 Hello, everyone. Welcome to Mind Pump. In this episode, we talk about the benefits of loaded stretching for building muscle. The guys go into detail about what it is, how to use it, and how it can benefit you. Later, we talked about how low melatonin levels may contribute to leptin resistance and fat gain, as well as other topics. In the second half of the show, we answered four questions from our Mind Pump media Instagram account. Questions such as, how can I target my chest when doing dips? Should I do reefy days when cutting? What are the best foods for bulking? And what is the best protein powder for someone who can't tolerate weight? Finally, if you've been listening to Mind Pump for a while, you're probably looking pretty sexy and your friends and family are probably wondering what you're doing. Well, you may not know how to answer their questions, but we do at Mind Pump Clips. Have them go over and subscribe. All right. Enjoy the show. All right. Check this out. Stretching can actually build muscle. You just have to do it the right way. Loaded stretching has been shown to increase IGF-1 in muscles. That's insulin-like growth factor, very anabolic hormone. It also has been shown to upregulate the receptors that IGF-1 attaches to what it works with. And it also has an occlusion effect similar to muscle occlusion training, where it fatigues muscle fibers and causes the fast twitch muscle fibers to build even faster. So you can add this to your routine. It doesn't cause much damage, improves your range of motion, and it accelerates results. Old knowledge? Old knowledge. But there's studies that are starting to support loaded stretching, but this is like a favorite among bodybuilders for a long time, right? Where they finish a workout with like a isolation exercise that puts a muscle in a stretch, focusing on the stretch. And then other bodybuilders have figured out that if you take an isolation exercise, put a muscle in a stretch, hold it under stretch for 30 to 45 seconds, you get these crazy pumps and what's the most common ways that they do that with like a chest fly, for instance, and like in that stretch position? Yes. Yes. Like a chest fly would be one for the back or the lats. It'd be like hanging from a bar or a pull down bar, getting a lat stretch bicep, right? It would be like an incline bench with two dumbbells hanging down, delts you could do on a flat bench, where you're holding down here, quads, obviously you could set in your heels, hamstrings, that's an easy one. But basically what you do is you get a pump and at the end of the workout, you do this like extended loaded stretch and it's like a few percent more stimulus for muscle growth and it's easy to add. And then the real benefit that I enjoy from it is it helps me work on improved range of motion because that's the best time to do a static stretch at the end of the workout because you're not doing any more exercises. Yeah. I mean, I've done something similar, but it's mainly just intrinsic, so it wasn't loaded stretches, but it was like those positions. But now you're really like digging into it and adding muscular tension to kind of reinforce those positions. If it's hard to get in those positions especially, but in terms of muscle building, I could see loaded stretches being an option. Now mechanistically, what is happening? Is it facilitating recovery at a faster rate because you're relaxing the muscle? Because obviously if you're lifting, you just go down with a massive pump, you're in a state of tonus and you're active still. If you do this static stretch for more than 30 seconds, it tells the CNS to kind of relax. Does that speed up the process of recovering because of that? What are the real benefits that are happening? Yeah. I don't know if it speeds up recovery, but I do know that it's loaded so it's not necessarily like a recovery type of stretch because if I'm doing a weighted fly and I'm holding it here at the bottom and I'm letting it stretch my chest, there's still kind of an isometric thing that's going on. I can't completely, or my body's not going to completely let go. Otherwise, I'd hurt myself, so it's, you're still getting the isometric contraction. What you're also doing though, when a muscle is pumped and you're stretching it and loading it, you're squeezing the muscle, the muscle of blood. All the waste products are kind of building up. It burns like crazy. If you've ever done this, it's very, very painful. It feels like it allows your, that fluid to kind of travel a little bit more to end range in terms of your muscle. Like, I don't know if that's... Well, what I noticed is after the stretch, when you let go of the dumbbells, the pump comes back like super, super intense. My favorite value of it is it helps with range of motion for the next workout because I get this deep stretch. I've already trained the muscle. I'm not worried about weakening the muscle because it's at the end of the workout. And then when I go back into my workout the next time, I tend to have a little bit of better range of motion, and then you can train in better range of motion. It would be interesting to me to see it compare to somebody who, like let's say a group of people that do the stretching afterwards, then another group does just traditional isometric type of holds afterwards. And then another group, let's say, does two reps, two, no, two more reps of a set. So let's say we use the chest fly example. I would love to see a study that shows somebody who does just an isometric hold on the chest afterwards, a group that would do the stretch, like you're saying, and then another group that would just add two more reps or another set of flies, and then which one potentially builds the most muscle. The closest thing that we have to that is they did do a study on isometric holds comparing both ends and ranges of motion. So fully contracted versus fully stretched. And they found that the fully stretched isometric contraction resulted in more muscle growth. So like, you know, holding a bicep squeeze here versus holding it here at a stretch, for example, the stretch position produced a little bit more muscle growth than the. Okay. So we do have research to show that. Yeah. So it's like, it would be like comparing, I guess. But I mean, you could also still do it. You could do an isometric hold that's. Yeah. So that's, that's the squeeze part, right? Right. Because it doesn't get as much emphasis otherwise, like in the exercise. It's like doing, it's like comparing concentric to eccentric. So what if you did though an isometric hold then like against a wall. Yes. Opened up. Yes. So that would be in the stretch position. Right. That's where they see you get more muscle growth. And I also think that it doesn't cause much damage. So it's something that's easy to add versus if you add a few more reps or an exercise, you may tip yourself over. It's a different stimulus. So there's that novelty aspect. I notice that more results with certain muscle groups with this one, delts are really hard. Like delts are hard to get into a stretch position. So that one's always tough for me. My lats, crazy pump, quads, crazy pump, chest, crazy pump when I do, and it's not, it's not adding much more to your exercise. It's really easy to do at the end of your workout. And it's a lot of fun. I know Ben Pekolsky was a big proponent and he does it in between sets. He does intraset stretching. So he doesn't even do it at the end. He does it after a set and then gets back into a set. Yeah. But again, the thing that I, just makes me wonder if there's, what we're seeing is we're obviously, what's happening is you're stimulating the muscle again. Yeah. So would a isometric, just a traditional isometric hold and or another rep or two, or another set. Do the same thing. Do the same thing. And it's like, are we really overvaluing something that, okay. So the argument is, okay, there's some value there. I think the best argument is what you started to say as far as the novelty. Yeah. Like if you're, right. Yeah. If your go to move is always just add volume, add more reps, add more sets, and you eventually will peek out on that. So here's another technique that maybe potentially doesn't do as much damage to the body. And that's novel. It's a novel stimulus. So maybe you'll get the benefits there. But yeah. And I think it, it points back to doing full range of motion, the importance of that. Because it's, maybe you aren't tapping its full potential because you're not fully in that, you're not challenging that stretched position enough. That's where, that's where I think the real value, because let's say they were all, they were all equal. Let's say what you said, everything's equal. Yeah. The value would be then just increased range of motion in the stretch position for muscles that you're tight in. Right. So like, yeah, like I tend to get real tight in my quads. And if I don't stretch them deep, I mean, I can't even sit on my heels. That's how tight they can get. And I don't really get into that position with any strength training. There's really no strength training exercise that stretches my quads. I mean, a 60 squat kind of, but this would do that, right? Cause this at the end of my workout, I could sit on my heels, get a gnarly stretch, and then increase that, you know, kind of get that range of motion I don't necessarily tap into. Yeah. So I went on a kick where I was doing this quite a bit. And of course, this is my experience, right? So there's no, I have nothing to improve. This is what I, what I thought I recognized was, uh, and that's why I asked to facilitate recovery. I, I thought I didn't get a sore. Oh, interesting. That's what I felt like. I felt like when I did, I gotta pay attention. When I did a good job of stretching really well at the end of these workouts like this with weighted stretches or hangs or something that I do for my lats. Like so I do these things afterwards when I, and I had a pretty good sense of the feel of a lift where I know like, Oh, this is going to get me, right? That's actually, actually what would promote me to do is like, Oh, I started to notice that if I do a good, deep stretch afterwards, I wouldn't be quite as sore the next day or the day after. But again, I don't know if that's what's really happening with that or not. Or that was just by coincidence that whenever I did that, we're just the, the workouts born as taxing. There's this really interesting record. Okay. So, uh, you want to take this with a grain of salt, right? But there was an animal study where they took birds and they put one wing in a weighted stretch position for like a long time. Like they'd leave it there for hours or days or whatever. And the muscle growth that the bird went through on the stretched wing was really crazy. Like ridiculous muscle growth. And they speculated that this may even contribute to again, grain of salt here. So everybody just kind of relaxed, but hyperplasia where this may contribute more to muscle fiber for you, you know, muscle fiber splitting and becoming, you know, one muscle fiber becomes two muscle fibers, which that's the holy grail of muscle growth, right? You can make muscle fibers grow or shrink, but if you, you can increase them, they don't go away. So now you've got extra muscle fibers and building muscle becomes. Do you think that's one of the, the key components of what makes somebody like a, like a, like a natural, a good natural bodybuilder. Like they have those type of genetics that they actually have hyperplasia happens at a, at a much faster or easier rate than the average person. I would 100% be a factor to that. And I think also if, if it does happen in humans, which it's widely believed that it does, cause we observe it in animals, I think it, the best example are just old lifters who've been working out for decades. And then, you know, they've been working out for so long. It's like they've got this kind of permanent muscle that doesn't go away. Yeah. I mean, I think you have a friend like Ben Pekolsky, you brought him up already. Like he's a good example of that. Trying to get small. Yeah, just still looks unbelievably muscular because he's, he's probably at, now is the reason why we don't know that is cause the only way you can test that is when they're dead. I think you have to do a bunch of muscle biopsies. Cut it out. Yeah. I think Dr. Andy Galpin has done that and shown how, you know, it happens. Yeah. I mean, I mean, you guys have experienced this, we've all been working out for decades ourselves. How much easier is it to stay your size now than it was in your 20s? I've shared this before on the show that when I fall out of shape today, I'm still in better shape than I was, you know, three years or five years of consistently lifting. Yeah. So I mean, once you, I mean, that's, that's one of the cool things about, it's like investing, you know, if you, it just keeps compounding the longer and more consistent you are years wise, the easier it gets to maintain good shape or good muscle mass. Maintain like progressing, you know, past, oh yeah. Increasingly difficult, which I think is what people kind of forget. It's like, you know, if you've been in the gym a long time, you really have to kind of press to optimize outward in a different direction and stimulate growth. Otherwise, it's like, it is a lot easier though to maintain whatever mass you've built within that time in the gym. Yeah. This is like my great grandfather, he died, he was 90 something years old, like a long time ago. But I remember as a kid, he had these really like meaty forearms because he was always working with his hands and stuff. And he didn't work out. He's like, you know, 90 years old. He stopped working, you know, labor. He's had these muscular forearms and it's because of all the labor he, so I'm wondering if there was like a bunch of hyperplasia that happened there, it just sticks around. Sure. You know, afterwards. All right, everybody, Cyber Monday sale ends tomorrow. That's why I'm about to do a crazy giveaway. Oh, also, by the way, the Cyber Monday sale is 60% off all maps, workout programs and all maps, workout program bundles. So if you want to take advantage of that, go to mapsfitnessprox.com and then use the code Cyber Monday. That sale ends tomorrow. Here's the giveaway that I'm going to do for this episode, the maps super bundle. It's the biggest bundle that we offer. One of you will get it for free. You have to leave a comment below in the first 24 hours that we drop this episode in order to qualify. You also have to subscribe to this channel and turn on notifications. And if you win, we'll let you know in the comments. Everybody else again, Cyber Monday ends tomorrow, 60% off everything at mapsfitnessproducts.com with the code Cyber Monday. All right. Here comes the show. Anyway, so more interesting stuff I've been reading. I was reading over the weekend. So you guys know what NSAIDs are, right? Non-steroidal anti-inflammatories. So these are like Tylenol Advil. No, not Tylenol. So Ibuprofen, which is Advil. Neproxin, that's Aleve. Aspirin, which is the old school classic. And there's other ones out there as well. Tylenol is not. Acetaminophen is a different class. That's right from kind of one to the other, like go back and forth. Well, I was reading about, so I ate a bunch of, I had a real big dinner one night and I went and took some Alka-Seltzer, which is old, it's old, you know, over-the-counter medicine for whatever, and in Alka-Seltzer's Aspirin. Yeah. And I'm like, you know, Aspirin's been around for a long time. We've been using this forever. I wonder what the studies say on Aspirin in comparison to the other NSAIDs like Ibuprofen, which is more, one of the more widely used ones, right? And did you guys know that Aspirin is, now for pain relief, this is where you get like, Ibuprofen might last longer, might be a little better or whatever. But when it comes to safety and health profile and stuff like that, Aspirin's superior. Yeah. Well, it's superior. Recommended to have like a baby Aspirin a day just for heart health. Yes. For people who've had heart attacks or stroke. And don't they even, for pregnant women, don't they have them take baby Aspirin too? I don't know about that. Yeah. I thought Katrina got recommended baby Aspirin at one point. That's interesting. I don't know that. But so Aspirin's got anti-cancer effects. It's got anti-stroke effects, and it can prevent heart attack in certain people, whereas other NSAIDs actually can cause problems or increases in strokes and heart disease. Now, So is, I mean, Aspirin obviously isn't like as impactful on the liver than in terms of processing it. Cause that's like the big detriment of Ibuprofen. So all the negative stuff that they've said about Aspirin, like, oh, it increases, it could, it could increase your risk of gastric bleeding or ulcer. That's all true for all the NSAIDs. It basically, in other words, all the negatives are similar, but Aspirin has way more positives. In fact, check this out. So the way that NSAIDs work is they block these prostagladins that promote inflammation. And there's two main ones. I think one's called Cox 1 and the other one's called Cox 2. Aspirin does not prevent nitric oxide production like Ibuprofen does. In other words, if you're an athlete, you want nitric oxide, Ibuprofen is going to reduce it, whereas Aspirin does not. So it's really crazy. And I'm like, why, why are we being told, why have, you know, are we all using these other ones instead of Aspirin? Cause Aspirin is around for a hundred years. Cheaper. Yeah. It's blocking all the Cox. It's a little late, but I still had to land it. I said, hey, when I said it to him, like, let's see if they jump on it. See if Justin gets it. No, it mainly works on the first one, not the second. I'm not going to say the name anymore, Justin. Okay. Hey, speaking of words today. So Max, Max has got this, uh, this, this app that you, there's a good app, by the way, that I think is really cool. I don't know if you're, if it really is, it's called PBS for kids and it's like games that they can play. And, uh, yeah, they're more, they're more on the educational, totally educational, right? It teaches them shapes and colors and he's really into this cooking thing right now, right? So he, and basically what it does is, you know, it guides them into picking a pot that they cook in and then you open the fridge. The seasoning, put it in there. Yeah. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Some deal. That's cute. Yeah. Yeah. So he's like, he's all, he's all into it and he's, uh, hilarious. And so, uh, I finally found, I don't know why this is so funny to me. I guess as a dad, one of the things I looked forward to is the day that my son can't pronounce something and it becomes a swear word. Oh ho ho, I love this. I love this. It's like, you know, innocent fun that you like to have. It's the best. You know what I'm saying? So we're doing it and, uh, and we get to, uh, the foods parsley, right? And I saw of course I'm like, that's parsley. And so he goes to say it, oh, pussy. And of course I have to say, and Katrina's in the kitchen cooking is like that. She's like, what are you having him say? It's parsley, honey. That's not if she wants some parsley. A lot of parsley. A lot of parsley. It's an educational app. So he can't pronounce parsley. What does daddy like to eat? So I don't know why it's so funny and immature for me to do that. But then you just play with it, bro. I would tell him, like, if you want to mess with one of your buddies, I'd be like, hey, his nickname is parsley. I'm already doing it. I'm already doing it. So Aurelius says he can't say truck. He says fuck. And he also, when he says sit, it sounds like shit. So we're eating. My kids are like that. They say, shit down. So we're eating breakfast yesterday. We went out to breakfast. Jessica's mom was visiting. And we're all sitting there. And my son wants to walk. He's infatuated with trucks. And so he wants to see this truck video. He wants me to pull up a truck video. So he's sitting there. We're all sitting there. And I'm standing up. And Aurelius goes, buh-bye. Shit fuck. Shit fuck. And the waitress is like, looking at my son, I'm like, he's trying to say sit truck. He's not saying shit. She's like, OK, because I thought he was going off. And I'm like, no, we don't teach him that, OK? Shit fuck, buh-bye. It's hilarious. That's the best dude. I don't know why. I don't know why I think it's so funny. But I remember having my little siblings when they were growing up. And I feel like every kid has a word or two that they just can't pronounce very well. Of course. And they seem to be different. You know, and unique. And you never know what it's going to be. And so I know I do part partially with people. Well, the worst is when he hears everybody laugh, he's going to start saying it more. Of course, of course, of course. So Aurelius is like full on. It's like a light switch turned off. So as he turned two years old, boom, toddler mode, OK? So if you've ever had anybody who's ever had toddlers, they can definitely be, there's a stereotype of a toddler where they're very emotional. He'll be playing with his car and it gets stuck and he'll lose his shit. And I'll go over there and be like, let me help you. No. And he's like, it's just hilarious, OK? So anyway, Jessica, you know, she's, I'm in the other room and I hear her talking to him and she uses this nice voice. But I can also, I can tell she's pissed off with him. So she goes, she goes to, she goes, Aurelius. Because I guess he had water in his sippy cup and he was like splashing her with it in her face. So she goes, Aurelius, if you splash mommy in the face one more time, I'm going to be really pissed off. And I'm like, oh, I better jump in. She's got the nice voice, you know? But I can hear the anger underneath it. I was cracking up. Oh, it was funny. I was driving up to a truckie to kind of spend time on my family. We did an early Thanksgiving and we're driving up. And this for Adam, because I wanted to hear, you're into rims and everything and you've seen kind of the progression of that, right? We've seen some really like bizarre ones. You remember Spitters? I was wondering about, is that still like around? Cause that was so ridiculous. It was like a five year, five year trend that they were so popular then they fell out of favor. I never liked them. I thought they always looked so I'm wondering, is this a trend or is this like just one off that like this guy just had this hair brain idea. He was in this like red Corvette and I look over and I'm like, wait a minute, those are kind of a weird color. And they were like a little bit kind of yellow, a little bit greenish. And then, you know, we kept driving next to him and then it got dark and they started glowing in the dark. And I was like glowing the dark rims. And you're like, yeah. That's kind of cool actually. I mean, no. That's kind of cool. Doug, pull me up some glow in the dark rims. That's kind of cool. If you saw it, you'd be like, okay, sounded like a cool idea, but I don't think he pulled it off. I mean, that's kind of cool. No, it's not. I think that's kind of cool. I want to see what they look like. I mean, I got glow in the dark shoes. I wish I was taking a picture, dude. I think I just picture you getting out and you've got the shoes that light up all you want to. I do have the shoes that light up like that. Did you? Well, the ones I brought in here the other day and I showed you. Those did. Easy's the bottoms of them. If anybody could pull, I figured it would be in your wheelhouse for sure. No, no. You never got the ones that, remember the ones that were popular with kids? No, with the kids. No, no, no. And those are cool though. I mean, you see. Hey, did you ever get the shoes with a little skate in the bottom? No, I didn't get these. That was after us. Those are like your kids' generation. That wasn't when we were kids. They didn't have those. They didn't have some that were worth having. One of my favorite Instagram accounts was this guy. He had the wheelies and he'd go to skate parks and do tricks and go, shh. He died, dude. I don't remember his name. I had a boss that wore them. I know exactly who you're talking about. Yeah, when I was 20. He'd skate around the gym. He did. He's a fitness manager that used to wear them and he was in his mid-20s or late-20s and he used to rock those. They were probably with kids at that time. So I never, I did not think it was cool like when he was doing it. So how did those work? Like can you accidentally, can the skate pop out on accident where you're trying to do something, fall down? Or do you have to like purposely... You guys know how they work? Yeah. Yeah, you have to lift your toes up, right? Yeah. So I mean, your heel is elevated by a wheel. The wheel is built in the heel. It's in the heel. And it's sticking out. But do you have to physically pop it out and lock it? No, it stays. It stays there on an axle always. And you have to... So you still walk on your toes. Yeah, you still... It's just like having a very slight height. I'm just picturing like some dudes carrying groceries up his driveway. Yeah. Oh, there's a little dark room. It's a thing. Damn. You don't want to do that, bro. It's so dumb. Yeah. It's just during the day it looks like shit, dude. It'll be honest. That's like the peak of... Look at the ones that are black with a black with just the lip that's green right there. Click on those ones, Doug. Okay. I would do that. Stop it. Hey, have you seen... I forbid you. Have you seen... Yeah, those ones right there. Oh, those are like bike tires. Those are like bike tires. That looks so dumb. Have you seen the new... I think it was a BMW where you have the app. I think that the key does this. Either the key or an app on your phone. And you can change the paint with a touch of a button. Yeah. Is that out yet? I don't know. But somebody sent me a clip. I'm like, this is crazy. How does that work? I don't know. So the whole is like a digital screen. The car is like a digital screen. So it's not like a normal... You know, like when you go... I mean, I'm... You know those buildings have like... Yeah. Like LED, like mini LED through the whole thing. I think that's how... Should we wrap the whole car? Yeah, there it is right there. Yeah. And it goes from white to black. What the heck? That's crazy. Now, I don't know if it's a concept or it's actually out. I think it might be a concept. That looks like the new... They do some crazy stuff for concept cars. That looks like the new X. The BMW is coming out with a new... I think it's called X or something like that. Looks pretty sick, but maybe... So basically, you break a law, you hit a button, your car changes, get away. Is that what we're gonna do? Yeah. You know what I mean? Yeah, I remember there was like some... Somebody installed something where you could lift your license plate up. Oh. Yeah, or another one. Yeah. Coming across. I've seen gangsters out there. You know how you get the... Like if you... Sometimes you get a picture of your license plate if you don't pay like a toll or something like that. There's these covers that you could buy. I don't think they're legal. But they go over your license... Your license plate. And when you look at it normally, you could read your license plate. But if it's at a particular angle where these cameras take a picture, it'll blur it out. Oh, cool. So they'll take a picture and they won't have your license. Oh, wow. Yeah. I love underground tech. And you're totally gonna buy that now. Yeah. You guys... I always get ticked. Okay, so since we're talking about like asshole things that I spend money on. So I spent a bunch of money this weekend on a new couch. You told me about it. This is crazy. Yeah, you're hyping it up. Dude, getting pictures. Love Sack has... Well, I haven't got it yet. They had to... They custom make it, right? So it's getting all done right now. I get it like in two weeks. So I'll definitely like show you guys once I get it. So Love Sack has partnered with Harming Kardon. And Harming Kardon is like top of the line. Yeah, great speakers. Stereo systems. They're in some of your luxury cars and stuff like that. So it's great, great speakers. So they partnered. And so Harming Kardon has built a surround sound system in the Love Sack couches. So I built this sectional that has two chases on the end and then I got two chases on the outside. Underneath, I have three subwoofers and then I've got two on each side speakers on the sides and in behind. And you can't see anything. Everything's all hidden in the couch. And then you have a centerpiece that's underneath the plasma and it all is connected, all wild. Now you were saying... Wow. Because it sounds... It sounds wild, but you tested it. Yes. And you were saying it sounded like... Yeah, so I mean I see... So I saw reviews like people that were... Speculated. It's pretty new. And so I looked up on YouTube to find like reviews on what other... Like someone who owns it. They say... And I couldn't find anybody who already owned it. Just people that heard about the tech that it was coming. And of course people were speculating, oh, it's probably going to be muffled. Oh, it's going to be this. That's what I would think because it's inside the couch. It sounds... You know what it feels like? It feels like I'm wearing headphones. What? What? Because you're in the couch and so the sides are here and it's a rip-off. Yeah, it hits you and makes you feel like you got headphones on. So what's cool... So what really sold me on this is... So Katrina... We have pretty good surround sound already at the house and Katrina's always getting on me to turn it down. Oh, Max, turn it down. Turn it down. Turn it down. I'm like, fuck. I got all these badass speakers but it is kind of loud. Especially the upstairs one that's near his room. So I don't get to really blast it the way I want to because it makes the whole house loud where this is going to be like the couches. More focused. And so I don't need to crank it up as high and it won't be as loud right outside of so I'm really... And Love Sack, you know how comfortable Love Sack stuff is. So the couch is unbelievably comfortable and the whole thing... It's called Stealth Tech. Yes. Oh, shit. And the whole thing... It's all Bluetooth. Yes, all Bluetooth. And the whole entire couch is machine washable. So the side... That's important. Oh, yeah. With kids and dogs. So the side panels all... And you can't tell. So you would never guess that you can unvelcro the couch and actually unzip the cushions. It looks like a normal sectional couch. Now, are they like... Are they really expensive? Are they kind of expensive? What is... What is... Let's just say... What is your definition? Love Sack on top of having tech built into the love... Like, come on. Well, like a couch, a nice couch would cost like four grand. Like a really nice couch. Yeah. So like it's way more than that. Or like ten. Yeah. Way more. Yeah. By the look on your face. Yeah. And knowing you. Yeah, yeah. No, it's not cheap at all. Now, mind you, I did get a... Like you could get it for... You could get something smaller. I got a whole setup, right? So I have... And I built it to where I had the chase. Because I like the chase. And then I got... On each end chase. And then I... You're gonna put Max in it and turn on PAW Patrol. Let's look at his face. Like... I've always got him sending that music. Dad, this is great! Katrina is the one that doesn't like the stuff loud. She's always turning everything on and I'm like... Do you have to watch these with subtitles with her? No. That's how I watch them. Well, she hates subtitles. Okay. So you just can't hear it and see it. Yeah. So that's how I watch it. Because Jessica's like that too. Turn it down. Turn it down. So I'm like subtitles. Yep. Okay. I guess I'm reading TV today. I... You know, as a kid, I was into that stuff really young. In fact, my first big purchase as a kid when I was in my early teens, when I was first starting work, I saved up enough to buy music and to surround sound on TV Move. And I've always been into movies and collected cassettes. Then I collected DVDs. Like... So of course, when I grew up, you know, you never grew out of some things. That's one of the things I never grew out of. Well, what it is, it's immersive. I'm like that too. I like to be immersed when I'm watching something. Me too. I just don't do it anymore because kids and all that stuff. But I love it. If I'm watching a good movie, I want to be immersive. I still get loud, but you go downstairs if you want to play your raucous music. I got nowhere, bro. My whole house. I can't even work out in the garage. I can't work out in the garage. I need a man cave, dude. You need to figure it out. That's all right. I've accepted it, bro. I got four kids. I'm going to have four kids here, so. My house, no more kids down there with me, and we rock out. 100% if and when the time comes when I do a build, like I will build a separate man cave. 100%. That's like in the basement, concrete wall. Yes. I can play it as loud as I want. Do whatever I want. Yes. Totally. Yes. 100%. That's on my list for sure. Speaking of family, this is just hilarious. I just noticed something. So I'm on this big family group thread with aunts, uncles, cousins, friends, whatever. It's a huge one, right? And man, do you guys have like a biggest fan? You guys have someone in your family? Or biggest fan? Oh, yeah, yeah. I'm no fans. No shit. Anything I share, would you say? I got no fans. Anything I share, I'll share anything that my mom will always love it. She'll always heart it and say something like, that's amazing. That's so sweet. That's the greatest thing. And I just noticed the other day, I sent like a meme or something like that and it saw like a heart and like this comment. I'm like, wait a minute. It's only my mom that's liking my stuff. Nobody else is like She's her biggest fan. We got started. She's a big, like two people listening. I know. Okay. You have family that listens? Yeah. I mean, like really listens. Not like, like checks in. Honestly, it's on, I would say probably more on Courtney's side. Like her sister. Oh, interesting. Yeah. So yeah, my like, so my parents will listen to like, when we do like certain interviews with people that they're interested in and that's about it. But like Courtney would be like the next one I would say, probably listens the most. Yeah. She used to not. So that's, Yeah. So I think that's why I've been so like carefree about what I talk about. So if you're like, listen, I'm gonna roast you. That's what you get. Yeah. Now she listens. Yeah. I've got a, I have a handful of family. I mean, my sister doesn't count because she works for the company, right? But she was, she's been since day one. She's been a listener in a fan even before she worked for the company. I have my, my cousin Stephanie's shout out to her. You guys have met her before. Yeah, I love her. I've been to Seattle, right? So she listens to the damn interview. She's great. My uncle John, he listens to, shout out to uncle John. He listens to like almost every episode. He's always commenting. And then my mom's husband, Lonnie, shout out to Lonnie. My mom doesn't listen. Well, I have to, okay. So I have to be like, Jessica by far is, she listens to every, in fact, she has people from Mind Pump send her the episodes before the air. Was she a fan before? Yes. You guys started dating? Yeah. A hundred percent. Well, no. Yes, she was actually, when I first met her, I had her subscribed to Mind Pump because you guys remember how aggressive we were early days. Oh yeah. We grabbed people's phones and just. That's right. She subscribed. No, she wasn't. She became a fan. In fact, she told me that when she first listened, at first, she thought it was pompous. And I'm like, oh really? And she's like, I still think that. All right. Anyway, but she, she still. So we refer to Mind Pump, right? Is that how we refer to Mind Pump? Like third person? Yeah. But she, but no, she gets the episodes early, listens to every single one. She's my best critic because she's very honest. Yeah. Oh, that joke you made. That was kind of a little, I don't know if I like that joke. Like what? You're listening? Yeah. Yeah. That's the thing. My parents support, but they're like, you know, they, it makes them too uncomfortable. I think like the subject matter we bring up. Anyway, so I got this interesting speculation. In fact, I thought about you, Adam, because you, you tend to speculate on the stuff a lot. So the more and more products and eventually entertainment will get produced by AI and machines and computers. Do you think that at some point, a label on a product that says human made is going to make something more valuable and more expensive? 100%. You do. I 100%. I mean, and it's all going to be good, right? So I think that so many things are going to be created and made by AI and it's going to lower, lower the entry for a lot of people. So things that maybe you could like mass production. That's right. Yeah. Yeah. So you, like shoes or example, from being able to 3D print sneakers and shoes. And so people who want to have a certain look that looks like certain shoes or whatever, they get them for relatively cheap. Like that. I think in the future, right? Obviously a 3D printer is expensive and that's not, we're not there, but we will get there at one point. And then what I think will be, and there'll still be a market for very high and it'll be human made stuff, handcrafted stuff. I think that we're going to see the come back of things like that, things that are handmade or an artist. No, totally. You know why I agree with you? So I was thinking about this. So Ferrari, obviously one of the most expensive car brands, it's got a crazy lineage in history. They advertise that, that they're cars. That's right, handmade. It's a big hand made, hand stitched. You see this with instruments. You see this, you see this watches? You see watches, instruments like there's guitars, there's, you know, there's trumpets, there's violins that are, the most expensive ones are the ones that are handmade. So, and it's all in these art. It's no different. It is no different than how it really is today. The only difference is that AI is going to be able to open up the opportunity for people that couldn't afford certain things before. Well, now, and the car example is a pretty example. Obviously not everybody can afford a Ferrari, but most people can afford somewhat of a car at this point. Now cars, you can get a pretty cheap car today and because they, what, they mass produced them in factories and everything. And so that is 100% what I think AI is going to happen. Music, we're going to get reproduced and you're going to see it. You guys think it's going to be like that with meat? Do you think that we're going to see steak? And it's going to be like, this is from a real cow, not lab grown meat. I mean, aren't we seeing that right now? They'll show a picture of the cow. Like, oh, cool. It's like grass fed beef versus beyond meat right now. That's kind of the, already the divide. There's people that. I'm talking about lab grown meat though, because they can actually take stem cells. It was grown in a lab. It was never a cow. Like, I wonder if it's going to be like that. Like, I only eat meat that's from actual animals. I want to eat lab. I want a whole montage of its life. You know, crazy. They'll have a picture of it. You can buy a video. And then like, Sarah McLaughlin before it's in. You know, it's funny, you know, it's funny about that. Is that like pita activists? Well, actually, they actually did this at one point. They put name tags on steaks. Like this, this cow was Bessie. I might actually sell more steaks in the future. It was a real cow. You know what I mean? I mean, I got a kick out of the Coca-Cola when the Coca-Cola had your name on it. So it's kind of like the same thing. You know what though? Growing up with an ethnic name like me, nothing ever had my name on it. No key chains, no wallets, no nothing. You go to Grand Canyon and you just screw. Yeah, I'd go through their Sally. I can get Sally if I want. There's never Sal. I've never seen Sally. I've never seen Sally. It's so annoying. Hey, are you completely avoiding the stock market? Has anybody bought any stocks? No. None? I don't want to look. I bought some stocks yesterday. I know you've been kind of promoting you. He's down, dude. He's doing the right thing. Yeah, I'm listening. I get asked all the time about a new one. So basically, I've been averaging down on all the stocks I already had. But I did buy a new stock yesterday. You know the stock I bought yesterday? I bought it for Max, too, because I think it's a Krispy Kreme donut. Really? Yes. That's why. All right, you know who they just partnered up with? Who? McDonald's. Oh, no. Krispy Kreme donuts coming into 400,000 locations. That's a duh. Go pull my ticker up there, Doug, while you're laughing. Blood money. Pull my ticker up there. Hold on, hold on, hold on. He's just laughing because we're a fitness podcast. It's like, Adam's portfolio Marlboro. Exactly. You have Marlboro. You do? I wasn't making it out. I had you in my bed. I'm going to try and save all your lives. You guys are taking your time to make that good decision. Wow. The problem of it. So Krispy Kreme. The ticker is donut. It's donut. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know what, though? Are you guys fans of Krispy? I understand why people come. It was so in the bodybuilding community, it's huge. It's good. Are you kidding me? It's not as good as I thought. I'm not a big donut guy, but like, yeah, they were popular when I was out in Chicago and it was like, it's just because, especially it's fresh and it's just like, they've mastered whatever glaze, you know, like it's just like the perfect balance. I don't like it. I like regular old windshields. Yeah. I want to go to a donut place that looks grungy and dirty and an old Asian lady comes out at 4 o'clock in the morning. Yes. I mean, I can get down with that. Bro, there's the one over there by the 24. She has to sleep in the place. Yes. She wakes up at 4 o'clock in the morning. And if they don't just serve donuts, they also make sandwiches and barbecues. That's right. That's the place that makes the best. You know exactly what I'm talking about. That is the best donut you can get a hold of right there. How are we doing over there, we're down today. Yeah. It's not a bad buy. The only stocks that crush Adam are the ones you talk about but don't buy. It's like a weird. Exactly. I don't know that I like those. I mean, I just threw a couple bucks at it from Max's portfolio, but more than anything else, I was actually just interesting in the merger, right? Isn't that an interesting partnership? It makes a lot of sense. Brilliant. Did you know, isn't McDonald's crushing right now what their adult happy meals? Have you guys been reading about this? So I know they did it. They were crushing. How's McDonald's stock doing right now? Are they doing all right? So they, I mean, I think right now is when the big monopoly game hits, right? Is that happening or did I miss that boat? I don't know. I don't go to McDonald's enough to know that stuff. Oh, McDonald's is crushing 274 right now. Geez. They always do well. They did get like little prizes in their happy meals, right? The adult ones? Yeah. Like a weird thing. But people collect them and they got weird. You know what's funny? I don't remember, I saw this a long time ago. There was this analysis of McDonald's customers and there's a sizable percentage. I remember what the number was, but it was significant percentage of their customers that are such regular users that they can count on them to come every single day. Wow. They have like a huge chunk, a base of people that are like McDonald's every single day. I've never heard that. Yes. Interesting. Yes. And it's, that's like one of the keys of their success is they have this like crazy loyal. They all live in Ohio for some reason. Hey, did you start, you just brought up Ohio. So you made me think about your Graham Hancock. Yes. I watched it. I've been going through it. I've been fascinated. Going through quite a bit of it right now. Did you see the Ohio serpent or snake? Yeah. No, I didn't see that. Yes. Yeah. The mound that's up there. That's why it was created. There's a lot of those. I'm just getting excited about the new discovered pyramids that were like terraces. Yeah. That are on the site of mountains that, well, what sucks about it too is like they're kind of protected and there was one in Mexico too that's apparently the biggest pyramid in the world. Yeah. But there's like some kind of like a church that's on top that they had built so they can't excavate, which is really frustrating because they've excavated kind of the bottom of it and there's all these perfectly cut stones and, you know, they've been able to kind of go in and they see all these like, I don't know how many tunnels there are but there's just tunnel systems everywhere and it's, it would be so revealing if they could like excavate the whole thing. So his whole, it's the, say that for me, Quetzalcoatl. Quetzalcoatl. Quetzalcoatl. Quetzalcoatl. So that was the, there one like, the one figure that was like kind of like a Jesus figure that like taught him how to create. That's the myth. Yeah. Civilization and all that, the myth. Like him and like Varicocho. So his whole premise, which I think is a very reasonable premise, his whole premise is that human civilization is not as linear as we think. Like we think of it as starting here and then improving. But what he's saying is we've been on Earth for a long time and there probably was lots of progressions and then wiping out a civilization because of cataclysm. So Katrina was trying to ask me, she goes, what is the, what's the controversy around him? Right? Cause he obviously has all these archeologists. So what I said to her and you guys tell me, build on it or correct me is we have, our, our theory on how man evolved is basically that we were kind of dumb cavemen way back in the thousands of years ago, right? And you've got stuff to gather only. Yeah. And so when stuff like this starts coming out and then dating back, maybe way further back, way further back. And then, and it aligns with the stars. And I mean, it's just like these guys had to been a lot smarter than what we think they were back then. And that's kind of controversial based off of how they're discovering all these ancient megalithic structures like under water, under oceans. Yeah. Yeah. And that points back to. Ice age. Ice age because the the oceans were, you know, a lot of it was pre flood, pre flood stuff, right? Ice and the big, you know, glacial structures. And so it's like, there's just so much history that still needs to be uncovered. And the thing about archaeology, it's like they've created an entire timeline based off of like what they've been able to discover in the past. But now these kind of interrupt that timeline. And so they have to kind of throw it out and be flexible and go back and revisit based on new evidence. And it seems like there's a lot of resistance to do that. What I heard in the documentary which I thought was interesting is that, you know, archaeology and what's the, what's the study of the stars? Astrology. Astrology. Thank you. So archaeology. Astronomy. Thank you. Astrology is the fucking horoscope stuff. I'm sorry. Astronomy and archaeology don't really communicate to each other. Is that correct? I mean, and so that's what's interesting about this. Now, the reason why this is important is because so much of these ancient historical artifacts were designed to line up with constellations. So astronomy is like the, the worldwide language that we all spoke before language, right? I mean, was the ability to look up the stars and notice that there's patterns. And so a lot of this stuff is pointing to that. And then the archaeologists, they don't, they don't utilize any of that. They're purely off of something and like what this structure is made out of. In terms of the alignments, like, yeah, like where they pointed specifically to different, like what do they call those like different like seasons and things that come through. I forget what the names are, but yeah. Equinox. Equinox are the, yeah, there's, there's a few of those. Solstice. Solstice, summer solstice, like, so yeah, they're finding a lot of those structures were, were pointed very specifically to align with these different star structures. I mean, it's very, it sounds very reasonable to me that it would be very easy for civilizations to get erased after cataclysmic events. You know, when you're talking about 10,000 years ago, 20,000 years ago, like we're not going to have really remnants of, you know, what they did. And yes, there probably were lots of, and there definitely were lots of hunter-gatherers, but they could have existed simultaneously as more advanced. Now, do we, do we build things today that we intend like if case this were to happen again, an Ice Age were to come again. Oh, they're going to see our ship for thousands of years, bro, we got plastic. They're going to find plastic water bottles and shit, be like, this ancient civilization, they just had a bunch of containers, you know. Just Legos they're like putting together. This is what they built their houses off of, because they're plastic Legos and everything else. Yeah. So yeah, our shit ain't going away then. No, bro. Unfortunately, they're going to, we've made a lot of stuff that doesn't biodegrade very well. So anyway, interesting. All right. So more cool studies. I'll bring up. I just read a cool study on red light therapy. So a lot of you guys know that red light therapy can help with healing and recovery and their studies to support this. I just read a study that showed that it reduced joint pain by 50% in people who used it. 50%. That's very, very significant. Wow. They also had another one on Achilles tendon pain and there was a significant reduction in pain as well. Really? Yeah. So how long was the usage? They did it for, I want to say 90 days, I believe, I'd have to go double, double double check. Now, I mean, that's like, there's like nothing does that. That's, yeah, it's crazy. And it's natural. Big. Yeah. It's natural. Nothing does that. And it's pro recovery and healing, not anti healing like a lot of, you know, anti-inflammatory. Now, when you read something like that, what is, what is that point to for you as far as like, what is what's going on for to have that powerful impact? The mitochondria, does that mean that it's that impactful? Yep. Yep. It literally super charges the mitochondria and they produce more collagen, more what are they called fibroblasts, which create the structures of collagen, reduces inflammation because it speeds up the waste removal process. So basically it's like, red light is like fuel for the mitochondria. So when you, when you hit them with red light, they operate better and faster. So healing happens faster. Inflammation is regulated better. And it's, and this, this, it's crazy. If you look up the study, it sounds like magic. If you look up the studies, there, there's a lot. It's not like one study. There's a lot of studies. You know, when you, when you talk about the stuff, I can't help but think that we're heading towards total recall. But why? Because it was always all, it was all red lit up, you know, and I know they do that because it's on Mars, right? But they, it was red lights all over the place too. Like I, could you imagine if like red lights, which we've already proven is not ideal for us, that just we get used to having red lights on us all the time. Why don't we have them in our cars as we commute? Well, that's different. You can overdo it too. So. Oh, you can. The actual red light that you would get from like a Juve panel. You could definitely over, that's why they say 20 minutes a day. They don't tell you to use it all day long. You could over-stimulate or you could cause problems if you over, you know, if you use it too much. Just regular red lights, not the same. Like we put red light bulbs on. Oh, I know. But I mean, the technology that's in Drew, if it makes its way into your lights in your house, why would it not do that? Because it's just too much. It would be too much. Yeah. You only want to do it focused and you only do a certain period of time. Otherwise, it would be cool to have a switch, you know, like you could have a timer where you're right after it's been on for X amount in the day. I would think if it's up in my ceiling, it's not the same impact as you are standing six inches from a Juve light. Yeah. No, I think it'd be too much and probably really expensive. That's before AI makes it for us. Yeah. And say, now even poor people. It might just be like shower, red light, and then like cold plunge in. So and then you go to bed. That's what I've been trying to see how I want to build my Juve, like hang over me by shower. Since I'm in the shower twice a day every day and it's a nice little, that's like the perfect amount of time. Like I'm trying to find a way to mount it and then also do it to where like the steam doesn't ruin it. Yeah. So I want to figure out how to do that to where it's like I just boom, I hit the switch while I'm shower and I'm getting hit with my red light and then when I'm out, then it's then it's done. Yeah. Because that's the only thing right now I have to like take the effort to outside of what I already do which like anything else when it's not part of your normal routine, it's it takes discipline to stay consistent with it. And I notice a different, I notice a difference on my skin when I'm consistent on it. When I'm consistent on it, it makes a big difference. But I also notice that if I if I'm not consistent with it. It's like exercise. Gotta ritualize it. It's like exercise. Yeah. And then along those lines, more health study. So low melatonin production at night is been connected in animals and they do think this happens to humans as well to leptin resistance which then of course leads to insulin resistance. So they think that that this could be contributing to the rise in the more recent rise in things like diabetes is that people are just not getting sleep like they should. They're up on their electronics all night long using enough melatonin. And because of that, they're getting, you know, leptin resistance and insulin resistance as a result. So I think and we made this speculation before. I think blue light blocking glasses are going to be at some point. Like just you pick like everyone's going to have to use them. Yeah. Just because the amount of you know what's interesting about that is that I remember when they first came out in the dumb commercials when we were kids and their parents had them. So that's not like this it's super new science. But they promoted more for driving. I think it was. Yeah. That's exactly what it was. It was the bright lights that you were hitting at nighttime. They would tell you to wear it. They were actually telling you promoting you to wear it at night. Yeah. You're driving with this late at night. Yeah. It's probably why I didn't last very long. Well, the new technology with blue light blocking glasses is like what Felix Ray has, which is it's clear clear lenses. Because the technology before was you put them on and everything's yellow or orange. And then you look like you know, Dave Asprey. Well, you know, obviously we knew the value of it back then or else it wouldn't even hit the mark in the eight because it blew up. I'm sure blue blockers made a ton of money back then. They did. So we knew the value in the science team. But then the difference is you know, TV's, computer screens and phones today. We're on a way more now. Way more and way closer. You cannot tell me that staring at that these these phones and these iPads this close. Have you ever seen the meme? You ever seen the meme where you're like, you know, kids in the 90s and their kids watching us for being too close to TV and then it's like today. And then they got the VR glasses. Have you seen that? Yeah. Yeah. I remember that. That was like the big pitch was like, you can't be too close to the TV. I wrote it. As a kid, I got yelled at all the time. My mom would always tell me, scoot back. You're too close to TV. Go back. Now we're like, we're all in. We're like, I want a contact lens that shines the internet in my eyeball. Yeah. I didn't want any space. I mean, you guys think that we're so I actually was listening to by the way. Okay. So I promised that I would bring a person to shout out every every quag going forward. And so a recent podcast that I've been listening to is Ryan Panada has a podcast called the wealthy way on YouTube. I watched a couple of interviews already that I really liked the conversation. So if you're into, he's a real estate house flipper guy. I don't know. He sent a clip. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. So I was a little bit shocked at the fact that he did a little bit of talking to Grant Cardone. They actually got it. What made me think of that and why that came up was that they were talking about Metaverse and NFTs and crypto. You guys so have the FTX, right? Yeah. But I mean, that's like dude, the amount of money that is being that got lost. There's a little money laundering. Yeah. I was going to see the more kind of emerging from that story. Right. Yeah. Well, so this, the founder with his name, owned both companies. Did you know, so here's the, they're gonna get like these crypto companies are gonna get so regulated because, so if you're a bank, which by the way, okay, I agree. But the irony of that is that was what everybody touted what was gonna be so amazing about this technology. Decentralized. Decentralized. Yes. Meanwhile, if you believe it's gonna stick around now, almost everybody believes it needs to be regulated by the SEC. So it's like, okay. All you need is one of these assholes to ruin it. Which brings me back to my original argument of why I'm gonna hang back and wait until I see the, which one the government gets behind. Because whichever one they get behind is the one that's gonna be the most profitable, it's gonna do well. It's gonna be around forever. Well, so if you're a bank, you're not allowed to, or credit union, right? You're not allowed to use your depositors funds to fund your business. You're not allowed to touch that. Okay. That's a big no-no. That's like you go straight to jail, right? Right. What these crypto companies do if they, if they're not labeled as a bank or whatever, and that's what they did is they funded their business with their depositors money. That's how it was like a Ponzi scheme. Wow. And that's real bad. No, no. Yeah, that's real bad. Well, and it just, I think it just highlights, that was one of the big ones, FTX, right? That was a massive one. You had people like Steph Curry, you had people like Tom Brady that had hundreds of millions of dollars in it, and it went under like that. But so many of these coins are just griffs, dude. You got all these people that are just creating these tokens and attaching them to random. It's like, dude, this whole thing is coming up undone right now. We're going to make a coin. Pump coins. Pump coins. So I just think that we're much further away from all of it being integrated the way everybody thought it was going to be. I think that the metaverse thing is a ways away. I think NFTs are a ways away. Yes, I believe in the technology. Yes, I think we're going to use in the future. But again, speculating on what company is the company today is like speculating on what company was going to come out of the dot com era. I think these are, I mean, I think a lot of it's just talking points for these companies, you know, it's like, we're doing all these things and this is what's happening. Like they're speaking like it's going to be a couple of years. When in fact, I think it's going to be a lot further. I don't think that they're they've quite figured all this stuff out. No, there's certain things that it makes a ton of sense for. Like I see a lot of value with NFTs, with things like houses and watches and cars, like to be able to attach like the owner digital certificate. Yeah. Imagine having a digital certificate to things like, like it'd be so hard to steal a car. That makes sense. Yeah. Things in a watch, like to make sure that I mean, there's a huge aftermarket in the watch game and stuff like that. And to know to make sure it's authentic, like man, they make fake watches really, really good now, fake shoes really, really good now. It's hard to, but if you had it authenticated by an NFT, I could see tremendous value. Disrupting ticket master and all that. So like artists can basically like run their own kind of where it got crazy to me was when it was like the board eight, you know, the that thing where it turned into this thing where it's like, oh, it's going to be this community metaverse. And, you know, all these famous people are going to hang together. And if you pay hundreds of thousands of dollars, you'll have access to them too. It's like that to me, that was stupid. Like this idea that, you know, everybody is going to like what happens when those people don't, it's not cool anymore. It's what happens when it's like spinners, you know what I'm saying? And you spent all your money on hella spinners. You know what I'm saying? That would be a good idea. Next thing, man. Yeah. Glowing. Glowing the dark spinners. Just wait. Hey, check this out. There's a company called Livon that makes great supplements that utilize liposomal technology so that these nutrients get to the target tissues. And right now you can get Lipo Glutathione for free when you bundle it with B complex and vitamin C. Go check this company out. Go to liveonlabs.com. That's L-I-V-O-N-L-A-B-S.com forward slash M-P. All right. Here comes the show. First question is from Michael Trenler. How do you target your chest during dips? I only feel my triceps. Oh yeah. You know, what's interesting about dips is it could become like a, like literally just changing your form can make it like an awesome chest exercise or make it an awesome tricep exercise. It changes the emphasis. 100%. Flare the elbows, chest forward. That's it. Lean forward, bring the elbows out. And so, you know, when you're doing an exercise, you want to hit a target muscle, consider the action of the muscle, right? So the action of the chest is to bring the humerus from out here. So that's the upper arm towards the midline of your body. So it's pulling this part of your arm in, not extending the elbow, extending the elbows of triceps. So you want to focus on that almost like you're trying to squeeze your hands together as you're coming up. Like a decline bench press. Yeah. I mean, that's what I'm thinking about when I, when I do a dip for my chest, I'm thinking about the same feel of when the bar is being lowered down on a decline, on a decline press. I mean, that's what I'm, and you're doing that by leaning the chest forward, flaring the elbows out and, and then going really deep too. So getting a nice good stretch on there and you should feel stretch. And then the opposite is true when you want triceps, you want triceps, you stay more upright and you tuck the elbows in and you stay tight. That's it. So it's elbow extension versus what is that? Humor, horizontal adduction. But that being said, it, it, it's also important to note though, too, that it's very much so a tricep exercise too. So it's like, you know, it's not like you isolate the chest and then there's no triceps. I brought that up. Yeah. I mean, it's, it's, you emphasize one or the other. That's right. That's, that's right. So it's not like, you know, what I really like about dips is it's one of the few chest, uh, it's also worse the shoulders quite a bit. It's one of the few chest shoulder exercise with where you could really go, I mean, under control, right? You have to have good control, good stability. So make sure you're trained within your parameters of control, which is different from person to person, but you can work up to a really crazy range of motion. I, in fact, I can't think of an exercise where you can really work a range of motion like a dip where you're putting the chest and the, the shoulders in this really crazy, deep stretch, which we just talked about at the beginning of the episode, uh, you know, muscles in a stretch position, especially under low, they tend to stimulate more muscle growth. And they show this with other when they compare exercises, for example, exercises that put a muscle under stretch tend to build more muscle than ones that don't not saying that's all you should do because there's value in all of them. But dips are an underrated chest exercise. If you ask me, I really think it's a compliment to, to bench press too, just because you are getting so low there, like, uh, you know, in that sticking point in the chest where I'm at the bottom position and I have to really dig my way out, uh, you know, dips, if you go super low with that, it'll really help to strengthen that part of the way. 100%. And to me, it's like, uh, deficit, deads versus conditional deadlifts. Like you working deficit, deads helps you with that in range like that and digging out from the bottom where that's kind of the same thing. When you do dips, you can do dips really deep like that helps you dig out the bottom of the, of the, the chest. Yeah. The other thing is that a lot of people realize you can load dips. Uh, if you get a weight safely to, yeah, if you get a weight belt where you get a bench so you can stand on a bench so you're in the kind of top position and then you can bend your knees or, you know, clear the bench so you can go all the way down. You can load around a chain that goes around your way, what are they called? I think it's called a weight belt. You can load the hell out of it. So like a bench press, it could be a really heavy pushing exercise. I mean, I've worked up to close to 150 pounds around my waist. Well, what's cool about that to that point is I feel, I feel safer loading a dip, dip like that where I maybe I might only be able to get two or three reps out than I would a barbell by myself. Oh yeah. If I'm doing a barbell bench press by myself, like I'm going to put a weight on there that I feel pretty confident. I can get five reps. Otherwise you're pinned. Yeah. Otherwise I'm pinned and I have, but with that you can, you can bail a lot easier. So that's why I actually really like it for going heavy because I feel safer when I'm by myself. Next question is from Ryan Elnoki. Is it better to cut with or without refeeds and cheat days? All right. Yes and no. So here's the yes. The yes is it's better to cut. Or in other words, it's better to have a calorie deficit, but include days where your, your calories are higher, maybe even a slight surplus because this look, it looks like, okay. So there's not a ton of evidence for this, but there's a lot of anecdotal evidence. It seems like this prevents the what's called metabolic adaptation that happens when you're in a cut. In other words, when you cut your calories, your metabolism starts to slow down to make up the difference. And in the studies that I've seen when you interrupt that cut with days that are higher calorie, less of that happens. You tend to keep more muscle and you tend to burn more body fat as a result. Now here's the no part, calling it a cheat day. That's where I'm against because now what you're doing is you're emphasizing or strengthening this relationship where cutting is restricting and you know, binging or cheat days is like, oh, this is great. And you do this on off type of deal where you're always either on point or you're totally off. I mean, in a perfect world. So like when I was competing, obviously this is a lot of what I would be doing, right, getting as I'm cutting for a show. The reefy day is all the meals ended up getting a half cup more rice in them or a half cup rice. Plus I enjoyed an avocado and, you know, two or three of the meals. Yeah. Now a cheat day doesn't usually work that way. No. Cheat day is like, are you whenever I want. What it ends up doing and I did go, I did mess around with it. So I'm not saying that I didn't play around with eating out. But what I found was when I did that, it was hard to stay away from that. Like once you enter, anybody who's ever gone on a strict diet, you notice after a couple of weeks of eating really clean whole foods, you start to lose those cravings. Like I no longer want those greasy burger, those things like that. I'm like, oh, man, my system feels so good. I'm actually craving a healthy and like, that's a really good place to be, you know, a good way to fuck that up. Have a cheat day. Yeah. Go have a bunch of greasy fast food and then see if you're not craving it the next day or two. And then now all you're doing is thinking about my cheat day on sat. I can't wait to get to Saturday because I'm all week. I've been like, that is a you are you're setting yourself up for failure. You're promoting a bad relationship with food. The idea of just a little more of what you normally that's right. This is the science that we know about the the refeed and the higher calorie days. I 100% agree with. And I think that the the the move is for you to just increase the meal sizes that you're having already would be a much smarter approach to getting the benefits scientifically of increasing calories for a day and then going back down, then allowing a day where you're going to let this food creep in. That's going to kick up all these cravings that now I'm going to be thinking about it all week long. Yeah, that's 100%. That's 100% how I used to advocate for it because first off, when you bump your calories ghrelin tends to go up anyway, which makes your appetite go up. But when you introduce new and novel foods that also have effects on dopamine and serotonin and other reward systems of the brain, what you're what you're what you're going to do is make it exactly what Adam said. You're going to make it much harder to stick to later on. Plus it it you know, using the word cheat makes it seem like the way you were eating before you can't eat any other way anyway. And cheating is like you're breaking the rules. It's all part of your diet. Like it's all part of it, whether you eat a burger or pizza. You know, I'm glad you said that too, Sal, because then there's these other things where it's like, you know, in a in a nice setup, my reefy day, I would plan on like the night that I went out to dinner with Katrina on Friday night. Right. And then what I end up doing is I hit my macro targets and then I know that I'm dinner. I'm going to go over a little bit and I'm going to I'm going to enjoy the bread on the side or the mashed potatoes and gravy and so with that with my juicy steak and I'm not going to freak out about exactly what it is because I don't know because I didn't weigh it and measure it myself. And guess what? Today was the day I was supposed to have a little bit higher calorie day. So to me, like that is like the perfect way to try and have a reefy day is to plan it around a day or a night that's important. I'm going to the game. We're going to the warriors. And that's like it's real life. Yeah. You know what it reminds me of? It would be like this. It would be like instead of having recovery days, like a workout and then have days where I recover, we're going to call recovery days lazy days. Let's just do that. So hey, how many lazy days have you scheduled? Like think of the difference that of a relationship that that would create with exercise. If you didn't have recovery days, you had lazy days. That's already a mindset going into it. 100 percent. So a cheat day is like a lazy day. It's not a cheat day. It's just I'm going to eat more today to fuel my body to prevent metabolic adaptation and it feels good. I'm going to have better workouts and it's just different. Now, if you want to make it burgers and pizza on that day, that's fine too. But how you label things, what you call things, how you consider things makes a big difference. Well, I know that because Adam already brought up the fact that like cheat days, a lot of times people will bring in all this like garbage and stuff. And then you bring the cravings, you ramp all that back up. It's already challenged enough to like increase your calories and then go right back to a deficit to interrupt that because like a lot of people mentally, it's like if I'm going to try and stick with this, like I just want to hit a rhythm and I want to keep going with that same amount. And you know, to interrupt that, we know that it's more beneficial. I know it's already more challenging for my clients to even just do that part. And now you're going to add in like foods that will promote more cravings on top of that. So it's like, that's where I definitely caught my traditional refeed day. When I when I was doing this landed on Fridays and almost always was sushi night dinner with Katrina. It was and the way I looked at it was I always scheduled my low calorie days during the week. So I'm dialed I'm eating out of my Tupperware every single day. And then on Fridays, that would be due for the increase in calories. I'd still eat my Tupperware normal meals. But then Friday night, I go with my wife. We go have a nice it's not connecting with your wife. Yeah, I'm not I'm not like overly counting or worrying. I know I'm probably going to eat in a surplus of and I'm having enjoying some roles. You know what people end up doing with with quote unquote cheat days that I've noticed this really it's not a great behavior. It's they're eating alone. It's like today's my cheat day. Oh, I can't wait to go eat all this garbage and they'll bring it home and they'll eat by themselves. Yeah. And in Gorg's like porn 100% exactly. Or they'll find another person who's dieting. We're all going to go together and go and cheat together. Yeah, the mentality is totally wrong. But refeeds and you know, I don't think it's it's it's much more beneficial to not be on a consistent cut, but rather interrupt it with days of higher calories. Next question is from court. Jim fit. What are the best foods for bulking? What do you suggest for upping calories? Alright, we just we just kind of goes in line with what I was just saying with refeed days. Totally. So the best foods for bulking the first criteria that I always consider is digestibility because the biggest challenge with eating more food is things like blow indigestion heartburn constipation like just digestive issues and that will prevent you from eating the calories. You know how important what you're saying is like this is literally what what limited me from being able to build, you know, 10 15 20 pounds of muscles through muscle more muscle on my body over the course of my teenage and early 20 years saying because I thought because McDonald's super size and extra like, oh man, I got to be so high in calorie. But what I what I wasn't accounting for was after I ate that I was so backed up for the next four or five hours. Anything else in yeah, I didn't eat I didn't eat not to mention the macro profile was way off. I had a little bit of protein mostly carbs and saturated fat. So I got a bunch of calories but then I didn't eat my protein intake. Then I wasn't hungry for four or five hours like understanding actually when I made that switch to eating like like leaner leaner for lower unsaturated fats, higher protein, good, good digestible carbs like, you know, potatoes rice, sweet potato yams. I was able to hit my macros and get my calories up, which is was so weird for me as a young kid that was trying to build because I I assumed because I could never I had a hard time putting weight on that I justified the behaviors around eating whatever food. And a lot of times there were food that was not ideal digestibility. Same thing. And it kept me from building it went from any calories at all costs to calories that I can digest and that I'll be able to eat again later on way better. The first successful bolt I ever did where I really put on muscle. I want to say I was 16 or 17 years old. And that's when I pieced this together where instead of eating a bunch of bread and pasta, which I don't digest gluten super well, a bunch of cereal and candy and so does I went rice, ground beef and vegetables. And I remember buying this is the first time I went and bought some groceries myself. And I went and bought a bunch of my mom helped me cook it up because that's what time moms do they cook your food for you. And I ate ground beef and rice and vegetables. And I gained over that summer, I think I gained like 10, 12 pounds of muscle, which was a lot, you know, for a kid. And it was all because I could digest it like I eat this big meal two hours later, two hours later, I could eat again. Whereas before I eat this huge meal. And I was just all the next one was just a chore and I couldn't eat those calories. I can't stress how important that is. And because I think when you're trying to gain and you can't you have a hard time putting weight on and building muscle, you you easily justify the other foods and you don't realize what you're doing. And so oatmeal became my staple with some, you know, whey protein in there that I'd end up getting rice and chicken guys and vegetables were, you know, and then a juicy steak at the end of the night with more potatoes or rice, like all these foods that were very because what I noticed was I'd be hungry. I could eat again in two or three hours where if I ate the Togo sandwich with chips and a soda, I didn't want to eat for four or five hours. If I had the McDonald's, I had the fast food that was high calorie. Totally. I wasn't getting enough high good quality protein and I wasn't and I wasn't hungry until four or five years later. Yeah, what I would do like the terrible like dirty bulk where I would like eat a meal and then I thought I had to have this like crazy ridiculous shake in conjunction with that. So it would be like this meal and then that on top of the meal and it was just like overwhelming to where I'd had like gastro intestinal problems. I was fighting, you know, like all day long and then trying to eat on top of this almost impossible. Bro, do you remember? I don't know if you guys, I mean, as a teenager, before I figured this out, I would eat these ridiculous meals because I just like calories. And then I'd sit in class and just my stomach. Yeah. Oh, I don't feel good. This is what demons talking. Yeah. And then it justifies like, well, bulking, you know, it's only for hardcore people. So I'm just going to force myself to sell this. It's all about force, like keep forcing it in digestibility is real important. So best foods for most people, the easily the most easily digestible foods include red meat, white meat, fish and then vegetables, well cooked vegetables are easier to digest than raw vegetables. And then carbohydrates, white rice, buckwheat, oatmeal can be potatoes, sweet potatoes, sweet potatoes. I think sweet potatoes are even better than potatoes for digest. I could eat way more sweet potatoes than regular. Yeah, I could I could do both pretty well. But I mean, that I really have one of my favorite dish and you said already with ground beef mix with white rice, man, I could eat like a I make a and you can make it in bulk. It's reasonably inexpensive if you buy it in bulk too. So if you buy the ground beef cooked the rice and bone broth, you got yourself a high calorie you'd taste good, goes down really easy. I can eat it again two hours later. Like that was such as that was a staple that and chicken thighs and those and either the rice or sweet potatoes like those are like the staple meals for me, which sounds funny because you're eating healthy. They sound like, yeah, exactly. They sound like cutting foods. They do. And it is actually just less of it, right? So that's really the strategy is eating more of the healthier foods. And I think the mistake that most people make that struggle with is putting weight on is their their their food choice. Next question is from usually Lauren. For someone who can't digest whey protein powder, what's the best alternative protein powder? Okay, so good question because whey protein is the gold standard. It's got high branch shaming of acid and essential amino acid content, high loosing. So it's just really it's really this kind of anabolic muscle building hormones got health benefit. So whey protein is great. Unfortunately, it's dairy based. And a lot of people have issues with dairy even when they remove the lactose. People have issues like I'm one of those, right? So it's not the lactose, it's just dairy proteins in general. So I can't have whey. So okay, what are the what are the other solutions for protein powders? Okay, so you could try egg protein powders. That's very high quality. Now here's the issue with egg protein powders. They also tend to cause digestive issues and people adjusted to this fumes involved protein. Yeah, so that can be issues. So you could go when you're looking at the plant based one, P protein seems to have the best amino acid profile. But when you want to plant proteins, you tend to want to have a blend. You want to blend of different types of vegan sources because you'll get a better amino acid profile. And then you want to digest the enzymes in that protein powder. But P proteins, one of the better ones, collagen protein or bone broth protein considered a lower quality protein because it's low in essential amino acids. However, it's one of the easiest digesting proteins you'll find anywhere. In fact, it's the it's one of the only protein powders that would be recommended to people with gut issues. In fact, when you have gut issues, one of the things they do is they tell you have more bone broth or have collagen protein because it helps repair the gut. Well, you might be asking, well, it's not as good of a protein as way. Well, here's how you make up the difference. You have more of it. Yeah. So I can have a ton of collagen protein. And that makes up for the fact that it's not as high an essential amino acid. How do you feel about beef isolate? Be some people are great with beef. Yeah, I've heard it's great. I just haven't tried it. Some people are really, really good with beef isolate. And if you find some here's a problem that I found with beef isolate proteins is that read the label. It'll say like beef protein, read the label. They'll often add dairy to the beef isolate protein. Really? Yes. So like, yeah, I found like three where I look and like, oh, this looks good. And then I'll try it. But like, why is this messing me up? Then I'll read the label like an idiot after I took it. And I'll be like, oh, that's nice. They added dairy to this. Well, I see everybody's posting your Paleo Valley bone broth now. So after you talked about it, everybody's has been sharing it. And I do see everybody saying how amazing well, you know, bone broth and collagen are interesting. Yes, it's true. It's not as anabolic as way. But again, it's so easy to digest. You could just have it like I can have 100 gram and I do this all time. I'll have 100 grams of bone broth protein in a shake and feel fine. I can't do that with any other protein powder. That'll totally mess me up. So 100 grams of bone broth protein, is that going to be as effective as let's say 40 grams away? Yeah, it's way more protein. So it makes up. Well, we know this was studies. It's like back to the conversation we just have about the fast food. Yeah. I mean, when you when you're trying to build calories as part of the game, right? Like you got to get more calories. So you think that having this 1500 calorie or 1700 calorie meal would be ideal. But not if it fucks up, you know, you can't digest it, right? So if you can't digest it, then you and you don't want to eat for four or five hours later again, well, then it kind of defeats the purpose. The same thing goes with the way protein. It could be the best protein in the world. But if it upsets your stomach, well, then you're better off getting something that's even a little bit lower quality, but you can do more. Now, the other thing about collagen protein, it actually suppresses your appetite for a long way. Way is a really good bulking protein because it tends to have a very negative. It doesn't have a huge effect on appetite. So if you're trying to pound calories and you can tolerate way, it's great. Collagen is great for dieting because it actually suppresses appetite more than almost any other protein that they've studied. So and I think it's because of the way that it sits in the stomach or in the system. But you'll take it and you'll feel full longer. So if you're trying to cut, that's another option. But, you know, again, vegan sources, P is the best, blends are even better, egg protein phenomenal, but digestive issues. A lot of times with that beef protein isolates good. And then collagen or bone broth. That's that's right. Tend to go. Look, if you like mine pump, head over to mine pump free dot com and check out our guides. We have guides that are free that can help you with almost any health or fitness goal. Again, they cost nothing. You can also find all of us on social media. So Justin is on Instagram, mine pump Justin, Adam is on Instagram, mine pump Adam and you can find me on Twitter at mine pumps out. This one's really important and that is to phase your training. If somebody trains for a full year doing a bench press and they're always aiming for five reps, if you compared that person to a person who did bench press where they did three or four weeks of five reps, but then they did three or four weeks of 12 reps and then three or four weeks of let's say 15 to 20 reps and then they'll throw in some supersets. At the end of that year, you're going to see more consistent progress from the person who's moving in and out and less injury. That's another thing. You'll see less injury as well.