 In this episode of Mind Pump, we answer questions asked by listeners like you. Here's what you do. Go to Mind Pump Media on Instagram, post the question under the QUA meme, and then we'll pick the best ones and answer them. But before we do that, we do our introductory portion of this episode where we talk about current events, our lives, and we like to mention our sponsors. Here's what we talked about in the beginning portion of this episode. We start out by talking about self-awareness, the skill and practice of achieving more self-awareness and why it's important. Do you know you exist? And then I talked about my car getting towed this morning and how furious it made me. It was a good way to practice more self-awareness. We talked about a message from one of our listeners in regards to how hemp oil extract helped her brother's autistic symptoms. Now our favorite company of hemp oil extracts full of cannabinoids including CBD is the company NED. They're the best. They're the ones we chose to work with. We also have a discount for you. If you go to HelloNED, that's H-E-L-L-O-N-E-D.com forward slash mind pump, you'll get 15% off your first purchase. Then we talked about protein, the magic macronutrient, and why it may have that reputation. Then we talked about Viori, the clothing line that we're sponsored by of athleisurewear, and why it's so much better than that other clothing line of athleisurewear. I think it's called Boo Boo or something like that. Yeah, whatever. Whatever it's called. Anyway, we have a discount with Viori. If you go to VioriClothing.com, that's Viori spelled V-U-O-R-I, then of course clothing.com forward slash mind pump. There's a code on that page that'll give you 25% off. Then I talked about studies showing how mothers and babies brain waves sync up. That's kind of cool. We talked about a beer that came out that made fun of the PG&E blackouts here in California. Get them. Then we talked about, what's his name there? Kamal, Kamal, Nanjin. I don't know what his name is. He's an actor in the Silicon Valley show who got really buffed all of a sudden, so we speculate as to whether or not he's on steroids. Kamal, I think. There you go. And then we talked about the show, The Marvelous Miss Maisel. Adam keeps trying to close me on that, so maybe I'll watch it. Then we got into the fitness portion of this episode. This is where we answer the questions. The first question was, is progressive overload super important for hypertrophy? So we talk all about progressive overload, what that means. And by the way, hypertrophy means muscle building. And we talk about how they work together. The next question, this person is saying, hey, I heard that you're a huge disadvantage if you're tall and you do squats. What are the things that I can do to improve my ability to squat? So we talk all about effective methods for people who are tall for squatting and other exercises. Next question, this person says they're addicted to the gym and they go six days a week. Even when they're hurt, is this good or bad? Obviously it's bad, but we explain why. And we also talk about how they can get themselves out of that cycle. And the final question, this person has a 65-year-old father who's overweight, has arthritic knees, pain in the lower back, wants to know how to get started. So we talk all about how to get this person in this kind of shape on a fitness program. Also this month, maths aesthetic, this is our body sculpting, body building, bikini competitor program. This is the program designed to help you train your body and sculpt your body as you see fit. What does that mean? That means you look in the mirror, you identify the body parts you want to focus more on. You look at yourself and say, okay, I would look better with better shoulders or glutes or quads. Then you go in the program. There's a way you can plug that in so it's unique to your body. Then you can follow the whole program as it's laid out. Super effective. It's 50% off all month long. Here's how you get that discount. Go to mapsblack.com and use the code Black50, B-L-A-C-K-5-0. No space for the third, one of if not the most attractive quality about Katrina and Katrina and I's relationship that I just, I adore it. I try and remember that I'm so grateful that I have a partner that's like this because that is the thing that's so cool is, you know, we're like anybody else. We have disagreements and arguments and that stuff happens on a semi-regular basis. But it's the way we handle it that is so cool is, you know, fuck, last night. Last night, you know, I come home. Last yesterday is a day where I get up extra early to get Max ready and around because she's back to going to JJ Albany's. And so I'm up early and I spend the morning with him, getting him kind of ready for when the nanny gets there. And then a long day at work, we've got a lot going on here and stuff. Then I come home, as soon as I come home, I'm kind of playing with him and doing stuff. I, you know, take out the trash, clean the house, do some dishes to kind of help out with her because I know it's a work day for her. So she's busy and she's also got family over. And, you know, I'm exhausted. Justin and I fucking, we thought it would be a good idea to do 10 sets of 10 of 225. Wow, that's real smart. That sounds like a terrible idea. Yeah, well, I tapped out early and then Justin had to do one more set just to be an asshole. He's not competitive at all. And so I'm like, I'm exhausted, right? And so I creep upstairs for one minute and I like, I lay down in the spare bedroom with my face down with my clothes on, everything like close my eyes from it. I'm tired and she comes in with Max and she's like, can you take your son? And I was just like, inside of like angry about it. You know, like I was like, fuck, you see the day I've had to, and I've totally been supportive of how what I love though is I can be like, I didn't say no, I just looked at her and said, like, are you going to bring him to me right now like that? And she just kind of walked away. And she walks away. Initially, I know that I'm probably frustrated. Initially, I know she's frustrated immediately within minutes after that, I'm going like, okay, seeing it from her perspective. And like right away, starting to become aware of my part in this and see that. And then I pop up like maybe five, 10 minutes later to go find her with him to take him from her and say, fuck, I'll get sleep later, whatever. And when I go do that, she's like, no, honey, it's okay. And she kisses me and says, like, I got him and stuff like that. I know you've helped out a lot today. And what I know about her, because obviously we've been together for so long, is that she does the exact same thing. Initially, she probably was irritated with me, but then she walks away and goes like, wait a second, I know he just. So are you responding to her like, hey, look, I know you've been working, you know, been with the kid, you know, all morning or whatever. And I should have, you know, whatever. So you guys are both doing that basically. Yeah. And what that is, is it's this unbelievable amount of self-awareness and social awareness that we both have. And that's been an area that has always been important to both her and I. Yeah, it makes it easy when, or not easy, I shouldn't say that, it's always hard. It makes it easier when both people step away and give each other the opportunity, because you ever been in a situation where you're, you know, whatever, you're frustrated, but then because you're getting pushed back, it doesn't give you the opportunity to examine. But it's key that the parties both are very self-aware people that when they break, instead of going and trying to confirm their belief or reach out to a friend and be like, can you believe him? And do she like that? They go like, okay, fuck, how could I done that better? That is such a hard skill because it requires vulnerability. Because for you to do that, it means that you're taking the, there's a potential that she will not do the same. Admitting you might be wrong. And not only that, but it's, you may think to yourself, okay, what I did was wrong, but she may never think that what she did was wrong. So you are vulnerable because you're like, okay, I'm going to step forward and do this without any guarantee that she's going to do the same thing. And that's a hard thing to do. That's a lot of it too. And I experienced this in my relationship all the time. It's like you have to be okay with the fact that whatever you want to bring up sometimes, like you have to let them discover that. And so like, oh, I want to point this out, like how wrong you were in this situation. But a lot of times I just have to like step out, step away, and then let them discover that fact. It's great because if you do have the right partner, they will come to that conclusion, come back to you, you can have a discussion about it. But to hammer them is so counterproductive. It does. It just, so Dr. John Gottman is the foremost researcher on relationships. And a lot of what he says can be boiled down, and there's specifics, but generally a lot of it has to do with giving yourself the ability to be self-aware. And so this is what he did. And I really am going to try and get this guy on the show, but I think it's almost impossible. Yeah, I hope so. But one of the, so what he did is he had something he called the Love Lab, and it was an apartment with cameras. You would have couples come in, he'd hook them up to heart rate monitors and all these other stuff. And then you'd have them live there or discuss difficult situations. And he did this for 20 years. And the results he came up with, the conclusions he came up with, have been duplicated I think four or five times, which for behavioral science, for psychology, scientists in that field will tell you it's very hard. It's one of the worst scientific fields in terms of duplicatable research, because they'll have a result of something like, if you act this way, whatever, this is the result, then someone else will conduct the same study, different result. Well, his has been actually duplicated several times and not by him. So you know what he's saying. There's a lot of truth. And so one of the things that he did, which was brilliant, is he'd have a couple come in, they'd hook up their, you know, they'd see their heart rate and all that stuff. And he'd say, okay, I want you guys to discuss a subject that you guys have been having trouble over. So that, you know, maybe the wife brings up, you know, you don't help around the house or the husband says something like, you know, you always, you know, whatever. And then he would sit in the back and they would observe and they'd watch both of their heart rates start to elevate, because, you know, he's getting angry. He calls it flooded. As you get angry and emotional, heart rate, you know, starts to be, and you can see on the monitors, then what they would do, and this is totally brilliant, is he'd come in there, he'd interrupt the fight or the argument, say, hold on a second, our machines went down. Can you guys take a second? Yeah. Let us fix the machines real quick and then you guys can reconvene. Even though they didn't. Even though they didn't. So then what he would do is he'd go back into the lab and they would wait until the heart rates came down. However long it took, if it was 30 minutes, five hours, he'd sit there and wait and wait and wait. And as soon as the heart rates came back down, he'd come back in and be like, okay, everything's working again. And they could have a rational conversation. And the success rate of the couples in terms of being able to understand and hear each other and resolve their issues, or maybe not resolve their issues, but it not result in a massive blowout, was astronomical. It was like 78% versus like 5% or 10% when both people are flooded or angry. So that's such an important thing is for you to. Now didn't that, I thought I read that or watched that too. Didn't it matter too, the couples that were meant to be or would last would have that success like that, right? Okay, so there were certain things that he pointed out. And his book, I'll pull up his book. So if you're really interested in this, I highly, highly, highly suggest it. His stuff is fire. It's the most brilliant book I've ever read on relationships because it's very pragmatic. The seven principles for making marriage work. So he identifies a few things that through 20 years or 30 years of study, if he saw these things happen in an argument, he could predict within five minutes, within five minutes of watching people interact with something like 80 to 90% accuracy, whether or not they'd be together in five years, just by doing these things. And so absolutely phenomenal. But it's key, it's so key to step outside of that emotional space to become more self-aware because when you're angry or upset or hurt, your self-awareness goes, or at least your willingness to become self-aware, it goes out the window because all you're doing is feeling all these emotions. Ways you can exercise that too is to, and it reminds me of the time we live in right now with the internet and getting flooded with information that just confirms your own bias and how important that is to seek out the opposing ideas. And so I always like to find somebody in my circle, whether it be a friend, a family member, who I know would side with her, so I can, even if I feel a certain way about something, like I don't want to go talk to my friend, who's going to be like, Oh, screw her, man. Right, who's going to side with me. I already know he's going to confirm how I feel. That's not going to help me make my way through this situation. I want to find somebody in my circle that I know is going to identify with her or side with her side of the argument, so I can then work it out that way and have a conversation. But at the end of the day, you have to be willing to hear that. That's the self-awareness piece, right? That's the piece that, that's the first step and it is you care enough, which again, to me, this is also the truest sense or what love is. Like love is not a feeling, love is an act. And if you truly love somebody, these are the types of steps that you take to do that. The feeling of love is like the feeling of happiness, sadness, the feeling of motivation. That will come and go. The love is really about action. It's about willing the good of the person. And it matters the most in the times when it's hardest to... When you're not feeling it. Right, exactly. When you're like, I don't like this person right now. I'm not really feeling loving. It's interesting to me because I was thinking about growing up and being somewhat dependent on my environment, my family, my friends that were, like I grew up with. I had this preconceived notion of how everything went, like had this specific lens I was seeing everything through. And then stepping outside that, like going somewhere halfway across America and getting into a completely different environment and having to reinvent myself. No friends, like going to... I just, I can't promote that enough. I think that, especially through like growing up, even through like high school and just getting out and going somewhere else and having to start all over again, you learn so much. That's what really helped me to solidify who I am as a person and understand what self-awareness is, like why act the way I do, how other people perceive that, like how they perceive the world. Like all these other variables and factors you just don't get unless you immerse yourself completely somewhere else. Yeah. I mean, gosh, for me it was like while I was going through the back end of my, when I was married, I could not hear the problems and issues that I was causing. I couldn't hear it. I couldn't even acknowledge it. To me, all I could focus on was the stuff that she was doing wrong. And I'm not saying I was the cause of everything. It takes two people and I think it was pretty balanced in our case. But I couldn't even really understand or fully hear it until I got out of that situation. Unfortunately, I got out of that situation. Years later, I'm trying to be the best father that I can be. So I'm motivated by something different. I'm like, I want to make this the best out of a bad situation. And it was like two or three years of painful self-awareness. Two or three years of me looking back and be like, fuck, I see what I did there. Oh shit, I see what I did there. And it's hard. But when you come out of it, you're a better person. You don't repeat those same mistakes. Even in my current relationship, the fears that I had that I carried from my failed marriage and from all that stuff, I carried into my current relationship. And it definitely was difficult for me to view that. Luckily for me, Jessica at some point stepped away and said, hey, look, I don't need commitment for me. I don't need anything. I'll just want to be with you. Which gave me the space to, I don't have anything to push up against, right? I don't have anything to push out against. Gave me the space to be self-aware. Once I was able to realize like, fuck man, I got all these fears. These are legitimate fears. These are fears that are both legitimate, but also at the moment irrational. I have nothing to base them on, except for my past relationship. And I'm eating in this current relationship to base them on. Once I was able to do that, it was like slight ears. Like you just step forward. That's an amazing thing to feel. But it is hard as shit. Self-awareness, let me tell you, man. When you're in the middle of your, whatever you're in and you're looking out, everything you see and feel, that's what you're experiencing. And to be able to say that, oh, what I'm experiencing is probably not right. It'd be like me telling you right now, hey, you know, you're living in a simulation or something like that, you know? Say, how can I know that unless I actually step outside of it? Very, very difficult. Yeah, we'd much rather be distracted. Yeah, that's a lot easier. Dude, I had to exercise my self-awareness this morning big time. I think, yes. You've been having a little bit of a, nice of you to get here finally. Issues last few days. So, so angry. So like, you know, what is it? Maybe two weeks ago, Jessica's car gets broken into. So someone breaks in, rifles through her stuff. She has nothing. The worst feeling ever. Yeah. And she's such a violation. She's really good. She doesn't leave anything of value in her car because this happened a time before. So this is the second time someone went in, rifled through her shit. I'm like, obviously, pissed off. Contact the management company of the complex that we live in. I'm like, hey, this is the second time it happened. Also happened to the car next to us at the same time. Plus whoever did it left some stuff on it. Looked like a homeless drug addict did something and took off or whatever. I'm like, we need more security. This seems to be an issue. Nobody responds. Nobody responds. Email them again. Get on the phone. Finally, they respond. And what I get is, you can attend the next board meeting. Oh, that's nice. Okay. Nobody gives a shit. This morning, I parked my car in front of my garage for approximately 15 minutes. Literally, I moved the car out, did as few things in the garage, went inside, got the kids or whatever. Go outside. Cars gone. Toad. They toad my car. These motherfuckers are so fast to do that shit. But when something- Gangsters. Yeah. So, so I, you know, I like on the way there. I'm obviously late for work, you know, figuring out how to get my son to school. He's got finals. So I'm like, he cannot be late. Yeah. Luckily it all worked out on the way there. I'm fuming. So I'm like exercising self-awareness. I'm like, okay. Doing a little breathing. Yeah. I'm like, at the end of the day, I did park my car in a place that, you know- It's a hustle. It's a hustle. They have- I remember my place- It's happened to me too. They make a deal. Like, so my place, I had a gated community, which baffled me, how's this happening? Like, how's a tow truck getting in? And it took me probably, you know, six, seven times of getting towed before. They get a kickback, don't they? Yeah. I mean, I think it cost like, what, 300 something bucks? 320 bucks. Yeah, 320 bucks. I had to pay $100 to store my car there. I got there before my car did. They didn't even store it. They pull up with it and they take it. I had to pay 95 bucks. This has happened to me so many times. I have so many tow stories from the- Was this the one where you put, like, you got all the change and put it on the way down? I mean, that was another story I told on this here. That was another situation. I've had times where I pulled my truck up to my garage and unloaded my groceries and then I decided to go to the bathroom. I took a shit. You know, it was 10, 15 more minutes, right? I come out and my truck has been towed before. I've had situations where I parked in it just for a minute in my garage and I hear the tow truck because I just ran upstairs real quick and I run back down and they're already jacking up and I had to pay $75 for him to set it back down. Wow. By the way, there's a strategy Jessica told me about. Lay in front of the truck? No, as we're- As we're- Change yourself to the bumper. As we're driving there, I can tell she's like trying to calm me down because she can hear me breathing or whatever. And I'm like, you know what I'm going to do? Next time I park in front of the garage, I'm going to keep the garage open and if I see them coming, I'll just, you know, whatever. And she's like, what you need to do is get inside your car because if they take the car with you in it, it's kidnapping. Yeah, it's kidnapping. They're like, oh yeah, that's true. Just jump in your car, you know. You can't go anywhere. You can just sit there. Yeah, just chill there. Yeah, so I've been hit a bunch of times from that. And again, I think that the HOAs, like they have, they get a kickback and so they promote them coming in there. They would actually let the trucks cruise in there like two or three times a day. So they're just driving around looking for people to pick off? Looking for someone to pick off and- Yeah, so they make their money. Wow, that is so frustrating. And I know you want to go to the meeting and you want to make a big stink, but I would urge you not to because I think that would just backfire on you because part of why I think that I got all the shit I got was I was the guy who caused the stink like the first year I bought my house. So they picked on you? Yeah, I decorated my whole place and I had these red curtains. And I got a message, yeah. I got a message saying that. It's a love house. Right, the Hugh Heffner. Everything was white with some red. White with red? Yeah. All white couches, white fur everywhere, white bed, white everything. And then I had like an accent red pillow with red curtains. They didn't last long because I got a notice and they find you. So I got a notice that said, sorry, you can't have red curtains. What is this, Communist China? I didn't even know that was a thing. I didn't realize that had to match, right? So I thought that was crazy. That's why you pay the fee, dude. You pay the fee, you got to sign the fee. Oh man. You know, it's not your house. It feels like that, right? So it's not even my house. And I totally, I stalled on, I mean, I waited until the last minute until they were, in fact, I think I paid one fine because what happens is they give you a bunch of warnings and then eventually they find you and then they find you every month. It doesn't get changed. And so I think I waited all the way until I got the first fine and then I was just like, oh, this is some bullshit. So I think from that point on, like they had a, I had a target on my back and I used to get towed all the time. Oh no, I'm going to go to the board meeting but I have a strategy. I'm not going to share it here because who knows, one of them may be listening to the podcast but I'm going to pop in there and you're going to get the best of me. That's all I can say. Get you a soapbox. Dude, I got to read to you a message I got in my DMs. This is a legit message, real deal message from somebody. Now I want to preface this by saying that we are not making any claims based off of this message. This is just an anecdote from somebody who felt like they needed to send me a message. So this person says, I'm a big fan of the podcast and weekly listener. I hear you guys talk about Ned and its benefits. So Ned is the hemp oil extract that we were sponsored by. I started using it on my autistic brother. His violent episodes are gone. His OCD is less. He opens his eyes because he said, she says he always closed them from sensory overload and he actually gets himself ready in the morning and overall level of functioning is improved. His behaviors have been mineral, excuse me, minimal, honestly in shock with his response. How crazy is that? Now this is again, this is- That's amazing. This is an anecdote. Yeah, but it reminds me of the topic that we just had when we were commenting on the CBD post that Stephie Cohen had posted a couple weeks ago when we were talking about that on the show and the thing that I didn't like about it was just like, hey, there are people that are- Of course, the fitness space I think is bastardizing it for sure by it's like it's gonna build a bunch of muscle by taking fucking CBD after your workout. That's a crock of shit. Yeah, there's no evidence for that. Yeah, right. But there's a lot of people that have found a lot of benefit from the use of hemp oil. Well, here's the evidence right here. Now they're currently- There's a couple studies that show that cannabinoids may have a positive effect on autism, but they're not conclusive. It's all preliminary. That being said, pharmaceutical companies are investing money in looking at whether or not autism, symptoms of autism can be treated or at least ameliorated with cannabinoids, CBD and other cannabinoids. So the fact that pharmaceutical companies are investing money shows you that they've heard enough anecdote to show that there may be something there. Now, right now, all we have to work on is anecdote, but here's the anecdotes that are the most common. It reduces seizures. That one's actually supported by clinical studies. In fact, that's why CBD is being prescribed at the moment, Epidiolex, I believe is a drug that is prescribed for certain types of seizures. Symptoms of autism, that there's a lot. People who have autoimmune diseases, Crohn's disease being one of them. There's a lot of anecdote around that. There's a lot of anecdote around anxiety. So people are saying that it helps ease their symptoms of anxiety. And we've talked about how cannabinoids work in the body and I've also explained how the cannabinoid receptors are so prevalent throughout the whole body that there is a plausible way that cannabinoids could possibly affect so many different things because these cannabinoids are found everywhere. So it is very interesting. Now the cool thing about hemp oil is it's legal and you can try it for yourself. So although there may be limited clinical evidence, if you want to see if it works for yourself, if you don't want to wait another 10, 15 years for all the studies to really come out, you could do it. You could try it. It's not illegal. Hemp oil I believe is legal in all 50 states if I'm not mistaken. You could try it for yourself and then test it. Try it for a week. Stop taking it for a week. Try it again for a week. See if you can notice a difference. And like again, I've been getting lots of messages. The people that I get the most messages from are people that just struggle with anxiety. If you're someone who's really anxious all the time or have a trouble settling down your brain or your body in general before you go to bed at night, like those are probably the most common that I hear. Like wow, it's made a big difference for me. I mean, I've used it with my bulldogs like because they're anxious and it's helped settle them down when we travel and do things. And so there's, I see lots of little applications for it and I get why someone like Steffi did a post like that because it for sure has gotten to a point where now every fitness influencer is now promoting. They have CBD water for God's sake. Yeah, and they do that with anything though. Any like protein, powder, like, you know, they're going to add, you know, all these like, you know, like fortifying with all these vitamins and, you know, they're going to overdo anything that they find value in in order to sell a product. And so this is the unintended result of having a product like CBD out there that if, you know, like specifically used for certain purposes, it has a lot of value, but it can also, you know, sound like snake oil. Again, if you're going to try something out, make sure it has a full spectrum cannabinoids. It's not just CBD because so far the studies are showing that cannabinoids together are far more effective than when they're isolated and most products are just, you know, just speaking of protein, Justin, I want to tell you guys a little self experiment that I've been doing. So you guys know, I was kind of on this, this upward trajectory of body weight. Yeah. For a little while I was on this. Dude, I like thick cell. I love you guys. You were on the Justin program. I got like a compadre over here. Yeah. I was on the bulky time. Yeah. It was my buddy bulk. So now I got a little too far, right? My body weight was creeping above 215 and I was starting to put on some clothes. And I was like, wait, there's a picture of me. I don't remember who took of it, but I was sitting down and I had a little bit of a, a little bit of a belly roll. I was like, all right, time to reverse gears. So I cut my calories down by about 500 calories. So I dropped about 500 calories, but I changed my macro profile. So I was consuming around 140 to 150 grams of protein, which is a decent amount of protein for a guy who's, you know, 215. That's not bad at all. But I changed my profile to where I reduced my carbs a little bit. And then I bumped my protein up even higher. So now I'm eating about 200 grams of protein, lower calories. You want to know what's crazy? Stronger, stronger in the gym, lower calories, higher protein. And you know, of course the studies, there are studies that show that this can actually happen, but I understand why protein is so heavily lauded in this fitness space. Like, you know, we call it the magic, you know, macronutrient. It is part of the process. Oh, it was one of the first, when I think back to my early twenties and really started diving into nutrition and trying to piece together, like how do I build, truly build muscle, you know, even after I was lifting weights, tracking my protein was one of the most significant differences ever. I mean, when I started, that's why too, since day one, we've done this podcast. I've been an advocate for making sure that you get that, even if you have to take a bar or a shake, although it's ideal to get it through food, I know personally how challenging that was for me to hit those targets. And I know that when I made a point, like, okay, 200 grams, I'm gonna hit 200 grams every single day, consistently, man, I would feel the difference and see the difference. I would feel a significant difference in my lifts. I would see the muscle come in my body and then the minute that I stopped paying attention and caring and tracking, I would lose. I would definitely feel myself get weaker in the gym. I would lose some muscle mass. And then when I go back to tracking, I'd see, well, sure, shit, I was back down to 130, 120 a day. Yeah, now to be clear, if I go up to 300 grams of protein, I'm not, I'm most likely not gonna see any additional benefits. Right, yeah. I went from 150 to 200, which is still less than one gram per pound of my body weight. And I'm relatively lean. I wouldn't say I'm super lean, but I'm relatively lean. But yeah, protein is like, if you want to lose fat, if you want to build muscle, high protein helps both. It's like, it's the one thing where, you know, carbs and fats can be manipulated or whatever. And some people would say, it's, you know, losing fats, these are low carb or whatever. But when it comes to, you want to burn body fat, high protein preserves more muscle and has a satiety effect that does help you eat less. When you want to build muscle, high protein accelerates the process. So I can see why it's, you know, again, it's considered the magic macronutrient. It's not the magic macronutrient, but I can see why it's got that repetition. Hey, Doug, are they gonna knock off the contractors back there or what? Yeah. Destruction? Well, yeah, there was next door. Yeah. Did you have to go fight somebody? Yeah. No, I didn't. Doug, the enforcer. Hey, I'm just happy they're fixing the bathrooms. I know. I can't complain too much. Were they nice about it when you went back there? Well, no, it was actually next door here. It wasn't the bathroom people. What are they doing next door? They're dragging heavy furniture around. Oh, okay. Oh, that wasn't even the guy. No, that's not even them. Oh, that's all right. That would be our luck. That's hilarious. Yeah, yeah. And I thought we were supposed to, I thought we agreed that we would send each other the memo when we wear this, the shirt here, buddy. Oh, yeah, it's yours. Sorry, I didn't get your memo. Are you guys always paired with Doug? I feel like, yeah, Doug and I are Doug and Sal are Doug and Adam. It's like, yeah, we're always in somewhat of an alignment with Doug. He's the apparel whore. He just goes around everybody. I need more clothing, I guess. We're all sponsored by Viori, Doug. So we're all going to wear the same shit. But that's how it goes. Dude, I was at my cousin's house recently, and we were hanging out, and he bought Lulu, Ethleisure Wear pants or whatever. So of course, you know, he comes out and he's wearing them. I'm like, what are you fucking doing, dude? And he's like, what? What's wrong? How dare you spin that one in that direction? I'm like, bro, I work with Viori, who's their competitor. So number one, why are you doing that? Number two, Viori's superior. And so, no, they're not. I like this one too. They're both good or whatever. I'm like, all right, I'm going to go, I'm going to go give you a pair of my pants, try them on, and let me know your honest opinion. So he goes in the bedroom, tries on my Viori, comes out and he's like, hmm, you know, you know, and you know you're wrong, but you don't want to do him. And he's like, that might be something to this. Yeah. So anyway, later on, he's ordering. Hey, what's your discount code again? Yeah, bro, the fuck's wrong with you? You wear those ones that you're wearing right now the most, right? Are those the ones that you wear the most? This is the easiest sell, dude. All I have to do is get people to actually wear it. In my family especially, in my friends, yeah. It's just like, once you put it on, dude, like it totally like changes. I didn't even like to wear jeans anymore, which is funny because I love jeans. They're comfortable. Well, that was the chat I squatted in these the other day. When we first partnered with them, which is now, it's been two over two years now, and we were courting even before that, the hardest part was they were still on the rock. People hadn't heard, not enough people had heard of the brand. Yeah. It was still small enough to where it was a product that people, I don't know what that is, and if you were already attached to something like Lulule, it was a hard sell to get people to go away from that because Lulule's got a great product line for themselves and the material they use is incredible. Once you find something you really like, but once they had been around long enough, then got a little more popular, and then once people started buying, the reason why we can continue and have a partnership with them is because of that, because of the return customers, because the way our partnership is set up is- Their lifetime value of a customer must be through the roof. Yeah. And that's what you bank on. You bank on, and they have stuff where, if anything goes wrong with it, they have the Nordstrom type of policy. If you wear something and you have a tear or a rip or someone that, you could have had it for six months, you send it back to them, no questions asked, they'll send you another pair, and that's because they can stand by the quality of it. It's so, so nice. Dude, I've got to share with you guys a study. I totally just remembered about this last minute. I was going to send this to you, Adam, because I know you'd be interested in this. So this article was published in the Telegraph, which is a website from the UK, but it was based on a study where they were testing mothers and babies and the way that their brains operate and how they sync up. So a mother's brain and a baby's brain, oftentimes when the mother's holding the baby, they can test the brains to show that they kind of sync up a little bit. So like the baby's almost getting the cues from the mom, and the brain starts to sync up and act very similarly. But the study showed that when the mother was happy, that happens much faster, and it's much more of a solid connection. So here's what the article says. It says, researchers discovered that mothers and babies' brains act together in a mega network where brain waves fall in line, allowing for greater connection and empathy. But that level of connectivity varies according to the mother's emotional state. When mothers express more positive emotions, their brain becomes much more strongly connected with their baby's brain. Wow, how weird is that? How the hell do we track that and find that out? Well, they can track brain waves, that we've been able to do that for a long time. So what they're looking at is they're looking at the brain waves and they're finding, they're seeing that the brain waves start to sync up. The same pattern. Yes. How common is that? I mean, for all of us right now to be talking, do we start to get into it because we're having a conversation together? Do they start to get on the same path? I would surmise that some of that happens, right? You're talking to someone and you feel their vibe, their energy. You just totally sync up with the flow state. Yeah, and I feel like the stronger that happens, the more you can connect with someone, the better your chemistry is with that person. That makes sense that that would be the definition of what group flow is, what's probably happening. Anything of a SEAL team, when they're all working together, there's no verbal... In the same brain state. Yeah, as they get in the same state where they're almost as one. But at some point, they're going to find an artificial way to sync more people up together, I'm sure of it. I mean, that's what things like Halo and those things are supposed to do for the athletes, right? That's why they practice with those headsets on the warriors they use Halo right before, or why they practice. And I think the idea of that is to try and get everybody on the same brain length, which is only going to promote better passing and moving the ball and seeing the court better. I would assume that what helps that is the more you work with someone and the more you practice being synced up together the more you practice being in the same wavelength the more you practice focusing on things the same way, the easier that that starts to happen because then you see that person, you have a history of syncing up. Yeah, it's like repetitions then creates a way for it to get way down in there into the subconscious almost where it's like, you don't think about it, that you just react because you just know where to go. What is subconscious? What's crazy to me is the studies they have on this with mothers and babies and speaking as a man, we will never understand what that kind of connection feels like because like Katrina, right? She carried Max for nine months, she grew, she was everywhere, sleep, bathroom, car, everywhere. She's not just with this baby, she's growing this baby. Yeah. That's got to create a bond that none of us, I don't think well. I know it's part of their body, you know? And not to downplay the love and connection a father has for their kids. I love my kids to death and I feel very connected to them, but that's got to be something that, there's got to be something special or different about that that I don't think we'll ever be able to experience, maybe in the future when we, I'm sure they'll create. Well, we start out with the tadpoles. They're alive. You're connected to the sperms. Yeah, their eggs aren't alive yet, so we got that going for us. That's hilarious. Hey, speaking of kids, I thought you told me the other day that you had to borrow some money from your kids. Well, things are getting rough, huh? Yeah, it would seem that way, right? We could give Justin a raise now. I think he's been working hard enough. I mean, how often do you have cash on hand? Like for whatever, I just thought it was hilarious because I brought that up because we, you know, there's certain things like at school, they need, you know, to hand in some cash for certain projects or certain things that they need for the teacher. And like Courtney's like, you have cash. I'm like, I don't have cash. You have cash. And then we, at the end of the day, we had to like go ask, you know, our youngest. We had to ask Everett. We're like, hey, I know you have some cash because you just had like his tooth out from the tooth fairy. I thought we just paid him. And it's like, we'll totally pay you back. You know, and then he got all like, you know, you guys, like, please, please pay me back. Like, I'm like, make sure like I get it back. And we're like, yeah, we got it. Don't worry about it. You don't have to kick your ass, okay? Yeah. I messed up with the tooth fairy with my daughter because same reason. I never have cash on me, right? So her tooth comes out. It's like, you know, right before bed or whatever. I'm like, I don't want to have to give her like a book or something. Here's a pencil. Yeah. Hell of a pencil. Well, no, I don't want. I'm like, I don't want to have to go to the freaking ATM and all that stuff. All I had was a 20. That's way too much for a tooth. Oh yeah. Way too much. Can't justify that. But my laziness was more powerful than the rationale. So I gave her a 20, right? Now every goddamn tooth she loses is a $20 bill. You know, I can't go down. Yeah, yeah. Once you give him a 20, it's like, you know. Why did I get a five this time? Did I do something wrong? It just felt wrong, though. I'm like taking $2, you know. And you have to pay him back, right? Of course. If you don't pay him back, that's like forever scar, kid. That's all he thinks about, you know? Like they think in point A and point B, like there's two things. Like it's just like, if you don't do it, there's no other factors involved. Like you didn't give me the money, you know? Like that's my money. How much did he give you? Two bucks. Oh, it was $2. Yeah. So that's like all his money. I was going to say, you could trick him a little bit. Like if he gave you a five, you can give him like three ones. Be like, I'm giving you more of that. Look at this, more of these than the one you gave me. This is a math lesson you're learning. Make a little profit. Yeah, yeah. Then he really hates you when he can finally do math later on. Wait a minute. I see that to my siblings. They're like, oh, you have a quarter? I'll give you five of these pennies for that quarter. Okay. Dude, so it's been raining a lot lately. Did you guys see, there's this brand. There's this brewery that's up in Northern California that's actually making fun of the whole like blackout thing with PG&E. I thought it was like hilarious. Oh, wow. What are they doing? So they branded like the can. So it looks just like it's like a PG&E label. And they called it mandatory blackout. That's the name of the beer. Oh, wow. Clever. Yeah. So you can like pop one off when the power's out. Pull that up. I want to see that. I pull that up. I just appreciate clever marketing and branding. No, totally. Like you saw that with the whole like Storm Area 51, with the beer cans and all that. Dude, beer, hey, I don't know why nobody else does this or maybe the beer companies just do such a good job of paying these guys and girls. But the people that run the advertising in beer companies, I think, they get it. They're on like a whole another level compared to like everybody. Of course. They've always been that way. Of course. What do you think? Those are the ones you look forward to at Super Bowl or anything else. It's like, what are the beer companies? They even use PG&E's branding. Yeah. Yeah. They got a bunch of backlash, I guess, because of course, like PG&E employees, I'm sure were just like, yeah, whatever. Because they were like, there was another one that was way more aggressive. It was like, basically it was like, fuck PG&E or something. And you're just like, okay, that's, hey, that wasn't very clever. What's the brand, Doug? It's Imperial. So what's the brand of the beer? Barrel brothers. Imperial brothers? Barrel. All Barrel brothers. And it's where it's, where at? Northern California? Yeah, it's up in Northern California. Sounds like a great idea. Everybody loses their power. Your security is down. Let's all get drunk. Yeah, let's make a party about it. Let's all get drunk. What could possibly go wrong? What could go wrong? You know what I'm saying? Oh, Sonoma County. Yeah, no potential anarchy and apocalyptic things. This is Danny's area. We should have Danny go have one. Did you guys, are you guys familiar with what happened? I don't remember what year. It was in the 70s. Maybe Doug can look this up. Are we familiar with that? No, I'm not. Are you guys familiar with the 70s? Yeah, I was born in 80s. That was a good decade. No, there was a blackout in New York City, I think it was, in the 70s. Doug can remember this. Yeah, I remember that. Doug was in college this time. Driving his Model T4. That's when his first grand kid was born. This phonograph. Doug and Moses were friends back in the day by the way. No, so there was a blackout in New York City. I don't remember how long it lasted, but it caused major anarchy. Like lights went out and then crime went through the roof. Really? Yes, it was the New York City blackout in 1977. Just everybody looting everybody's stuff. Oh, dude. How long did it last? Was it like a long blackout? I mean, it had to been for people to start looting and going crazy. Let's see. Let me see. It was the summer. 9.30 p.m., what did it say? 24 hours, a 25-hour outage. Oh, wow. Yes. See, that's crazy. It was less than it was a day, bro. That's insane. See, that, that, I think like this, this is what I was worried about, like with the whole like, man, like we know ahead of time when the blackouts are going to occur too. So it's like, you know, if you're this like savvy crime guy, you know, like, that's the perfect time to do it. Yeah. Well, to be fair, New York City in the 70s had terrible, terrible crime. It was not a great place to be. Yeah, they really cleaned it up. They did. They got to clean it up aggressively, is actually what happened. There was a little controversy around that. There was. But yeah, it was not a very safe place in the 70s. So the lights went out for 25 hours, and it went crazy. It went absolutely nuts. Anyway, who's that guy in the forum people were posting about that you guys said is on a show or something on Silicon Valley? Oh, I don't watch this show. Yeah, that's right. God, what is his name? Can you pull that up, Doug? I totally forgot his name. The Indian guy from so, from the show. He's Pakistani, but yeah. Yeah. Kumail. Kumail, thank you. Yeah. He's a stand-up comedian too. But yeah, he got jacked. Like he apparently like he got hired on for this Marvel series too. And so he obviously like needed to play the part of a superhero. So he needed to put on some muscle mass and went through this aggressive training program. I think even Jocko and his team were part of his training. So I don't know what he looked like before. All I saw in the forum was a picture of him after and he did look pretty fit. Is that, was that a radical transformation? He was pretty radical. He was pretty radical. Yeah, he didn't like have any visible muscle definition or anything. No. For, yeah. And I've seen him on Silicon Valley and I've seen a couple of his stand-ups and he didn't look anything like that. Did they say how long it took for him to get there? Because there's like a big deal about it. I mean, everybody's, I've had, I've had a ton of DMs over and people asking if he's on steroids just now. And it's such a funny question to me when people first of all even care about that because it's like whatever. I actually think you'd be a fool not to take steroids. Right. You're a, you're a comedian, right? You, your, your big hit is, I think Silicon Valley is probably his biggest hit show, right? And then you get signed with Marvel, probably the biggest contract of his fucking life. And part of the deal is you need to be jacked going into it. And you have X amount of months, maybe at most. I doubt they give him years to plan for that. Yeah. I'm going to guess like six months, but probably more. Right. I mean, the stuff that we know about testosterone and how you can use it, I mean, I, and I'm in his place. I go higher, you know, to two or three of the best people in the field of nutritionists. And yeah, I'm for sure. Some hormone, you know, lab or whatever. Yeah. Doug, if you could pull up his picture, because from what I recall, he did look fit, but it didn't look like he was. No, he was not. He was never fit. No, no, no. What I mean is the after. Oh yeah. So what I mean to look like. No, no, no. What I've been telling people is, no, it's very, he has a obtainable look naturally, but I doubt. Oh, there he is. But I doubt he did. I'm sure he used an ambulance to get there. Well, here's the thing though. Think, let's pause. He does, he looks pretty impressive. He looks pretty impressive, but he doesn't look like, I wouldn't look at that. If I didn't know any better, and I just saw him, I think he was just a committed fitness enthusiast. But we also need to be fair. Here's a guy who, his job is to look fit for a role. Six months, imagine. Six months, he's got tons of money. He's got somebody making his meals for him. All he's doing is training and getting good sleep. You can make a radical change in six months. If you don't have to. You can put a big debt. If you don't have to worry about anything else, like you don't have to worry about the work. That was me. I mean, I wasn't working really. My whole from fat to fit to competing, to professional journey, I was dedicated to that. It was not much other things on my plate at that time. And you absolutely can make a radical change in that amount of time. Yeah, because especially if you went from not working out to all of a sudden, you know. Or a terrible diet and not exercising, and then you swing the other direction. And so I got a lot of questions around whether I think he's natural or not. And, you know, I say that his. He could be natural. Yeah. The look he has is obtainable naturally. Totally. I think you could look that way naturally 100%. There's guys that look even more impressive that are natural than what he is. But do I think he has probably not? Like, I mean, I wouldn't if I was in his shoes and I had to get ready for, if Marvel called me today and said, yo, Adam, you got six months to look the most impressive. $5 million. It's funny because you see who's given him the most hate right now is the other comedians. Oh, really? Like, of course, you know, like it's just like, oh, all of a sudden on the sauce, you know, I mean, that's like, that's almost the button that everybody just hacks right away. Oh, gosh, I know. I saw Shabi throw something up on it. He's thrown some shade. It might be, it might actually, you know, it's funny comedians being a comedian is the only profession I can think about or getting fit might actually hurt you. Right. Like, if you're a fit, good looking person on stage, it's harder to be funny. Yeah, unless you, yeah, that's the thing. If that's part of the act, you know, a lot of times too, like some comedians have lost a lot of weight and then they didn't get received quite the same way. Well, Jonah Hill, way funnier fat than when he's lean. Yeah, it's just true. I mean, I'll agree with that too. I think he's a great actor. That's the unfortunate part. Yeah, he's like more lovable. He's like, hey. Speaking of fit comedians, I, you know what? And I'm almost a little embarrassed to admit this, but I think that one of the best shows on television right now is the Marvelous Miss Moselle. Oh, yeah. I just got started. I just started that too. The third season just came. And we, we benched it right out. It's so fucking good. Really? It's, it's funny as shit. The, it's a period piece. So you could really see like, you know, the fifties. They did a really accurate job. What an original story to tell? Show me another movie or, you know, it's, we're at a point now where television and movies have been around so long. It's hard to find original, original content. Almost everything's remade of something else. Yeah. Show me a show that depicts the, the fifties like this. And, and from this perspective, it's a, it's a woman who gets cheated on by her, her husband. That then drives her to pursue her, her kind of career dreams, which is stand-up comedy as a female. In the fifties? In the fifties. Oh yeah. Leaves her. Growing up from a well off, you know, family. A rich family. Right. And she goes, so like such an original plot and then the characters that they pick in the show are just fucking phenomenal. You brought it up enough times. I'll check it out. I can't believe you, you guys haven't watched it. It's really, really good. No, I'm looking for a show too. I like, I'm watching The Mandalorian with the kids, but I haven't seen, I'll check that out. It's, I, I say it's, and it's a great, both, you know, male or female. I think it's great. But it's definitely, they, they depict a lot of powerful female roles in it. Really fucking well. And a time when that was not very popular. Oh cool. And so I think they do an incredible job and it's hilarious and it's smart. Like it's a good question. It gives you a little bit of history of stand-up comedy too. Yeah. Which is cool. Yeah. No, it's just. That was all at the beginning of it all. Right. It's, it's for sure up there with one of, if not my favorite show that's on, it's on Amazon. So you can stream it on there if you have Prime. So you, you gotta watch. You and Jessica will like it. First question is from Tyler Hagen-Fitt. Is progressive overload as important for hypertrophy? Or is stressing the muscle as hard as you can each workout sufficient? All right. So before I answer this, let's, let's talk about what progressive overload means for the listeners who might not be familiar with that term. Essentially what that means is adding more weight or adding more exercises or more reps. Gradually. Essentially doing more as you progress in your workout. So is that important for, in hypertrophy means building muscle, is it important that you eventually progress to where you could do more exercises, more reps or lift more weight in order to build muscle? Yes. It's very important. That being said, don't take that to being the only thing you need to do to build muscle because I've had many occasions with clients where I reduced their volume of working out. I've reduced the amount of reps or exercises and then they built muscle. So progressive overload is an important thing to factor in, but it can be overdone and when it's overdone, it actually results in reduced or less progress. Now I want to challenge that a little bit, not because I disagree, but I think that's less often the case. More people I think don't progressively overload consistently enough to see progress week over week, month over month, year over year correctly or consistently in order to reap the benefits. It's more rare to get the case that you're talking about which does happen where, and that typically falls in the same category as the people that we talk about that abuse the protein, that are the hardcore people that never take days off, the fitness fanatics. So if you're listening and you're part of the fitness community, I agree with what you're saying. And I do think that those people, I too have seen that and myself reap the benefits of going from training six, seven days a week, reducing the volume tremendously, and I saw huge benefits from it. But I think that the average person, and I like to talk about progressive overload or volume in general to clients. Like so the way I kind of talk about progressive overload is in relation to how I talk about volume in general to clients. Now what I have found from being the guy who tracks all the time for a long time is that we have this tendency to always kind of find homeostasis and even with our training. So we'll have this great week or two or even three weeks in a row of consistently training a little harder and kind of pushing the weight up. And then we have a rough week, we're busy, something happens, and you still get to the gym and you think you're doing well, but what you didn't realize was just that little bit of being off that week, you stopped a set early, you didn't quite lift as much weight, and the volume kind of comes back down. And a lot of times this is the cause of people's plateaus and me teaching somebody to track their volume and actually pay attention, which is sets, times reps, times weight gives you total volume. And then tell them like, listen, your goal week over week when we're training is to make sure you at least hit your total volume for that workout compared to the one the week before or slightly increase that just a little. And it doesn't take much, just that little bit of increase week over week. This is what I had to do when I was competing because when I was competing, everything was on the clock. There was, I can't have a week of setback. I've got to be making progress. If I'm going to make my way up the amateur ladder and into the pros, I've got to be progressing and improving all the time. And so there was not room for taking 10 steps back or getting lazy for a week or two or falling off consistency. So I was diligently tracking and volume was one of the number one things that guided me through my progress during that journey. And that's what I found was this natural inconsistency that most people fall into. Well, there's something I want to add to that, two things. One, one of the problems with understanding this is people think that progressive overload is consistent and linear. It's not. If you track your progress, you don't progress every single week. Your body doesn't do that. Just doesn't work that way. No, but you can progressively overload without just strength, right? So it's not, you... You can, but there are going to be weeks where whatever reason, lack of sleep, you've pushed your body hard the previous week. Yeah, your dips. And not only that, but the formula that you're talking about, which is a common formula that we use, and it has value, you know, sets times reps times weight, there's a fault with it in the sense that lightweight, high reps disproportionately calculates volume over heavyweight and low reps. So in other words, in order to equate the volume of 10 sets of squats at 100 pounds with 10 reps, or let's just forget the sets for a second. Let's say they're equal. 10 reps at 100 pounds. That means you have to squat 1,000 pounds once. Now, that doesn't equate. It doesn't work that way. So when you're cycling your reps, as we recommend, sometimes it looks like you're doing less volume, but that's not because you're doing less volume. It's because the formula isn't perfect. So if you, like, if you do, again, if I take somebody who could use 10 reps with 100 pounds on a squat, and I put 200 pounds on the bar, they might be able to only do four reps. The volume looks like it went way down, but the intensity is part of the formula that doesn't often get factored in. And when you go heavy, it looks like you're doing way less volume, but it does place a pretty high demand and stress on the body. I think that's, again, why I think it's not flawless. Nothing is, right? And there's such an individual variance in everybody and anything we talk about, right? There's too many things that are, you have to take into consideration. But following something like this, and then understanding the benefits, like you're saying of intensity, you know, if I'm tracking volume and I'm just, my goal is to add a little, and I'm talking little, start small, which is why Maps and a Bulk is where we push everyone to start, which is a two to three day a week type of a program which gives me lots of room to scale up and progressively overload with other days and longer workouts, whatever, in the future. So I think that you slowly overloading volume by adding a tiny bit, week over week, and then manipulating intensity based off of the points that you're making right now. So if I had a really rough rest, I didn't sleep very well that day, but I'm consistent with my training and I'm competing, so I'm not missing very much at all. So that's the day where I'm gonna hit my volume target, but I'm gonna back off the intensity. I'm not gonna do the single rep for 1,000 pounds. I'm gonna do lightweight, get a pump, get the volume up there. So I keep my volume. I keep my body used to training that much so that we, so atrophy doesn't set in at all or start to set in. So I wanna keep the volume up there, but I back off the intensity because I know that my body is stressed today or I didn't get adequate rest or my nutrition isn't where it's supposed to be. And then the next day when I'm feeling great or two, three days later of good consistent sleep and good food, now when I go back and I hit that leg day again this time, now the intensity goes up. That's why I think this is a good concept and principle to understand, but I don't think it's a good idea to take it to heart because there's a lot of other factors that can determine whether or not you're gonna build muscle or not. And if you take this to heart, it's not gonna always lead you in the right direction, but it's something that you need to consider. It can get you hurt. It can get you hurt. If all you're concerned about is progressively overloading, adding weight, adding weight, adding weight. Or over train. And exactly. And you're not paying attention to your stress, your sleep, your nutrition, then you absolutely, this could head down a bad path, right? Well, this has always been the criticism I've had of a lot of these apps that track that progress and it gets you so fixated on exactly the numbers moving forward or not. And so there are so many other variables that interrupt that process that you have to account for, but it is a good baseline, I think. I think it's something that like it's, I want to achieve this and to be able to then keep perpetuating forward. This is a measure I can look into. It reminds me of how I feel about tracking nutrition. I mean, the goal is not to, it's not like something you should do for the rest of your life, but when I think about some foundational principles that I think everybody should go through, if you really want to learn about building muscle, tracking volume and understanding progressive overload is by far one of the core principles, in my opinion. Does that mean that you should live and die by that principle? Absolutely not. There's too many other variables that come into play that I agree with you guys. But when I think of some of the most pivotable things in my fitness journey personally and with clients, when I taught this principle and they understood it, it really opened up their eyes to why probably they were stuck in a lot of plateaus, because like I said, people that aren't tracking, aren't paying attention to it, it's really amazing how your body just kind of naturally goes to this place where you feel comfortable. You might have one or two days where you really stretch yourself, volume-wise and maybe intensity-wise, and then you kind of naturally back off. And then when you pull back and you look at the entire month, you go, oh shit, I pretty much average the same, you know, every single week. In the body's job is to make things more efficient for them. It's one of the tools. And again, you can actually reduce your volume, reduce the weight, reduce the sets, and then all of a sudden see your body progress. So it's not a rule, it's just something to look at and consider. And of course at the end of the day, you know, the answer that will say is, you know, it depends. It depends. On a lot of different things. But I want to point out to the last part of this, which is, or stressing the muscle as hard as you can in each workout sufficient. That's a terrible idea. Totally. So we didn't really address that. We were going to, you know, debating back and forth on the importance. No, the progress can be incremental. It can be tiny. You know, let's, if I did 10 reps last week with a weight for bench press, in fact, I recommend it to be incremental. If I did 10 reps last week and then this week I did 11 reps, I'm probably better off just doing one extra rep than pushing to see if I could do another two or three reps. The more incremental I make my progress, the more consistent my progress will be week over week. This is just something I've noticed for myself. If I'm stronger today than I was last week, rather than pushing to see how much stronger I am, I'm just going to be a five pounds or a rep. And then next week we'll see what happens. And what I found when I have that approach is that I progress for longer and more consistently. And I end up having greater overall progress versus pushing the limit and saying just how far I can go every single time I work out. It's a great way to hit a plateau. Yeah, I think we should spend most of our time optimizing and then every once in a while you're stretching yourself outside of that. And so doing it every single workout is an awful idea. I just, that is not, it's not only not, is it? It's like beginner mistake number one. It is a big mistake. It's a big, and it's part of the culture that I don't like. You know, the beast mode all out, training to failure, having a partner squat or spot you. Come on, push, one more, one more, you got one more. Training like that, every workout is stupid. And the only people that get, like truly get away with it are the people that are hopped up on all kinds of antibiotics. And so they get away with it. And it's, even for them, it's not the most optimal way for them to try. If they would do better if they didn't do it. Right. Next question is from that fly guy. They say if you're tall, you are at a natural disadvantage for squats. Can you discuss different methods to progress and increase range of motion? Will I hit a point where I can't advance any further doing high bar back squats? All right, so I'm gonna say something and then I want you to answer this, Adam, because I feel like you have the best experience being a very tall guy who's progressed a squat from terrible to phenomenal in a very short period of time. But before you do that, here's the reason why tall people have been said to have disadvantages when it comes to certain exercises. What you're dealing with are levers. And the longer the lever is, the more force needs to be put on that lever to get it to lift the same amount of weight. So think about it this way. If I grab a shovel with a very, very long handle and I grab the very end of the handle and try and lift the shovel off the ground, it's gonna be much more difficult than if I grab the handle closer to where the weight of the shovel is. More gravitational forces that are working against you. It's just leverage. It's just the way leverage works. So when you're tall, you have longer levers. Now that being said, tall people can oftentimes make up for it by having bigger muscles. Tall people have bigger muscles, typically, because they're taller. So when you look at the records in strength, in general strength, you look at strong men, they tend to be big dudes. They tend to be tall dudes. They're not typically short people. So yes, there's that leverage advantage, but it doesn't, but it's not the advantage that everybody says it is, because the big people typically, maybe not on a pound for pound basis, but generally overall wise, can tend to have higher potentials for strength. Yes and no. For sure. And I think that the examples you have of that are more deadlifting. It's advantageous to have long limbs when you're pulling. When you're pulling something, that the leverage is in your favor. Because if you think of how a deadlift works, having long arms. Yeah, long arms is specific. It's a shorter range of motion. It's a shorter range of motion that I have to lift the bar off the ground. And plus, again, also physics, understanding that if I have this long lever, you think of where the hips are at, to where my arms go, having that to pull something up is advantageous. So having long limbs for a deadlift is actually, which is why I can deadlift significantly more than what I can squat. So I don't think that we see the greatest squatters that are tall. I don't think that's true. But they're also not the shortest, is my point. Yeah, maybe not the... That's what I mean, because taller people have bigger muscles. So if you go to the extremes, it makes perfect sense. You're not going to get a seven-foot basketball player and have them squat very effectively but because of the long levers. But it doesn't go all the way down to like, okay, fine. Yeah, five to five-five guys, not squatting the most nowadays. And even the strongman you brought up, too. You always see their feet being so much more substantial, like geared towards the deadlift, for instance, and carrying things versus the actual squat mechanics. But they are still putting up quite impressive numbers squat-wise. It does. And the things that have helped me with this is how I've reframed almost everything in my life. I look at adversity and challenge and I've tried to look at that instead of poor me or that sucks or make excuses and oh, cool. This is an area that I can work hard at and try and improve. And even though when people look at my squat on my Instagram, I get all the trolls and it's not impressive and it's like whatever. To me, it's very impressive to what I've accomplished. I was a terrible back squatter. I had chronic low back pain. I had bursitis in my hips. I could barely break 90 degrees when I squat. And three plates was heavy for me. So for me to be able to get to a place now where I can sit in a deep, deep squat and my squat mechanics feel really good and my hip pain and my bursitis is gone. My low back pain is gone. And I'm relatively strong at squatting. That to me means everything. But it's taken, you know, Sal alluded to it being a short while. It's felt like a long time for me. It's been a lot of work. You know, I constantly was focused on this. So when and when you're tall, there's common areas that I think that you are challenged in. And one of those I think of the number one in my opinion and I did a YouTube video on this recently is the combat stretch and ankle mobility. Yeah, because the levers are so long, you need probably more ankle mobility than somebody who's short. For sure. My knees need to be able to travel over my toes a lot further than what Justin's knees have to go over his toes. Because my shins are so long and in order to get my ass all the way to the ground, I've got to have that mobility in my ankles to allow the... And that was the number one limiting factor for me. As soon as I would get a little bit lower than 90, I would hit that end range of motion for my ankle mobility and then the breakdown in the squat would happen, you know. And then I would feel the pain in my hips and in my low back. So ankle mobility first was everything was addressing that. And then the next thing after that was working on my hip mobility, the ability for me to open up my hips and drop that deep. I just unfamiliar, familiar territory for me. And I had to put a lot of work on internal rotation and external rotation of my hips, which is basically living in the 90-90 and all the transitions in that. So basically focusing on 90-90 and the combat stretch, those two mobility drills and doing them, I'm talking two, three times a day every day. And that sounds like a lot, but I'm not spending 20, 30 minutes. Anytime I have an opportunity to jump down on the carpet and get into a 90-90 position, I would. Anytime that I could get down into the combat stretch, I would and I would spend two to three minutes doing this to improve that. Just constantly. And what's awesome now and why I do like to share this because it was so life-changing for me when we talk about the low back pain and hip pain that I had is it's cool that I don't have to put that work in anymore. Like it's super, all I have to do now is do things that promote that mobility, which is squatting really deep. So now when I get ready, all the work and effort that I used to have to put into the 90-90 and the combat stretch, I can get now right down into that really deep position and I can connect to my feet, connect to my hips, and actually just kind of get and intensify that position real quick for a minute before I get into my squats and I'm ready to roll. Oh yeah, if you want to get good at the best exercises, MAPS Prime Pro is your program, 100%. Because that's what it's designed for. You go through the different joints, work on your areas of mobility, and then watch yourself improve. That being said, there's going to be exercises that you're going to be better at naturally, and there's going to be exercises that you're not going to be as good at naturally. Regardless of how much mobility work, for example, Adam does on a squat, he's naturally built to deadlift, so he's probably always going to be a much better deadlift. You say this a lot, Sal, that I think it's important that everybody pay attention to this and you are. You're going to find areas that you're not good at, but that's where the most room for improvement is. So, and we get out, we just got asked a question recently, like, you know, how do you guys stay motivated with training and exercise after 20 years of doing it? Well, part of the way that I stay motivated is finding the areas and aspects of my training that I suck at and putting a lot of energy and focus into it. It's the reason why it's fun is not because I'm good and impressive. I can't post any cool Instagram posts or I don't look impressive in the gym next to everybody else, but what's fun and interesting for me is that there's lots of room for improvement. And when you've been training for as long as we have, it's hard to get those leaps and bounds still. I mean, this question to me, there's no real secret hacks to that. I mean, it's really the same rules apply to anybody, like in terms of where you're stable and where you lack mobility, that's what you need to address. And it might take you a bit longer based off of the levers and the mechanics you're dealing with, but it's worth it. So going through that process may seem like it's daunting and it may take you a bit longer than somebody else that it just comes more naturally towards, but you just get so much more payout when it is more difficult. Yeah, the progress of going from not being able to do something well, to being able to do something well is phenomenal. But then the progress from now that you could do something well, you can unlock all of its potential value. So if we're talking about an exercise like a squat, the potential value of a squat is tremendous. It's one of the best possible exercises that most people can do. So to get yourself from not squatting well to being able to squat well, amazing, amazing progress. You get great results, but now that you could do it well, now you can unlock the potential of one of the most powerful effective exercises in resistance training known to man. This is true for other very effective exercises that we've talked about on the podcast. So if you find yourself not being able to do some of them, get to the point where you can do them, because then when you can do them, boy, the results are phenomenal. And that's part, the major process is getting there. And I think this message gets misunderstood sometime on our show because we've got people that, oh, they hear us talking about deep squatting, and then they just go out there and they start deep squatting because you hear us talk about the benefits of that. And they get hurt. Yeah, and then you get hurt or it bothers your low back or whatever. And it's like, no, the idea is that you put in all the work so you can get to that point. And that is, you know, that's the hardship. That's the shit that's the practice, right? That's the stuff that is boring and laborious to do. And you've got to do those things to get to the place to where you can. But when you do, and like Sal said, man, what it unlocks for you, it's changed my life. Like for anybody who suffers from bursitis to know what that feels like, it's a fucking, it's like someone's sticking a knife in your joint. It's an awful feeling. Bro, it's like a video game when you're playing and then you have those characters that you can't use, but then you unlock them. And then all of a sudden, you've got the wizard or whatever. Like, you know, it's like, I was thinking of a voodoo doll that you're like stabbing. Yeah. Well, that's what it feels like when you have something like that and me for having chronic low back pain to eliminate those things, because I put the work in. Yeah, it was a year and a half or so of a lot of mobility drills and working towards it. But now it's gone. Yeah, but now it's gone completely. You don't have to live with it anymore. Yeah, and now all I need to do is to keep squatting deep. And I know that I'll keep that healthy. So next question is from Eugene Kavanaugh. I'm addicted to the gym and go six times per week, even when I'm hurt. Is this good or bad? Well, obviously not good. Not a good thing. You know, exercise addiction is like any other addiction. It starts to decrease your quality of life. It reduces your ability to have good relationships with the people around you. The obvious, it can injure your body physiologically. You can cause problems for yourself. Probably if you're that addicted to the gym, it probably carries over to the way you eat and the way you supplement. Okay, here's the thing. There are a lot of things that we can do in the world that have a potential to be phenomenal for us. And then they also have the potential to be bad. Opiates have amazing potential for alleviating pain when people really need it. They also have a potential to become extremely addictive. Gambling, sex, you know, we can talk about food. You look at food, food can nourish your body, make you healthy, or you can kill yourself by being addicted to food. Exercise is no different. This is a very difficult one to conquer though because the belief is, the common belief is that exercise is good and more exercise is better. It's always good. And it's always good. And you know, it's like work. Like this is why work addiction is so difficult to beat. It's like, but I'm working. I'm not being lazy. I'm not doing anything. I'm productive. Yes. It's still can harm you. Now, here's a big question. Here's a real question. How do you reverse out of this? Boy, is that hard. Boy, is that hard. Now, first off, the only way, in my opinion, that you can address this kind of an issue is to figure out the root reason of why you're addicted to the gym. What are you medicating with fitness? Like why are you using the gym to medicate yourself? What is it that you're hiding from, running from, or numbing with working out? Are you, is it your relationship at home? Is it that you hate everything else? You hate your job? Is it that you feel depressed if you're not exercising? Or maybe you have body image issues to where if you're not working out, you're just focusing on how much you hate the way you look. If you don't find that root cause, what'll end up happening is you'll stop working out or reduce your exercise and you will find another way to medicate yourself. And it may be something else that's going to also harm you. So really got to find that root. You went right where I was going to go, which we started this episode off about talking about self-awareness. And here's an exercise that you can do for yourself around self-awareness that I think would really help. And that is tell yourself you're going to miss the gym today or for this week. And the first thoughts that come into your head and fears that come into your head, if you do that, is the secret to what Sal is alluding to right now. What are you struggling with? Yeah, if you... Is it a body thing? Yeah, if you... Yeah, if you're getting fat. Right. I'm going to take the week off. And the first bit of fear that sets in because you're going to take a week off, the things that go through your head is the key to unlocking the root cause. Because then what you need to do is unpack that. Where does that come from? Where did it start? Is it true? Why do I believe it to be true? And start to dive into that? That has to be solved first. You have to figure out why you feel that way. Why do you think it's necessary? Because we... The science is already out there to prove. You can work out two to three times a week, eat a balanced nutritional diet, and have a phenomenal physique. Phenomenal. If you eat well, train two to three times a week in the gym, you can build damn near almost any physique that you really want. I mean, aside from probably competing at the professional level in bodybuilding, you can have an incredibly healthy physique. So it's not whether that's true or not. So what is it that makes you feel that you have to do that and then start to dig deeper into that? That will give you the answer and then the area where you can start to work. Yeah, when I was addicted to exercise, it was all rooted in body image. So it was like, if I miss a day, I'm going to lose muscle. If I miss a day, I'm going to shrink. If I miss a day, I'm not going to be stronger. I'm actually going to get weaker. And that, it's funny because that drive, here's the irony. The irony is it actually reduced my gains. It actually reduced my body's ability to progress. So because I use the gym as a way to medicate my insecurity, and my insecurity being I need more muscle, and I need to get stronger, because of that, I was using it inappropriately and ineffectively, actually built less muscle as a result. I actually had less, I had worse results as a result. That's the funny thing about this is that you're going to get, whatever your insecurity is that's driving you to do this, being addicted to the gym is only going to make you look worse or whatever. Now, here's the kicker. That's not how you're going to solve this. So you can't solve this problem by saying, I'm going to work out less because it'll make me look better because it's going to feed your insecurity even more. All right. Yeah. You have to be comfortable with it. It's interesting though, because I had a friend like this too, where it was like, went from a bull rider, you know, and then went from a full-time skateboarder, then went into like this addictive, went through a phase of drugs, and then went into the gym and then became like ever, like always living in the gym, like working on a physique and was just obsessed with it because it was starting to kind of promote what he thought was like very healthy, but took a long time to unpack that, that fear of not having something that you had to always be doing, and like always having to fill that up with something was, you know, part of the problem. So yeah, that's going to take a lot of soul searching and work. All right. Next question is from Becker, 1127. I want to help my 65-year-old father get back into shape. He has arthritic knees and pain in his lower back that I believe is due to weight gain. What are some routines or techniques you would suggest to get started? You got to meet him where he's at. That's number one. So be very conscious and honest about where he's at. He's deconditioned, overweight, painful knees. Prime Pro. He's probably not exercising at all, and he's probably has a poor diet. Meet him there, okay? So now that you're where he's at, move him forward just a little bit. Now, as far as exercise routine is concerned, Adam's correct. Maps Prime Pro would be the perfect program to recommend to your dad because it's based entirely on correctional exercise. But besides that, he needs to start very, very slowly. And I can't stress this enough. Do not use your standards to judge what is considered slow. Use your dad's place where he's at. I made this mistake all the time. I'd get a client that would come in, totally deconditioned, and I'd be like, oh, okay. Three sets of squats. That's easy. Let's just do three sets of squats. Then they'd call me and be like, I'm sore. I'm sore. I can't move. I'm sore for five days. And I just wouldn't realize like three sets of squats is easy for me and easy for people to work out. But somebody who never exercises three sets of squats is way a lot, way too much. What I should have done is one, and then maybe done some stretching and some correctional work. And that would have been much more appropriate. So focus on correctional exercise number one. With nutrition, start very slow. I would say rather than taking foods away, start with adding foods in. So rather than saying, hey, dad, stop eating the pancakes or stop eating this. Say, hey, let's have you throw in some steamed vegetables once a day. Let's start with that. That's a great way to start. And it's easier for people to start from there than it is to start restricting right out the gates. Yeah. Trying to identify the limitations is everything. And I mean, this is why I've always been very focused on ways to assess clients and to properly kind of go through the functionality of the joints and see where we're healthy, where the deficiencies lie, and this was everything to me in terms of having a professional title behind being a personal trainer. It's our job really to be able to help identify these things for people. So that way they know what they can do and what they can build upon and work towards. And so for us to kind of wrap our brains to make that a more simple process, something that's a little more straightforward where you can just have them lie down on the ground and then just regain access to certain muscles and be able to just lift their hips and then see where there's pain by moving their legs in certain positions and all that kind of stuff is super valuable for somebody like this where they're riddled with pain. They don't really know what's going to work, what's not going to work. So again, kind of coming back to why Prime Pro is a good suggestion, it's a simple process of being able to just be in certain positions. Does this hurt? Does this not hurt? Let's build towards more range of motion, like get your arm to go a little further and just go through those channels so that way then we can load the body properly. And we can, so body weight exercises and just kind of like paying real close attention to what your body is telling or what his body is telling him is everything. The way I would start, because I used to love working with people just like this, right? 65-year-older, deconditioned, pain. Here's how I used to start them as a personal trainer. So let's say your dad comes in, asks me about what training looks like. I would recommend one day a week, that's how I'd start. Hey, Mr. Johnson, I'm gonna train you once a week to start with. Now I knew this, this took me years to figure out, but I realized that once a week was perfect to start with. Now eventually I'd get them up to two days or three days and then I'd get them up to doing some kind of activity on a regular basis. But we would start with once a week. Then when you'd come in, we'd start out with some stretching. We'd start out with some correctional exercise, some correctional exercise movements. I would do some light resistance training movements in between sets that have him move his body. I might do a little mild fascia release where I'm pressing on certain muscles. And the first few workouts are very, like he would leave the workout feeling better than when he walked in. The idea was to get him at the end of the workout to go, wow, I feel really good. I feel more energized. The idea was not to have him at the end of the workout be like, wow, I got my butt kicked. That was a really hard workout. Wrong approach, very, very slow, but relatively consistent. And the potential for someone like this to progress is phenomenal. You get someone like this, oh my god, at the end of a year with this very slow incremental approach, he could very easily be at the end of the year pain-free and feeling like a completely different person. And the value in that is just absolutely tremendous. And with that, go to mindpumpfree.com and download our guides and resources. They're all totally free. You can also find all of us on Instagram. You can find Justin at Mind Pump Justin. You can find me at Mind Pump Sal and Adam at Mind Pump Adam.