 You wanna know what I learned the most from using this natural muscle building potential calculator that we have now? Oh, what was, what'd you learn? The biggest lesson that I learned, Adam. Justin slacking. Oh, come on. Justin and Doug, not even close to the potential. We're way down, way down our potential. No, so these, this is pretty cool. So we actually have this now on our site. What's the, what's the link for this, Doug? How do people get to this, by the way? What is it? I have some calculator, it's MuscleCalculator.com. Is it MuscleCalculator.com? Okay. You're so. I forgot, you got him distracted. Sorry, so there's this calculator that you enter in your height, your wrist size, your ankle size, and then your current body fat percentage. And then what it does is it uses an algorithm based off of what, what lots of what we can, with this, the person who developed this, by the way, Casey Butt is his name, no joke. That's his real name, he's a PhD. And he did a bunch of calculations of natural, you know, bodybuilders and natural strong men from back in the day. People that have been lifting for a long time. Yes, and he used those averages to figure out what your potential could potentially be when you enter in these numbers. Which is really cool because when you were, I mean, at least when I was a kid, I couldn't imagine the numbers that it's spit off, I could never be that big. You think that you can't get that big, but with training, you know, consistently for a long time and properly. Well, so here's the thing. So I've been working out for a long time. I've been doing this, and I mean, consistently, I've been going towards the same goal of building muscle since I was 14, okay? And I've already surpassed my peak, but I know what the biggest, most muscular I've ever reached. This thing is pretty accurate. It actually hit me pretty close. So this says, so I entered in my height in inches, which is 72 inches, so that's six feet. My wrist size is 7.75 inches, so almost eight inches. My ankle size is 9.5, and my current body fat, I guess, is about 12, which, you know, I think I'm around 12 right now. This says at 12% that my max potential for size or weight would be 222 pounds, which is, that's pretty damn close to what I've hit, and it says my arms, 18 inches would be my potential. Four arms, 15 inches. My thighs, 26 inches. So I know what my max measurements have been in my life. I've definitely hit 18 inch arms. My forearms, I've gotten to 14 and three quarters. My thighs, I've actually gotten to 27 inches, so I've actually surpassed what this said. So this is pretty darn accurate. It's pretty interesting, right? No, it's really interesting, but like 20 inch biceps? That's what it says for you. Come on, dude. Let's just, because you're- I've gotten up to like 17 and a half, maybe 18. You never do arms. I don't do biceps. Come on, guys. That's what you get. I'm just like, really? Well, think about it, you've trained, you've exercised and trained for a long time, but your goals have been more performance than just maximum muscle size. Right. You know, so- Wait, I'll let him down nice. Yeah, so, I mean, this is what it says. You've been trying real hard. Dugs over there are like depressed as fuck. You're not actualizing anything. Well, what it says, because Justin's wrist, remember mine was 7.75 inches. Justin's wrist was 9.5 inches. Holy, yeah, can we talk about that for a second? And his ankle- It's all about frequency. Oh, my ankle and your ankle are the same size? Wow, that makes me really sad about my calves. Wow. Yeah, but this says that your max potential is like huge, dude. Well, you know, that's a good point that you just brought up though right there when you're teasing yourself about calves, because now this gives you a good generic idea of about where you can get, but there are other factors, right? There's lifestyle and genetic factors that play a massive role here. So I'll give you an example of something that's similar to this, right? So body fat test it. So if you've ever had your body fat percentage tested with calipers, which is the, it's relatively accurate and it's the most common way to do it. It's more accurate than electronic impedance. As long as you get somebody that, you know, really knows what they're doing and is consistent with the way that they apply it. Yes, and it's more accurate than electronic impedance. That's the, those scales that you stand on it tells you what your body fat percentage is or the handles that you grab or whatever. That could change based off of what you ate. Oh, I could change that in an hour, you know, by hydrating or not or whatever. So calipers relatively accurate, easy to administer if you've ever worked with a trainer or gone to a gym or whatever. Chances are if you've had your body fat tested you've done it with calipers, but here's how they did it with calipers. Cause you might ask yourself, how do they know what your percentage is for your whole body by testing your bicep, your tricep, your, what they call sub scapula that's behind your kind of near your shoulder blade and right above your hip, what they call the supra iliac crest that's above the pelvis on the side. You think, how can they come up with a percentage off those measurements? Well, what they did a long time ago is they took cadavers, no joke, and they tested a bunch of points on the cadavers with calipers. Then this is for real. They stripped off the body fat for reals, weighed it and they found these points on the body that would give them the most consistent measurements. So even when you get tested with calipers you're still getting an estimate based off of an algorithm, based off of lots of different people just like this potential. I'm glad they didn't do that with the live people. Right, yeah, right. But again, individual variances can vary dramatically. You may just happen to be a person who's got a lean bicep, tricep, shoulder blade and hip but still have a lot of body fat in the rest of your body and then that algorithm's not gonna be super accurate for you. So that's an important thing to consider but you're right, Adam, there's a lot of things that'll determine what your real muscle building potential is. Now, why is it important to even consider muscle building potential? What if you never wanna build maximum muscle? What if you just wanna work out to speed up your metabolism and sculpt your body a little bit? Well, your potential also can help determine how fast you get to your results. Not just how far you could go but how fast and how well you respond. So this is kind of a cool thing to talk about and to talk about all the things that influence potential. It's just another tool, like body fat percentage, like you're bringing up. I mean, it's just another tool to help you know if you're on the right path, right? Or if you're doing a good job. I mean, if your muscle building potential is extremely higher than where you're at, you've got a lot of room to improve. Now, sure, there's other factors like genetic but there's a lot of lifestyle factors, what you're doing nutritionally and sleep, all those things that we'll cover, that matters. And so I like using, I love all these tools. I think people like to take something like this and they like to tear it apart and be like, oh, it could be up to this percentage off, just like body fat percentage. It's just true. Yeah, and like with all the food calculators that are out there, like, oh, this could be all. Well, yeah, a lot of that. But man, as a guy who's been lifting for a really long time, we didn't have any of these tools when we first started. I'm guessing all the time. I'm just trying to get big. Yeah, I'm guessing or I'm going and referring back to a book and writing and tracking everything down. So all of these things just, I think as a coach for sure, and even as a person who's maybe not trying to compete, I think are just great resources for you to know if you're heading down the right path. Well, it's the equivalent of this. It's like you're in a car and you wanna drive somewhere and you're in San Francisco and they say, and you say, I wanna drive to Dallas or whatever. You have, if you have zero idea of where that is, it's gonna be hard to, you have to drive around for a while before you even get close. Or you can have a general direction. Someone can say to you, oh, it's Southeast, general direction. These calculators give you kind of that general direction. But it's not gonna be exact, right? But you get some direction and you're right, Adam, we had none of this. I had none of this growing up. I had no idea what my potential could even be. And I didn't even know what determined what my potential was, especially when I first started. Especially if your goal is to really get as big as possible and gain muscle size. And I know that's not everybody's goal, but the first thing you think of as a young man is, well, I can't really get that big because I'm not gonna be on steroids. Like that was one of those things where you just have this mystical idea of what it provides you and all that as well. But to really kind of understand your potential naturally where you can, what you can achieve, I think that is helpful to kind of stay in it and really try to maximize what you can do in your efforts. Well, potential is interesting because it literally means what it could be possible, okay? So we all have a potential. Some of us, our potential is much higher than others. LeBron James has a much higher potential for to be an excellent basketball player than the average person. But that doesn't mean he's gonna hit that potential. He still has to train, he still has to practice, he still has to apply a lot of different things to reach that upper limit of potential. That's an example of when I think they both cross, right? When you see these super humans, whether it be bodybuilding or sports, is when you see the highest genetic potential matched with the lifestyle, putting in all the work and effort to do that, and then you get this, right? So, and we see this in bodybuilding. You know, a lot of times we look at bodybuilders and we try and compare ourselves, it's like, oh, I wanna look like this one day and the reality is you may never, because that person, not only did they have the genetic potential to build a ton of muscle, they also put all the work in to do that. The combination of that is just, it's something that you may never even look. There's also a lot, I also really like this because I get a lot of, probably more so than you guys, because I openly talk about using steroids on the show, I get a lot of young guys like in their 20s that are considering doing this and they always ask me, what do you think? Should I do this? Should I not do this? Well, first of all, I don't encourage anybody to, but if you're like, I wanna get into bodybuilding, I definitely wanna do this stuff and I'm okay with doing some of that. How would you start? I said, well, I tell all of them the same thing. Personally, if I could go back and do everything all over again, and I had tools like this, I would go after my potential naturally first, and then after that, that is when I would consider something if I was really serious about bodybuilding. Yes, now why is that important? Because you have to figure everything out before you throw one factor. Dial it all in. Right, because that's one factor. Anabolic hormones are a hormone factor, but there's a lot of other factors. Why would you throw that in the mix when you haven't figured out all the other stuff? Once you've figured all the other stuff out, then you could throw that on and then watch what happens. But why is this potential, muscle potential, even important to the person? Maybe we have a female listener who's listening right now is like, I don't wanna maximize my muscle size, although I'll make the argument that most women could naturally maximize their muscle growth, and none of them, very, very, very few of them would look anything like a bodybuilder. If anything, they would look extremely sculpted, tight, and have very fast metabolisms as a result. Nonetheless, I'm sure somebody listening is like, I don't wanna maximize my max potential for muscle. Why should I even consider this? Because understanding how to maximize your potential just gets you there faster. Whatever your goal is, you'll get there faster. I mean, I disagree with that too. I think even the female client who doesn't even think about muscle just wants to lose body fat, and she's 45 years old, three kids, doesn't give a shit about anything. I would still encourage this, because first of all, it's extremely hard. It's not easy. So no matter what we're talking about, male or female, to reach your max potential of muscle without any sort of drugs is extremely, you'll spend years chasing this number. This is not like a, oh, I know what it is. I'm gonna follow the Next Maps program and I should get to that. Like, no, this is gonna take a very, very long time. And hanging on to as much muscle as possible is really difficult. So I would always encourage my female clients to let's try and build as much muscle as you possibly can. And then you let me know. You let me know when you wake up one day and you think you don't like the way you- Never happens. Never happens. No, never happens. What does that say? It produces the look you want. I mean, you can eat more. There's just so many benefits to it. I think that it just doesn't get advertised enough. What it does to really pursue building muscle for women, I think it's awesome. Yeah, what's that saying, shoot for the stars and then if you don't hit the stars, you at least hit the moon or something like that. So that's, and again, you get the faster metabolism. You get the tight sculpted body. So understanding this is important because it's gonna get you to your goal faster, more effectively. So it is an important conversation. There's one more point about this also is that there may be a maximum muscle gain potential, but that doesn't necessarily mean you're gonna look as muscular as somebody who has different shape to their bodies. This is an important factor to consider. A lot of bodybuilders are not the most biggest muscular people on the planet. You put them next to a strongman competitor and they don't, they're not nearly as big. Why do bodybuilders look the way they do? They have a combination of great muscle building genes with a structure that makes those muscles appear a certain way. So I'm gonna go back to this muscle building calculator. We all dug, Justin and Adam and I all entered our information. The person in this room, the only person in this room has ever been an IFBB professional competitor is Adam. His muscle building potential on this calculator was actually one of the worst ones. Now it's not because he's not gonna, he can't build great muscle. Obviously he was a professional. He has small joints. He's got a small wrist and small ankle, which can actually be benefit on stage. It actually can make the muscles appear to look. Look-wise, right? That's my advantage of the small wrist and the small ankles and a small waistline too. Exactly. Those things, so if I do build some good muscle on there, it looks exaggerated on stage or in photos. So the reality is I will never be able to build or have as much potential as someone like Justin because of our skeletal structure. It doesn't mean you can't achieve an amazing look. And when you think of bodybuilders, I think of, you know who I think of is Frank Zane, right? Frank Zane is an example of this as somebody who had really small bone structures. But, and if you compared his body to Arnold, Arnold had so much more mass on his body than, but he's still Frank Zane. Some people say that's their favorite bodybuilder because of the look that they have. It was exaggerated really. Absolutely. And I'm just communicating that because if you do this and you fill it out and you're like, oh no, you know, you have your own individual factors. And at the end of the day, you know, and I used to tell us to female clients all the time, you know, nobody is gonna be carrying around a scale and weighing you. You know, I've told this story many times. I love telling this story because it's so impactful. But when I would give potential members a tour of my gym, oftentimes I would talk about this to, you know, both men and women. And sometimes the women would respond and say, oh no, no, I don't wanna build muscle. I just wanna get smaller. I just wanna lose weight. And so anything that sounds like you're gaining would freak them out. And so then I would, on my intercom, I used to do this all the time. It was super effective. I would page one of my female trainers, you know, attention staff, Jennifer, please come to Sal's office. In would walk in my five foot one or five foot two female trainer, very, very fit. Obviously has been lifting weights for a long time, very sculpted and lean. And I would ask the female potential member, I'd say, how much do you think Jennifer weighs? And be honest. And then, you know, she'd look at the trainer for approval and the trainer would be like, yeah, I don't care, be honest. And they'd say something like, oh, 105 or 95 pounds. I'd say, okay, that sounds like a good guess. Let's go weigh Jennifer on the scale so we can see how much she weighs. We'd walk over the scale, 135 pounds or 140 pounds. And it was a great way to illustrate how muscle looks on the body. And I'd say, look, you thought she weighed 105 because she's got a small waist. She doesn't take up a lot of space. She's very toned, very sculpted, but indeed she weighs about 30 pounds heavier than you thought. Do you know what that means? That means Jennifer can eat 2,700 calories a day or 2,500 calories a day and not gain any body fat. That's one of the wonderful benefits of building muscle. That's why it's so important, especially nowadays when we're just not moving that much. It's good to have a fast metabolism. Let's talk about the factors that help determine your muscle building potential. And really, I think you can break it down into two big segments, but these segments can be broken down into smaller constituents. The big one is genetic, right? That's the first one. There's a lot of genetic factors that determine how much muscle you can build. Now, before we get into that, I think it's important we explain that there are things that we know that affect you in terms of your genetics and muscle building. There's a lot of stuff we might not know. This is a complex thing. We're talking about the human body and metabolism and stuff like that. There's parts of it we still don't fully understand. Oh yeah, it gets really complex. Right, so here's one. Muscle belly length. So what does that mean exactly? Well, when you look at a muscle, you have where it attaches. There's two points typically where they attach. And in the middle of that is the actual muscle belly itself. Sometimes people have short muscle bellies and long tendons or long parts of the muscle that don't have this big bulky muscle part. You see this. I see it a lot in biceps, where I always thought it was interesting because my biceps are a little bit longer in terms of where the attachments are. And so when I flex, it looks totally different than my other friend had like almost like a little soft ball that was just straight, it was like a ball versus mine being like more spread out. Right, a real common one where you can look at his calves. Oftentimes when you look at athletes or basketball players, for example, you'll see short, real short, naughty calves up kind of high on the lower leg. And with other people, Justin's a great example. He's got very long calves. Cancels. That come all the way down. Caring the cankel. The longer the belly of the muscle, the more potential there is for size because that's the part of the muscle that really grows when you lift weights. It's not the tendon. You do strengthen tendon and stuff like that, but it just doesn't, you know, when you lift weights, you don't get these tendons that just explode with muscle. It's the belly itself. So, and you see this with bodybuilders. Bodybuilders all have, especially at the high levels, really long muscle bellies. You think so? I think you see examples of both like what Justin's talking about. And I think it's, there's obviously a little bit of an individual variance in each of your muscles, too. Like, so you might- Sure, you can have long bellies one person. Right, but overall, like Justin's using, we're using Justin as an example, right? Like I think he has a long origin and insertion for his bicep. He also does for his calves. He probably is that way pretty much all over his body. On the opposite, I have more of a shorter origin insertion. When I do a flex, I have that smaller ball, like you saying, my calf is up higher, like more like a basketball player. So, I think when you tend to have shorter origin insertion, you kind of have it distributed that way. You've got long muscle bellies, except for your calves, your biceps, your triceps, your forearms, they're pretty long. I mean, short muscle bellies, you could develop them, they're just not going to appear to be- The example, the cool way or the example to see that, and I disagree with you, is like Justin said, when you flex your bicep, you can tell there's a gap between the elbow and the bicep where Justin goes all the way down to like his elbow. I have a nice gap there. And the same thing goes for where my calf, when I flex my calf, you can measure the distance from where my calf is down to my ankle. And it's- He's got longer ones for sure. Yours aren't short though. You've got some biceps that you'll see that. Guys, this is making me uncomfortable. Yeah. Take your shirt off, Justin. Let's take a look. This is where this is going. But it does play a role, right? Muscle belly length is, and that's genetic. You can't change the length. I don't care how many preacher curls you do, or how many Pilates classes you do, you're not going to turn your muscles into longer muscles. That's something that is not effective there. That's a good point to bring up too, because you see a lot of this in marketing. You'll see somebody that has a certain look, and then they'll market that, oh, to work on the peak of your bicep when Justin's bicep is never going to look like that guy's bicep that's trying to advertise that to you. So that's why things like this are good to know. Yeah. Bone structure is another one. Bigger bones carry bigger muscles typically. And this is because that's the anchor point of muscle. And one thing that your body does is it tries to prevent you from being unstable or hurting yourself. So gaining a ton of muscle on a small bone structure isn't really something your body's gonna wanna necessarily do. People with bigger bones just tend to have more muscle. And you can see this with really big, giant people. They've got bigger muscles. Now, how they look is determined by lots of other factors. But big bones are just, again, they're just heavy anchors. It's like towing something with your car. If your tow hitch becomes, if it's not strong enough to allow you to pull something heavy, you're not gonna be able to do it. And so big bone structures allow you to build more muscle. So that's another factor you wanna look at. Yeah, and I see muscle fiber type is the next one. I immediately think of like a sprinter versus a long distance runner. You can see a clear difference in terms of the type of muscle that dominates their physique. Yeah, totally. So muscle fibers, and this is way more complex than this. We're gonna totally simplify this, but you could generally break them up into two types of muscle fibers. One is known as the fast twitch muscle fibers. These burn hot, generate a lot of power, but they burn out quickly. In other words, they use up the energy very fast. So think of like a V10 twin turbo or supercharged engine. It's gonna give you a lot of power, it's gonna burn up a lot of gas very quickly, and they fatigue quickly, but they can generate a lot of strength and a lot of power. Then you have the slow twitch muscle fibers. These are the muscle fibers that are efficient. They don't generate as much strength and power, but they can keep contracting over and over and over again and they give you endurance. One of these muscle fibers grows when it's trained and stressed. The other one doesn't grow that much when it's trained and stressed. Now a lot of people wonder why. Why would the one that makes you stronger and give you power, why is that the one that's gonna build? If I train the slow twitch ones, if I do lots of distance running and lots of rowing and stuff like that, why don't the slow ones grow too? Because bigger muscle fibers take up more energy. And when you're telling your body to have endurance, you're also telling your body to be thrifty with the energy that it uses. That's not advantageous to carry a lot of mass. No, there's a reason, look, there's a reason why a Prius doesn't burn much gasoline can last a lot longer. So when you're stressing your slow twitch muscle fibers, those muscle fibers get more and more efficient and they do grow, but they don't grow that much. Not like fast twitch muscle fibers where a bigger fiber squeezes harder, it contracts harder. So it's something that builds more. Now some of this, a lot of this is determined by genetics. Some of us are born with more fast twitch than slow twitch and vice versa. How do you know? The only way to really know is to have a muscle biopsy, but you probably figured this out as a kid. You were probably- Based on activities you're drawn towards, right? Like that's what I always noticed that some people had a propensity more towards long distance running, jogging, like things that were more movement based versus like some people that were more into just lifting heavy things and challenging themselves with their power and strengths. Now believe it or not, even though I was a skinny kid and I wanted to build muscle, I was much better at explosive activities than I was at long distance type stuff. I could generate force quickly better. So that's kind of a clue that told me that I had more fast twitch. You think you'd be a better jumper if that was the case? Yeah. I didn't say I was good. I said I was better at that than I was at the distance. Yeah, I was at the distance stuff. Thanks, Juer. But that's one way you can know. Now here's something that's interesting. As we're going through these genetic factors, some of these, your lifestyle isn't going to change much. Others, your lifestyle can change quite a bit. So we talked about muscle belly length, your lifestyle not gonna really do much to it. Bone structure, your lifestyle can affect it a little bit. You can train hard, you can lift weights, you're gonna thicken and strengthen your bones. Very little though. But not a ton, right? Your genetics largely determine it. Yeah, I'm not gonna grow my wrist. Yeah, you will some, right? But not a ton. Muscle fiber type, training can actually make a pretty decent change on this. It'll impact it a little bit. They've shown, studies now show that your slow twitch fibers can start to act more like fast twitch fibers and vice versa, depending on training. So that's kind of interesting, right? All of these are not 100%. And things like hyperplasia, things like that. Yeah, you actually increase the number of muscle fibers in your body. So you build new ones, which is kind of interesting. The next one is your hormones. Genetics do play a pretty big role in your hormones. Here's one of the greatest example of this. Men versus women, okay? Women typically do not have nearly the amount of testosterone than men do, obviously. Testosterone is the male hormone. Does testosterone impact your body's ability to build muscle? Absolutely. In fact, that's what anabolic steroids are. Anabolic steroids are based off of the hormone testosterone. Women who take steroids are essentially telling their bodies that they're becoming a little bit more male, and that's what ends up happening. As part of that, they build a little bit muscle along with other side effects. Can lifestyle affect your hormones? Absolutely. Has a huge impact. We're seeing a huge decline in testosterone levels in men in modern times. Oftentimes, I've seen this myself with clients. One thing I did later on in my career is I would have clients test their testosterone levels, and we would test it again six months or a year later after training, and I would see significant boosts in testosterone among my male clients, and it wasn't out of the ordinary for some of them to double. If I got a guy who came in with relatively low testosterone, like 270 or 300, it wasn't out of the ordinary to see it jump in the high 500s or sixes from changing their lifestyle. Yeah, I've never jumped like I did when I was going through puberty, and after that, just seeing the amount of muscle that I put on, doing the same type of workouts I was doing previously to that, and it was just this surge of testosterone indifferent to hormones that just all of a sudden came to be, and so it definitely, I mean, just going through that, seeing how that affected me was pretty substantial. Well, when we talk about hormones, I think about the other one I think is similar, which is metabolism. The two of those, I think, are something that your lifestyle affects a lot, and you can change it instantly. Hand in hand. You can see a dip in your hormones, or a dip in metabolism, like literally over things that you do within a day or two. So these are things that, even though you have a genetic foundation of where you kind of start off at, or in general, where you're at, but then there is a lot of variance of that going up or down, based off the choices that we make from eating, sleeping, and other things. This is where potential comes into play. So let's say you're a man and your genetic potential has you between 500 to 900 with testosterone. Your lifestyle determines where you land. Your lifestyle's gonna determine if you're at the low end of your potential, or at the high end. Now, all of us have a potential with all of our hormones, and some of us are more resilient with hormones. I don't know where my potential was for testosterone, but typically when I test it, it's pretty good. But I also have a lifestyle that feeds higher testosterone levels. You talk to a guy with low testosterone, or someone who suffers from it, and you ask them the difference that they feel. Adam, how different did it feel when you went off anabolic and your testosterone got real low? Oh, night and day difference. Yeah, total, right? So that's also highly influenced by genetics, but also by lifestyle. Here's a good example of that. People who suffer from gigantism. I don't remember what the official term was for that. Yeah, it was like a pituitary gland, like a tumor, or something that they were born with. Tony Robbins, right? He has some of that. Andre the Giant. Andre the Giant, yeah. There's just examples of that. Usually it was around the pituitary gland, if I'm not mistaken. Acromalia, I don't know how to pronounce it, but yeah, and they'll have a tumor that'll grow on their pituitary, so that they're just squirting out growth hormone like crazy. And they'll grow, grow, grow. Yeah, seven foot five or whatever, and I know Andre the Giant's parents weren't even big. They weren't even that big, and he was just such a monster. There's something else that we've identified relatively recently, which is myostatin. Now, it's probably influenced by genetics, but also lifestyle. And they discovered this factor, and it's probably more powerful than your hormones are in terms of seeing how much muscle you can grow. They've done, if you look this up online, if you Google myostatin, that's M-Y-O-S-T-A. Myostatin pit bull. T-I-N, or myostatin dog, or myostatin mouse, or whatever. Bull. Yeah, or bull. They'll do, they do these studies where they take like a mouse, and then they'll take one and they'll inhibit myostatin, which is essentially like the breaks on your body's ability to build muscle. And the difference between these two animals is like, it's like one is a cartoon bodybuilder. It's insane. Didn't you long time ago on Mind Pump, like when we first started theorize that that would be the next like breakthrough that we would make? Oh, they're working on it. Besides steroids, yeah, that was the next one. They're working on manipulating myostatin and what that'll do. And what's crazy about that is with these animals, when you give animals hormones, they'll gain some muscle, but if you, they have to train and do activity to really see what happens with the myostatin, they just leave them. They give, like, they mess with the myostatin of one mouse and then the other one, they feed them the same, they don't move much. They're not even training, they're just getting jacked. They just build muscle. It's really, really crazy. That's the magic pill. Yeah, but there's a genetic factor there too. I've seen articles of children with this mutated myostatin gene. And they're like three years old, looking like little bodybuilders. I would assume that some of the best athletes in the world in sports like football and other strength, related sports, probably have a myostatin gene that helps them build this kind of strength. I'm sure, yeah, I'm sure there's a little bit of that. Like all these factors, like I'm sure, genetically you have, and then again, this is where it gets complex because I'm sure there's parts of the genes that we haven't really fully dived into yet and saw, like, oh wow, this is contributing too. And then your central nervous system and how that fires muscles, how that produces force, there's gonna be a genetic component to that as well. Do you think examples of that? I think CNS is a really interesting one to talk about. I think of somebody who just picks up an instrument and they can just play right away. Like I feel like that has a lot to do with CNS. The ability to, yeah, and the same thing goes for somebody who can just pick a sport up. I can watch Justin play a sport a few times and then right away I can already start to emulate. Just mirror it. Right, really, really well. I think that's an example of somebody who has like a high potential with CNS is they have this ability really quick to get connected and to mimic something else that somebody's doing. Wouldn't that be a cool chance? Oh yeah, well, I mean, I don't know if you guys ever watched the Stan Lee superhero, like it was a TV show. They just showed people like that were... Oh, I did, that was great. Yeah, they had, I don't know, some DNA, some genetic factor where it made them have these kind of superpowers. And one of the guys was like not impressive in terms of physically. Like he wasn't like this physical specimen or anything, but he could hold this car while it was like peeling out like on the bumper and put his feet up against like one of those cement pylons and just hold the car. And like he just had this insane strength that he could summon through CNS. And it was just like, I was just like, my mind was just blown. And ever since I watched that and I've watched other examples of people that I like physically, I'm just not that impressed, but they're so strong. Like what is that, you know? Look at motor skills in kids. That's central nervous system. You see some children develop amazing. Now- Very good balance right away, hand-eye coordination stuff really early. Oh dude, I had a client who, you know, and I gotta catch up with her actually. I would love to see what this kid's up to now because it's a long time ago. So he's gotta be in junior high maybe at this point, but he was like three years old. You know, I mean, three years old, right? The kids barely learned how to walk not that long ago. And you give them a little plastic bat and he'd throw the ball up. And every time he'd hit it, boom, boom, every time you give him a little club and he'd hit it perfectly. He'd throw a baseball perfectly. And I was like three years old. I remember thinking to myself like this kid's gonna be, I'm gonna attach myself to this kid and train him. Oh yeah. But yeah, there's definitely a genetic component there, but can you train and have a lifestyle that impacts your central nervous system? God, you just hit on something that's so true about you just went over it real quick, but I think it's an important point. And we've talked about this before about, you know, some bodybuilder coaches getting like all these accolades and stuff for coaching these athletes to become champions. And a lot of times these coaches, what some of them get really good at is seeing this, is being able to look at somebody and see their genetic potential and know like, man, if I can just tweak a few things, this person's gonna be great. And it's funny because a lot of times these coaches get a ton of credit for that, but in reality, they just found somebody who had this great genetic potential, learned to unlock it. So it's not to take credit away from them, but more of that is that than it is like, and then everybody thinks, oh, if I hire that coach, I'll look like this or I'll be that great. And it's not necessarily true. This coach may have just hit the jackpot by finding this young athlete, like you were just alluding to, who you can see like, okay, he's gonna be special. And now if I just point him in the right direction, he's gonna be this great person and I'll get all kinds of credit for that. Oh, totally. Here's the other thing too. It's genetics aren't this solid blueprint that can't be necessarily changed like we used to think. Now we're starting to discover that epigenetics is a real thing. This is where your genes can be expressed differently based on your lifestyle. Environmental factors. I mean, there's actually studies that show that fathers who train and lift weights and live that kind of lifestyle produce offspring who have genetics that allow them to build more muscle, more so than if the dad didn't. In other words, they were able to express these genes differently and then they produce sperm with different expressions of these genes and then they produce children this way. Muscle sperm. Yeah, it's pretty. Yeah, .com, don't look that up. Now the next big category is the one that we focus on the most and we talk about the most, which is your lifestyle. This has a huge impact on your potential. The biggest one, the most obvious one would be training. That's the stimulus that tells your body that it should build muscle. You gotta remember that your body isn't gonna just build tons of muscle and strength. Just sitting there. For no reason. It's expensive tissue. It costs a lot of energy. It's something that it can build and take away. It's an adaptation process, just like your skin darkening with the sun. You're not gonna have a nice tan typically sitting in your mom's basement. You have to go out in the sun to elicit that adaptation. Same thing or similar thing with building muscle. Training is the biggest factor, but really it's the kind of training you do because some of it can build muscle. Some of it can cause you to maybe even lose muscle. So let's talk about that for a second. Some about the training that makes you build muscle, right? Strength training. That's it. Well, and I think that's, you have to understand that there's, with all the lifestyle things that we're talking about, there's a big wide spectrum there too of, you can train and get some of your muscle building potential just cause your quote unquote training, but how well you train really dictates how close you get to that upper limit. And like everything else in this lifestyle category that we're gonna go over is, it's not just simply doing that. You know, like sleep is another one. Not just sleeping is gonna get that, but how well or what quality of sleep makes a big difference. The same thing goes for training. When we're training, you could just, just cause you're lifting weights doesn't necessarily mean you're going to reach your muscle building potential. The more effort you put into like training properly or according to your body will really dictate the amount of that muscle that you can build towards your potential. Yeah, and your body's gonna form to this environment you're creating for it to adapt to. And so that's why you'll see like certain muscles develop. Certain muscles are a little bit underdeveloped. It's really about like assessing, you know, where the deficiencies lie, where you're, you know, maybe a little bit more dominant in your training style. And so it's like a constant thing that you have to look and assess and see, you know, results and metrics and see, you know, where you stand in terms of all those things, but also it's about setting yourself up for success. And this is one part of the whole training process. I think a lot of people skip over what is ideal? What's ideal posture? What's optimal way to kind of set yourself up and stack yourself to be able to move to get your muscles to express themselves how they need to be expressed. The interesting thing too about talking about training and all the things that go into your lifestyle is they all kind of feed and bleed into each other too. So, you know, you can put a lot of effort into one of them and that could potentially affect another part of your lifestyle. For example, if you trained around the clock, nonstop all the time and neglected sleep, that could potentially hurt you in the opposite direction just because you're training a lot. So, all these categories that we go through right now, you know, it's really about finding the most optimal balance for you. Look, there's a lot of notes in a song, but if you just throw them all together, you're not gonna have the song, you're not gonna make music. All of these factors that we're talking about have to work harmoniously together. Just like the example Adam gave, you know, if your training is taking sleep away from you, you're not gonna gain anything from it. And then training itself is pretty complex. Like, there's some exercises that are excellent at building muscle and strength. There's other exercises, they're not so good at it. You know, a barbell squat is way more effective at building muscle than a single leg extension. A single leg extension works your quads, it's resistance training. You're not gonna get anywhere close to what a barbell squat's gonna be able to do. So if you wanna maximize your potential, and again, even if your goal isn't to get as muscular as you possibly can, even if your goal is just to get to your goal fast and effectively, pick the most effective stuff to get there. Otherwise, and by the way, even if you do that, it's gonna take you a long time. So if you wanna take a normal, long amount of time, pick the most effective ones. You wanna add extra time to that, that's up to you. Do the least effective stuff. So pick the most effective exercises, which tend to be compound movements, they tend to be big, what are called gross motor movements. Your deadlifts, your squats, your overhead presses, your rows, your bench presses, those tend to be the most effective muscle building exercises, so do those and focus on those most. Rep ranges make a big difference as well. You wanna train somewhere probably in between the four rep and then maybe 25 rep range, but that doesn't mean you're always doing that. We talk about this on the show all the time. Phase your training, stay in a rep range for a little while, get good at it, get good at five reps for a little while, maybe a few weeks, then move to a new rep range, train at that, because the stimulus also stops being a stimulus if you do it too much too often and you never change it. Eventually, it stops, your body stops responding, which is why it's important to train in those different phases, but which is why all of our programs are phased. You look at all of our maps workouts, you'll find that they all have two to four phases and phases just means you're changing your training enough to spark that stimulus again to maximize those results. You have to also train properly. A properly performed squat is gonna be much more effective at building strength and muscle than an improperly performed squat. Form is extremely important, so is tempo, there's lots and lots of things we can do to break down training. Strengthening end ranges, full range is gonna provide that extra stimulus for your muscle that you're not gonna get in the shortened range. Right, right. And the reason why I'm saying all this is not to confuse you, it's just to highlight that your best bet is to try to maximize because you're probably gonna fall short of it, but it'll get you there better than if you say to yourself, I don't wanna build lots of muscles, so I'm not gonna maximize anything. Try maximizing a lot of stuff and you'll get there faster and more effectively. Now, the next big lifestyle category is diet. Diet plays a huge role. You can definitely eat in a way that'll prevent you from building muscle, 100%. You know, when we work with clients, Adam talks about this all the time. When we work with clients, whether they wanna lose fat or build muscle or just improve their health, our goal as trainers was always, we gotta get them stronger and typically we need to put some muscle on them. What's the one thing we would see consistently with clients where their diet was cutting them short? Right, under eating protein intake. Yeah, low protein. Now studies consistently show that a high protein diet builds more muscle and it builds it faster than a lower protein diet. Consistent, this is a very consistent across the board. We see this in studies all the time. Typically you wanna aim for anywhere between 0.6 or seven grams to one gram of protein per pound of body weight. If you're relatively lean, if you're obese, use your lean body mass. So that means that a guy like me, let's say I weigh 210 pounds, I'll probably wanna aim for about 180 grams of protein a day. So that right there, step number one. But what about calories, right? People ask about calories all the time. If you're not eating enough calories to fuel the muscle, you're not gonna build muscle and you can have the best workout in the world and the best everything else. You don't have the building blocks, it's just not gonna happen. That's it, you gotta give your body what it needs to be able to even build. Now I think too, you need a healthy body and that's something that I think a lot of people like don't realize. If you're not eating to provide environment for your body as a whole to thrive, you're gonna have a hard time building muscle if you're fighting yourself internally. So just also knowing and doing the due diligence of kind of going through all the different types of foods and kind of narrowing down what your body can digest the best is definitely something I recommend. Well, this is also why we recommend the mini cuts and the mini bulks. No matter what your goal is, regardless of your goal is to build as much muscle as possible or your goal is to lose as much body fat as possible, we still recommend that people weave in and out of the mini bulks and the mini cuts. And a lot of that is, because how often do you guys get this? A client who comes in and she wants to lose 30 pounds of fat. She doesn't even really mention building muscle but you know how advantageous it is for her to have as much muscle on her body as possible to reach her ultimate goal. And so we'll be cutting for a few weeks and I might see like her progress start to slow down and then I wanna transition into a bulk. Even though her goal, she came to me and said, Adam, I wanna lose 30 pounds of fat, that's all I care about. I know as a trainer that I don't wanna keep going that route and slowing her metabolism because in turn, even though her goal or focus is 30 pounds of body fat off, it's gonna slow that progress down. If I don't reverse her, add some calories back into her diet, focus a little bit on some building some muscle and some strength to then go back again that way. Oh, I learned this lesson in the opposite direction. Of course, I've talked about this before as a kid, I was always trying to gain muscle and at one point I went all in in just eight, a ton of calories but I did it for a long time and I remember getting my body fat tested and I had gained, I don't remember how much it was, 25 pounds and I gained out of that 25 pounds, I think it was like four pounds of lean body mass. I had stuck so long in this calorie surplus that my body stopped building muscle and just stored body fat. So I gained all that weight for four pounds of lean body mass and it was very, very frustrating because then when I went to remove the body fat, I ended up almost where I had started, it was like a total wash at that point. Right, so cutting would have been smart for me in between because that would, for lack of a better term, resensitize my body to the extra calories so that I can turn it all into muscle instead of body fat. So what Adam's talking about is if you're trying to gain, you wanna eat more calories than you're burning, if you wanna lose, you wanna eat less calories than you're burning. So if you're losing, you probably wanna stay in the less calories you're burning more often than not but every once in a while, eat more calories because it resensitizes your body. Otherwise, for people gaining, you'll gain too much body fat and for people losing, you actually start to lose muscle. That's why you wanna kind of go in and out of that stuff. Now, the next one took me a long time to learn and I didn't really learn this until I read this article and I don't remember what magazine, it must have been Flex or one of those. And there was this guy who told this anecdote about how he gained 10 pounds of lean body mass just by sleeping eight to nine hours every single night and he was a really, really good author. He wrote, the article was very effective at convincing me. So up until this point, I'm one of those people that I can get around not needing much sleep, especially when I was younger. I was one of those five, six hours a night and I'm up and ready to go and not a big deal and I used to brag about it all the time. I remember reading this article and it was over the summer and I thought, man, let's give this a try. Let me just try to go to bed early. Let's sleep, yeah. And I'm trying to sleep, try to sleep in and I followed all the advice. I blacked out my room and I didn't go to bed and I was stressed out and eat too close to bedtime and see what happened and it worked. I didn't gain 10 pounds of muscle but I do remember gaining a few pounds of muscle just from doing that. Nothing else changed. Diet was the same, training was the same but I was stronger, I felt better and that's all because I got better sleep. It took me a long time to learn that. Oh yeah, it sounds hilarious to me because it just sounds like, you know, it's a lazy thing. Forever you're just like, I'll sleep when I'm dead. And, you know, that's the sentiment that most my friends and myself even had when we would like go to train or like do anything in terms of like sports or, you know, try to get better. You know, at whatever we were doing, it's like, oh, sleeping more, that's gonna help. Like that to me wouldn't even resonate at all. So that was something I had to learn a lot later on that, you know, to balance out my hormones, to rebuild, to like act of recovery as well. Like all these things played such a bigger role than I even like realized. You know, Saul, you said something I think it's important to touch on also is that, you know, there's a major genetic variance in all of these lifestyle things per person also. Meaning, you might find that, like the sleep thing you brought up, you might find that you have a friend who never gets sleep, you know, they never get any sleep whatsoever and they just have this most amazing physique forever. They could have this genetic potential that their body just doesn't need as much as yours does. Or they're not reaching their potential. Right, it could be either one of those. But the point of me bringing this up is you have to be very careful about your training partner or your friend or somebody you know that you're comparing their behaviors, their lifestyle to yours and thinking that you should be able to get the same results. The same thing goes for like what we talked about with diet and training. I remember having a trainer who worked for me. McDonald's every day. That's right. He had Taco Bell and McDonald's twice a day and he had six pack abs and he had all this muscle. Some people- Maybe no sense. Some people just have this ability to be able to get away in some of these lifestyle things that you may not. And so it's important that you, all the things that we're talking about that you do a deep dive on them and figure that out for yourself. Like where is it going? Does it make a huge difference when I get that extra hour of sleep versus if I don't? And so, you know, as we're going through and talking about all of them, I'm thinking about all these anomalies. You know, these people that I know that didn't do one of those things and yet still had this amazing physique that goes back to the, this is where the genetic variance is so crazy is that, you know, each of us are so unique that you may be, there might be this little thing that you haven't unlocked because you just didn't think it's that big of a deal because you've got a friend who doesn't do it and never does it and he looks amazing so you don't even think about it. But if you all of a sudden start putting some energy and focus, it may be that one thing that unlocks your potential. Totally. And again, think about it this way. If LeBron James, you know, played basketball two days a week- He'd still be good. Yeah, he's got, but he would never have reached the potential that he reached, right? He would never have become one of the best players of all time. So that guy that worked for you, that ate McDonald's and Taco Bell and looked amazing, if, you know, I could compare myself to him and be like, oh, that's not fair, whatever. But the truth is, he's not reaching his potential either. His potential may be so high and he may be on the lower end because he's eating McDonald's and Taco Bell every day. It's also important to note that, you know, the muscle building process, even if you're gifted or whatever, is a slow process. I don't know anybody on the planet that can work out and a week later look amazing. Burning body fat is faster, much faster than building muscle. Muscle is a slow, long process for all of us, some of us faster than others, but still a slow process. So when you, you know, if you go on this calculator that we have online and you enter your potential, you know, and you think, oh cool, that's my potential. I'm gonna get there by, you know, by next year or whatever. Maybe not, probably not. It's gonna take you some time. I mean, I looked at my calculator. This is coming from someone who's been working out for a long time. And I didn't reach that potential that I have, that I came up with with mine. It took me my early 30s to reach that. And this is somebody who had started at the age of 14. So that's like 16 years of really trying to build muscle, which takes me to the next one with lifestyle, which is the most important, which is consistency. You know, I've said this before and I'll say it again, a subpar workout routine done consistently will outperform a great workout program that's done inconsistently. Consistency is extremely important for any goal, but especially for muscle building because your body is constantly, by the way, muscle doesn't just maintain. Your body doesn't just keep muscle where it's at. What's happening every single day is a little bit of building or a little bit of reducing. And if you build a little more, then you reduce. The overall result is you build a little bit of muscle. If you lose a little bit more than you build, the overall result is you lose a little bit of muscle. But your muscles are not just sitting there stationary and maintaining. It's this constant up and down, fluctuation of building and losing. And so the consistency of sending a muscle building signal, the consistency of eating the right diet, the consistency of getting good sleep, the consistency of having a lifestyle that maximizes your genetics or your genetic potential will ultimately result in more building than losing, which will give you the physique that you want. We didn't touch on stress. That's another really, really big one. Your body's not gonna build muscle if your stress is really high. I've gone through stressful periods in my life. I've never stopped working out. And I'll tell you right now, I'm weaker. It takes me longer to recover. And there's no way I could reach my potential when I'm really, really stressed out. Stress doesn't work. Stress is a big one because it really bleeds into all the other ones, right? High stress, bad sleep, high stress, diet has to change. It's compounds after all. And this is again, one of those ones too, that I didn't really put this one together until I got older. I started to really evaluate, like when I'd see the ups and downs in my stress levels and how it was affecting everything else. And probably now one of the number one things I speak to if I'm talking to a client, one of the first things I ask them is about their workload, their family, what they got going on. And if I can find little ways to hack into that and improve that part, I know all the other things in their lifestyle are gonna be a lot easier for me to fix. Right, now here's the big message with all of this is what should you focus all of your energy and attention on? Your genetics or your lifestyle, right? Which one can you change? What can you control? Now this also means which one do you think about and stress about? If you stress and think about your genetics all the time, you're gonna be miserable. You can't change it. You can't do anything to change your hard set genetics, but you can change your lifestyle. And the most successful people you'll find, actually almost any aspect of life, but definitely in training, are the people that realize that. They've got their genetics, whatever. I don't even think about that. I think about what can I do? What can I manipulate? What can I work on to get me where I wanna go? And that's what we said, right? That's your training, your diet, your sleep, your stress, how consistent you are. Essentially, focus on the things you can change. Don't worry, accept the stuff that you can't change and your odds of success are much, much harder. Well, part of that too is just reframing that. You know, we were earlier kind of alluding to this when we were comparing Justin's body type and mine. We're probably the most extreme difference of the two. And the grass is always green on the other side. So if you lack in an area genetically, there's always a positive to that also. So like, you know, Justin could probably put on more, I mean, obviously he can put on more lean body mass than I ever could naturally, right? But then I also have an easier time leaning out than he probably ever will too. And it doesn't mean each guy can't do great things. You just gotta reframe what your genetic potential looks like. It's not like a complete disadvantage. You know, there's still, there's pluses and minuses to all those things that we talked about if you're on the higher end or the lower end. So a lot of times you just, again, comparing yourself to your friend or comparing yourself to someone else and say, oh, I wish I had that ability or I wish I had this ability. Well, because you don't, you have another advantage so that you have to reframe the way you look at that. The only fair comparison, and what I mean by that is like apples to apples is you to you, you know, compare me now to me yesterday. That's the only fair comparison that I'd say would stand the test of scrutiny. Look, mine pump is recorded on video as well as audio. So you can actually watch us and listen to us on YouTube. If you go to Mind Pump Podcast on YouTube, all of our podcasts are posted on there. Also, you can find all of us on Instagram. You can find Justin at Mind Pump. Justin, me at Mind Pump Sal, Adam at Mind Pump, Adam, Doug at Mind Pump, Doug. And finally, if you'd like some free content, if you'd like some free guides on muscle building, fat loss, and anything that has to do with fitness, go to mindpumpfree.com.