 The magic you are looking for is in the work you're avoiding. What does that mean? Often the exercises that you don't do or you avoid are the ones that are going to give you the most gains. Look, if you've been working out for a while, especially if you've been working out for a while, and you remember those newbie gains that you got when you first started working out, you can tap into those by doing exercises you're not good at. Often the exercises you hate the most. Stop avoiding them. Pick them up. Practice them. Watch what happens to your body. We're literally creatures of habit. Totally. Guys, remember when you pieced this together? You remember what exercise it was that you had a bit of voiding, or muscle group, or you remember avoiding something? 100%. Really? I hate pulps. Because you have those heavy cakes. I focused on that. It took me a few months of just deliberate attention to finally get decent at them again, but that was one, I was always mad because it was like the presidential physical fitness, and that was one of the standard ones. I always didn't do well. I did well on everything else except for that, and I just always used to get at them. Did you get the presidential fitness award? You didn't get it? I did get it. So that was the hardest one for you. That was the hardest one. You know which one was for me? The stupidest one. I did it. I aced everything else. It was the sitting reach. Oh, yeah. I could see that. It made me so mad. It's the dumbest one. He's a flexible guy. Everybody was able to do the sitting reach, and here I am, I crush and pull ups and I can run and do everything. And then I'm like, oh, I could better get to this a lot. It was so mad. So did you get that? Yeah, I did terrible with the sitting reach too. The exact same thing. Did you get the national or presidential? No, no, no. I didn't win. No, I didn't win. But I remember that, or I don't remember what category I fell in. Because I remember it was presidential and then national. Yeah, I don't remember what it was. I did well on it though. You got local. Yeah, that's actually a good question. But I do remember the sitting reach, not being great at that. I crush pull ups. I remember being really good at that. I crush the sit ups. I remember that. What is it? Sit ups? Push ups? Pull ups. For girls over the head. For girls over the head. And the mile run I did. I still remember my number for the mile. I ran a six something. Now keep in mind, I weighed like 25 pounds. I ran under six. I ran a 550 something. Wow. Yeah, 552 or 556 something like that. That's great. Yeah. So, you know, the first time I figured this out, I actually remember specifically. It's so weird. It just popped in my head when you said this. I worked out in the backyard when I was a kid and my dad had a basic weight set. So it was a bench and it was one of those Olympic bench sets. The sand filled ones? No, no. These were iron. So this is what my, so I had the first weights I used were the cement ones. But my dad had the iron ones in the backyard and I wasn't allowed to use them until I was like 14 and a half or whatever. So then I was finally able to use them. It was the one with the leg extension, you know, part attachment. It's all wobbly. Yeah. And I went out there and for arms, you know, I did all the exercises, but for arms, it was always barbell curls, dumbbell curls, barbell curls, dumbbell curls. Okay. And there was this preacher curl attachment that I had to take the leg extension attachment off and then slide the preacher curl on top of it. I just didn't do it because I didn't know how and I just avoided it or whatever. So for, I don't know, six months or so it was dumbbell curls, barbell curls back and forth. And then I remember I was reading an article about Larry Scott, the first Mr. Olympia, and he was all about the preacher curl. He talked about how that made his arms so big. So I'm like, I think I can, I have that in the backyard. So I looked around, it was all dusty, put it in there, took out the leg extension, took me forever to figure out, put it in, did preacher. And I sucked so bad because the preacher curls, the tension is at the bottom because of the angle, right? So with the barbell curl, it's like pretty easy from the bottom up to mid-range. But with the preacher curl all the way down, I had to go way light and I couldn't do it and I hated it. But because Larry Scott had these amazing arms, I stuck with it. And I'll never forget within weeks, I saw my arms progress so fast. Yeah. And I started to piece together like, huh, I wonder if it's because I sucked so bad at it that I'm getting this progress. And so from then on, it was just like, you know, this kind of dysfunctional relationship where I would realize it by doing something and then I still wouldn't do it because nobody wants to suck it at an exercise. I think that's the problem. No, I, especially a young insecure teenage boy, right? 100%. So I totally get that. I mean, I, I feel like so many lifts I experienced this with, especially all the big ones. I mean, I hated bench press. So I avoided bench press forever. Finally got decent at bench press, saw huge gains. That's rare by the way. A young man avoiding bench press. Yeah. Cause my form was so terrible and I was so weak. I was so embarrassed that I couldn't even put the 45s on and all my buddies in high school and stuff could do that. And I couldn't do that. Like that just drove me crazy that I had to go put the quarters on there, which they, they seem tiny, tiny, tiny when you're used to the 45 plates. So I mean, avoided that forever. I avoid crossfit weights back then. Yeah. Yeah. They didn't have that. They didn't have that. So I mean, I, I remember that. I remember, uh, never squatting, always leg pressing and legs. And then I remember squatting and then I remember never deadlifting and then deadlifting. Like I remember never a barbell overhead press. And then I did that. Like I had so many, I remember incline bench. Like there were so many moments in my lifting career where I had to learn that lesson of like, oh man, there's some huge value in seeking novelty and training, especially as you, as you get more advanced. Like when you're so new, you can almost do anything lifting wise. And the, and it's so long as you're got a good diet put together and you, you train well, exercise selection and programming is, is less important. It's always important, but it's less important. But then when you get into lifting for a long time and you've put two years plus under your belt of consistency, now this gets really important that you, you know, learning that man, seeking out these movements that I suck at and that is novel to the body. Man, there's massive gains there. Even though you, but you have to just go through the, the mental struggle of I'm going to suck at this. I'm going to have to be light in the weight and, and be shitty for a month or two at it. But boy, that's where the gains. The last time I did that was as an adult, um, I love, you know, I was barbell squatting at a young age. It's a, you know, exercise I was pretty good at. And then there was the video and so I was an adult. So it was after we knew we met Paul check and there was a video of him doing walking lunges. I don't know what it was like 250 pounds or something like that. And I remember Kyle Kingsbury told us also, he's like, Oh my God, I tried to work out with him. He did walking lunges with a tremendous amount of weight. And I sucked at lunges. I sucked at the split stance. It's just I could squat 350 pounds, but you know, you put more than, you know, 120 pounds on my back with walking lunges and I just didn't have the stability. So I, that's all I practice and practice and practice them for a while. And I got to the point where I could go, I mean, up to 185, but I went from 120 something to 185 in like five weeks. No way I'd be able to add 50 pounds or 60 pounds. No, not as an adult who's been training for so long. So that's really what you're tapping into. And you might wonder, people might think, well, why does this happen? How's this happening? Well, one is strength and performance is as much of a skill as it is your muscle's ability to contract. So the reason why my legs were strong with a squat, one of the reasons I could squat a lot, but I couldn't lunge a lot was my muscles knew how to organize themselves very well with the squat. They were very efficient with the squat to practice it all the time. As soon as I went into a split stance, it was like learning a new dance move. I just, you know, your body can't figure it out. I can't output as much power. So there's a lot of CNS adaptation, which by the way, CNS adaptation leads to muscle growth. They go hand in hand. They're like hand in glove. You want both. So if you're getting lots of CNS adaptation, you're like, oh my God, I added 50 pounds to a lift. Oh, it's just because I'm better at the lift. That is going to lead to more muscle growth. And then the second reason is when you look at, and this is, you know, this is largely the accepted theory with muscle fiber contraction. When you look at the muscle fibers, the filaments, as they pass by each other, you know, I was watching an animation of muscle fibers and it looks like the best example I could give is somebody pulling a tug of war rope, like they're reaching over the rope over and over again. That's kind of what muscle fibers do when they contract. And when they are put under tension, it's like your grip getting broken a little bit at certain points. That damage is part of the muscle building process. That damage is going to be different depending on the angle, the tension point. So if there's a lot of tension point in the mid range versus at the length in range versus the contracted range or isometric versus concentric or eccentric, it's slightly different. And that slight difference elicit is a new signal. It's a new muscle building signal. This is literally the intermediate and advanced hack. I would say this has to be the number one hack with intermediate and advanced lifters. I'm going to add to that the mistake. So I've pieced that together. And then the next mistake I make is now I'm changing things up all the time. I'm so glad you said this. So the next level to this tip or the next bit of the fully understanding it is that you still, but when you change the exercise or you go after something, you've got to stick with it long enough to get those... To get good at it. Yeah, to get good at it. Otherwise, if you're just constantly changing up all the time, then you're not giving the body enough time to really adapt and get good and then build that extra muscle. And so there's the key there because that was the next mistake I made, which was like everywhere. I figured this out, but then you went too far. Yeah, I mean, that was literally this was like... Novel stimulus every time. This was like a flex of mine, which, oh, I've never repeat... I've been lifting for 10 plus years. I've never repeated the same workout. I thought that was such a good thing. I was like, no, it's really not. Like there's tremendous value in following a routine long enough to maximize the growth and gains from it and then transitioning out of that. This is why strength training can be... I feel for somebody really trying to figure this out because it can sound so contradictory. It can sound so complex. So somebody hears the novel argument and then they do what you just said. I'll change everything. Then they hear somebody else is like, no, no, no, practice these basic exercises, practice them off and get good at them. You'll get the most gains and it's some really high performing athlete. Like, okay, who's right? Yeah, here's the shitty part. They both are. Yeah. They both are and workout programming is a balance of all these different things. And so I think you said it best just now, Adam. Find something new and then practice it long enough to get good at it. Yeah. That's really the thing, right? And then practice something, practice something. Now I'm good at it. Now I'm strong at it. Now I feel solid at it. Now maybe I can try something else. But there are exercises that have such a long range of benefits that you almost always should have them in in one's way, shape, or form. And those are the big lifts that we tend to talk about. Yeah, or come back to it, right? So I love the idea of... God, I remember another one I didn't name, Bulgarian splits quads. Oh, go ahead. There was a part of why... I've avoided that one a long time. It was actually... Who wants to go do Bulgarian splits? It was so difficult. Bro, yeah, it was so embarrassing. I had to get like 20-pound dumbbells was the most, and I was just like on fire. That's more than me. I was on fire. But I mean, I was in a relatively short period of time. I was able to go from holding 20-pound dumbbells to holding 80-pound dumbbells over the course of just a couple of months. And this is... Yeah, where else are you going to get gains like that? 10-plus years into lifting. You're not getting that anywhere else. And so, yeah, there's just... And then after doing that and then coming back to Barbell back squats again. So, I love to take the core lifts that we always talk about, find a lift within those lifts that you don't... For example, let's use overhead press, Z-press. You've never got good Z-press before? Go get really good to Z-press for, say, three months. Then go back and do your bar... And watch the carry out. Yeah, and then you go back. If you haven't done Bulgarian split squats dedicated for a three-month block of getting really good at it, do that. Then come back to Barbell back squats. Interrupt those core four or five lifts that we always talk about with these novel variations of them or similar to them. And then revisit that and see what you get. Deficit deadlifts, then back to deadlifts. Or like, my favorite was front squats. Yes. Backs loaded squats. I know that's always one that it seems like an obvious exercise that people should just keep on their radar. And it tends to fall through the cracks because it's hard. It's very challenging. And especially to like... There's different positions now. You can hold it so it's not so demanding on the wrist and you don't have to have the mobility for it. But in terms of the overall value of it and what you're going to get from that in terms of your overall strength and squatting, it's phenomenal. And you have to consider all this. By the way, real quick, here's your hint that you may have experienced what we're talking about. If you've been working out for a while, you know exactly... You've probably experienced this where you'll do a new exercise or a new rep range or you do the same exercise in a different way with a pause or change of tempo and all of a sudden you get sore. Not that soreness is the be all end all signal. But it is interesting that you're fit. You're consistent with your workouts. All you did was change the exercise and all of a sudden you're sore. There's a little... There's a hint that this is sending a different signal. I love that you brought front squats up because I remember when... So you've heard me share before about my journey with the incline bench press. I feel like front squats are the incline bench press of bench pressing, meaning that what ends up happening is so many lifters get good at bench pressing, so good at bench pressing that their incline press to their bench press, there's such a large discrepancy that they don't want to do it. And even if they do it, they interrupt it for a little bit and then they're like, oh, back to bench because I can bench 315, but incline I can only do 185 at best. And so they don't want to have to do that. And so maybe they interrupt it a little bit and then they go back. Actually said, okay, I'm going to stay good at this incline bench and see how close to my regular bench I can get. And let me tell you, you can get damn near close, if not the same, as strong on your incline as you can flat. Pretty damn close. I've done it and saw huge gains from that. Same thing from front and back squat. You get really good at a back squat. You know, you're back squatting 400 pounds, but then you can't do more in 225 front squats. So you get this like, I don't want to do this because I'm so weak. But then I want to kick same thing with the front squat of trying to catch my front squat up to my back squat. I never caught all the way up, but I got close. And that was some of the best gains I ever seen on my legs. I was doing that. It's crazy. Today's program giveaway is our new program, MAPS Old Time Strength. If you want to win it, you got to do this. Leave a comment below this video on the first 24 hours that we drop it. Subscribe to this channel and turn on notifications. If you win, we'll let you know in the comments section. We're also running a sale on some workout programs. MAPS Bands is half off and the Hard Gainer Bundle is half off. Both 50% off. If you're interested, click on the link at the top of the description below. All right. Back to the show. Speaking of strength. So I've brought this person up before on the podcast and I just learned something new about them. They're a fascinating athlete. This athlete was a Greco-Roman wrestler from the Soviet Union, Alexander Karolin. I've talked about him before. The Russian Bear. Russian Bear. I don't remember what his record was, but it was something ridiculous in international competition. It was like 800 matches. No losses. He was so strong and just so scary strong. I knew a guy who was an Olympic alternate. So this guy's a badass at Greco. Went to Russia. And this was well past Alexander's retirement. So he was like retired. I think he was a mayor of a city at this point. He was in his 60s maybe. And he went and met the guy. The guy in Alexander gave some seminar and Alexander messed like they were kind of messing around, you know, doing some drills. And he's like, bro, I went home and he goes, I had bruises everywhere he touched me. He was like, he was so strong. Anyway, this is true. You ready for this? No chill. This is crazy. Okay, you guys know the World Strongest Man competition. World Strongest Man competition, obviously when you're getting to the level of where you're competing at the European Championships or the North American Championships and of course the World Championships, you're talking about the strongest people in the world and they train specifically for that sport. You're not going to run an accidental strong person. This is like, they train for this, okay? He decided, Alexander Carolyn decided, I'm going to enter into the European World Strongest Man competition after he was done with wrestling. Okay? No training, nothing. Just a wrestler. He goes in, he gets eighth place in the European, which by the way, the European... That's where all strongmen are. That's where some of the strongest athletes are. So he didn't even really train me up to that. No, he went in there and got eighth place. I read this the other day. That is in... Just raw strength. Just inhuman. How crazy that was. Now there was more than eight people in the competition right now. Yeah. I got a tournament like that one. I got third place, I have three. So when competing with... It was so annoying. So when Bodybuilding and Bikini was first, like, new on the scene, I remember there was like some competitions that I went to that were... They used to be so small. They seemed gymnastic. And you get like a trophy and it's like, you get like a third place trophy. There was only three people in your class, you know what I'm saying? Like, that happened a lot. Like... I don't know how many people tell people of their third place trophy, but don't tell them that. Trust me, I've been around people that I was there to watch them get that and like bragging about it. You know bragging about the third place trophy and it's just like, well, there was only three people there. So it's kind of... Hey, here's some cool news. First time in... I think it's been over six years since... Well, definitely all of us, longer or not, that we've all are heading out to Olympia. Oh, yeah. Every year, we get requests to show up to these competitions. We always talk about how... Justin's competing finally. Yeah. Maybe we will or we've had a couple where we were about to... I was just waiting for my little skitties. I think around COVID, we were planning to go and then that fell through and so we are coming out to Florida for Olympia. We will be with the transcend group. So I know we're going to organize like a meet and greet out there at their booth. I believe they have one of the largest booths there, I believe. I haven't been to an Olympia. I hope so. Fitness convention. Yeah, when was the last time... I don't think you ever have. I mean, never. Have you ever been to any of them? Like Arnold? Yeah, Arnold. Went to the Arnold. Was it with Arnold? We didn't actually go to the events though. When did we go to the Arnold? Well, we didn't actually go to the Arnold. Well, okay. I was on my way to the Arnold. They got canceled. Yeah, we didn't go to the Arnold. 2020. That was the year we had the... Dude, I've been to Fit Expo's. It doesn't count. If you haven't been to an Arnold or Olympia, those are the big ones. Those are crazy. Adam and I went to the one at San Jose. Guess I'm missing out. Wasn't it here? Yeah, I've been to it. I mean, I've been to obviously quite a few. Well, you have. Yeah, I've been to quite a few. But you and I went together to the one here. We went to the San Jose Expo that they had here, which by the way, they reached out to us to do something with them. Okay. But you and I haven't done Olympia or Arnold, which are like way bigger. I went to the Olympia. It's got to be at least 14, 15 years ago. Yeah. It was a long time. My favorite part of the last fitness Expo was that was the bang booth. They had like girls on things. Oh, that was. And stuff. It's so cute. It was hilarious. What was that? That was one of the big ones. Yeah, it was San Jose. Oh, he did go. Was that San Jose? Yeah. Yeah, we all went. Oh, that was the San Jose one. For some reason, I thought that was there. Yeah, there was. It was mildly entertaining to see. They're interesting. I mean, the Olympia and the Arnold are just about bodybuilding. There's martial arts. There's Brazilian jiu-jitsu. Yeah, that was cool. Arm wrestling and strongman powerlifting. Strongman competitions. So I've promised a lot of people that you would be there in a wife beater. Wow. So just. You have to come through. Well, I mean, you have to promise anything. I'm going to. Whether or not I'm going to have a shirt on top. I was going to say I was going to say I was going to pump it in a wife beater. No, no. In the ground half the time. No way. I'm not going to walk around in a wife beater, but I have it on. There'll be a lot of tank tops. Dude. There'll be a lot of tank tops. At least it's in Florida. We're all being stringers. So when I went to the Arnold, it was in Columbus. It was snow outside. It's cold. Yeah. And dudes are walking in and little stringers and stuff like that. I'm like, come on, dude. It's cold. What are you doing? Yeah, yeah. It's like a mandatory uniform. Yeah. Yeah. I miss those days. Yeah. I can't wait. No, it'll be cool. It'll be cool hanging out at the booth. I know transcend has a lot to offer. Yeah. It'll be cool hanging out at the booth, right? I believe so. Yeah. I don't know. I think you started that rumor and then I just went with it. No, they told us. It's only going to be fun if people come say hi. You know, make it worth our time. It's going to be a blast, dude. Yeah. I'm excited. I'm excited because this is the first time we've gone together. Well, actually, first time you've ever gone too. Yeah. Period. End of story. That's it. Well, I mean, that was early days. Yeah. A lot of them have been when we haven't done it in a long time. So I'm hoping that there's a really cool turn out. Dude, you want to talk about something exciting since we're talking about exciting things? I saw a video. I'm going to hijack you, Justin. Aw, man. I know what you're going to say. This is the new it. By the way, I did not have this on my apocalypse bingo card. We got Middle East war. I've been waiting for this, dude. You know, potential nuclear war with Russia, you know, UFOs. UFOs. You know, well, we just had the Loch Ness Monster. Loch Ness Monster. Now we got, yeah. A new video. Sasquatch is back. Yes. A new video of Sasquatch. Did you see it? I did see it. It's an elusive creature. I just squatted down. Let me see your camera. I'll do it. I don't know how sold I am on it, though. People are on a train. They're like literally on a train. I don't know if you'll ever. That's the thing. It's like, even if it was like, it would always look like a guy in a suit. Yeah, like it's. It's never a good video. No. No. It's, it's from pretty far away. That's because they're dimensional beings. Yeah. Yeah. They do. Can you play the video again? Because I did see it. I mean, you like, it like, it like, it like, it like, it like, it like, it like, it like, it like, it like, it like, it like, it like, it like, honestly, as kids like, believe in any of these like mystical iki. One. I believe, I literally believed in bit of. I am not ashamed of. Hold on a second. What do you mean? Believe I mean, I still do. Yeah. I mean, there's. I still think. I better really went. Okay. So there's, in Northern California, there's like a bunch of museums, like all the way out. Like Eureka, we went to like, all of them. Yeah. Yeah. Did you hear the story? Of course you did, because I was a fanatic too about Bigfoot. There's one story that's terrifying. So all the stories of Bigfoot, if you read about the encounters, almost all of them are like, I saw him, I smelled him, he makes this sound, there's a specific- Yeah, the knocking noises. Knocking noises. But there's one in particular where there were campers that got attacked, where the Bigfoot was throwing boulders at them and then came and chased them. And I was reading this book as a kid because I had all these unsolved mysteries books, right? With all the Loch Ness Monster, the Bermuda Triangle. And this one, when I'm reading the story, remember, keep in mind, I'm like seven, maybe. And I'm reading them all into it and I turn the page and it's a scary-ass picture. It's an illustration of Bigfoot and it fucked me up for a while. I still remember his face. Oh yeah, well one of my brother's friends we went camping with, he had this crazy story of the night before. We all heard the noise and I just thought it was some wild animal or something and he just still to this day claims like he smelled that like putrid stinky smell went out to kinda check out and then like he said it like roar, like roared and like scared the living shit out of him and it ran off. Did you ever watch that show on, I don't remember what channel it was on. It was like a hidden camera like show where they would play pranks on people but it was all about scaring the shit out of people. I think they had to cancel it in fact because. Oh, scare tactics. Scare tactics. There was one where they went, they were in a camper and they did a big one. I saw that, yeah. And somebody in a realistic Bigfoot costume and so they were scaring the shit. Shaking the camper shell. They opened the drapes to the window and it's a Bigfoot face and the guy and the girl like if they could have crawled through the wall they would have. Like they were so terrified. It was so, it was really good. Yeah, that stuff, that stuff. I love it dude. That's interesting, interesting stuff. Anyway, I wanted to tell you guys about, so we work with seed, right? Probiotic company. I sent them an email because I wanted details on the uniqueness of their capsules. And so here's what they sent me, okay? So here's why seed is for people who've tried it and they are like this works differently than other probiotics. Here's what it is. They have a capsule that they've registered. So nobody else owns this. They call it via cap. And it's a capsule and capsule delivery technology. So there's an inner capsule. It's hypermellos capsule, which houses the probiotic and it's inside an outer capsule that contains the prebiotic formula. Prebiotic meaning it feeds. It's like those Russian eggs. Yes it is. Kind of like those, what are those called? Those dolls, Russian dolls. So I'm assuming that it's designed that like your stomach acid eats away at one layer but not the other and then that way it gets further. Correct, okay. So through testing and they can show, you can ask them for this testing, the live bacteria gets to the target sites at 50 times the rate of the industry standard. Wow, 50 times? 50 times the industry standard. So you take other probiotics and you're destroying the bacteria in your gut. Basically get nothing out of it. Nothing. Or you get some benefit from even dead bacteria. That's not true. You still get some benefit sometimes with dead bacteria because I think it signals live bacteria to change how they behave, which is the theory. So minimal. But this literally delivers intact, alive bacteria to the need to, no need for refrigeration or anything like that. This explains to me then why, I mean why we've heard from people that are used to taking a probiotic, why they're like, I just, it feels better. And so they're just probably getting more of what they, so they've probably had other probiotics that were probably good, that they saw a positive effect from and so that's why they've consistently taken it. Then they switch the seed and they just get more of it, I'm assuming. 100%. That's the main, that's the big, besides the live probiotics that they use, which are backed by studies. If you get, if it gets destroyed it really doesn't benefit you at all. And then the ones you have to refrigerate, I never thought of this. When I first started taking probiotics, I thought, oh, refrigerated ones are better because that means they're alive. And they're like, if it needs to stay alive by being refrigerated, everything happens as soon as you put it in your body. Reaches high temperature. I guess you're right. Unless I'm a snowman, it's gonna be dead. You know, speaking of companies that we work with, I've been meaning to ask you, what's the latest with your cousin and dynasty? Oh, I'll read. I sent you over a reel. I don't know if your majority sent the reel to me first then I sent it over to you that, oh, this would be a cool dynasty commercial. And you should tell them to make it. I don't know if you sent it over to them. I did, but I wanna read to you guys. So I have a friend of mine who sent me this message. So friend of mine heard that we partnered with dynasty, looked into it. It's like, oh, wow, this is crazy. I can just go online and create a trust like free, whatever. Check out what he wrote. He goes, hey, I have a pretty good case study for you with respect to dynasty. And he goes, one of my cousins passed suddenly a few weeks ago. So he was home. He says, I was home and I gave the eulogy. He had a lot of money, but had no direct heirs and we have no idea where his will is or who his lawyer was. So they're like, we have to go to court. We have to figure all the shit out. It's gonna take a year or more to figure all the stuff out because that's what happens. It goes to the state. The state then hears cases, right? You gotta plead all these cases just to win whatever, yeah, like figure it out to bring it back to the family. This is when you hear those horror stories of like. And okay, so in a situation like that, right? Where there's a good lump of money, you gotta hire lawyers. You gotta pay for people to do all this. 100%. So does that come out of like, so let's pretend it was we're all a family and Doug's the uncle that dies, it's rich. And that happened to us. Naturally. Is it each of us individually that are hiring our own lawyers to go on and do that? Or do we take from Doug's money to pay for a lawyer? No, I mean, unless you just go to probate and don't bring a lawyer and then plead your case and then expect to get what you want. But you're gonna wanna get a lawyer. Right, and then how much of the state decides, like, oh, well, technically he had this car thing that we gotta pay for and he needs, and like, I mean, how much did they go and. You ever hear the horror stories, like a guy dies and his ex, and he doesn't have a will. And he ends up owning money. He doesn't have a will, and then the ex-wife comes, well, you know, he said he would give me this and his other kids are this and then the kids start to fight and what about this? And then it's just a nightmare. Basically, even if you have family and kids and everybody gets along, what you're leaving them with is a massive headache to deal with after huge stress. Huge stress, and it takes, on average, six months to a year to figure this crap out and money is lost during that period of time. And before, again, for people who don't know, creating a trust is at least thousands of dollars or try doing it on your own by getting the paperwork online and that's hundreds of dollars, but you still need a lawyer to store it and whatever. Well, dynasty's free. You go on there and that's it. I think the big selling point for me was that, because I would think like, I would go, oh, well, I don't have that much money yet. So I don't, you know, I'll wait until I make more money and then do that. But after hearing him explain like, how much more difficult it becomes, the wealthier you are versus having one set up and then bolstering and adding as you go along. It saves a lot of the lawyer costs later down the road. Right, so then it makes a lot of sense that, hey, even if I'm not at a place yet, I haven't reached this wealth level that I want to get to before I could really even get any money on. Like it's free, set it up. So it's all taken care of. And then as you build wealth, it's much easier to bolster it or allocate where it's going to go after you've already created than versus waiting until it's like, oh, now I got all this shit I gotta deal with. Yeah, so it's interesting. So did I tell you guys, I was thinking more about the whole, a pound of muscle and they burn so many calories and, you know, data shows doesn't speed up. That really got under your skin. It did because it's so counter to what every good coach and trainers experience with their clients through things like reverse dieting and strength training where we just see these massive improvements in metabolism. The person can burn more calories, get leaner, easier, the whole thing, stuff we talk about all the time. One more thing to add to this. We had a conversation with Dr. Gabrielle Lyon, okay. She's a doctor, an expert on the human body, on metabolism, on muscles. And she explained how accepted current lean body mass tests don't discern the quality of lean body mass. In other words, a pound of muscle is not always a pound of muscle. And the example she used was like looking at a rib eye steak, which is peppered with marbled with fat versus a filet mignon, which is totally lean. So they don't discern that. So a lot of these studies when they're looking at lean body mass, lean body mass is just stuff that's not fat mass. That's what they can take out. So that's why there could be such a big difference. Like you could take somebody who's got the same lean body mass, but the lean body mass is quality. That is gonna require more calories to maintain than one that isn't because it's got, it's marbled with fat and it's not as healthy and that kind of stuff. So this may be one of the reasons why the metabolism boost that trainers and coaches experience with their clients doesn't add up or should I say doesn't match what they'll, what they'll try and pull up the data and say, where, oh, it's only 12 calories per pound. And the trainer's like, look, my client gained three pounds of muscle and they're eating 600 more calories a day. Like, you know, we're seeing something totally different. I mean, there's very much so a possibility that, or that could be true. And that could also be a possibility of why it seems so off. But I think the argument, or at least for me, the one that I feel confident I can make is the behavioral and psychological change that comes with adding five pounds of muscle that nobody fucking talks about. We always want to break down the physiological side and go, oh, okay, this equals that. But it's like, we know that after years and years and years of training all these people, it's like, oh, wow, less of this is been about the biomechanics and nutrition and more of this has been about the psychology of it, the behavior around it. And if I can change their behaviors, I can radically change their lives. And so there's something to be said about let's pretend that terrible number of, oh, it's 15 calories for every five pounds. And so, oh, you've added five pounds so you only got 300 more calories or whatever, or even less that you're burning. Yeah, but how's your energy level after you've added, if you've put on five pounds of muscle, in order to do that, you've had to eat adequate protein. You've had to strength train properly, how you've had to have given yourself. Yeah, you're right. We're trying to separate things out that don't typically come separated. Right, if you add, if someone adds five pounds of muscle, there's other things that you can also guarantee. You can't add five pounds of muscle and starve the body of nutrients. You can't add five pounds of muscle and not hit your protein intake. You can't add five pounds of muscle and have not start to build some good recovery processes that go along. You can't build five pounds of muscle without having somewhat of good programming. Not to mention the extra muscle is anti-depressant. It's got pro positive mood chemicals that they release, which could affect things like cravings. Could affect digestion, could affect mood, can affect. So there's this whole host of other things that come with a person who is now disciplined themselves to build five pounds of muscle that aren't measured in a lab. We can't go, oh, that equates to 15 calories. And so if it increased neat, like when I know I'm strength training and I'm lifting and I'm a leaner fitter version myself, man, I walk more upright. So my core's activated what maybe what, 30% more of the time of the day because my posture is better and I'm more energetic. I'm less likely to sit on the couch. Like, you know how you- Have you walking faster than you would do? Yes, everything. So it's like, you can't just distill it down to a pound of muscle versus a pound of fat and what does that do to the metabolism is such a frustrating, terrible argument. To give you just to back you up, if we parse out and control everything, okay? Artificially sweetened sodas versus regular sodas, everything else being totally controlled, exactly the same calories, exactly the same activity, everything's the same. Yes, you'll lose weight because you're cutting calories and that's what the data shows. But in the real world- Does it happen that way? No, no, no, no. When people start consuming artificially flavored sodas, we don't see weight loss. Why? Because trying to separate out everything as if humans act like robots, one behavior changes, all other behaviors are identical. Name one behavior that changes that doesn't affect other behaviors. Right. I dare you. Pick one thing. You can't, you absolutely can't. Pick one thing. I get more sunlight. Does that affect other things? Yes. Or I eat differently. Does that affect other things? Yes, it does. Or I change my frame of reference or I change my attitude or I start a spiritual practice or I mean, who knows, it's just- It's why I can't stand the trainers that have built a following and have built their business purely around just touting studies because there's so much more to this equation and to distill it down to some six to eight week lab study to make your case on how people should approach their fitness is just, it's stupid. It's stupid and it's- One plus one equals two. And it's ignoring- So many arguments like that. It's ignoring so much more of the equation. And arguably other parts of the equation that are far more important than what you're arguing. And all it does is confuse the average consumer on who's more- And these guys are all fighting with each other on, oh, I can't believe Sal said that. That's such an over exaggeration. This is really what the science says about college. It's like, dude, you're missing the point. You're missing the point that he's trying to make with that. And I just, that stuff irritates me because those people are smart. They're intelligent. They've read the studies. Maybe they have their degree. Maybe they have a bunch of national certifications. But you're hurting the overall population of people that we're trying to help and support. There's a reason why a nutrition scientist will not be more successful at getting people to lose weight long-term than an experienced coach. The reason is not because they don't know nutrition science. It's because it's a lot more than X's and O's. That's just the fact. And you ask, what do experienced coaches and trainers say when you ask them, what's it like to train people for 10, 15, or 20 years? What's it like? Sometimes I feel like a therapist. Oftentimes I feel like I'm just guiding people. Other times I'm just listening to people. It's like way more complex than just exercise, input this food, do that. It's like, if it was that easy, then we wouldn't have a problem. It wouldn't be challenging. I'm just laughing because I have another like horrible analogy I want to throw in. Are you questioning it that way? To me, it just reminds me that I heard somebody once say like, when one plus one doesn't actually equal two, right? So one plus one, sometimes that equals one. And when you get two clouds, one plus one, you merge them together, that's one cloud. There's like plenty of examples that have nature all over the place. And it's like, you can't always have that standard as like the only way you see and view the world. That's not bad. I just thought of that right now. You don't have two clouds, you have one. You have one. And I think that the part that I think we're always trying to communicate is like, there's lots of value to knowing all those studies, right? I mean, this is what I think. Yeah, you don't want to be like uninformed on what the data says. Yeah, so I mean, one of the things I love about having a conversation with you guys is I know how well read everybody is in this room, especially related to this field. And so, yeah, no, I can talk to you about those studies and I understand with it, but that's just us. Okay, so that's good. I understand that. What a perspective right here. Then I also understand this person that I'm trying to get to change these behaviors to ultimately lose X amount of pounds and keep it off for the rest of their life. And so, it's good to have that, but it doesn't mean that it's like the answer is, oh, tell them that and then the problem is solved. Like, no, it doesn't work that way. Never has worked that way. It's so funny. I didn't think that I would be able to connect this to any conversation we're having today, but somehow it worked out. So with the data, when you have a coin, right, with two sides and you flip it, every time you flip it, flip it, there's a 50-50 chance it can land on one or the other. On heads or tails. Except it lands on its edge. Well, no, well, no, not that, but that's another, but let's just say it does its... We're gonna throw a fucking curve ball. Gotta just ruin myself. Increase the variables. No, no, that's where you're going. Scientists actually had a machine flip a coin 35,000 something times to see... How close to 50 is? Is it 50-50? And what they found was the probability that the coin will land on the face that was facing up is slightly higher. Oh, interesting. And the way that they explained it was the heads and tails is not identical when you look at a quarter, right? Like weight-wise or whatever? Weight, aerodynamics, how it affects their air friction. That's funny, I tend to pick heads more often. When it's up, when heads is up? Yeah. So that's what they said. So it's a good strategy. That's interesting. So they tested it because data, like back, this is how it connected, data and probabilities will tell you 50%, like across the board, no matter what, every time you flip it 50%, the previous flip has no effect on the next one, whatever, it doesn't matter. And they said, no, actually, whatever's facing up, the odds slightly increase that that's the face that's gonna be up whenever you flip it. That's interesting. Because it's something that we just didn't account for. The change in air friction and all that stuff. So now. Which is, I mean, I love that as like an analogy around the conversation we're having because that's just it, it's like, there's so many more variables. We don't know everything. Yeah, and I mean, how many times have you guys had a client who like, weight, age, goal, like all these things match and then like, what worked for that person doesn't even come close to work? That formula doesn't even work. And yeah, all the math, and so if we were to take controls and go, okay, women this age and this weight with this goal, with these things, they would fit. They would fit in a study that is controlled. So then the outcome should be the same, right? If I apply this to that, if we controlled all these things and they're the same, but why it doesn't, it doesn't. And in fact, more often than not, it doesn't work exactly the same because there's all these other variables that are impossible for us to control for that you just have to keep in mind. And so it's good to know the data. It's good to understand that because I think that is what will help you have these conversations with either other intelligent peers or to be able to explain to a client, but getting a client to implement that and fundamentally change, that's really what all of our goal is supposed to be. It's supposed to be to help these people, not prove that I'm smarter than the other guy who's trying to sell you. Right, just like the studies on food, there was another study that came out showing that the consumption of sugar is related to all these negative things, but what they forget to control for is that sugar is often an ingredient that's added to foods increase their palatability so people eat more. So whenever you're looking at high sugar intake, you're also typically looking at people who eat more food or when you see high sodium intake, it's typically people with more food or people have high fat intake, typically people, because those three things are how you make something palatable. Was that say, Doug? So I was listening to your coin flipping reasoning why it would land on the side that was facing up more often and it didn't make sense to me. However, this is called procession. It means the side that was facing up had more time in the air. That would account for it. Okay. So I don't think it has to do with wind flow and things like that. Well, the article I read, they were speculating. Okay. They were totally speculating. This makes more sense to me. Interesting. Yeah, it does make more sense. So you're saying there's no air for it to prove something? Well, there is, but how would that determine which side? You know what I'm saying? Right, right, right. That makes more sense. It's already facing up for a longer period of time than the other way, right? So it has a slight chance to land up there. I'll tell you something else that my mind was blown. And you guys, I don't know if you know this or not, but so we're into like the Halloween time. And so, you know, obviously the movie Halloween in Michael Myers. Yeah. Did you know like where they came up with that mask and how that all went down? Of course. It's William Shatner. Okay. So you knew, I didn't know that. Yeah. It's a William Shatner mask. It's a William Shatner death mask that was in Star Trek. And then he had the actor put it on and they were so freaked out because it was like so lifeless looking and everything. They're like, oh, we're gonna use this. So it's like based off William Shatner's face. Yeah. I didn't know that. I didn't know that. I think I remember seeing something around those. So, okay. So did they ever use it in Star Trek? I think so. I think it was in an episode. It was an episode. Yeah. See, look, it is. Now, when you look at it, can't you see that it's William Shatner? Yeah. I can't. Yeah, exactly. Now I'm like looking at it and it's never gonna be the same. Yeah. In fact, it's so funny you just said that. Okay. But. No, I was just gonna say, I just saw a mashup of old Star Trek clips. God, they're funny. Yeah. They're so funny. My stepdad was a massive Star Trek fan. So I watched it as a kid growing up for sure. So, okay, so that was made to shoot a scene where he is dying or dead? Is that what? I don't know. So I'm more curious about the story. Like how did that come about? Like they made this mask. A Captain Kirk death mask. Okay, here we go. Sorry. That's all right. Go ahead and scroll down and find out what's happening there. Let's see here. That's interesting. Yeah. That's a cool, that's a cool fun fact that I bet a lot of people have no idea. Yeah. So did you watch it with your kids? No, no. That's way too scary. I was going to say, what are you doing? I was just traumatizing. No, I did watch, was Super Troopers though. And I was like, what was I faking with that one? But it was like, I had to fast forward some parts. Hilarious movie. I watched old school with my 13 year old daughter completely forgetting that there was some definite parts in there she should not be watching. We got to like the, it was like the oil wrestling part and the chicks are taking their time. I'm like, what am I doing? You know, I wonder, so it's so funny because I have family where my uncle and aunt were like really strict with like the type of movies the kids, I remember the kids couldn't even watch like radar movies until they were over 18. Like they were really strict about that. And so I've always, I thought that was kind of crazy. I'm not, and I'm not where you guys are at. So I'm like, where, when will I watch a movie with my son that and like, and what kind of inappropriate? Like, am I going to let him watch like lots of foul language first or sex scenes first? Or like, what would, I think the sex stuff is the, I don't know, the most concerning. Yeah, okay. Now, you guys, okay, let me, this is funny cause I've thought about this and I feel kind of- Silence for me, I'm like, ah, like Courtney's is like a problem. It goes bad language, violence, I go violence, bad language, and then sex. Sex is the worst for both of you. Now, okay. So this is, I thought about this and I think naturally I've kind of fallen into this too but then I asked myself, why? Okay. Is that because it's more uncomfortable for me with my child probably to watch a sex scene more so that it really is like, they probably have already walked in on you guys having sex before. Put an image in there that their innocent little brain like, I'm not sure they're ready for it. Listen, violence by the way, God, that's such a broad category because there's like violence, then there's like gore, then there's like disturbing violence. Like, come on. It could be so bad that it's, like the kid's feeling is going to be traumatized. Like I know people wouldn't show Star Wars they're like young, like four or five year old. I'm like, dude, I'd start both kids and I'm like, two, you know, I don't care. That's not violence, it's lasers. Yeah. But like some people have a problem with that. You will. No, definitely. I'll tell you what, you will 100% pick a movie from your childhood. Every dad does this. You forget what's in the movie. Yeah, yeah. I did this with gremlins. My kids were six and seven maybe. And I'm like, oh, gremlins. This was, was it PG? That scared me as a kid. Bro, I know I wouldn't do that because for some reason I was scared First of all, PG meant something different in the 80s. That's 100%. You did. Way different. I put it on and it was like, my kid's got traumatized. I turned it off and I'm like, oh. So you think sex is the ultimate weight for them. Then it goes gore. Then it would you say? It depends, right? Cause nudity isn't the same. Of course, but I mean for conversation reasons, you know, like we can get into the nuance of it. But I mean, so like, yeah. There's disturbing violence and gore that is up there with like, with sex, I would say. Where are you out with this, Doug? You have a teenage daughter. So sex and then like bad language and then gore. That's kind of my tone. Oh, really? So I'd start with, so it's order that I would allow it. Bad language, gore. I mean, it depends on the kind of gore, but if it's like campy gore, maybe let that, I feel sex is probably the most forbidden. Just simply because I don't think kids should be exposed to that personally. I know. I mean, the violence is interesting, right? Have you seen video games now? Holy shit. Well, that's it. I mean, yeah. I mean, I've definitely kind of opened that window. Did you guys get traumatized by any movies when you were a kid? I did. I remember my, I don't remember what movie, I don't even remember what the movie was. I was a little kid. I was supposed to be in bed. I snuck out. I was watching TV behind the couch with my parents and a guy lost a hand and I just started crying. And my parents turned around and I was there. Yes. I still remember. So to me, scary movies were like more impactful on me as a kid. I think back of like, well, that's, I think it's caused because of that. I think I was traumatized. I probably saw it too little. I was traumatized by the exorcists. And then I didn't want nothing to do with any. I said poltergeist was like one of the ones I've ever seen. I was really, really little. That one fucked me up dude. So I, It's not even that bad if you watch this. Yeah. But a boy was for again, for, and I'm sure it's what my parents thought when it was on in the house or whatever. But yeah, I don't have like a memory of like hearing bad language or seeing the sex scene. Like it was more awkward for me as the kid in the room with my parents. Like when a sex scene came on at all, when my parents were in the room, I felt as a kid, I felt, oh, this is so awkward. Well, so when I, when I was a kid and a sex scene would come on, this was in the VHS days. My dad would fast forward it, but you kind of see what's going on. That's why it's kind of funny to me. I was like, dude, that was trying to fast forward. But then if you go too far, you got to come back. And I kept like, the naked bodies are still there. I'm doing things, you know, like how do I explain this to my 10 year old, dude? You know, I was like, oh, this is awful. And then you got to think that at that age, they're already savvy enough to be like, dad, that's this. Or I can, you know, like, don't you feel like that? I mean, your 13 year old daughter, your 12 year old son, like they're gonna know that. I messed up my kid, my oldest, because he was older and he was getting into like anime. And then I put on, God, I can't remember the name of it, damn it. It's just, it's a popular anime where like there's these giants that attack these villages. And I can't remember the name of it. Attack on Titan, Attack on Titan. And the first episode is kind of cool, a little scary. They look kind of eerie. They have these weird smiles on their faces. And we're watching it together. And then the big giant picks up a woman and then they show in detail, he bites her in half. He bites her. And my son went like this. My oldest went like this. And he covered his own eyes. He covered his own eyes. And I just like, my heart, you're like, oops. Oh, I broke my heart. Oh, what have I done? What have I done? And then I did it again on another one. We were watching the animatrix, which is the animated anime, you know? And there was a part where one of the robots squishes someone's head and their eyeballs pop out. So maybe- Same thing, you got all scared. Like what am I doing with my kid? So maybe the move is, I don't know, maybe kind of like the sugar approach I did with Max. So long as they're not even asking for it or really understand, I'm going to prolong it, right? Like not introduce it to them. Maybe that's the mistake you feel like you made. It's like you introduced it to them before they were even asking for it. Maybe you wait until it's like a conversation. It's like, oh, my friends said they saw this, said it's a great movie. And then, okay, maybe it's time you can sit down with dad and we can watch this. Do you guys- Hey, that's the move? I think so. The second one always gets exposed too early. Yeah. That's the old one. And then when you're not looking, the older brother is like, hey, look at this. And I know this. Have you guys ever been disturbed by a movie as an adult? Was there ever a movie that ever got you when you were like in your 20s or whatever? Oh, yeah. Rob Zombie movies. Go ahead, pick your pick. The heels have eyes. Yes. I was like- What the hell? Why did I even consume this? I was like, ah. Yeah, dude. I remember- No. I stopped it. I actually was thinking to myself like, he thought of this, making this? Mutants raping people and I'm like, ah. Yeah, dude. I can't watch it. In my 20s, I watched it and I felt like- I turned it off. Well, this isn't entertaining. No. There's too much other good stuff. Adam gets disturbed by the- Yeah, it's like Casper. I can't. Yeah. My son actually had Casper on the other day. Oh, they just put it on Netflix. Yeah, I saw that. Yeah, so we were watching over. I don't think I've ever watched it before. He was watching it and I was like, oh, that's cool. That's a good little- It's actually, if you think about it, it's a disturbing. It's a dead kid. Yeah, but it's not like- Casper's a dead kid. They make him, he's a friendly ghost, right? Yeah, he's a dead kid, though. Katrina's still mad at me for making all the decorations that are kind of spooky and not fun. I was supposed to do like- Would you go- Charlie Brown, you really- It was actual scary. Adam, I'm going to put you on the spot. Would you do this for the audience? Would you go to one of those legit haunted houses with us? Fuck no. But, oh, come on, bro. They like, yeah, come at you. Hey! Have you ever been to one? Yeah, of course. Of course I've tried one. Like the real ones? Yeah, they used to do them in the mall over here. I've been to one of the- And that was like enough for me, huh? I'm good. Really? Yeah, yeah, it's like skydiving. I've did it. I have enough to say like I know what they're like. They always try to go for the guy right away. Yeah, and they have like real people that chase you. That's not cool. Yeah, that's- I had a guy, like the butcher guy coming at me. Yeah. And I was just like- So you wouldn't do it now? Yeah, I was freaking out on the inside. We'd film it for some b-roll for the guy? No, no. You know, I've already learned enough- What if we get enough games? That like a stupid viral video doesn't do anything financially for us. That would- It's like, yay! We've got 3 million views on me fucking cheating myself. Shit, you're huge on TikTok. This is so great! How many programs we sell? None. It's like, no. That was a video of you crying. How many people- How many people in the- Hey, how many people in the social media space actually like do this stuff? Like, you know, it's so funny how- They think of viral video- They just sit- Yeah, that's what they're doing right now is planning their next dumb video. It's so like- There's such a misconception around like social media fame and like a legitimate good business. I can't tell you how many people we meet that you think are like super ultra wealthy or successful because they have millions of followers on Instagram. It's like, dude. In fact, it's more rare that somebody has figured out social media that well and then is also a killer, you know, business entrepreneur. Yeah, it's like you- You're kind of one or the other, right? There's rarely ever this like business savant and then there also this Instagram savant. It's like, you figured out you hacked the Instagram really well and doesn't translate necessarily to millions of dollars. I have a viral clip that is out there. It's the point where people are making t-shirts about it. How much revenue did it bring? Nothing. Zero? Nothing. Nothing. In fact- You know what shallow even knew about? Yeah. You know what it got me? Tease. It's a journeyman. Tease by my partners over here. Now they call me the journeyman. That's what I mean. That was what you guys would do with me. You're like, hey, let's go do this like scary thing. Oh, I want it so bad. Oh, that would be this, you know, shitting yourself meme for like the next like 10 years. Just what I want. No, I'm sorry. No, thank you, dude. That could work. All right, so today's shout out is a guy by the name of Christopher Maznaritz. His page is Scandinavian.astardiz. He just won a strongman competition. He used maps old time to train and he's legit. I don't understand how someone can be this strong. No. It actually literally doesn't make any sense. Look at his circus presses. Look at his- His hack squat. His hack squat. Barbell hack squat. 710 pounds raw. Yeah. No bell, nothing. Now he's a big guy. Yeah. I don't know how big you are. But I looking at him, I would not- Unconventional strength wise, I've never seen something like that. I can't make any sense of it. He does just insane stuff. Go on his page, check it out. If you like to be impressed by the human body. Yeah. I honest to God, I'm not just saying this. I haven't been this impressed in a long time because of the way he's doing somebody's lifts. He's just crazy. Yeah. He's a champion. Go give him a fall. Grass-fed meat. It's healthier for your better fatty acid profile. It's a little bit leaner. The problem is it's a little bit more expensive. It can be hard to find. Well, there's a company called ButcherBox that delivers grass-fed meat to your door. But that's not it. There's also Heritage Pork, Wild Caught Fish and more. This company removes the middleman, delivers it to your door, so you can eat your protein and be healthy. Go check them out. Go to ButcherBox.com forward slash mind pump. And if you go to that link, you'll get a free turkey and $20 off your first box. All right. Back to the show. Our first caller is Douglas from Malaysia. Douglas, what's up, man? How can we help you? Hi. Good morning. So I've come to a point in my hypertrophy program where I believe the risk of lifting heavier will outgain the rewards. So like tendonitis and pain in joints, kind of, you know, like muscle. 38 years old, 38, I've just gone 30 in Monday. 5 for 8, 35, you know, 83 kgs, 17 to 15% body fat. I'm put on 7kg muscle in the last year. I want to keep on making progress without risking injuries. Yeah, good question. So this at some point, people will hit this road block, right? You've been training for a while. Strength is a great metric to measure, to chase. But after a certain point, I mean, you can't keep getting stronger, right? That's number one. Number two, when you start to get to a certain point, little breakdowns and technique, even the smallest breakdowns can make exercises a bit more dangerous than they did before when they were maybe lighter, lifting lighter. So the question you're asking is actually one that I think all of us in this room encountered ourselves. Now there's a lot of different ways to challenge the body. One of them is with heavier weight. The other ones are challenging things like ranges of motion, slowing down the form. One of my favorites is doing exercises that you're not proficient in or those exercises that you haven't practiced in a while. That's an excellent one, right? So let's say you always do bilateral exercises for your low body. Doing an entire 12-week cycle of unilateral exercises would be a great version, right? So there's a lot of different ways you can challenge and stress and progress the body. Adding weight to the bar is just one of them. And at this point, based off of what you're saying, if you're noticing going heavier, the rewards don't give you the payback worth the risks, then any of the ones that I mentioned would be great ways to continue to progress. Yeah, give me an idea what your training kind of regimen looks like right now. How many days a week are you training? Do you run a full body, a split? Kind of give me an idea what the lifting looks like. So it's just three days, three days a week. Okay, kind of five sets of compound. So it's five sets of compound lifts that range from 12 reps down to six reps. So a week, one, two, and three, would be 12, 10, 10, eight reps. A week, three, four, and five. So a week, four, five, and six would be 10, eight, eight, six, four reps. And it'll be split. It won't be a single-body part. It'll be obviously legs on one day and then split on day two and day three. Okay. So how many times a week are you hitting a muscle group? Are you hitting it once or twice? Probably about twice. Twice. Okay. Yeah, I mean, I like the idea of, and it sounds like too, you have kind of a traditional bodybuilding type of a split or routine. Running something like map performance, I think would be phenomenal for someone like you. There's probably going to be some exercises in there that you're not familiar with or you don't do a lot. Getting really good at the Z-Press or a Matrix Lunge or Arnold Press. There's just exercises in there that don't fall into the category of the normal barbell lifts. And doing what Sal said is just getting really proficient at those. Plus you're also going to address mobility and more multi-planar movements, which is something that's also going to support the joint. So have you ran any of our programs before? I've run about any of your programs. I've only been introduced to your podcast six months ago by my partner who calls you the podcast gods for fitness. Smart guy. Very smart guy. Listening to that guy. Yeah. So I'm going to have Doug, unless the guys disagree. I say map performance is the direction that I would point you in. How long have you been working out for? And it says you play rugby as well. So how long have you been lifting for? Since pretty much university. So about 18 years. Oh yeah. You know what would also be good? Old time. That would be the furthest away. Either one of those would be great. Yeah. Old time strength would be the furthest away from problem. I mean, with 18 years of lifting experience, you've probably done a lot. Yeah. Old time is going to, I guarantee there's going to be lots of exercises that you've never done that are in that program. And it's going to strengthen your body in ways that you probably never have. And it's probably going to highlight some weaknesses. That I would, you know, based on the sport that you play, especially if you train and practice regularly, you know, you don't need necessarily to train for conditioning because you're probably playing rugby. I think old time would even be a good option. Yeah. I mean, and rugby is such an explosive sport too. And so like in your 38 years old, and it's kind of at that point where you got to start looking at longevity as part of that focal point now. And so to be able to kind of restore and recover is going to be a little bit of a higher priority for you than just like maintaining this like crazy explosive strength. You already have the crazy explosive strength. I'm going to assume to maybe dive in a little bit more into mobility. That's why Adam's suggestion with math performance has that kind of built in on those days in between. And I think once you get into the rhythm of that, you're going to see what, how your body responds to that and how your joints are just going to really thrive and benefit from that. Yeah. Douglas, to give you an example, you know, think of like a, think of a race car. Let's say you have a muscle car, lots of horsepower. And somebody might say, hey, I want to make it faster. I'm going to add more horsepower. But upon further examination, they notice the wheels spin when you try to take off. You're not getting good traction. Well, somebody who really understands how to make that car faster wouldn't spend any time on trying to make it a more powerful engine. They try to figure out how to improve the timing in the grip of the tires and sticking the power to the road. That would make the car much faster. More horsepower at that point becomes a liability. So you're at this stage of your lifting career, you know, improving range of motion, control, mobility, they are ways of getting stronger. They definitely are. And you'll notice improvements on the field and off the field, even though the bar is even though the bar doesn't have any more weight on it. Like, you know, maybe in the past where you had to add weight to the bar at this point, it's about control, stability, mobility and learning new skills in the weight room. You know, that's why I said old time maps, old time strength is a program that's based off of the way lifters trained in the bronze era. Right. So it's like the, the late 1800s, early 1900s. And there's exercises and movements in there. Nobody does anymore. So you take an experienced lifter like yourself, you try a program like that, you're going to feel like a beginner, but you're also going to get those beginner gains. You're going to get that, that central nervous system adaptation. You're going to get that coordination that's going to build the skill of the muscles working together in new ways. And then when you go back to your old traditional lifts, you know, I'm getting so many messages from people who are trying pro, our program, old time. And then they're like, man, I didn't deadlift like traditionally or barbell squat traditionally for the entirety of the program for the most part. I went back to my traditional lifts. I'm stronger. It fills so many gaps. That's right. And it's not because they were lifting heavier with those lifts, but rather they were bolstering parts of their body. They didn't even know needed bolstering. So Douglas, how often are you playing rugby right now? At the moment, it's, it's the off season at the moment. Okay, cool. Season club, you can start in, in January. Okay. Okay. I mean, personally, I like performance first then old timey just because of the emphasis on the mobility stuff. And I also think that you can take the mobility days and apply that to other programs like, like old timey or other things that we have. And I just think there's a lot of value in doing that. I agree with the, the, what you're going to get from old timey. I just think I would take you through performance first and then old timey. Okay. So what, so what I'm hearing is there's, you can get different rewards instead of just like adding, adding kgs onto the belt, onto the, the bar is going to be different rewards in terms of range of motion, mobility, you know, the muscle. 100%. You get, if you get a, let me give you an example, right? Let's say you took the average man who could squat 150 pounds. You get him to add 50 pounds to a squat because he's never worked out before. He's going to notice significant improvements in his athletic performance. You get someone who's been lifting for years and years and years and years, 18 years. And they add 50 pounds. First of all, adding 50 pounds to the squat after 18 years of lifting is going to be almost impossible. Almost impossible. Think of all of the things that would be necessary to make that happen and all the compromises that would have to happen as a result. But even if you were able to add 50 pounds to somebody's squat after 18 years of lifting, the translation would not be the same in performance as improving control and stability or identifying areas where there's weak links. So it's, you're in a different situation. We often don't talk to people like you when we're talking generally because the average person is not lifted for 18 years consistently. The average person, if we're lucky, has been lifting for six months or a year consistently. Oftentimes they're just getting started back up. So it's a different conversation altogether. So someone like you, I mean, if you were to hire me, I'm not putting you, unless your programming is terrible and your 18 years old lifting was the worst that I've ever seen. I wouldn't focus on getting you as strong as possible at lifts that you've been doing for 18 years. I would be looking at stuff that you haven't been doing. I would be trying to identify, you know, movement issues and mobility. And that's where I know you're going to get the most bang for your buck. All right. So try something like old time or performance and then come back to the original. Yeah. Yes. Absolutely. Because we're disagreeing, I'll give you both programs since I think one is better than the other to start with. And then you can choose from there and then, you know, let us know what you think. All right. Awesome. Thank you very much, guys. You got it, man. Thanks for calling in. Cheers. Yeah. This is not common because most people don't train that long that consistently. Yeah. But, you know, you look at... 18 years, yeah. That's a long time. I mean, look, I ran to this, at one point this year, I was like, oh, I wonder if I could, you know, keep pushing my deadlift past a certain point. And every five pounds, which is hard to add to my lift, one of my favorite lifts, it was just so much I had to go into. I had to compromise so many other lifts. I would notice if I was off a little bit, oh, I'd hurt for like a whole week. And I'm like, okay, if I had 20 pounds to my deadlift, what am I going to get from it? I'm not going to gain a tons of muscle. I'm not going to... It's just a number at this point. It's better if I work on things I don't normally work on. That's where I'm going to get the most bang for my buck. But you get somebody who's just only been lifting for a year. Yeah. Let's get you stronger. Let's just get you stronger. That's where you're going to get the most results. Yeah. That's where the focus is. Yeah. And it builds the base. He's obviously built his base already. So now it's really, it's about preserving that, but also to challenging it in new ways that the body can benefit from. And the only way to do that is to work on exercises and things that you're completely unfamiliar with. So which way you go, Justin? You're the tiebreaker. Yeah. I go performance first. And that's just because I have an inclination that he hasn't really worked on mobility yet. You know what though? Here's the thing. We should have said don't just skip phase one in that case. Phase one is very traditional. Go straight to phase two. Yeah. Go straight to phase two. I can agree with that. He's probably done a lot of that style of training throughout the gates. Phase two would be different, likely. Yeah. Our next caller is Jeremy from Ohio. Jeremy, what's happening? Hey, good afternoon, guys. How are you guys doing today? Good man. How's it going? Hey, I apologize to the front. I've only ever listened to your podcast. I really have no idea how these Q&As play out on video. I'm a little bit nervous here, but so just please bear with me that. First off, I wanted to say congratulations. I think before you really have something special here. But I also believe it is very important for you to be guests on another podcast too, to help spread some of your information and knowledge out. Had I not heard Sal on Max Lugavere back, I think it was May and 21, I'd still be stuck in that breakdown recovery cycle that you guys talk about so much there. So after listening for several months, I did get anabolic and I was really blown away by the results. I ran that through twice. It's as if I was achieving newbie gains even though I've been lifting for 12 years. Did 50 pounds to your bench? 40 your squat and 30 to your deadlift. I was pretty amazed by the results with that. I was really happy with my progress there. So at the risk of possibly stalling some of that gains, my email had multiple questions on it, but the crux of it was, what are the realistic expectations for building muscle over the age of 50 especially if there is a reluctance to add significant number of calories to the diet? Well, the calories part makes it a little bit more challenging. I'm assuming you want to stay lean while you build. Is that why you're doing that? Yeah. I mean, to this point, I've basically had a recomposition. So I was never, I've always been a thin guy. But I've noticed that the amount of muscle was increased even though my weight has not increased. So I didn't know how much further that could continue without having to add thousands of calories a week. Maybe I'd be happy doing two to 300 every now and then or maybe on just the days I lift. But to do that consistently, I'm a little nervous about doing that rate of an increase. You don't have to go crazy with a calorie surplus, but a surplus, which just means more calories than is required to maintain is necessary for the muscle building process. Now, if you have a good strong signal to build muscle, you don't need a ton of calories. However, I will say this, a calorie surplus by itself, and I'm careful when I say this because people can take this too far, but a calorie surplus by itself can be anabolic. Especially when your body's getting stronger. A lot of the strength gains that you'll get will be central nervous system adaptation, muscles moving better together. By the way, that's great. There's nothing you're literally stronger. And then some of it comes from increasing contractile tissue and the muscle fibers. You will limit that by not fueling yourself with more calories. But you don't need a ton. You don't need a ton. 500 calories above your maintenance, which if you're tracking and you know what you eat on a regular basis, you could just add an extra meal and just watch yourself, watch your physique. I don't think you'll gain tons of body. I don't know how lean you are. It depends a lot also on how lean you are. Like if you're in single-digit body fat percentage. It's 170 pounds. If I had to guess, I'd say somewhere probably 15, 18% somewhere around there. You're fine. 500 calorie surplus with good strength training routine. You're probably not going to gain any body fat. You'll gain muscle. Especially if we do, I think it'd be good for you to switch. Sounds like you've gone through anabolic twice and so if we did another program that is a novel stimulus, then you're also sending a signal to get those like newbie gains again and any sort of additional calories that we consume should get prioritized over to building muscle. So that would be my suggestion is to, you know, based off your goals, if we want to keep building muscle is to switch to another maps program. And I don't know, have you looked through some of them to see because we could go a lot of different directions with you. Yeah, I was thinking I was actually looking considering I already have performance and I have mass 15, my wife and I, you know, she does, I got her involved too. Thanks to you guys and my son too. So my son's in college and he's the one anabolic right now. So, but I was looking at symmetry possibly, mainly because I've noticed some imbalance in my right and left side. And oddly, it's my, my non-dominant side is stronger than my dominant side, which is very weird. Which, which the both, both arm and leg or just leg? Mainly just in the arms, mainly in the arm. I noticed definitely a difference in mass on my left. For instance, biceps and triceps compared to the right. So you mean strength? Is it strength or just size? Both. Both. Wow. Okay. That's interesting. Interesting. Okay. Yeah. Sometimes it has to do with the sport someone played or something in the past. Sure. But that's, yeah, that's interesting. Symmetry will balance it out. I love symmetry. Yeah. I think that's a great, it's a great idea. I think symmetry and then you could bounce back to like performance and go back into the kind of the, the three in a row that we kind of wrote in that in originally. After that, I think a stronger power lift would be good as well for someone like you. Definitely consider that. So going back to the question, I mean, realistically, how much muscle can someone expect to build after the age of 50? Is that a realistic goal to be able to increase? Yeah. Oh, you can build muscle after at any age. It's more determinant on how long you've been training already. Like if you've been training for years and years and years, it gets much more difficult to, you know, to build muscle. It also is, you know, based off of what you were doing before versus what you were doing now. If I take somebody who's been working out a long time, but their diet, their sleep and their workout programming wasn't so great. We can make huge changes in muscle. If I take someone who's been training for a long time and doing a lot of things right, it gets much more, much more challenging. So that's, that's what we'll determine whether or not we're going to see big gains or smaller gains. Also how you are health wise too, right? So we're, have you done like a blood panel? Do you know where your hormone levels are? Like where you mentioned, I actually just got this in the mail from Cabral, the sensitivity test. So I'm starting that stuff. But, you know, no, I have not. My wife and my, my son have done more of that. I really just been along for the ride. As far as that's concerned, I just follow the same diets they do. And, you know, we have a pretty unconventional diet. And we stick to meat base and plant forward more or less. Okay. And you're hitting your protein targets. Then I'm assuming say again, you're hitting your protein targets. I'm assuming. Oh yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. I mean, because you're afraid of adding more calories, I would say you probably got some good muscle there that you could gain by, by pushing the calories up about 500. If you haven't done that yet, that'll yield you some pretty nice results. Especially if you're eating good whole foods like that. I think you're going to be just fine bumping the calories like that. And then I do, I do recommend getting, you know, the blood work and testing like that at your age right now. That's the areas that I'd want you, if you were a client of mine, just to see if there's areas that we can optimize there. If you do have any sort of food intolerances, if your hormone levels are lower, we could optimize that. So a lot of those things could play a big role in you continuing to see, you know, gains through it past your fifties and stuff too. So I think you're already heading down the right path with that. Okay. Well, I appreciate that. So I mean, if I'm primarily doing total body workouts, you know, three days a week, obviously there's, there's a tremendous amount of stimulus taking place. So when it comes to the actual growth of muscle, what, what takes priority? Is it, is it the loudest stimulus? Is it the genetics? Is there something I'm missing? It's a, it's, it's very complex interplay between a lot of different factors. Genetics obviously is one of them. Training stimulus is the other one. Stress. Right dose. Yeah. Recovery. Your body's like overall stress levels, hormone signals. It's a beautiful dance. It's not as straightforward as one thing or the other. It really is. It's like, and which is why, you know, it's why all of us have jobs, right? If it was that easy, it was that easy to where it was just like, hey, plug and play and everybody should build or not. Right? I think it's, you know, you're, you're as a trainer, the thing you're trying to help out the client with always is to figure out, you know, where are we not, where are we missing? Are you, are you have a lot of stress in the life right now or our hormone levels not optimized? Are we over training the body? Are we under stimulating? Are we, are we feeding the body enough? Yeah. So, yeah, it's a, it's a very delicate dance of all these things. And so, I mean, I think you're heading down the right path. You are. I mean, that tells more potential there. The fact that you've recently put that much weight on the bar and those big lifts tells me, or hints very strongly that there's some, there's some muscle you can put on your body at your age. I mean, you gain 50 pounds on your bench press. Yeah. It's incredible. You know, relatively recently. Yeah. So that's, that's huge. You got to feed it. Do you take supplements? Do you take creatine? I do. I do creatine. I take calender, perforataminos, and then as well as the different nutraceuticals. Okay. That's it. I was going to say take creatine if you don't, but you already take it. So other than that, I mean the bumping calories, the change in programming should yield you some measurable muscle gains. Yeah. Jeremy, I'm going to have, I'm going to have Doug send map symmetry over to you. Awesome. And then after that, the things we consider is maybe stronger power lift, but we'll send over symmetry to get you started on that. And then just keep us posted, posted how things are going. And then Sal's advice, I think, you know, you're going to get a 500 calorie boost a day through those whole foods. Don't be afraid of the calories. Don't be afraid of it. Don't be afraid of it. We could always go back the other way. So, I mean, I think you, what you're doing right now, you're on the right track. And I do think there's, there's more in the tank there. Very good. No, I truly appreciate it. I'm just looking to stay as healthy as I can for as long as I can. Well into an old age, you want to be the 90 year old that can, the squat 300 pounds. Wow. Yeah. I like that. I like that goal. Good deal. Very good. All right. Thanks for having me. All right. Take care. You don't hear something weird. He reminded me of a client who, so when he brought that up, that's why I was asking him about, you know, his asymmetry. How's I'm non-dominant. Yeah. This is, I've only had this one time and it's probably super rare. I had a client who was weaker on the side that had significantly more hypertrophy. So they had a, they had a much more, I mean, it was, you could see it was size wise. It was big. It was full size wise. There was significant visual, visually you could see more hypertrophy on one side of the body of their leg, you know, one leg versus the other. And the leg that was bigger was weaker and had less stability. Now here's what it was because we couldn't figure out what the hell's going on. It was a very strange mystery. We were working with a neurologist. It was an adaptation because they had damaged nerves connecting to that side. So the body tried to adapt by building more muscle. Building muscle to compensate. That was the theory at least. And the body is like strange, right? Compensating. You know, where I've actually seen people have this, where the weaker, what they would consider the weaker side is more dominant, is sometimes in athletes where athletes have gotten really good at organizing their entire, for example, like a picture, like a right-handed picture. Yeah. To throw the ball, it's not like they're just using one or two months. They're using all that side to generate all this force. At the right time. Right. And so then when they go to do like, let's say, a bench press type of exercise, the weaker side, they have to be very technical on form. And so it's getting, it's hitting the muscle, right? Where the other side, they can just generate power. Yeah. And they're getting a lot of more decelerating forces too. That's right. Yeah. So they don't have the same, they don't have the... Also, sometimes it's not as apparent or obvious like a soccer player, right? He's got, you know, kicks with the right more often. Their left leg will have better balance. Yeah. Because they balance to the left. You're anchoring it. Yeah. He's taking a lot of that. Symmetry was a great call though. Yeah. I think it's a great call to send him that way. Our next caller is Ashna from the Philippines. Ashna. How can we help you? Hi guys. Good morning. Thank you for taking the time. Of course, I'll start by saying thank you. I know that you hear this all the time, but it's just worth repeating after everything you've done in the fitness community. You deserve every bit of success. So please don't stop making contents because you're not just changing lives. You're definitely saving lives. So thank you for that. Thank you. Thanks for saying that. Thank you. To the question. So can you really squat as to grass with heavy loads? So for context, I completed all three programs from the maps RGB and would want to continue focusing on strand primarily on my squat. Now I noticed that during phase one of each program, I was able to increase weights on my squat significantly. But at the same time, I was having a little challenge to maintain the same depth. Now my goal is to, of course, again, squat as to grass with heavy loads. But the internet says if you want to squat as to grass, I mean as to grass is not the way to go if you want to squat heavy. But I don't actually believe them. That is why I'm coming to your show. I'd like to get some advice. Should I focus on getting strong first or get better with my mobility? Yeah, the internet is stupid. Be careful out there. Heavy is all relative. It's all relative. Heavy for someone might be light for someone else. So heavy is just about the intensity of the load that the load brings to you. And all exercises should be performed with good control, stability, and technique. Okay, so the real question is can you squat as to grass with a heavy load in the context of that particular range of motion so long as you have good stability control and mobility? And the answer is, of course. If you can control a movement in a range of motion, if you have good stability, if you have good mobility, if you have good control, then you can do it. There's no question about it. That goes to any exercise. Now, the real question is, is there any benefit to squatting deeper versus squatting less deep, right? Should I squat lower versus squatting to just parallel? Well, with all things being equal, with both of them being under good control, well then yeah, squatting deeper means you're strengthening a deeper range of motion. You are strengthening muscles in positions and in lengths that you wouldn't be if you just stopped the range of motion short. Remember, the strength that you gain from an exercise is to a large extent limited to the range of motion that you train it in. If I only do curls halfway, I get a little bit of carry over outside that range of motion, but most of the strength is going to be that I gain is going to be in the range of motion that I train. So why would you limit, why would anybody want to limit the strength gains to a certain range of motion? Now, the only correct answer to that would be or the only reason why that would make sense would be that they don't have the mobility. They don't have the control of stability to go in a deeper range of motion. But then I always, to that my retort is we'll see if you can train your mobility and your function so that you can work in those deeper ranges of motion. So aside from specific sports, specific applications, yeah, there's no validity to what the internet says about, you know, fast to grab squats. I mean, I would love to put you in our private forum if you're not in there already. I'd love to put you in there. I'm already in there. Okay, so then my recommendation would be to load the bar with a very comfortable lightweight that you feel comfortable controlling and do a really deep squat so I can see your technique. And then if I look at it, I think you have a really, really good squat. Then I would encourage you to load the bar with a weight that's challenging for you. But the question is that, because some people can do it, but then they have a massive forward lean and or their knees are caving in or they have like a rounded back when they do it and so, or an excessive butt wink. So they could get down astagrass, but why you hear some of the coaches out there saying that you shouldn't heavy load that is in fear of their poor technique back to Sal's point that if you can do it with good control, stability, and range of motion, then absolutely. But I do think it's important that we assess that first before you go do a max lift in a deeper range of motion that you don't usually do. I would never recommend a client do that until I see the technique. Have you ever assessed your squat? Like what do you think about your squat deep? Why do you feel like sometimes you can go to a certain level and other times you can go deeper? Do you notice a difference in the squat? Yeah. When I was running anabolic, I compared my squat from, I think that was phase one and phase three, I think, the higher reps but lower weights. Now I can really like squat deeper and I can even pause for a second, but if I'm going to load the bar heavy, I only hit parallel. So right now I tried to like record my last session yesterday. So I was able to load the bar 100, it's 60 kilograms, just parallel. So my aim is to like really hit that parallel and just really comfortably squat. Well, I guess my point is I really want to challenge my mobility. Yeah. Like how low can I squat? What would have it been? Aushaniya, you have to compare apples to apples. So a parallel squat to a squat that's below parallel, you can't compare the weight. It's a different exercise. Yeah, I can't say it's not the same, right? So you may be already lifting heavy deep. So when you do go what you consider lighter weight, because it's lighter than when you only go parallel. So what Sal means by that, so let's say you can do 120 pounds just to parallel, but you can do 80 pounds ass to grass. That 80 pounds ass to grass is you're lifting heavy there. Yeah. It's a greater range of motion. So you're getting a bigger bang for your buck there. So even though there's less weight on the bar, it doesn't mean you're not lifting heavy weight. It's potentially heavy for you to do 80 pounds ass to grass. Yeah, your body doesn't know what weight you're lifting. It knows tension. Yeah. Your body's not registering the weight, it registers the tension, right? So look, I'll give you an example. We have a video right here too. I didn't even know we had a video. If you're doing 60 kilos on a parallel squat and you want to add weight, here's something else you could do. Instead of adding weight, go a little deeper with the same weight. Challenge it an inch or two lower and slowly increase the range of motion with the same weight. You're going heavier, technically. That's why it's a little bit of a difference of goal here in terms of like, are you trying to get more weight but get lower? I would focus on getting lower and then start adding weight. You look good. Well, yeah, there were a couple there that went as low, but I mean, I would go low. Go low and progressively overload your way back up. Keep your form the same. Don't change your squat from phase one to phase three. Change the weight in the reps, but keep the form the same. There's no reason for you to train with a shorter range of motion. Yeah, no, you look good. I think what's happening is you just, you challenge the weight and then you probably get a little nervous and scared to go deeper because it's really heavy. Just lighten it up. Exactly. Yeah, just lighten it up a little bit. Lighten it up a little bit to allow yourself to go that full range of motion and then eventually. It just needs time. You just need time of repetition, getting at that depth and then you'll notice the same progression that you've made already at a higher position. How often do you do hip thrust? I don't do hip thrust. Okay, so I think that'll help you. I think what's happening right here is that when you get really, really deep in that stretch position and the glutes have to really hit you out of the hole, you're a little bit weaker there. You look like you have very strong legs and quads. I'm from your video. At least it looks like it from the video. And the glutes may just be a little bit under developed in comparison to your quads. I would incorporate some hip thrusts into your training and try and get really strong in the hip thrust. Some pause reps down there at the bottom. That carries over into help you with your barbell back squat. But you look good. Yeah, but your squat form shouldn't change from phase to phase. The weight is relative to the form and your technique. So don't change your form to lift more weight. Then that's not doing you any good. Okay. Okay. Thank you. You're on the right track though. Your form looked great with a deep squat. She's barefoot too. So yeah, you look great. Great job. You literally think adding some hip thrusts into your routine, you're going to see some great benefit from that. Okay. All right. All right. Thanks for calling in, Ashia. Thank you. Tag us in the forum too so we can see the progress. I'd like to see how you're doing. Okay. Thank you, guys. All right. You have a good one. Hip thrust is like one of those exercises, I will say, that if you recommend someone to do it, they immediately think to themselves like, does my butt not look good? Yeah. Based on your video, I think you should get that. I could see that. I could see. No, I see what you're saying with the technique. Yeah, I could see. And if one of the things that will, I mean, that's why deep squats are so great for the glutes is because it'd be when you're down there at the bottom to get you out of that hole. It's in a stretch position. Yeah, it's in a stretch position. They got a fire. And so what's happening is, I think it's just underdeveloped in comparison to her quads and she had great quads. I mean, look at her legs. You can see she's got strong legs. So I bet if she includes some hip thrust, if she gets really good at hip thrust and starts loading that, I bet she'll see great carry over into the squat. Yeah. You know, it's interesting because when you're taught, because I know what's going to happen. Some people are going to talk about athletic pursuits and athletes squatting parallel or half squats or quarter squats. There is. It's different. Yes. There is value to shortening the range of motion, but it's sport specific. It's almost always sport specific in that case. I mean, the truth is, you know, it's funny that it's not talked about very much. If you were training like an athlete, you actually technically should be squatting on your tippy toes most of the time. I mean, that's another part. I mean, most all sports do not want you flat on your hip. Name me a sport where you should ever be heavy on your heels. Never. Yeah. So if you really want a great. I was just having that conversation with Smitty. Really? Yeah. What does he think? Would he agree? Yeah. To some extent. To some extent in terms of like building the base, it's basically everything we say about like starting off with glutes and glute, but then specifics. Yeah. Like you're going to want to end up on balls of your feet and strengthen that position. Because if I'm on the field, I'm not, if I'm heel driven, I'm dead. Yeah. You know, I don't have any movement. That's in any sport. Any sport you are on, you're on your toes. Like I'm trying to think of an example where you wouldn't or that would be valuable. That's why the sled is so amazing. That's right. Because you're driving on the toes all the time. 100%. That's why that's so great. So really for the athletes out there that I think that you have a good decent already back loaded squat on your heels, tippy toe squats are a great exercise. That's how they used to squat back in the day. You know that, right? Bronze era squats were always on the toes. Oh really? Yeah. I didn't know that. Yeah. Flat squats didn't happen till later because they could add more load. Oh, interesting. Our next caller is Catherine from Louisiana. Hi Catherine. How can we help you? Hey guys. Thanks so much for taking my call. I'm excited to speak with you. I'm just going to jump right in. I'm 34 years old and I'm very new to weight lifting. I had three babies in four years. So from January of 2016 to January of last year, I was either pregnant or breastfeeding. So in January of last year, I finally managed to get my fitness life back on track. And I spent 18 months doing orange dairy. And I know y'all's thoughts on that. My husband has undergone a remarkable fitness transformation over the last six years, most recently and successfully using your programs. And he was really encouraging me to switch things up to weight training after I kind of hit a plateau last summer. And then I'm listening to your episodes and there was one, and it just felt like Adam was addressing me directly. I love the social aspect of orange theory, but I realized I just wasn't achieving the desired results for the amount of time I was putting in. I was going four times a week and with kids, that's pretty much all of my free time. So onto my question, it's kind of all around nutrition. I'm 5'11 and I began anabolic advance in July of this year. I was 162 pounds. I tracked my macros and I'm currently aiming for 2300 calories and 160 grams of protein. I completed anabolic advance and now I'm in week two of aesthetic. And I just noticed that I feel a little bulkier. My shorts fit a little tighter. And then my weight is sitting closer to 165. I'm definitely seeing strength gains though. And I feel fantastic, my gut health, my sleep. Like I feel really good, but the scale is playing mind games with me and I'm just uncertain if I'm truly noticing any changes in the mirror. I know you say to expect this. I've heard you say it a hundred times, but I'm just curious what should I be doing over the coming months? I know you'd say three weeks of bulking then one week of cutting. If I'm trying to gain muscle, vice versa. If I'm trying to lose fat and I'm just not sure what phase I'm at at this point. Is 2300 calories too much? Is that bulking for me? I really don't know. It's easy. Yeah, I'm going to speak directly to you again. You're doing a great job. Yeah. You're doing a good job right now. I got easy advice for you. Throw your scale away. Yeah, take your stuff. Stop weighing yourself. Yeah. 5'11. You're doing great. If first off, you look lean. Okay, I can see you on camera. 5'11. 165. You're getting stronger. If you're gaining a little bit of weight on the scale, which it looks like you gained what, 3-4 pounds? 3 pounds. Right? Okay, so 3 pounds. So 3 pounds on the scale, you're noticing significant strength gains with the strength training. You just started strength training relatively recently. Before that, you did orange theory. I wouldn't be surprised if you lost body fat at the same time. The only way to really know that would be with consistent body fat percentage testing. The scale is a terrible metric on its own. And it does play mind games with you. Like you said, you're looking in the mirror and you're questioning whether or not you're actually seeing what you're seeing and what's happening here. As far as clothes are concerned, especially women's clothes, men's clothes are like this as well, but women's clothes are not designed for athletic women at all. If you go from orange... Especially 5'11 women. Yeah, no. So you're tall. If you're going orange theory, which is basically just cardio, if you're doing a bunch of cardio, then you start lifting, following our programs in particular. Yeah, your shorts are going to feel tighter because your butt grew. Your hamstrings probably developed. Your body fat sits lower on the body. Muscle kind of sits higher. So things are going to start feeling a little different. You're going to notice, you know, maybe a little tightness around the shoulder. Your posture is probably different. A little bit more developed in the arms. Probably more sculpted looking. I'm surprised if you're getting comments from people you haven't seen in a while. Yeah, I wonder what your husband thinks. What does he say? He swears he's seen major differences. Yeah, okay. So you need to... Now, don't tell him, because I know how men are. If we hear one thing, it's like... But he's right. If he's saying that and you're getting stronger... You're doing great. Yeah, he's right. The numbers that you're... And I'm assuming that 2200 calories, is an effort of you to increase calories. So if you're... Yeah. Is that you increasing too? Oh, definitely. Oh, you're kicking ass. We're kicking ass. I mean, this is... You are doing exactly what we should do. What you're seeing is exactly what you should be seeing. And I mean, and I would never want you to do this right now, but you could easily go back down to 16, 1700 calories and you would lose the weight real quick on the scale. But I wouldn't want that. I think what you're... I think you're building... Keep building. You're building a good muscle. I think you're actually in a really good place, calorie-wise. I bet your energy is probably good. Lebedo's good. Sleep is good. I bet your hair, skin, nails. You probably noticed improvements and all that stuff. It's excellent. Yeah. Oh, man. You're killing it. Kath, I'm so glad you're on this episode because you know what this highlights is just how terribly advertised to women are, especially. Like, for you to question your own body, like, you feel good. Your hair is good. You're sleeping good. Energy, I'm stronger. Eating more. My husband says I look better. I feel my energy is better. I got better Lebedo. Something's wrong, though. And then you're like, oh, but I gained three pounds. Am I right? Like, it's like... It's terrible because our media and our advertising, all the messaging is making you question yourself. And how our clothes are made. Yeah, imagine if you were... Clothes are just not made for athletically fit people. Yeah, imagine if you were like a, you know, a 19-year-old girl who just started figuring this out, you're gonna probably go in the opposite direction and start starving yourself again and going the wrong way. You're killing it. I would take this... Throw your scale away, seriously. Yeah. And just keep listening to the signals of how you feel, your performance in the gym, and pay attention to the non, you know, body fat-related, weight-related things, like hair, skin, nails, Lebedo, mood, energy. Like, those are wonderful signals to pay attention to because they will tell us whether we're going the wrong direction or the right direction oftentimes. I'm not against you going and testing your body fat so you have an objective number that you can look back. But look at the trends, though. Yeah, exactly. I mean, what I would do is I'd go get it right now, then I would throw the scale away. I wouldn't even... I would continue doing what you're doing, and then in a month or two, check back in and look at your results. Yeah. And it'll highlight the good work that you're doing right now. I think you're... I think you're on a perfect track. If you were a client of mine, the only thing we're changing is our workouts. Yeah. That's the only thing I'm changing. The way that it sounds like the food and everything is going, I'd be very happy. And it sounds like your husband can see that and is trying to tell you that. So we're here to remind you right now, too. Okay. So the 2,300 is that a solid range? Can I keep doing like three weeks of that then kind of cut back down to 2,000 every third week? Sure. I mean, that's all relative, right, on the individual. But I like where they're at. But I would ask you, how do you feel eating 2,200 calories? Do you feel satisfied? I can't believe I can eat this much food and I haven't gained more. That gets incredible. But do you feel good, though? Does it feel like... Yes. Okay. Yeah. So there's nothing wrong with doing 2,200 calories for a couple more weeks and then maybe running a one week of 1,800 calories, then going up to 2,300 calories. Yeah, I would keep going up slowly. I would keep stair-laddering you up. And every three weeks or so, and some of this, if you're a client of mine, sometimes I'll do this just to give them the mental relief and to get them to trust my process of like, listen, you're doing good. Watch, watch, we're going to cut calories for a week and then they see like the three pounds come off the scale and they're like, oh my God, look out. And I'm like, yeah, that's because we are building muscle, we are sculpting, we are building a great physique. Now let's go up to 2,300 calories. Then we go to 2,300 calories for like three weeks. Then I let them have another week where I cut them back down again and then go back and just... I'd keep stair-stepping you up until I've got you eating 2,6, 2,700, 2,800, and you're just blown away by how many calories. Yeah, that's sustainable. You know what I mean? That's great. It gives you so much flexibility to go on a vacation or a trip or to go out to eat. Now you can eat more and your body's burning it. That's what... Always keep that in mind and anybody who's listening right now, that's one of the advantages of continuing to increase your ability to maintain on a higher calorie is really for the flexibility. The sustainability. For the time, so you and your husband can go out and have a nice dinner and you can order dessert and wine and not feel like it sticks to you right away, which is how people explain that, oh man, I have one bad night and I feel like it sticks to me. Well, a lot of times it's because their caloric maintenance is at 1,500 calories and one heavy 800 calorie meal is literally half of their calorie intake. But when you get to a place where you're eating 2,800, 2,900 calories a day and you have an 800 calorie meal, ain't a big deal. It has a lot to do with that. So that should be kind of the goal is to keep inching those calories up and just build a muscle and putting yourself in a place where you have a lot of flexibility nutritionally. Okay. I think that was my question. How far can I keep inching? Because I moved it up to 2,300. So I'll keep going a few more. Yes. Yeah, you'd be surprised, but there's an individual variance there but I would expect, based off of what you're telling me that we could probably get you around 25, 2,600 calories comfortably. Easy. Yeah, comfortably. Easy. I mean, okay, the one number I don't know is how's your movement throughout the day? Do you track steps or you have any idea about how much you move? She got three kids. I guarantee she's moving like crazy. Not as much as you think. I'm a CPA so I'm pretty much at my desk but I did an average and I'm about 6,500. Okay. So there's room to move more, okay? So I like to do this too as I'm challenging clients like you who are a little nervous to keep moving the calories up in fear of the weight. I also sometimes will move steps up. So I might go, okay, Catherine, I'm going to bump you up to 2,400 calories now but now I want you to make sure that every day you get 9,000 steps and that becomes our goal and then we get level there and I go, okay, cool, we're not gaining any weight and I go, okay, now I want to push you to 25 or 2,600 calories and let's make sure we get 10,000 steps every day and I kind of will stair step a little bit of movement with you so we don't see this major surplus or a swing in the wake that much and there is room for you to be more active. That's not bad but the average American is like 3,500 so you're doing better than the average person. But if you walked like 15 minutes for breakfast, lunch and dinner, I would add a couple thousand steps easily. Yeah, that's a great goal or a lunch break. And that's just good for health. Okay, and then one more thing if you have a minute. Any suggestions on what program to run next? I think we have most of yours. You're on anabolic advance then you did aesthetic. I just started aesthetic. Okay, so that's a lot of volume. Performance or symmetry. Yeah, I would want you to do a scale back on volume because you went from anabolic advance to aesthetic. Aesthetic is a lot of volume. So at the end of that, you might, it would probably be a good idea to scale the volume down to get the body to continue to progress. Okay. And work on different planes of movement. I like performance. Yeah, I like performance or symmetry. So, map performance or map symmetry would be a good follow up. Okay, awesome. Well, thank you so much. You got it. Yeah, good job. Keep kicking ass, huh? There you go. All right, bye-bye. Does anything illustrate what a position people are in? She's like, I'm stronger. I feel better. All the metrics that we talked about. I can't believe how much I'm eating. I can't believe how much I'm eating. And it's a three pounds. I could, you know, three pounds on a scale. And she's like, I'm questioning whether or not I'm moving in the right direction. Yeah. That is so sad to me. And also, Keepa, you guys have heard me share this. I mean, this was the part, I think I really got a good grasp of how easily we can fluctuate three pounds. I mean, that's exactly three pounds. Yeah, if you go from eating 1,700 calories, let's say, on normal, and you're all the way up to 2,200 calories and you're exercising, just the carbohydrate, sodium, and water intake from that will be, so she's, there's a good chance. She's actually lost body fat. I think she did. And built muscle. If she got stronger, like she said, and she just started strength training. Like what she did, like 12 weeks ago, something like that. And she's potentially eating three to 500 more calories every single day. Yeah. She literally probably lost body fat and she's in like the Goldilocks zone. Totally. She lost body fat, probably put on muscle and is eating more than she ever has. Like three pounds is so insignificant. I could drop that three pounds in one day. Body composition is completely changing. Cut her calories, cut back a little bit on some sodium, and in 72 hours, all that weight would come right off. It's mostly water. I just needed a three pound burrito later today. I did. Look, shit's holding out. If you like this show, head over to minepumpfree.com and check out all of our free guides. They're free, they're awesome, and they can help you with your fitness. You can also find us all on Instagram. Justin is at minepump. Justin, I'm at minepump to Stefano. And Adam is at minepump. Adam.