 If you want to pump your body and expand your mind, there's only one place to go. Mind pump. Mind pump. With your hosts, Sal DiStefano, Adam Schaefer, and Justin Andrews. In this episode, we have found Sal's replacement. Damn it! We've been searching for two and a half years now. Justin and I have now found his replacement. He gets a solid choice. He just freaked everybody out. Well, we're not going to do it. I just want people to know that, hey man, if something... The pump goes on. If he gets assassinated, we will... the show will go on. Cancel that. Don't put that in the universe, bro. So we talk about that. We talk about the Spartan races we just came from. They were awesome. Find out in this episode how Justin did in that competition. Yeah, I did well because I didn't do it. We talk about... we go mind pumps, trip down memory lane. Oh boy. We had wacky ideas. Including porn ads. Yeah, hopefully you're on the forum so you can actually get to see some of this. We're going to write down some of what those ideas were back then on the forum. It's vulgar and shocking! We also mentioned two of our sponsors. The first sponsor we mentioned is Organifi. We love their green juice and their protein. All the products are organic. We talk about it all the time. Go to organifishop.com. Enter the code MIMEPUMP4DISCOUNT. And then we mention our newer sponsor, Thrive Market. This is a place where you can buy organic non-JMO products at ridiculous prices. Like half off what you would find at retail stores. Just go to thrivemarket.com forward slash MIMEPUMP and get some free stuff. They give you like a free month. They give you $20 towards your first three orders of $49 or more. Great place to go. Thrivemarket.com forward slash MIMEPUMP. And then we get into the questions. The first question was how did we, or excuse me, how did Adam finally commit to TRT that stands for testosterone replacement therapy? I couldn't think of something funny fast enough. Total ridiculous tyrannosaurus. The next question was how do we motivate ourselves to eat and train properly when we're going through tough times? Good advice coming from Sal here. Exactly. I added a second in there. There you did. Then we answer the question, well, in previous episodes we've totally fixed the problem of fitness in public schools. So now we're going to fix the problems with big box gyms. How to make them more effective. How to make them more successful. Listen to our expert advice. Finally, the last question is what are our current workout routines and goals? Is Justin trying to grow his glutes? Also, this month, check this out, we want to talk a lot about our super bundle because I think we get a lot of questions from people who are looking to train. A lot of people keep asking what is the program that you guys recommend the most to people? That's a hard question. It is a hard question because what we do recommend is that everyone goes through all of them because each one that we highly recommend that everybody goes through. Regardless if you're an athlete, regardless if you're fat loss, regardless if you want muscle building or overall health. What have you not been doing? They each start with that. Each program has something to contribute to that and I think everybody should at least go through it once. And that's what the super bundle is. It's all of our programs all organized for you. So it's like a year. It's basically a year planned out of different workouts, different routines, different phases, different adaptations. It's all set up for you. However, if you're just getting started, you don't want to commit to the big super bundle, the one we recommend is Maps Anabolic. That's what we consider to be our foundational program. You can find both of those at mindpumpmedia.com. And we also have some review winners. Excellent. Yeah, we had a solid 16 reviews this last week. All right. And we're going to give out five shirts. So I'm going to read these off. A dog, smalls. A dog? Yeah. A type one trainer man. Maxed out three. Scotland 360. And I'm a tiny killer. Was that you, Doug? Watch out. Yeah, it is. All right. Send the name I just read to iTunes at mindpumpmedia.com. Send your shirt size, your shipping address. And we'll get that right out to you. Thanks. Oh, I'm back in my seat. Dude, I already feel so much better. I was off a little bit over there. My questions, they just weren't coming to me like they normally do. Sit next to Sal. This is the best seat for me at least. Because you know why? Because I'm so close to his brain that some of it was clouding some of my information. And so like I'd go and be like, what is that noise? And I kept. What's all this static? Yeah, it was like this static. My brain sounds like. All of a sudden like weird images of like penises and vaginas were coming. I'm like, what is in this guy's brain that's starting to leak over? That's weird. Leak over into mine. I can't sit next to him. You know what's weird about what you just said? What? What's in your mind? That's so weird. I know you're making it up. I'm not, dude. But I'm like, how did he hit it right on the dog? That's exactly what's inside your mind. Man, what a pleasure it was to have our boy. Okay, got to give him an extra shout out. Not just his episode because Andy Gaplan. Galpin. Galpin. Sorry, Galpin. Sorry. My good friend. Andy G. Miss pronounce your name. You can do that to everybody though. It's endearing. It is endearing. I've been calling Saul, Saul for a fucking ever, right? Sorry to fuck up my name. Everybody else does it. No, Andy G. I'm calling my G. Wow, he's a gangster. If Saul ever dies or we get rid of him, he is who will replace him. 100%. That's a much smarter version. Definitely first contender. I think Saul would be okay with that. I feel like this is what's fair. I think we should do this as we interview guests. We've had lots of people on the show. Each one of us is connected in different ways to different guests. I feel like Brendan Schaub might be you. I don't know. We haven't hung out with this guy. We haven't hung out with him yet. We'll see. I don't know, dude. His fitness science. Well, not on that level. Here's the deal, bro. It's got to be a replacement. It's got to be a replacement. You can't not just some other good looking guy who can talk, bro. It doesn't work that way. You've got to have it all. Like Andy is definitely a smart guy, very similar views as Saul. But Saul takes his shirt off. You know what I mean? Yeah. Well, no, that's right. I would never replace Saul. Yeah. I think we could all agree. He's the full package. We're not ever trading it. I believe we have the full like a diaper. But if shit went down, I think we all need to agree on our replacements on. It's a good bet. Who to call, right? Because what if, check this out. What if, because Saul's so great, somebody in Florida says, hey, bro, I got an offer for $20 million a year. Yeah. You only get to talk once or twice a week. You really think I would do pretty awesome. You really think I go to Florida for $20 million a year? What's your number? Wow. I need to know. So when we get close to that number, I know when to start looking for your replacement. You know what I'd do for reals? Because I'm extremely loyal. I'm an extremely, extremely loyal person. You would come back and let us offer that. I take the $20 million. I'd give you guys some millions and it'd be like, come with me. We're moving the show to Florida. And then we'll take over. That's not a bad strategy. We just have to convince Doug and Justin's entire family. Getting me to come would be pretty easy. Hey, what's up, bro? Justin can't come, but I drove all the way here. I got 10 mil for you, dude, if you come with me. I'm like, oh, shit. I just got to give you some money in a chicken sandwich and you're over there. Those are the two things. This is true. Dude, how productive and awesome was Spartan? My favorite trip we've done yet. By far. By far. By far. Good. I love all the trip. Paleo FX was awesome. All the stuff we've done is great. Spartan was the best. First off, we were either on or interviewed like 12 podcasts, right? Yeah. Was that the number we came up with finally? Yeah. 12 when we were there. We captured awesome footage and video and all that for the YouTube and content. We created a brand new program for the audience, which... She's not a win. Can I even say? No, you shouldn't. I'm not saying shit. Well, what I will tell people is it doesn't come till January, so Sal shouldn't have said that now. It's going to be a long time before I see it. They're going to be pissed now. But anyway, we created some good content together, a lot of hard work. We met some awesome people. We met the host of Order of Man podcast. Great guy. Very cool. Of course, Greenfield was there. Ben's always one of our favorite people. How about Todd Orr? Todd Orr, dude. Attacked by two grizzly bears? No, no, no, no. Or the two... The same grizzly bear twice. Yeah. There's a big difference. That was a... Yeah. Crazy. Is it really though? Does it suck more or less? I mean, it's not like... If your body knew the difference... Okay. If your body comes up to me, he's like, dude, check out what I did yesterday. I had sex with two girls. And then you find out it's the same girl, but he did it twice. She just put a mask on. It's not the same. Okay. It's a good analogy. Okay, fair enough. It's the same thing. But you got fucked by the same bear. Yeah. Twice for sure. And the same day. That was awesome. We met Joe DiStefano, my long lost cousin apparently. I don't know, but it's the same last name. He's like, yeah. He's like good fellas. Like old school. Yeah. He writes all the programming for their certification, right? Their Spartan certification. He was an interesting fact that he shared with us. Very knowledgeable guy. Oh, brilliant. Can we just say this? And I told him on air, those that have a chance to listen to the episode. That, you know, we've openly talked about obstacle course racing, marathon running and these types of training modalities. And I expected to see some shenanigans. Yeah. No, I expected to get the guy who was heading up the training for it. I was not expecting to be that educated, to be honest. I thought a lot of the questions we were going to ask, he was going to have some bullshit answer that we'd see right through. Yeah. The way they're programming is, I don't know. I mean, you have to be certified just to get certified by them. They won't let you come in unless you're already certified by another organization. Which already separates them from the norm of the organizations that teach this type of training, right? Any type of training. Right. And what really blows me away was, so he, this guy knows his shit. He's been in the industry for a while. He took courses learning how to create a certification. So they have courses and classes and stuff that'll teach you, hey, if you're a trainer, scientist, doctor, and you want to make your own certification program, here's what you need to do to be successful. And one of the things, this was mind blowing for me. One of the things was that they said you have to have at least a 90% pass rate. Because apparently certifications, if their pass rates go below 90%, they lose sales, right? So Joe Desina told him, I don't give a shit. He says, make our certification, like the only people that pass this are bad asses. You're not a bad ass unless you, if you could pass this, you're awesome. So their pass rate's like 50% and they're proud of that, which I think is cool. I think that's very cool. That's a lot of integrity. No, that's why I was very surprised by what he talked about. I mean, his level of knowledge in exercise science was very impressive for somebody who's programming for obstacle course racing. I did not expect that. But shame on me because of how much we fucking loved Joe Desina and saw the people that he was, how about that? He does that with like everything. How about the VP CEO meeting that we were at? What a fucking treat that was. Yeah, that was great. He had a guy come out who spoke. Doug, what was the name of the, Cal? Yeah. Cal what? Fussman. Fussman. Great storyteller. So he was the writer for what big magazine? Esquire. Esquire. Esquire. And he interviewed Muhammad Ali and who? Gorbachev. Oh yeah. But he did this big talk about how important it is to communicate and connect with other people, but also the strategies to do so, which was a brilliant thing to have someone talk about at an event where everybody's Networking. Networking. Right. It was so smart. No, it was cool. Me and Adam look at each other and he's like, dude, just as I know, I'm already thinking the same thing. The minute he started speaking, right, the direction we were going, we were both looking at each other like, wow, this is such a smart, smart, smart. Oh, just totally, that's why I like Joe. Also a lot of confirmation on some of the things that we do here at MP that makes me feel good, man. I pride myself or we pride ourselves on that ability when we have a guest. We just had Andy come in and give us all kinds of great compliments about, I mean, he's doing four plus interviews a week and just did Joe Rogan and then to turn around and say that this is the best interview I've fucking done. Well, he just, he says that he likes that we're doing it right, that our style of doing it is right and that he said things on our podcast that he didn't really ever say another podcast. And that's another thing that I kind of really am starting to pick up on is because we do so many other podcasts too and we've met so many people in the space is just the different styles and stuff and, you know, I think we tend to have a different style because we're so on the surface it seems so loose. Well, it's like unorthodox, you know, because everybody tries to kind of create a formula to what they're doing and we just like, let's have a conversation. Let's just stick with that and like try and improve on it. Well, dude, when I get interviewed sometimes people will send me their questions in advance and all this other stuff and it's like, let's just talk, man, ask me what you want to know about me and see where it goes and then that's where the best conversations come out of. Plus, we enjoy doing so. Pretty awesome. And then we met what's his name from Yemeni from No Foods. Fascinating conversation. Very interesting. He came from the food industry, from the bad side of the food industry where they spend lots of money and time designing the perfect taste, smell, you know, the way it looks and feel combination to just kind of overcome your body's natural systems of satiety so that you eat more of them. And he was talking about their health food and how good it tastes and all. And I brought that up and I'm like, well, what do you think about this and the money that food industry spends on doing this and do you think that's a good thing? And he looked at me and I thought I was going to offend him but he was like, oh, that's what I did. He's like, we're fighting fire with fire. Yeah. And he was very surprised I think by the conversation because to give everybody an idea of what was going on here, this was, you know, shout out to Mark with Spartan for having to organize this. It was definitely challenging the first time they'd ever done this. They did a day that was, it was Friday, it was all podcasters. They had all these people, authors, CEOs, bear attack guys. I mean, you name it, there were all kinds of great minds and entertaining people to interview. And we were slotted like these 20 minute or 30 minute slots that we would get people. And so it was really all over the place. And it was in a big room with other podcasters. Yeah. It was pretty chaotic. Yeah. Very chaotic and not time for, which I think feeds into mine pump. I think all the other podcasters were freaking out like, oh my God, where's my notes? How am I going to interview somebody? If I don't know anything about him, I'm like, we're like, oh, this is fine. Yeah. Some random guy sits down like, hey, would you get your shoes? Ready, set, go. Yeah. And we got him and I'm pretty sure he didn't know who mine pump was, wasn't expecting the questions we probably threw in. And we challenged him quite a bit too. So that was a... Another smart guy. Yeah. Another really cool guy. We got to hang out with Shauna from... Oh yeah. Shout out. Yeah. From Organify. From Organify. She's like our representative, right? Yeah. That was really exciting too because, you know, one of the things, we waited a really long time to align with any companies really. And I'm really excited with the people that we're doing business with right now. And I love it too. And you know when you did the right thing and you waited for the right company, when you continue to meet like executives or people from that company. And they're awesome. And they're awesome. And, you know, meeting her and getting a chance to talk to her and listen to her experience with Drew and Organify and the company. And it's just like, man, that makes me feel really good that we waited this long and vetted all these people before we decided to partner up with. So that was cool. So shout out to Shauna. Yeah, it's really cool because she represents the brand very well. So if you're listening Organify, I did a good job picking her because she really represents it well. Very genuine individual. And we, you know, again, we like, if we like the product and we like the people, then we want to work with you. It has to be both. It can't be one or the other. Like I can't like the product and then there's a bunch of and it's an asshole. Yeah. It's not gonna work. You know what my favorite thing of this trip was though? Besides all the hard work and the hanging out with you guys and having a great time. We reminiscing. Yeah, dude. We went down memory lane. Are we gonna share that right now? I don't know if I'm gonna share it. I think you should hold that until we decide how we're gonna do that. Well, I want to say we mentioned so what we did, we were sitting around Maybe just for the forum. We were sitting around the fire and late at night. So it's like 11 o'clock. We've been working since, you know, 7 a.m. And we're all hanging out, having a drink, getting loose and we start reminiscing about the early days of Mind Pump. The irony of this, it's only like two, two and a half, three years ago. It feels like forever. It does. Which it just so much shit. Right. I mean, it does. It speaks to, and I'll let Sal finish his story. It speaks to how important reps are. I think so. Practice, practice. Right. So many people get so hung up on the details. Oh, it's this way. And we did a lot of stupid things. And I don't think I realized how many bad ideas that we had until we started reminiscing like this. We found some notes. Oh, God. Man, I went through all of it. It was hilarious. So I'm sitting there. We're around the fire. We're drinking, having a good time. Finally, relaxing. And we're talking about some of the stupid ideas that we've had in the past. And we've talked about on the show how we did porn ads back in the day. And I just want to, let me just explain the rationale to the audience. Just because they, we're not completely down in infamy. You need to explain how, how it came about, but with Justin came in like, and remember, I'm gonna put this on you, dude. I know I like, I accept it. Well, you know, you gotta own it, bro. For sure. But we got closed. Hard. He comes in the studio one day. And this is kind of, this is give everybody a little, what it looks like behind the scenes of Mind Pump. You know, you got, you got all these visionaries working together, trying to head towards the same direction. Thinking outside the box. Right. Always trying to be creative, thinking outside the box. And we encourage that here because we've definitely been successful in other arenas having this, this mentality, right? So here comes Justin. He comes walking in to the studio one day. And he's like, you guys listen, I've got this idea. Hear me out. And he starts talking about porn ads. And at first I think Sal and I and Doug's eyes get huge right away because he's just like, oh no. And Sal and I are like kind of laughing like, okay, no, he's like, no, listen, listen. And he starts riling off the numbers. And those porn sites get so many visitors. Insane amount of traffic. And it's so cheap to advertise on them. Like stupid cheap. Yeah. And our show is, especially in the early days, very edgy. Oh yeah. We just, I mean, I think around this time we just dropped an episode that was about the jazzling and vaginas and like, I mean, we literally were in and so I think I remember Sal and I looking at you and like, well, I mean, we do. We're not too raw for porn. I mean, I'm sure a lot of our listeners watch porn too. This may be too raw for porn. So at this point we all decide or we decide that we agree that this is a decent strategy. Justin had came up with a brilliant idea. And we were all, Well, let me just say like it came from, I just had, I read this book. Yeah. What spurred you to come up with this purple cow? Purple cow. So I mean, the whole book's premise is to basically get outside of the box. What she got me to read right afterwards. Yeah. So I'm like, Oh yeah, I see it. So that's probably why you accepted why I was going in that direction. You know, it was like, everybody's doing this. Like, you know, the formula for everybody has always been this. Let's, you know, disrupt that. Let's do something like, like shocking. Let's do, you know, I wonder if this is the thing. You know, it's like, you know, it's like, what the fuck? Why not try it? You know, and a lot of companies can't do it, right? Because they're, because they can't do it. Yeah. Well, they can't, you know, what their brand is going to be hurt as a result. And we're so edgy and we're explicit. And so it's like, probably not going to hurt us. Who gives a shit? So we come up with the idea and we actually came, we actually put one out and we came up with a bunch of ideas. Well, we, we had all blocked them out. This is the crazy part is four days. What I was trying to say, we were, we were tasked out. This all went down after that whole, we all finally agreed. Justin close us. Then the next step was, okay, let's take this serious. Each one of you go home. Each guy had a homework to go home, come up with a creative slogan to match the image that Doug, like 10 different ones each. Yeah. So we all were tasked to come up with a slogan that matched the image that Doug was working on. Yeah. So Doug was tasked with Doug. I don't, just imagine Doug, like going through all these like horrific images. Well, because people need to know, like if you're going to advertise on porn, like we're thinking in our head, like how are we going to get their attention? It's got to be shocking because you go to, okay, because when you go on a porn site, it's not like when you go shopping or whatever, like I'm going to look at stuff. You, you're there for a mission and the goal is not to go off the site until you're done, right? So we're thinking we need to get their attention and I, at another time we will horrible. Well, this is what I think we should do since you opened your mouth is I feel we owe it at least to our OGs and our form fans, which is you should take the list that I know Doug has in his computer. No, no, we can't even look at it so bad. Why? Yes, you can. You've talked about on the fucking show, you may, you have to, people already explained ourselves with it. Yeah, but you didn't share that you didn't, you can't come out and what a dick tease that I have a place for them to look at. You already told people we came up with a program. Those that are listening can hold Sal accountable since he said this on the forum to show us the list and Sal will have to We'll put some of them on. We'll refer to them. Because some of them are really mad. Because they were pictures and they were, well, we only did one that was a picture because we would have to choose pictures. That's my favorite ad though. But we had pictures and it was, they were explicit pictures and then there would be like a slogan or something on there where we have Taylor up with us now, right? So Taylor is now in the company. Taylor was not a part of the company back then. So he had no idea. So he had no idea and part of Taylor's role right now on the media side is cleaning up our image. He's making everything like nice and pretty. Yeah, he's he's almost solely responsible for much of the imagery you see going on with the mind pump media page right now and hopefully those that have been around for a long time appreciate and see the direction it's going and that is Taylor and Taylor, that's the listening and he was just like, oh my God. I could not even believe his eyes were like super good. You guys want to do this? Here's the testament. Like, so not a lot of people realize like I was behind the original mind pump media page, right? Oh yeah, you went back home. Oh my God. We went, oh. And so like, you know, you've seen the evolution of the page, you know, that since Taylor sort of taken over and if you just keep going, you know, keep going to the beginning you'll see what old mind pump used to look like. Oh my God. That's not wrong. Oh, and the episode I don't know what I was seeking and our old episodes and I'll tell you like if you're listening right now and you're a relatively new listener and you're like, oh my God, I love mind pump. You don't need to go back. You just keep listening to mind pump. Keep trucking forward. If you're like a really hardcore listener, you're like, I love mind pump. Yeah. Try going back to the episodes around a number 100 and you'll see what raw fitness truth was like back then. We served it raw. It was good. Well, you know, there's something to take from that with business and that's why I was saying that I think a lot of people get caught up in a lot of the details. Sure. That was a really bad idea. Sure. We spent probably we wasted a little bit of time but there was something to learn from from all of that. I think the I think we would not have got the attention we did at the beginning. Had we not used the shock on our approach? I think that was important. We none of us had big names for ourselves. I mean, let's be honest my stupid Instagram didn't have that many people on it. And you know, I wasn't famous pretty much. Oh, yeah. So we, you know, the shock on our approach was most certainly how we got the attention but then also being able to go from that and then, you know, pivot over to some serious good content that people can actually have some takeaways from. There is a fine line there that we danced a lot of the entertaining education that yeah, was totally on that. But no change gears real quick. Have you guys try? I know you guys are ordering your stuff from Thrive Market. What brand of stuff? I haven't yet. Have you? So yes, freaking great quality and even cheaper than the name brand stuff. So they have their own sources of organic, you know, whatever you can order. And it's the Thrive Market brand, which I think remember how we were speculating at them like how the fuck are they making money? That's how they do it. That's how they do it because you go on their site. It's like Kirkland, right? Dude, you go on their site and I'm not exaggerating. You'll buy the same product. I'm not just saying listen, just nailed it right on the head. It's exactly how it works. It is. Listen, to the audience, I'm not sitting here trying to sell this. This is honest. You go on there and you'll buy peanut butter organic or whatever your favorite brand is. It's 50% off. It's half off. And I'm like, how the fuck could they be making money doing this? It's not like a little bit less. It's a lot less. Even if you count the membership fee, it's ridiculous. It's because of their brand stuff that they're probably making the biggest stuff. And I think that's It's a brilliant model. Very smart. It's a brilliant model and it's very much so. And it's good quality shit. Yeah. You know what I mean? Same thing that Costco did. Yeah. It's just like Costco. I'm sure if we had You're right. It's exactly like it, right? It was organic. Memberships, fees, same thing. Yeah. Costco is not making a ton of money off of the Tyson brand that they carry in there or whatever other GIF. But the Kirkland stuff. But everybody, most people that have been shopping at Costco long enough, it's been a long time that I've shopped at Costco. And at least half of my cart is not Kirkland. Yeah. Because a lot of their products are just as legit. It's quality still. It is quality. And when you look at it, I'm like, oh shit, I can save another 50 cents on top of that just by. God damn it. It's brilliant. It's a brilliant, brilliant model. It's actually strange to me that we haven't seen more companies kind of go that direction. That's what I'm saying. Yeah. That's what I'm saying. It's exciting. Yeah, because I got some of their stuff and you know, something you expect or usually what's happened. Kirkland changed my mind on this, but typically you expect less quality, you know, the package is not doing it. It's fucking legit stuff, great sourced. So you're right. It's exactly like Kirkland does that very, very well. In fact, I think some of their products, if I'm not mistaken for Kirkland, at least I don't know about Thrive Market, but for Kirkland, some of their products are from the brand name stuff that they will then kind of white label and sell for cheaper. Like they do this with their vodka, and then there's a couple of, like their macadamia nuts, I think are the same ones. Ibuprofen. Yeah. Oh, that's one of the ones I was going to try. Have you ordered their macadamia nuts yet? Have you got them yet? From Thrive? Yeah. No, I haven't tried their macadamia nuts. That's on my list because I'm really particular about those. Me too, dude. The only ones I like. Isn't that funny? Macadamia nuts are not the same from everywhere. No. With the Hawaiian brands and macadamia nuts are my two. Macadamia nuts kind of sewers over here. I'll go to Whole Foods and they have their little macadamia. They all went bad or something. Yeah, they don't taste good. And I don't know if it's the amount of salt they use or what it is. The freshness. Yeah, I don't know. But there's something about that. And pork rinds. I feel like pork rinds are the same way too. I like them if it's the right brand. If it's not the right brand. You don't like the gas station ones? No. The chicharronis there. No bueno. I'm not a fan of those. The diaries? Yeah. They're on the burn. The burn. The burn. This quiz brought to you by Organifi. For those days you fall short on getting your organic veggies or whole food nutrition. Organifi fills the gap with laboratory-tested certified organic superfoods to help give your health and performance the added edge. Try Organifi totally risk free for 60 days by going to Organifi.com. That's O-R-G-A-N-I-F-I.com and use a coupon code mine-pump for 20% off First and off at checkout. Our first question is from H.V. Hayes 9. This is to Adam. How did you finally decide to commit to TRT? Testosterone replacement therapy. How did I decide to finally commit, well, you have to know the back story first which is as a 23 year old or so I dabbled in this steroid to use and I had no fucking clue what I was doing. Wasn't it some like bodybuilder friend of yours or older guy? It was a bodybuilder. Who was also selling you the steroids? No, no, no. He didn't actually. Oh, okay. I was going to say that. I mean, the first mistake. Although, looking back now, the way it all went down, I'm sure he made a nice little kickback. Yeah, a little kickback, yeah. Off of me. Yeah, no. Because I definitely paid way above market value for this stuff that I had known. Oh, I mean, back then I'm not, you know, I'm not killing it money-wise and stuff like that. So I don't have a ton of money to be spending and I think I spent $1,500 on my first stack of steroids. Do you remember what your first stack consisted of? I do. What was it? It was testosterone. Was it just like an anthate, isn't it? It was an anthate and deca and ecopoys. So and what else did he give me? What a nonsensical stack. And then I can't remember. Yeah, I know. Totally not. Like, nobody stacks deca and ecopoys. Right. Again, looking back, that was probably like him calling his like steroid hookup and being like, what do you got, dude? Oh, cool. Take all three of these. Yeah, what's in the back? Okay, you got some more. Yeah, Mike. Do you remember what the doses were at first? I was over, let's see here, I know I was over 700 milligrams worth of shit in me. Holy shit, your first cycle, 700 milligrams? I remember- Because I know that, you know, people typically what they'll do for first cycles is, well, at least if you have some integrities, you'll tell people 200 to 300 milligrams. Looking back now, you know, anybody that's ever asked me that, like, or they've told me like, Adam, I'm going to take the stuff. I just want to hear your opinion. Like, you're not going to change my mind. So then I'll tell someone, well, my recommendation is that you take a very, very mild dose because your body's never seen it before and you're going to see some results. Like, less is more here for sure. No, but I didn't. And man, I just- I did not respond the way I wanted to respond, but boy did my body respond in a different way. And while I was- why I used it was for major insecurity reasons. So Sal and I have addressed this before on the show that we have- I've always been called the skinny kid and, you know, lean and bird and, you know, all the comments I've gotten them forever. And they- and in my head, I didn't really feel- I've always been a confident guy, so it wasn't like I sat around my room and cried and be like, oh, I'm so insecure about being- but subconsciously, I made decisions like this that for sure were, like, rooted from insecurities. So, so you got to understand that. It drives you. It did. But I didn't think that, right? I wasn't like, oh, I'm taking steroids because I feel so insecure. Oh, you're unaware of it. Right. So people need to understand that. A lot of times you have to look deeper into things like this because it's not that obvious. It wasn't like, this insecurity is making me do this. But it was. It was- it was subconsciously doing that. And, you know, and the way I looked at it was I knew about nutrition, I knew about weight training. I've been training consistently for years now. And I don't look anything close to what these guys in the magazine look like. And I really wanted to. I really wanted to experience that look. And I had accepted that I just don't have the genetics. And so if I want to look like that, all these guys must be on an anabolic steroids and I'm willing to dabble in that. And so I did. And in 100% regretted, if I could go back and do things over again, I certainly would, although it wouldn't have allowed me to talk about it. And I'm sure I've definitely changed some people's opinions on it and views and been able to help others. So that is the plus from that me going through this and experimenting with my own body. But what happened was like week over week, I was like, mind you, right? Remember, I'm trying to get bigger. Like I was skinny. And I weighed about 185 pounds around this time. And like I just wanted to be over 200 pounds. Like I just wanted to see that. And I didn't. I added like five pounds, like total weight, but I was getting stronger every week that I fucking touched the weights. I was going up by like 10 pounds. So like, I remember watching the dumb, I was doing dumbbell presses around that time. And around that time, I was pressing like 70s or 80s. I don't remember. But I went like 70, 80, 90, 100, 110, 120s, 130. Here I am like pressing 130 pound dumbbells and I'm like a buck 85, like in still skinny, but strong as fuck. Same thing for all my other movements. Like this was what was happening. And so I didn't, then I didn't get the results. All the bodybuilder guys were like, oh, bro, you were eating all wrong. You know, you're eating all wrong. You got to do it again. When you do it this time, you just need to fucking eat. You need to consume. Now at this point when you're done with your cycle, how long was it for? Do you remember? Oh, I ran for 12 or 16 weeks. So, so three to four months. Yeah. Then you go your, did you go off for a little bit? I did go off for a little bit, but I did not do any protocol to coming off. How did you feel when, cause of course, when you go off, your testosterone is to shit already. Did you, was that hard to deal with that whole? Well, because I was a young and kid that would, testosterone was flying through me naturally already. When I came off, I didn't like see like, all of a sudden I didn't have like ACEX drive at all. But I definitely noticed that it was never the same. Like there was enough of a distinct difference that I was like, I used to be the kid who, you know, I wanted to hump everything inside. And I got multiple hard ons throughout the day for no reason. Like that was the norm, you know? And so that was always me. After this, I still had a sex drive. I still being around a good looking girl, I'd be turned on. But I was, didn't feel like the 17 year old boy that I used to feel like before definitely had lost that. And then I watched the strength drop every, every week, just like I saw myself climb, every week I saw myself decline and it was extremely depressing. And at that time in my life, I had thought I was only going to try and see where it went. When I saw that happen, then I had everybody tell me that, oh, it's because of what you fucked up the way you ate. You gotta do it again. You gotta do it again. And so did it again. Did you take more of the second time? I didn't take more because I did put that, I didn't make that connection. I did realize it wasn't, I wasn't, because I could feel how much stronger. I could tell the testosterone was working, but it was obvious. I was eating chicken and rice all the time. I was just not getting enough calories. It wasn't, you know, and this again goes back to what's more important. Like all the juice in the world, you're not gonna build as much muscle as you think if you're not feeding the body with what it needs to build, right? So I put that together and realized, okay, I need to take more. I mean, I need to eat more. And, you know, I did take the same dose though. And this time added a bunch more. Again, didn't come off, come off correctly. And this time, I really noticed that like I, my sex drive was starting to decline, but still again, still there. So I never really addressed it, but this was enough to keep me away from testosterone for a long time. And it wasn't until like later in my 20s did I start, and what caused it was actually issues in my relationship. I started to get girlfriends that would get upset that I'm not having sex with them enough. I mean, it caused insecurities with them, then it caused issues in my relationship. And then it was like this cycle that I was getting in all this vicious cycle of I'd be with a new girlfriend and then things would be fine. And then eventually she would get insecure because I'm not having sex with her enough. And then I'd realized that I didn't really want to have it with her anymore. And so I was starting to put this all together. And this is my late 20s now. And then I started to think like, fuck man, how did I really fuck up my testosterone? And now I'm starting to- So you didn't know at this point? Yeah, I still didn't know. Like I still just assumed that it was okay, but now I'm getting closer to 30 and I'm starting to realize like, man, it's, it doesn't, maybe I should have this checked out. Like let me, let me go have it tested. And when I went out and tested, I was 200 in something. I don't remember it was too- Really low? Yeah, for those wondering like free test is supposed to be somewhere between 400 to like 13 or somewhere in there. And I was abnormally low. And what I don't know, which really sucks, which is also why I always recommend to anybody who's even thinking about taking testosterone, go get your blood work first. So you know where you're starting at. So you, because this is where, this is what the struggle that people have that decide to do TRT or not is because there's such a wide range, 400 to 1300. Sal may naturally be somebody who cares, that hangs around 900. I may be somebody who naturally cares, is around 1300. Justin may be someone who's around 600. And I may do just fucking around with steroids just enough to not kill my testosterone drive, but take it from 900 down to 450, which still you fall in the normal range. It's low for you. But it's low for me. And that's why, and some hormone therapist won't prescribe testosterone if you still fall in that range, but you as a person notice a difference. And why it really matters and what made me make this decision was I noticed the other stuff like, and I never went through like real depression or anything like that, but I felt down and just wasn't motivated to lift like I used to be. And then I decided to go through the TRT. And what I did at this time, it was for that reason, it was more therapeutic than it was, I need to build muscle. I was at a different point in my life now. I'm no longer hung up on, I need to look a certain way or be something. It was more like, dude, I need to be able to fuck my girlfriend. Like, or she's, you know what I'm saying? Like if I want to have a good, healthy relationship. For maintenance, I mean shit. Right, I need to definitely make sure that I'm at least fucking normal, right? And so again, I went and had it prescribed and had the blood work all done and stuff and decided, you know what, I had already done enough damage, like let's figure this out and see where I need to be. And so a lot of people don't know this, but I was already on TRT before my transformation. So I'm on testosterone in that fat picture. Like people think that like, oh, you know, cause he talks about steroids. And so he probably took all these steroids. And that's what- No, you just changed your training in diet. Yeah, so I was on testosterone before that picture, but on my before picture and my after picture, it's the same, you know? And when I got into competing, like I, once I started to get on stage, then I started to up my dose. So when I, when I am staying like normal or like what I take right now is 150 milligrams, you know, so I stay at a very low dose of testosterone and anthate is what I take. That's how I use it. And it's just to probably keep my levels that tends to keep me at a very even kill. And if I were to be aggressive and if I were to go get on stage again, I'd wrap myself up to 250. That's what I would do because that's enough to give me the competitive edge to where I can build muscle like really well compared to everybody else. And that's kind of where I hover around. It's interesting too, because, you know, we see this with men when we take, you know, anabolic steroids and testosterone levels get crushed. This is more common than people realize, by the way, like you're gonna read into bodybuilding forums and stuff like, oh, if you take anabolic steroids and if you do post-cycle therapy, right, and everything, then you'll be perfectly fine. That's not true, because I know lots of people who've done the, that did all the protocols and then went to the doctor and the doctor did the protocols to get the testosterone levels back up. And that didn't work. And then they still had to take go on TRT. So there's definitely potential for permanent damage by going on these super high doses of testosterone. But what trips me out is when women take birth control, which is also a hormone, which also, I mean, I wonder how much that throws women's hormones off. I always think about it. For a long time. I, you know, I've had friends, female friends. This is total anecdotal, but I tell you what, Katrina's the only woman I've ever met that hasn't, has never used it in her life before. And I think from a hormonal standpoint, I think she's the most even killed normal woman I've ever met in my entire life. Again, that's completely anecdotal. And I know there's exceptions to all the rules and stuff like that, but I'd never, before her, I'd never met a woman that hadn't hadn't had to use it or did use it or whatever the case. Well, I have female friends that will go off their, you know, their birth control and they'll, they'll tell me they didn't feel normal for like a year or two years or longer. And that's just subjective how they feel. Like, you know, who knows what's going on otherwise, you know? Well, you know, too, as far as like TRT is concerned, like I remember listening, I don't remember what doctor it was specifically, but there's like some research in the direction of TRT usage for like post-traumatic stress and CTE. And it's like super interesting to me, like, you know, how it's being used more for like therapy and more for other alternative ways to, you know, help with the brain. Testosterone is a feel-good hormone. It does make you feel good. This whole like, you know, the myth of the super aggressive or whatever. Yeah, when you throw things off, that can definitely happen, but healthy testosterone levels make you feel good. And when they're not healthy, when they're low, you're going to feel depressed. Oh, I noticed a significant difference when I'm off and when I'm on, for sure. And I always, I do this like probably every three to five months, I'll use HCG and I'll come completely off the testosterone for a little bit just to kind of see what it feels like to be there and see if I've made some sort of progress or I'm getting worse. I just like to do that. And when I do, I feel okay, but it definitely, my libido is just not there. I've not been able to get my libido all the way back to where I'd like it to be. And to me, it's really important. That's really, to me, that's more important than the muscle-building aspect or any other things. And so when I get back on, I'm like, man, my motivation to lift, everything else. But what has been, and I've shared this on the show before and this fascinates me, being somebody who's a tracker, being somebody who's had lots of experience with this stuff, it fascinates me that more than test, synthetic testosterone being in my system, nothing affects me more than stress and sleep. That fucking blows my mind. It blows my mind that, because I know how crazy strong testosterone is and wow, what a difference that makes when you take it. If I am stressed, nothing will kill me hormonally or fuck up my workouts or mess me up more than stress and sleep. If those two are better, it makes a bigger difference than actually synthetically pumping something into me because I have been on a higher dose, 250 plus milligrams in a week, which is a high dose for me of testosterone but then very high stress, not great at sleep because of work or whatever's going on. And my sex drives feels like I have no testosterone in me and I've done the flip before, been extremely low dose, even off of it but had a really good balance everywhere else and my testosterone feels better. So I find that really fascinating. A second question from HV Hayes 9. How do you motivate yourself to eat and train properly when going through tough times? So I went through one of the most difficult, actually probably a difficult five years. You're the best at following, explain this right now. Yeah, I went through a very difficult, I don't know, five-year period where somebody very, very close to me who I grew up with, you got diagnosed with cancer, watched her fight it and then lose that battle and then I went through difficulties with my marriage and a divorce and all while starting a new business and selling my old business and moving and doing all this stuff and it's been a very difficult and things are settled now, much more settled today than they were then but eating right and exercising right, the motivation behind them change or at least the goals change depending on your life. So I would love to always have a life where I'm eating and exercising to perform better and to be stronger, more muscular. That sounds awesome, that's fun, right? But when I'm going through those stressful times I then view exercise and nutrition as a way to, you know, ameliorate some of the stress and to- More of a therapeutic. As therapy and to keep me healthy and to keep me strong enough to make it through those periods. There were a lot of people that were affected in my family from, you know, the person I'm referring to who had cancer. And everybody handles it differently and we all had a very tough time with it but I was the only one that exercised consistently and still paid attention to my nutrition and I can tell you that I came out of it much, I survived it a lot easier than other people because I had those outlets. So during that period of time, I would still go to the gym. I didn't like stop working out but when I'd go to the gym, it wasn't like I'm going after it. I don't walk in there thinking like, oh, fuck, I'm gonna go lift so hard or I'm gonna get this great pump. I went in there like it's a break. I'm gonna put my headphones on. I'm gonna feel my body which puts me in the present which means I'm not thinking about everything else that's going on or thinking about the fear I have for, you know, the future for this person or the regret I had in the past for, you know, maybe the things I might have said to this person or not done with this person that I could have. I'm just here right now. And it was only an hour, you know, an hour, you know, four or five days a week that I would do this but it was enough to carry me through and it became, because of that, I never missed a workout. I never missed a workout because I knew how important was and how good it felt to do so but by no means was I chasing PRs or really trying to change my body. And the same thing with nutrition, you know, I think nutrition is one of the first things to go when stressful times come. Because I know, I do know a lot of people who exercise with when stress comes although sometimes they do it, they might do it the wrong way. They might just beat themselves up to try and, you know, get aggression out or whatever too much. But nutrition for sure is the first thing to go for people because stress or sadness or anxiety can cause us to either not want to eat. That's usually the first phase of depression or whatever is you don't want to eat anything or then start to comfort yourself with food. And then it becomes this kind of vicious cycle, you know, where you're sad. So you eat, which is temporary, like feels good for the second because I'm eating this whatever. And then now I'm starting to feel terrible because the food I'm eating starting to make me feel terrible, which it does by the way, that food will have an impact and does have an impact on your mental wellbeing. And then on top of that now, because I'm eating terribly, now my body's gaining body fat, hormones are starting to change. And then if you're self-conscious, you look in the mirror, now you're gonna feel bad about that. And it creates this, and now I'm feeling even worse, which then motivates me to continue the cycle. Versus, you know, I feel terrible right now. I'm really anxious or stressed. I need to make sure I eat foods that I know make me feel good. And really the way I look at it, and this is the way I coach people too, is look at your tool belt. Look at your, you know, open up your tool chest. And there's certain tools that you know that you have in there that do certain things. For example, I know exercising regularly and properly makes me feel good and makes me feel stronger. I know that eating certain foods makes me feel healthy, gives me more energy, and it just in general makes me feel better. I know that if I meditate this much time, I'm gonna feel better and it's gonna help me deal with stress. And I know if I sleep this many hours and do this sleep routine that I'm gonna be able to deal with problems a lot better. Now, I might not be able to change the stressful situation that's happening, but I can definitely use all those tools that I'm familiar with and I know in ways to really help me along and through that process. If you don't use those tools, then you're just making it a lot more difficult for you. And then you become of, it's like you're reacting. You're just reacting to all these issues. You see this a lot with caregivers, right? Like they have a really hard time taking care of themselves. And they really pour themselves into the situation where yeah, they're not eating, they're not sleeping, they're stressing, but they just to do all those things you mentioned to consider those things to be a better caregiver is such a hard thing to kind of realize. But it's so important. You see this a lot with parents, especially moms, but I see it with some dads too, where they get married, they have kids, and they become martyrs, okay? Everything is for the kids. That's all life is. I wake up in the morning, I make them lunch, I clean the house, I focus on everything for the kids, and I end up forgetting about myself. So then my relationships with my husband or my wife starts to suffer. I feeling terrible, my body, myself, my health starts to decline, and you become a martyr. And in the irony of that is you become, you're not as good of a parent as a result. You have to place yourself first if you're gonna do all these great things and help all these awesome people. If I have a truck, and there's a situation where I need, where we need to haul stuff. Like it's an emergency situation, hey, we need your truck to haul these things out. If I don't take care of that truck, if I don't check the tires and check the gas and the oil and take care of that truck as well as I possibly can, I'm not gonna do what I wanna do, which is haul these things and help these people out. So think of yourself the same way. If you don't take care of and place yourself as a priority, you will eventually become worthless for all these great things that you wanna do, including help the people around you or do your job or become good at business or whatever you wanna do, you're not gonna be good at those as well. So that's the irony of it is, you have to place yourself as a priority before all these other things that you think are more important because of course if I were to list things of importance, my kids, right? My kids are most important. I die for my kids. But I gotta place myself ahead of them because if I'm not healthy and strong and feeling good, you're not gonna be your best you. I'm not gonna give my kids what they deserve, what they need at least. Well this is kinda cool because it's not often that we have totally different advice on a topic. And I do have something that's totally different or the way I approach it than what you just named, which I think is an incredible advice still. I kinda look at it like this. Like you have, and I believe perspective is everything. So when the question is, when you're going through tough times, like what are tough times first of all and what do we mean by that? Like so I've got my relationships with my friends. I have my relationship with Katrina. I have my business relationships. I have my relationship with myself which would be like exercise and how I'm taking care of it. So those are like the main categories and everything kind of falls underneath that, right? Like so you could name something I could probably put that in one of those main categories in with relationships, whether it be with myself, with others, with business, with what that. And when something goes wrong, it's like in one of those it feels, right? So let's give an example. Let's just say fucking work is bad. I get fired, right? I'm no longer working this job. That fucking sucks, right? Well here's the perspective on that like, or here's some perspective on that. That's just job, right? That's a job that I work for this other company. They fired me and I'm over there. That really fucking sucks. But I have all these other relationships in my life that are a part of me and make up who I am and my experience. And so what I always try and do when I find that I'm having a tough time in one of these other, one of these arenas, I tend to put a lot of energy and focus on the other ones and try and excel at the other ones. So if work is going really bad and that's what's all that's on my mind, I wanna get that out of my mind and I wanna put energy and focus on other things and excel at them. So maybe work's not the best right now because some shit happened that I can't fucking control and that really sucks. But you know what's cool? My relationship with my girl right now and my friends has never been so good. I just had this incredible weekend with them. I just had this great date with her and I'm doing the things that make them happy and make me happy with them and I can hang my hat on that like, you know what? I'm not the best me at work right now because of the situation that's happened but I am the best me over here. And so when I look at these things that tend to happen to us and then we can flip that over to the relationship, fucking home life stuff. How many times have we've gone through divorces or had something going on? Well, you know what? That does suck. There's nothing you do about it. It fucking sucks. It is what it is. What I don't wanna do is I don't wanna dwell on it and get caught up on it. I'm gonna put all my energy and focus over here in work because my home life is going through it and instead of dwelling on it so much and beating myself up, I'm gonna go put my energy and focus in business and I'm gonna excel at that. That way when I look at myself at the end of the day and I go like, well shit still is pretty rough at home. You know, it's not fixed yet. There's a lot of work to be done there. I'm still kind of going through it but you know, it's pretty awesome that I'm kicking ass at work right now. So I tend to try and shift my energy and my focus on the other aspects of my life because rarely ever does one of them necessarily have to affect the other but many times we allow that to bleed in to the other arenas in our life and that's where you get really fucked. When shit goes wrong at home and then you allow it to bleed into work, you allow it to bleed into your working out, you allow it to bleed into your other relationships, now that's your fault. You know, you can't help that your wife left you. You can't help that your boss fired you. You can't help some of these things. You can't help that you broke your leg and you can't work out now. You can't help some of these things but what you can do is you can control that one fucking scenario from bleeding into all the rest of them and that's normally our own fault because we allow that. So it's all about perspective and realizing that and then putting your energy and focusing. So that's kind of my approach on when I'm going through a tough time. Next question up is prime and glory. Now that you've tackled fixing public schools, how would you fix big box gyms? Oh, this is our wheelhouse. Yeah, this is cool right here. You know what, I used to say this as a general manager managing gyms and back in those days. I know what you're gonna say, Brock. I could finish your sentence right now. And back in those days. No such thing as bad clubs, just bad managers. I wasn't gonna say that, but that's good. That's definitely very true. But I used to say this back then and back then consider when I was managing big box gyms, corporate gyms. There was, it wasn't a huge divide but there definitely was a fitness side and then there was a sales side. So you had your fitness side, which was your trainers and then to a lesser extent, your group X instructors and your sales side with your sales people who sell the memberships. And your general manager, although the general manager managed the whole gym, the way it was run back in those days was all the emphasis or most the emphasis was placed on the sales people as a manager because they're the ones that brought in most of the revenue. And then you had a fitness manager that would manage the trainers and help with revenue there. And I would have these all staff meetings. So I'd get these big, these huge gyms boxes and I'd stand at the front of my staff, you know, 50 people, whatever, trainers, sales people, whatever. And I'd stand up and I'd say in terms of the member experience, profitability and our revenue, the most of people, all of us are important. Everybody plays a role. But the people where I'm gonna place a lot of the focus on a lot of the energy on or the trainers. And I used to tell them all the time, the trainers play such a massive role in a gym and it makes me sad that gyms have completely abandoned because they have, you go into gyms and there's almost no effort put on the personal trainers in the gym. But if you're a big box gym and you know how to train trainers and make them effective and good, you will fucking succeed. The reason why CrossFit has succeeded as well as they have is because to some extent, I'm not saying the trainers are great, they're all great or any of that stuff. What I'm saying is they've got that energy and that culture and that's the only way you can create that in your big box gym of that culture is with your trainers. It doesn't, it happens from all the staff but the trainers really drive that. Well, they're the ones touching the lives. They're the ones touching clients. They're the ones in the gym, in the weight area and the cardio. They're the ones training people. They're the ones driving the fitness information. And unfortunately, big box gyms have abandoned that. But there was a period of time where when I was with 24 Hour Fitness and for a short period after I left, they were placing more time and money on this because there were managers like me and a few others who were showing and demonstrating that this was successful and it was becoming a model. The problem with it is it required general managers who were good leaders and who also had fitness in their background. And believe it or not, no joke, a good chunk. If not the majority of general managers back when I was a manager barely even fucking worked out. Most of them started in sales and had no fitness experience. And I had started as a trainer. So I had understood differently. So I would say what you fix right now in the big box gyms and when I say big box, I'm talking about the big, super cheap membership, lots of people using the gym type of thing. Invest time, effort and money in your training staff and get them to be excellent at training clients, getting clients, building programs and creating the culture within the gym. Well, it's interesting as you saw that for a minute especially with 24 Hour Fitness and they really put emphasis on that. But then they lost that and then they lost the culture as a result because the new bean counters coming in that are trying to look at the actual financials and look at profitability and all these types of things. As a business owner, you're always looking to gain sort of an edge in what you can cut costs on and all these types of things. That's important to do. But this is not one of those things. No, no. And I'm glad you brought that up because it really is. Because you were there when that shit went down. Yeah, it's the foundation of what your gym is and looks like and is perceived by all the members that are coming in. Your staff has to be friendly. They have to be approachable. Everybody in the gym watches trainers and what they're doing with their clients. So this is something that, the whole experience revolves around that. And I don't know that like you mentioned CrossFit there's a couple other smaller gyms that it's inevitable because you have like a smaller community where people actually interact and they talk. So I guess my advice would be more around the structure of the gym, how to like do it in a way where people actually like run into each other more. So there's forced interactions with each other. So they actually talk and communicate. And your front desk is set up in such a way where there's like a few people that make sure they say hello, make sure you talk to them on their way out. Make sure when they're coming up to purchase like a drink or whatever like there's this constant rapport. And that's what's gonna help you to succeed in the future. That's what it's all about. It's this micro community. It's this thing that you create for people to have a certain type of experience that they're gonna wanna keep doing. Yeah, cause what you have now is you have this culture that's developed now is they've gone in and this is what happened with 24 at least they went in they had people from outside of fitness who stepped in and looked at the numbers. Saw all these workouts coming in. Saw that 24 fitness owned all these markets cause they had the most gyms in there with the most amenities. And they said, fuck, all we gotta do is lower the price and cut cost and we'll blow up. Because they're using the same model that you would use for retail or something like that. And everybody who was in fitness when we heard that all of us shaking our head going, no, that's a terrible idea. And that's a shit. And we were, we were fucking right. And now you've got gyms that are following that same model kind of making money. And it's, I think it's ruined the big boxes. You don't see lots of growth in the big box gyms as a result of that. But I'll tell you what, I used to have these, I would do these regional sales trainings, right? With all the, I've done a couple of them with all the general managers from the region. And I'd say, you know, cause we were blessed in many different ways for working for 24 fitness. One of them is I got to work in a company that had 400 locations that I was also competing with. So although we were all working the same company, I got to compete with clubs that were five miles away in the same city. And I got to see their numbers. I got to see what they were doing and they got to see what I was doing. And so it's, imagine if you could compete with your other competitors out that are, that you could do that. So I could see what was going on. To all to make a better place. And I used to remember, I'd sit there in these meetings and be like, what makes you, what makes us different than anybody else? And people raise their hand. More locations. We have cardio. I'm like, no, you, you're the only thing that makes a difference. The only reason why my club did better than this club down here was because me and my staff, because we had the same equipment. Or sometimes we had worse equipment. I was put in sometimes some shitty situations where we would outperform clubs that were brand new or whatever. They turned off the AC. It's like, you got to explain that to members. And you're just like, I don't know, man. That's it. Because I still came. I tell you what, you put me in a big box now. I walk in there, you give me a fucking month and I'll show you some returns that'll blow your mind. And it's not anything to do with the equipment or the fricking physical looks at the gym. It's all about the attitude and culture of the staff. And I do think the root of that is with the trainers. You guys pretty much summed that one up pretty nice. I think culture is the for sure. I'm in a living off of, when I work for 24 hour fitness, off of going into clubs that were underperforming and turning them around without changing anything else. So most times it has everything to do with that. That's wrong. So if there's something wrong with it, it's the culture, which is very similar to the public school issue that we talked about. It's the culture of the gym. And how you do that, it starts with you as the leader. Like you have to set the tone. I mean, I used to go crazy when I'd see my peers inside a gym and sitting at a desk on a phone behind a computer the entire day. And I'm just like, we're in a fitness gym. You guys understand that, right? Like there's all your people, there's all your customers. Like how are you not engaging and talking to them and helping them? And there's not a lot of places where you get to, anybody who's like a real entrepreneur really understands business would wanna strangle most gym people inside of, like gym owners and gym people like that are working there because they all should be out mingling with their members. Because if you look at a big box gym, there's probably anywhere between 50 to 150 plus people inside there at one time. And those are your consumers. Those are your buyers. Those are your referrals. They're all right there in front of you to think that you're not communicating with them is like ridiculous. That's absurd to not do that. But yet we do that in these boxes. You don't see this communication. The other thing that I think Justin said that I'll elaborate on more is the average person that gets personal training shop their personal trainer for three months before they actually do that. So, and this is why I used to tell all my trainers that you are constantly on stage. You are constantly being looked at. People are watching what you're doing, your mannerisms, how you engage with other people. You're on. The minute you walk to that door, you need to be on. I walk in a big box gym now and I just like laugh. I'm like, I see trainers leaning on machines, drinking coffee, sitting down while a client's exercising. Like I see these things that I wanna pull my hair out because that would not fly in my facility. There's no fucking way you would be a personal trainer flirting with some girl, drinking a cup of fucking coffee, sitting down Indian style while she's doing some fucking plank or something or watching you bullshit on the floor while someone's exercising or on your phone now. That's the big one I see with trainers. Texting on their phone while a client's actually exercising. I mean this is what's wrong and that's all going back to what Sal said. It's the culture. Somebody that's leading that place is fucking that place up. Yeah, the irony of it is, the traditional big box, probably, you're probably better off just doing the smaller box. I think to run and pay for a big box and the amount of volume that you need and all that other stuff and, you know. The only real difference though, Sal, why that is is because it's easier to create a culture within a small facility. That's the reason why. Because if you were, and we saw this with other leaders and peers of ours, right? We always had, and I know you remember this, there was always the guy that was pretty good. He was decent. He was decent. He wasn't like the- That's why they put him in the small box. They put him in the small box. He could manage a facility that saw 500 workouts a day and a team of five people. But if you were really good, you were leading the biggest boxes because you could run a 50,000 square foot location, have 25 people underneath you and you could create a culture inside that big of a facility. So that's possible. The reason why we see this explosion for small boxes, CrossFit, Orange theories, all your little small studios, it's just easier to create a good culture there. It's easy to control five to 10 people. But if you take that same formula, you can have a bad-ass big location. Next question is from Health. Healthy, happy and free. What are your current workout routines and goals? Nice. Hmm. For me at the moment, I'm always training to feel better, but I do have secondary goals, I guess, when I go into my workouts. Right now, a long-standing goal I have is to improve my mobility and control and range of motion in my lower body. My hips, my knees, my ankles, my feet, my back. So my training for my lower body looks different than it does for my upper body, where it's lighter, it's controlled, it's tension, it's unilateral. I'm basically just, that's the main goal. It's gonna be like that for a very, very long time. It's not, I've relegated it to that and that's all good. As far as the rest of my training is concerned, it's at the moment, I went through kind of a mini bulk where my gut has been feeling so good, where I'm eating food and absorbing it and having no issues that I thought I'd push my food and take a little bit and see what happened I gained some muscle and I felt real good and now I think I'm gonna go back on a mini cut, but that's really more my nutrition, anything else is concerned. Yeah, well, I'll go ahead and go next. I think for me, like I went through a period where we had talked about this where it was more unilateral and for me now I'm kind of transitioning to see how that applies with barbell training and also very specific like gross motor movement, like skill type movement. So I'm sticking with three particular lifts and that being, I'm actually trying to get back into a little bit more of like what I used to do for sport specific training, whereas I'm adding in barbell squats, I'm adding in power cleans and overhead press. So those are like my three like staple skill exercises that I'm just gonna work on the skill and mastery of for the next couple of months. And my focus with that is just to get back into how everything is firing, how my body is responding, what my mechanics look like and just because too, like doing that takes a lot of pressure off of the programming a bit of, okay, I wanna add this muscle group in, this muscle group in. And I know this is kind of going back to my comfort zone because that's kind of like what I used to do, athletic wise, but it's fun and it's something that I enjoy and- You've taken a break from it for a while so I haven't seen what happens. I haven't seen what happens. So it'd be cool to like see how I can kind of ramp it up and get that back on track. So I wanna probably bore the shit of everybody with mine right now. You know, where we're at right now is different for us like business wise. So my workout routines and goals kind of reflect that. And what I mean by that is I'm pretty happy with where I'm currently at physically. Well, I'm lying. Today I'm on this like, I need to lean back out a little bit because we just came off of four days of not training, eating whatever the fuck I wanted. I wasn't dialed in at all on our trip. So I feel a little soft and I know that once I get back to the swing of things this week, I'm already back onto my regimen as far as eating is concerned. But if I had a goal right now, the goal actually would be to mentally check myself and be okay with where I'm at. I'm only gonna train like three days a week right now. I'm not trying to make major moves and gains and changes with my body. I'm very happy with my mobility right now. I'm fully recovered from the fall off the ladder. So I don't have any real nagging pains or anything going on with me. So my body physically feels really good. Aesthetically, I look pretty weak sauce, nothing impressive at all. And so that's part of the goal is I'm challenging that right now and to be okay with that because I know that what it takes right now to grow the business that we're in right now, something's gotta give, right? And I just answered somebody on the forum the other day or I just kind of said that something's gotta give because they asked this question like, how do you guys deal with this? Schools like crazy right now, works like crazy. I'm trying to achieve this goal. Like, how do you guys handle that? And for me, I accept that something has to give. And what has to give right now is me having a hardcore physical goal or like I'm not chasing a PR, I'm not chasing a look right now. I'm just kind of maintaining health while I help grow a monster business, which that requires a ton of laborious work that's on a computer and flying and traveling and not always getting the most optimal food that I should eat. So for me, I'm not focused right now on that. My focus is to be able to maintain it for it to reflect the rest of my life and the rest of the things that are a high priority. And I actually think that a lot of people in the fitness industry struggle with this. I think they- They need those hardcore goals, otherwise they don't want- Right, like even this question right now, like, you know, what are your guys's goals? They want to know what this, I don't have a current like- That's been me though for the last few months. So yeah. I'm not trying to change anything hardcore right now. And that's not to say that that won't, that could change next week. I mean, knowing me, somebody could put an idea in my head. In fact, I almost got one because I forget who was talking this weekend about jiu-jitsu and that's been kind of getting tossed around and- Yeah, it was Rob, right? That was talking about jiu-jitsu and I'm like, yeah, you know what? I've been meaning to do that. I kind of want to get into that. Taylor wants us to do it for video reasons. Oh, I'd be down. Right, and so, and Justin's already said he'd be up to it. Sal loves it already, so. But I don't want to announce that on the radio until I'm committed to doing it. I don't, you know, so right now, I'm not what I'm committed to right now. I'm sticking to my book goal. I'm knocking the books out. I'm sticking to my relationship goals that I set for myself with Katrina. I'm working towards my fitness goals or maybe my friendship goals right now as far as how much I'm spending time with them and I'm failing there. So that's a priority of mine more than my current workout and fitness goals are. And I'd like to maintain a healthy lifestyle as much as possible. So I'm kind of ebb and flow right now. You know, we just had four days of not eating well and not training. So I'm on one side of the spectrum. And then this week, I'll get back into the swing of things, eat better and train good. And so I'm just kind of chilling and weaving in and out. And I'm really focusing on the things right now that are really important to me. This business that we're building and doing right now is extremely important in all my mind most of the time. And then like my personal relationship in books, like that's kind of a big deal for me right now. So I hate to kind of shitty answer for this question that could have been better, right? Sorry. No, it's good. It's real though, man. Yeah, it's real. It's like you don't wanna just throw out some generic shit. Well, that's longevity. That's longevity with fitness. If you always have these hardcore goals, you're not gonna last number one and you will lose your motivation number two. So like the earlier question, you know, when I'm exercising, when I'm super stressed, the goal of the exercise is not to change my body. It's to feel better at that moment. So there you go. I felt like in the past, and I was definitely somebody who used to be and we talk about the show all the time on or off, you know? I'm either dialed in, I'm either- Cause you needed that. Yeah, right. I'm either measuring the food and I'm doing this, I'm training hard and I gotta focus and that worked really well for me. It really, really well to get myself in shape. But I like the shit. I mean, I'm filling out my shirts right now. I'm moderately strong. I'm nowhere near the best of any of those things. I'm not the best aesthetically, I'm not the best strongest right now. But I feel good. I feel good and I feel- Oh, you look good. Thank you, man. You look good, we'll give you a hug after. You're balanced. Yes. Go to YouTube, Mind Pump TV. That is our YouTube channel. If you haven't checked it out yet, what is wrong with you? How dare you? Also, mindpumpmedia.com, that's our website, enroll in 30 Days of Coaching, it's free. Thank you for listening to Mind Pump. If your goal is to build and shape your body, dramatically improve your health and energy and maximize your overall performance, check out our discounted RGB Superbundle at mindpumpmedia.com. The RGB Superbundle includes Maths Anabolic, Maths Performance, and Maths Aesthetic, nine months of phased expert exercise program designed by Sal Adam and Justin to systematically transform the way your body looks, feels, and performs. With detailed workout blueprints and over 200 videos, the RGB Superbundle is like having Sal Adam and Justin as your own personal trainers, but at a fraction of the price. The RGB Superbundle has a full 30-day money-back guarantee, and you can get it now plus other valuable free resources at mindpumpmedia.com. If you enjoy this show, please share the love by leaving us a five-star rating and review on iTunes and by introducing Mind Pump to your friends and family. We thank you for your support, and until next time, this is Mind Pump.