and do this in a PC way. So I walk into the bathroom today. Oh God, you're bringing that up. What the dugs like? Listen, I gotta bring this up, Doug, cause it's so crazy. I did take a picture. Well, I saw it first. Bro, we'll post the picture. You have to blur it out though. I got the video. No, I got the video. I walk in the bathroom and on the toilet in the back is a massive sex toy. It's a realistic look, you let us know what to say. It's a phallus. And it's just sitting there in the back. Swear to God, Andrew, in the back of the toilet, it's just stuck on the back. Stuck on the back. So I see it. Massive. I come in first this morning, okay? So I come in first. Dude. I'm the first one to do that. I thought one of you guys put it back. So I went back in there and I saw it and I went, fucking Sal. Wait a minute, wait a minute. I would have thought the same thing too. Yes, I said, Hey, screw you guys. His pranks are very much. Yes, I said fucking Sal is exactly what I said. I went, I went and bought a big ass dog. And here's the thing. I was like, I'm not even gonna give him, I'm not even giving him the gratification. I'm not even gonna say nothing. I'm not gonna say nothing. I'm gonna act like it was no big deal, like I'm not gonna say shit. Cause I know that's what he's trying to get out of me. Waiting for someone else to go back there and say something to see who really left it there. Because Doug and I were gone all week. So I knew obviously it wasn't Doug or I who did that. And neither one of us would probably do a prank like that. So I knew it was one of you two. And I thought it was you, but you said you didn't know. No dude. I went back and I'm like, what the hell? So here's what's even worse now. Now that it's none of you guys. Yeah. Who the hell? It's creepy. Like it's not like funny. It's like. Well, no one asked Andrew. Is that yours? Huh? Was it me? Was it me? That famous Eddie Murphy live. What if Andrew? What if Andrew was like, Andrew's like, oh wait, was it, was it red with? Yeah, yeah. No, no. He's like, okay, it's not me. I'm like, was it you? No, no, no, no. I'm gonna tell you guys something right now. What a different, the way that I reacted is so different now than I would have reacted in my 20s. I swear to God, if I was in my 20s and I found that, I would have been throwing it at you guys. I would have got it. I would have grabbed it with some toilet paper and it would have, I would have been chucking at one of you guys. I mean, I would have still done that in my 40 right now. The only difference is we have a staff now. So if that goes to my head, so I'm just like, we got like five employees. Dude, it's like, it's cool. But like, I need some resolve. Yeah. I can't go on my day not knowing like who put that in there. That's what I'm saying. I feel uneasy. Yeah, Doug, you're gonna have to make some calls. Yeah, we're gonna have to get to the bottom of this. Doug, Google. Doug starts calling me. I have no idea where he started. We're gonna need you to call all the people that work around here and ask them if it's theirs. Show them a picture of it. Is this yours? No. We gotta do some snooping. Shake it in front of us. Go get it out of the garbage, look up the brand. We're gonna find out where it was purchased. We're gonna isolate. Hey, how's the case? So Doug was with me, by the way, it was so funny. We were having breakfast on the way out and he's like on his, he's off caffeine completely and somebody snuck it into his drink and he was like freaking out. I've been off caffeine. No caffeine. Did you like it? So he's been off. He's off. He's off completely. I'm down to one cup of coffee. I know you're not even trying. Where are you at right now? I'm down now. So I'm doing the staggered, you know, kind of approach. And what I've been doing now is I did what you told, what you said. I mixed Organifi Red Juice with Pure. Yeah. Oh, how was that? Oh, you tried that? Dude, I tried that. It's amazing. It's great. It's like, you definitely get energy from it. You feel good, but it's non-stimulatory. It's not like caffeine, right? Yeah. So it's okay. How's it taste together? Not bad. Not bad. Oh, okay. Not bad at all. It's not bad. I just had mine, but I did some pure in there. Well, I'm doing, I wonder if, because I do mine with element tea right now. So I do the watermelon element tea with the red juice. We can throw them all three together. No, it's not a big, there's no, there's no interaction. No, no, no, pure and red juice because they're both, you know, kind of Neutropic, Adaptogen, whatever. Great combination. So yeah, I've lowered my caffeine to now where I'm alternating, you know, high days are 200 milligrams low, days are 100 milligrams. And I'm going to give it another week before I go off completely. I don't, I mean, even the way I'm doing it, I'm still noticing some of the effects, but the red juice and now combining with the pure has helped. Yeah, I was taking it with, before the whole lift-a-thon thing. It was funny because I realized too, like, because we had parents, we had people in the community come and everything. And like, I was like, I'm like, man, I'm not going to be nervous, but I decided to like get a microphone in a speaker. And then that changed everything for me. For some reason I'm, that's like my comfort zone. Really? I'm like, yeah, you know, yeah, dude, cause now I can like MC and have personality behind it. Otherwise I'm just like yelling, trying to get attention. And it's just like the floor is mine, dude. Like everybody has to suffer with it. You know what's weird about, about you? Well, there's a lot of things weird about you, but this part's really, this part's really weird. There's a lot of things. I'm going to, I'm going to, so Justin, obviously you got to think about speaking to groups in public, but tell them to be funny or give them an instrument or something like that. And he'll do that shit in front of hella people. Yeah. And I think that's way hard. I would never do that. Way harder. Yeah, I would never. Way harder. I'd much prefer that. Act all goofy and silly and stuff like that. Yeah. I would, I have a hard time with that. Way more challenging. No way. Hey, I have some, I have some things I want to talk about or add to a cold therapy. So you know, we had Wim Hof on, which that episode will be airing. One of my favorites. Soon. Such a great one. Yesterday, Doug says. Yesterday. It was already up. Okay. Sorry. So as of the recording of this, we've already had it up. But anyway, so people in our space always, again, this is actually to the beginning of the episode, they talk about everything in relation to muscle growth and they don't consider the big picture. So cold therapy, if you do it post-workout, does blunt, not destroy, but a little bit will blunt the muscle building signal because the muscle building signal is mediated through many different ways. One of them is inflammation. So you work out, this is inflammatory response that tells the body repair, build muscle. If you reduce some of the inflammation by immersing yourself in cold water, then you'll build a little bit less muscle, a little bit less strength. So you got all these fitness people like don't use cold therapy, post-workout. There's a way to use cold therapy post-workout where you'll actually, you'll benefit from and here's how it is. Because it blunts the inflammatory response, it allows you to train with more volume. So you can actually tip over slightly the doing too much scale, add the cold therapy and then you're okay. Oh, that's interesting. Now why would you want to do that? Because more volume allows you to practice exercise skills more often. So I could see this being valuable to like Olympic lifters or power lifters where perfecting the skill of a lift is so important. I could also make this argument too. Yeah. But I don't need to make the case that sleep is extremely important, right? A lot of people would say it's one of the most important things when it comes to recovery and building muscle and so one of the best things about cold therapy is it trains you to breathe correctly and most of us do not breathe correctly. And just a, I remember when I first started to learn how to box breathe at night, if I was anxious and thinking about working through that, how quickly I could box breathe and bring, I mean, I've shared this on the podcast a long time ago. Katrina would actually like elbow me and then she would make me breathe with her. Come on. And we'd do the breaths together. And then after like five of those, I'd be like, ooh, come down and then go to sleep. So this is, and just like anything else, you train it all the time and then you get faster and better at doing it or it's subconsciously just learn how to do that. So yes, it may blunt the muscle building signal or dampen the- Yeah, but you're not looking at the whole picture. Right, but if it increases your sleep quality by 15 to 20% over the period. That more than makes up the difference. More than makes up for it. So there are, and this ties in perfect with the way we started this podcast that I can't stand when we take a study and then there would be people that will shit on cold therapy for people that are trying to build muscle for that reason when there's a much bigger picture going on besides just the fucking one hour workout and then the 30 minutes afterwards. 100%. So you have, and let's talk about stress, what that does when you learn how to adapt inside cold therapy. So there's so many other benefits that also contribute to building muscle and recovery that you are getting from that. So if you are a hardcore muscle building person and you've heard you shouldn't do cold therapy for the reasons- Because it reduces the muscle building signal by 7%. Yes, yeah, you got to factor in all those other things. 100% and then to my point, like if you're practicing a skill like a clean or a jerk, which are very, very skill based, more volume is more important so you can practice it more often. Well, if you're already on the line of over training, like I can't practice it anymore, well, if you're gonna do cold therapy afterwards, you can throw in a few more sets and you'll balance it out. No, that was my whole point with that. Anyway, I wanna ask you guys, do your guys' wives steal your caldera like mine does? Yeah, whole time. So I need to get, so funny because it's, I mean, everybody uses it, but I know initially caldera was kind of like advertising it to men, although it's for both men and women. I let her try it, which was my mistake. It's now it's hers. It's not mine. Oh, see, Katrina hasn't tried it yet. Oh, don't. Yeah, don't give it to her. She'll take it. I'm stingy with my stuff like that. I got my little kit that I keep, and it's like my side of the sink, you stay on your side, my side, yeah, we're very... No, no, no, Jessica, that's it. It's not mine anymore, dude. Now, is she using the cream, the oil, which one is she using? Just the serum. The serum. I mean, that's the main, I mean, all the other stuff is valuable too, but that serum is, I think it makes such a big difference. So okay, so the serum is what got me started using it. And I use that every, you just saw me putting it on before we started the podcast, but I actually like the moisturizer the best. Really? Yeah. Do you use the moisturizer done? I do. That's personally my thing. It's really, really nice. Yeah. I mean, I could like literally put it on and see a dramatic difference. And then the serum gives me kind of this a little shiny look, like a little, like almost oily looking, which is whatever. I mean, it's fine because I have dry skin, so I like it and it feels amazing. But the moisturizer, I feel like it doesn't do that. And it just, I don't know how to explain it. The serum lasts forever too, because I put it on my face and I have oily skin. So it doesn't make me oily. It actually balances it out. Yeah. But it's like two drops. That thing will last me forever. Yeah, the serum will go a long ways. I go through the moisturizer pretty fast. I put on my hands a bunch, which helps that I do. They get so dry and crack like all the time. And I just put that on. You drink enough water? Yeah, dude, I drink a lot of water. I don't know, are you sure? Yeah, bro. I drink water all the time. It's like a big thing. You're just a gator. I'm just a gator, dude. Dryness like just follows me. Well, anyway, I hope at the, I mean, just to finish this off here, I hope we find the culprit for the toy in the bathroom. We need to find out this way. I'm seriously freaking out about this. Hey, I hope you're enjoying the show real quick. We work with a company called LiveOn Labs. They make supplements, vitamins, minerals, and nutrients that use a delivery method called liposomal technology. This means it actually gets absorbed and utilized. One of my favorite products is their liposomal glutathione. It's actually one of the only forms of glutathione shown to actually reach the bloodstream and raise glutathione levels. Master antioxidant keeps your liver healthy, helps with recovery much more, but they have more products than just that. They have a B complex. They have an L carnitine product. They have quite a few things. Great stuff. And right now you can get lipoglutathione free when you bundle it with the B complex plus vitamin C. And you can actually save $75 when you do this special bundle. So here's what you got to do. Go to mindpumppartners.com and click on LiveOnLabs for that hookup. All right, here comes the rest of the show. First question is from Andy Akins. Do you recommend deadlifts despite the internet saying it is not a great hypertrophy movement? You know what else the internet says? Yeah. That the world is flat. Yeah. There's a whole group of people that say the world is flat. Lizard people rule everything. That lizard people rule. So this is silly. The deadlift is a exceptional exercise and it does build a lot of muscle. Okay, you ask anybody who's been, who's very experienced with the deadlift, who's been training people for a long time and has tremendous benefits. Now I know there's studies that will say a barbell row is better for this or a pull up is better for that. But overall, and this is one of the things that we have to consider when we look at exercises, what's their carryover to other exercises and what does that mean? This is a, you have to look at the big picture and there's few exercises that allow you to handle the load that a deadlift will allow you to handle. In fact, for most people it's the heaviest exercise they'll ever do. Yes. And the amount of tension that that creates in the posterior chain, which includes the entire back, is unmatched. You're not gonna get it with a barbell row. You're not gonna get it with a pull up. What place does that kind of demand on your body? Nothing. Nothing else even compares. Nothing we're supposed to hear chain as well as a deadlift does. Here's where this argument comes from, okay? If you were to talk about hypertrophy of a specific muscle, like say the rear delts, because even the rear delts are getting some work in a deadlift, right? Because a deadlift literally hits the entire posterior chain. But could I pick an exercise like that could target the rear delts more for hypertrophy than a deadlift? Yeah, sure. Okay, that's fair. But for an overall back hamstring and glute exercise, three of your biggest muscles on your body, nothing is gonna build more muscle. No, you'd have to pick, you'd have to put like six or seven exercises together. And then that would be a lot of volume. It'd be a lot of work. You're not gonna create as much tension in the body. And here's the deal, I know a lot of people want, show me the guy or girl that deadlifts, it's got a great back. Okay, some of the most winningest Mr. Olympians, Ronnie Coleman, who is considered by most bodybuilding fans to be the greatest of all time. Okay, like in a league of his own, when it comes to bodybuilding, he was a huge deadlifter, huge. Even during the eights with the massive back, he stopped deadlifting later on his career, but he did deadlifts when he was younger in his career. Most bodybuilders do. You have now the Mr. Classic Olympia, what's his name? C-Bum. He deadlifts quite a bit, he's built tremendous back. I've seen it with clients. I've also, and I remember you talking about this, Adam, because you weren't a huge deadlifter until we met. And I remember you stopped doing other back exercises. Completely. Yeah, talk about that, like what happened. For up until, I got ready for competing, which was at 29, 30 years old, right? So for the first 10, 12 years or more of my lifting career, I never deadlifted, ever. It was all rows and pull-ups and hammer strength machines and dumbbell rows and bent over rows, T-bar row. I mean, I did everything else and I didn't deadlift. And to be honest with you, I didn't deadlift because I didn't know how to really well. I didn't have the technique down, seemed like a really difficult exercise. And I never had somebody mentor me or take me under their wing to teach me. And so I ignored it. I finally came around to learning how to do it, started to get the technique down, started to see my strength go up in it really quick. And then I thought, okay, well, let me, because there and the people that are huge advocates of the deadlift are, you know, they're in that camp where it's just like deadlifting is superior to all these other lifts. Okay, well, I've done all this other stuff for over a decade now. I've never dedicated myself to this lift to see what it could do for my physique. And since I was never a strength guy first, that's kind of why I ignored it because I've always been the muscle building guy and for this exact- And it's a powerlifting exercise. Right. And so, you know, your muscle building guys don't talk a lot about it as much, or at least not most of them, but I began to do this. And I thought, okay, well, a great way to really test this is to literally like drop all other back exercises and just deadlift, I was deadlifting at least three times a week, all the variations. And I would modify, you know, I wasn't going heavy every single day and technique and stuff. And my back blew up. And not only did my back blow up, I mean, and I had picture, I wish I could still find- God, you had such a great picture. I know, I had some before and after pictures I used to post on my Instagram when I was going through all this. But one of the craziest things that I thought was so significant was all the exercises that I stopped doing that I didn't do for like over a year, I reintroduced later on after I'd got my deadlift up to 550. So I went from a guy who'd never deadlift, was deadlifting like 135 to start off with worked my way all the way up to 550 pounds. That's where I maxed out at. And when I got there, then I started to reintroduce those other exercises. I was stronger in all back lifts significantly, not like five or 10 pounds, like significantly stronger in every other pack exercise. And my back looked bigger, thicker, wider than it ever looked before. This speaks to force production, okay? And so this is something that I wanted to always chime in because a lot of these internet people are out there like testing everything through these muscle activation devices and how active the muscle is specifically in that type of lift. But if you're looking at it in terms of force production, like you can't even match it with the deadlift. The deadlift, like you have to generate so much force to be able to pull off that movement. I keep thinking of like, so I think it was Dr. Andrew Spina, he talks about force being the language of the cells. It actually like determines like how they're gonna react and how you need to then be able to build this tolerance and this resistance to all this force, which then is a muscle building signal. This all comes from the central nervous system. So yes, there's value in hypertrophy training and isolation, but in terms of now, you then being able to stretch the capacity of force production, you bring that back into a hypertrophy setting, you're gonna have more strength control and you're gonna get more out of the hypertrophy. You pick anybody who works out and the heaviest exercise that they typically can do is a deadlift. You're not gonna be able to match that. And then to what Adam was saying, I need to reiterate that because I don't think people, a lot of people might not realize how crazy that is. Strength is a skill. So typically, if you get good in an exercise, most of the straight gains are in that exercise and there's some carryover to other exercises. And the more similar the other exercises are the more carryover. For example, a bench press is gonna carryover more to an incline press than it will to, let's say, a barbell row, which really has nothing in common with it, right? So there's a lot of skill with strength and it's very specific. You know how crazy it is to avoid doing all these exercises and just do one, come back to these exercises that you haven't done in a long time and you're significantly stronger? That speaks. It blew my mind. That speaks volumes. Now, I do wanna be very clear that we're not saying just deadlift. All these exercises have tremendous value and you wanna program all of them to get complete development and strength and function. But the people who say, you know why people say deadlifts are not a good, I'll tell you right now, while they say it's not a good hypertrophy exercise because they don't know how to plug it in their programming. When you do a body part split, where do you put deadlifts? Well, we're doing back, but it's also hips and legs. I do legs the next day, so that's 100% what it is. They don't know how to program it in their workouts because it's not a pure back exercise. It involves the entire posterior chain, which includes the glutes and the hamstrings. That's the main reason. Well, the other reason too is to the point at the very beginning of this episode where we talked about the learning curve of this. Like if I judged that deadlift based off the first three to six months, I would actually come back to you guys and say, oh, T-bar rows and bent over rows and dumbbell rows are way better. Why? Because it took me at least a month or two straight, consistently lifting the deadlift before my technique was even good. Before I could even be kind of like, before that switch went off like, oh, this is how I fire this movement. So kind of what Justin was talking about with the CNS. Then once that started to come together, I was like, oh, okay, now I got this. Now I can start to really load this thing. And then that's worse. And so it didn't really come on until months, eight, nine, 10, a year later, did I really start to see the compounding effects of consistently deadlifting. But if you were to measure it, and this is why I don't like someone when we talk about these six to 12 week studies, you take somebody who's a novice lifter and you say, go do a deadlift and they're going from never doing it before or go do a T-bar row, which is pretty easy to teach somebody how to do. And then let's measure in six weeks where you're going, you'll probably gain more from the T-bar row. Yeah, and the other thing, look, I'll tell you this is, you can't always tell who deadlifts, but you can often tell who doesn't deadlift. Like when you see physique competitors or bodybuilders on stage and they turn around, Adam and I have done this before where we'll look and be like, oh, that guy doesn't deadlift. That person doesn't deadlift. It develops a thickness. So for people who are interested in just hypertrophy, it's an excellent exercise for developing depth of the back, especially the muscles that surround the spine. So when you see people with a really well-developed, nice-looking back, and they have the back where it kind of dips into where the spine is, that those are the muscles you really get really well with a deadlift. Lats, pull-ups are probably gonna hit the lats more than obviously than a deadlift, but it's just, it's a phenomenal exercise. It's hard. It takes practice, but it's an excellent exercise for hypertrophy. And if you don't believe me, look, here's a challenge. Implement deadlifts in your workout for a few months. Do them right for three or four months. At the very least, you're not gonna lose muscle, but I guarantee you you'll probably end up gaining muscle and you'll be- I feel like the reason why this gets popular on the internet still is because there's so many people that want this to be true. Yeah. And they're hard and we avoid it. And here, dude, I admit I was one of those people too. I wanted that to be true too. I wanted, that's why I wasn't doing squatting and deadlifting that much because I read the same stuff, heard the same shit. And I was like, yeah, see, I'm a hypertrophy guy. I'm not a strength guy. I don't need to do this bullshit. I mean, you want it to be true because it's hard. It's hard to learn the movement and it's, and it works your ass to do it, man. It's not easy. So I find the only reason why I get so much traction is because so many people want it to be true so bad. And it's like, okay, if you wanna just do rows and the rest of your life and just- What a great exercise, not the only row. And by the way- You're not gonna replace a deadlift. Right, and you can build a good physique and never do those things. I had a good physique when I was 25. I didn't have a weak ass physique. Well, I'll tell you this. If you do barbell squats, you can get away with not deadlifting in the sense that you'll develop some good core strength, some good lower back strength. If you don't do barbell squats and don't do deadlifts, it's not a good idea. If you build a lot of muscle on your body- That was me. I didn't squat or deadlift really all the way in my 20s. Yeah, you end up losing, especially if you build a lot of muscle and strength around a physique that doesn't squat and doesn't deadlift. There's a lot of functionality that you miss out on, not to mention the muscle that you miss out on, so. Next question is from Mason Burnt. What is the proper standing bar row form overhand or underhand? So they're referring to a barbell row. Yeah, yeah, just to- Both. Supernative pre-group. Yeah, they're both. They're changeable. Now, underhand was, nobody ever did underhand barbell rows until Dorian Yates made them popular. Mr. Olympia, I think six times. And he was known, he was the bodybuilder that brought in the current era of mass monsters. Before him, bodybuilders looked very different. He goes from second place to first place and gains, I don't know, 15 pounds of muscle. There's those famous, maybe Andrew can put this in the video, black and white photos of Dorian Yates and it freaked everybody out, what the hell's this guy doing? So then everybody wanted to work out like him. And one thing that he did was an underhand barbell row. And the reason why he did it underhand was because his training methodology, which he called bled and guts. I love the names that they do for these workouts. He got from Mike Menser, who was a student under Arthur Jones. And the Arthur Jones said to do back exercises with the supinated grip because it put your bicep in an advantageous position, allowed you to use more weight. So the theory was, if you can use more weight, then it's a better position or whatever. Now that's not, I don't agree with that necessarily. I think the elbow positioning. Yeah, and if you do an underhand grip, you're gonna use more bicep than you do an overhand grip. If you do overhand grip, you're gonna get more brachioradialis muscle, which is this forearm muscle up here, brachialis. I like to give that a break sometimes because it definitely gets a lot of stress. Yes, yes, absolutely. So, and then you mentioned some elbow position, turning your hands activates the biceps more, but it also kind of helps people bring their elbows in. Tuxi elbows in. And if you're over the top, your elbows are gonna flare out. And the further your elbows are away from the body, the more difficult the movement's gonna be, you're probably gonna be able to load it. But I mean, they both. They're both good. Yeah, they both hit the back a little bit different. So I go back and forth between these. Yeah, so I think it's not one is right or one is wrong. Now the risk of bicep injury is much higher with underhand back exercises. In fact, Doreen Yeats tore his bicep doing this particular exercise because it's just, it's a more vulnerable position. I mean, if you get really strong with a barbell row, your bicep now is handling. Well, and you also will normally do more supinated, right? I can row a lot more supinated. I do overhand, but that's cause I practice overhand. Oh, really? Yeah, yeah. So you can do more overhand than, oh, interesting. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, most people can do more supinated. So, yeah. And that's just cause I've always practiced overhand, so I'm just much better that way. But they're both, they're both good, somewhat interchangeable. Although I would say, you know, you get value from one that you might not get from the other one, cause it's a little different, but they're both really good. The one that I teach most often is overhand. It's just an easier, you know, more natural grip for some people than underhand, but there's nothing, they're both proper. They're just different variations. I mean, just so you know too, this applies to even doing like a seated cable row. I used to play with this all the time. So sometimes I'll grab a straight bar and, you know, in row this way. And then other times I'll go over the top and wide and row with my elbows up and hit more of the upper back. Like, so there's ways to manipulate this. And it's not one is better than the other. I think they both have value for sure. Yeah, they do. Next question is from Alex SN Medic. What is better, eating three bigger meals or multiple small meals throughout the day? Yeah, we answer this a lot in the early days of our show. Whichever one works better for you. And really that's the bottom line. But I do think it's important that we list out who is probably gonna do better with one versus the other. I'll start with the obvious, which is the small meals a day works better for people who eat a lot of calories. If you're eating, yeah, if your metabolism is fast and you're eating 4,000 calories a day or 3,500 calories a day, you know, three, you know, 1,500 calorie meals, that can be really tough. You're probably better off eating six, you know, 15, sorry, 500 calorie meals doing it that way. And that's by the way why the small meals exist. Bodybuilders did it because they were eating so much food. Eating three massive meals just became a chore and it just didn't work well. Seeing this sort of trend from the bodybuilding community kind of like trickle in is like, if they're doing it, that means that's the healthy way to do it. And it's like, now, thankfully, you know, we kind of see behind the curtain of, you know, those practices and what else is entailed in that whole process is not very healthy. So, but in terms of trying to bulk and get more calories in, this does make the most sense in terms of digesting it all and being able to retain it. So I think there's another person that this works well, a client of mine that I would recommend this to, too, is some clients have a really hard time with the long breaks in between meals and they have tendency to snack or make bad food choices. So having a meal basically, if you have six meals in a day, you're eating every two hours, basically. So you never really get that hungry, you know, or ever get those cravings. You're already getting ready to eat. You just ate and then it's like, oh my God, it's already two hours again. I'm eating again because of these small portions that are built out. It works really well for that client. If the client is like, if you know you're guilty of grazing a lot on nuts and snacks and chips and things that you can get your hands on. If you work in an environment that you have access to all that all the time, I've had a lot of success with clients that putting their six meals out like that small meal so that, you know, as soon as they have that, I want to grab those nuts. It's like, oh, I'm supposed to eat in five minutes anyway. So I'll go get my meal and they eat their meal. Agreed. It gives them less dead time in between to be with boredom or thoughts or cravings. I agree. Sometimes if you only do three meals, a lot of times those three don't get separated by the perfect amount of hours and there's like this six hour gap between, you know, two of the meals and a lot of times this is when people start to make the bad decisions or they waited that long and now all of a sudden everything sounds good and it's like the first thing that's convenient so they pull over. So, you know, what has been debunked is the science that people tried to use before that it's more thermogenic to do the six meals like because you're stoking the fire six times. What we realize now is that if you eat 3,000 calories in three meals or 3,000 calories or six meals, the net thermogenic effect is exactly the same than the two. So there's no science to support that one is better than the other. This really comes down to a behavioral thing. As a coach and a trainer, what makes me make the decision on it, does a client eat one meal, two meals or six meals a day are these types of things that we're talking about right now is based off of their behavior. Yeah, now at the moment, I will not now actually but recently I was eating more small meals throughout the day. Not always but before that I would eat like three meals a day, no problem. But then I've been building muscle, my metabolism's been speeding up and it was just breakfast, lunch and dinner got really big. Now it wouldn't feel good afterwards, it was just too much. So I was doing the smaller meals. Well, now I'm in the process of trying to cut. So now I'm trying to get leaner and it's really easy because all I gotta do is remove one meal. I just gotta cut a meal out so it makes it really easy. So really it's about personal preference, what fits your lifestyle better because there's some people that don't wanna walk around with small meals throughout the day and they're like, I don't wanna worry about eating ever two or three meals, like I just wanna eat breakfast. And you don't have to, I mean, I'm the opposite, right? So I'm normally a six meal a day type of guy because I was always eating so many calories. My calorie intake is so low and I eat two to three times, max. Sometimes there's been days I only eat once. So you don't have to have, there's not like a rule on how many you have but I think the most important thing that you should take away from this conversation is really the understanding who you are. Are you the person who struggles with these long hour gaps and you know you have a tendency to make bad choices, well then maybe you will benefit from more smaller meals or maybe you're somebody that doesn't bother you at all, then fine, then only eat two or three meals without the wrong with that. Now the other part too is people with gut issues, believe it or not, can fall in either category. Some people with gut issues do better with long breaks in between meals. Other people do not do well with a long break and a large meal, they do better digesting a little out of time. So, okay, moral of the story, what works best for you is what your answer is gonna be, whether it's three big meals or multiple small meals, besides personal preference and lifestyle, there's no benefit one way or the other when it comes to muscle building or fat burning. Next question is from Grant Satterthwaite. It seems like mine pump is anti-rest day. If that's the case, how could someone structure a seven day per week training plan without sacrificing performance and gains? Where do people get rest day? I feel like it makes stuff up about us sometimes. Yeah, I picked this because I was very confused. And I wanted to see if you guys knew where they were getting these meals. No days off. No, because they're always advocating for rest and recovery continuously. You could put this into two categories. You have active recovery and then you have rest, rest. Okay, so what's active recovery? Active recovery is I'm not doing a structured workout, but I'm doing something that involves some kind of movement. I'm walking or I'm hiking or I'm doing mobility or I'm doing stretching. Well, in our programs, I mean, we call it frequency builder days basically, but we've literally programmed those in so that way, you know, you're getting blood flow, you're getting that active recovery where you're moving, but it's not at an intense level. Yes, and then there's a rest day where you're pushing it to the limit and you need to do nothing or maybe the value of that day is you do nothing because you hang out with your family, you watch movies or you go on vacation, in which case a full on rest day is very valuable. But the problem is I think people think an off day in order, well, at least this was me. I thought an off day meant I need to do nothing in order to recover better. The reality was unless I was extremely overtrained, what helped me recover faster was to do some kind of light movement, not structured, but some kind of light movement. Well, yeah, I think it's, this person probably doesn't own any of our programs because if you've ran anabolic or you've ran performance. We put both in there. Yeah, these, one, there's a full rest day in both those programs. And then in addition to that, the, quote unquote, active rest days are a very minimal amount of work. I mean, the mobility is like doing yoga with movements. Like so it's very relaxing as well as, and then anabolic, the trigger sessions is. They're supposed to be low intense. Yeah, they're 10 minutes and they're with, they're rubber bands and you're not supposed to get sore from it. It's not, that's not the idea. So really those are, those we consider those rest days. It's just like you said, Sal, I came in from the same camp when I was a young kid, I used to think that rest day means I should sit and lay in the bed and do absolutely nothing. Let your body recover. Yeah. Because well, I mean, Unless you've been through the gauntlet, like you competed like multiple day, you know, multiple times in one day and your body is just trash. You know, maybe in that scenario. I mean, what I thought was that I was, you know, I was trying to let the muscle recover as fast as possible. That was my thought process. And so I didn't want to burn any extra calories. I wanted any of those additional calories to go to recovering that muscle. So I laid and did nothing. We, what we realize or what I understand now is that actually I'll build more muscle by activating that muscle, encouraging more blood flow and circulation, getting more nutrients and getting more movement in. But it doesn't have to be intense. It's not supposed to be like a training session. It's just you moving throughout the day. Yeah. When should I do nothing? Well, if it improves the quality of your life. So that's number one. Number two, if you're sick or if you've trained so hard to the point where you're just, you're full of inflammation pain and you're like, I need to like sleep. I need to sleep and rest. Otherwise like stretching, walking. I remember when I first experienced this, I remember as a kid, I read this stupid article about how Arnold used to do squats in the woods all day and he would bring it like a gallon of milk. I read this, I don't remember why I read this article but you know, because it was Arnold because I was young, I was like, this is the, I'm gonna do this. I'm gonna do this. And I did, I took a barbell to the elementary school. It was like a half a mile away from my school, from my house. And I took two gallons of milk with me and I went there and my plan was I'm like, mom, I'm gonna come home. I'll be home by four. And I got there at like 10 a.m. And I was like, I'm gonna do squats all day. And I'm gonna drink milk all day. It's like Arnold, I'm gonna get so jacked, right? Well, I didn't make it till four. I remember, I don't remember what time it was. I think it was like one and maybe not, maybe noon. And it got to the point where I couldn't even do a body weight squat and walking my legs were like, and I was trying to walk home and I could barely make it home, dragging my barbell. And luckily my dad came looking for me, picked me up in the truck, brought me home. Anyway, then I had to take the day off school the next day because I couldn't get out of bed. Well, the next day my mom was like, you're not missing school. We're gonna stretch your legs out. And I thought that was the worst idea ever. No, I gotta let them rest and recover. And you know, my mom's like, I'm your mom, you're gonna do what I say. Well, anyway, she helped me stretch my legs out. And I remember being like, oh my God, my soreness is like way better just from stretching. So it kind of clicked a little bit there. But yeah, active recovery, you'll recover faster with active recovery than we will. Just being like bedridden, that's actually sending a signal to your body that says break things down. Unless you're sick and you actually, and you're so over-trained, you really need that. It's funny cause I had surgery like in my abdomen. I remember Courtney's a nurse and she's very like tough with me, but like, you know, like very empathetic with everybody else. And so like, it was literally the next day is she, I could have just like stayed there for a couple of days, just recovering like, oh God, it's just like tearing me up. Had get me up to walk down, up and down the aisles. Yes. You know, it was, it's the best way to heal and to recover is to just get that light movement. I did not want to do it, but it was the best thing Well, you know, in hospitals, they'll put, they put those, they're like these big wraps around your legs that pump one leg at a time or whatever. And it's to keep, for people who are bedridden to keep blood flow, so they don't get blood clots. Yeah. So yeah, active recovery, I'd say 90% of the time is what you want to do to recover. 10% of time, you probably should do nothing. Again, if it improves quality of life or like you're so hammered or you're sick. So I mean, the question that they're asking, I guess in a roundabout way, we've answered it, but we didn't go specifically. They're saying, how could someone structure a seven day per week training program without sacrifice and performance? You do exactly what we have in those programs is you have a foundational day, which is your hard-trained day. And then the following day right after that is always like one of these active recovery days. And those look different in all of our programs based off of what the goals are, right? But if you were structuring one yourself, that's what it would look like. It's basically every other day is technically a rest day. But what we consider rest days aren't laying in bed. They're doing mobility or doing trigger sessions, or go for a hike. Like those are all ways that you would do active recovery. Excellent. Look, if you like our information, head over to mindpumpfree.com and check out our guides. We have guides that can help with almost any health or fitness goal. You can also find all of us on social media. So Justin is on Instagram at Mind Pump, Justin. Adam is on Instagram at Mind Pump, Adam. And you can only find me on Twitter at Mind Pump Sal.