In this episode of Mind Pump, we answer questions asked by listeners like you. So we answer four fitness and health questions, but then the way we open the episode up, as we talk about current events, things that are in the news, we talk about our lives, we also mention our sponsors. So here's what we talked about in this episode. We started by talking about the meaning of rock and roll. Justin told us what rock and roll means, and he was right. I can't believe you guys didn't know that. Yeah, we were wrong. Episode 1198, finally, Justin said something. I can't add it here with all this dramatic nonsense. Then I talked about a study that showed that people can predict when other people are sick just by looking at their face. That seems kind of obvious if you ask me.  We talked about the health at any size movement. Adam's pissing people off again. I mentioned the key to a long life. We talked about a Texas law in which you can actually fight somebody and not get in trouble. We had to go Texas. Justin brought up a bodybuilder who married his sex doll. That's kind of weird. I talked about the difference between heritage pork and a regular pork. Now heritage pork tastes better. It's got better marbling. It's also raised more humanely. And some of our favorite, excuse me, sources of heritage pork come from Butcherbox. Now this is a company that delivers heritage pork and grass-fed beef to your door. They also have salmon, sockeye salmon. They'll deliver that to your door. It's high quality, great prices, and we have a discount for you. If you go to butcherbox.com for a slash mine pump, you will get two pounds of wild Alaskan salmon for free and $20 off. Boom. That's right. Then we talked about the, how you could use rhodiola in place of caffeine.   Get on that rhodiola. You feel tired. Try rhodiola. It's a great herb. It's adaptogenic. It's got stimulating properties. It's also found in OrganiFy's red juice. Now OrganiFy makes organic supplements and products like protein powders, green juices, and the red juice that I talked about that contains rhodiola. We have a discount for you. If you go to organify.com forward slash mine pump and use the code mine pump, you'll get 20% off. And then I talked about how health professionals are making a strong call for making exercise, the first prescription for mental health before any psychiatric drugs. Then we got into answering the questions. The first question was, is it counterproductive to do low reps and high reps in the same workout? The next question, you talk a lot about warmups, but what about warm downs? So what do you do at the end of your workout to enhance the productivity? Somebody warm me down. Of your workout. The third question, this person says they have a persistent not on the left side of their neck and not on the right side of their back. And it feels better when they work out but then it comes back. Like what the hell is going on? And the final question, this person has pronation distortion, meaning their foot flattens out and turns out. So they have no arch. And they thought, they've heard that it's been caused by a weakness in their abs. How can they fix it? Like what's going on? So we talk all about how to deal with pronation distortion, which if you're listening to this podcast, about 60 to 80% of you have to some degree. Now, before the episode starts, remember this maps hit is 50% off. This is huge. Our maps hit program is a high intensity interval training program.   It's hit training done the right way. Your exercises and workouts are all mapped out for you. You have exercise demos and videos so you can watch the form, see what you're doing. There's three levels to maps hit. So you can start a beginner, move to intermediate and advanced.  It's 50% off here. So you get the discount. Go to mapshit.com. That's M-A-P-S-H-I-I-T dot com and use the code hit 50. H-I-I-T-5-0, no space for the discount. Where does that come from, by the way? Rock and roll. It's a term for sex. What? Is it really? Rock and roll, yeah. Whoa. I mean, do I have to act it out? You roll when you have sex? Apparently, yeah. That was like before the 50s, I think. Is that really where the term came from? I'm pretty sure. No, it's not. Okay, look it up.  Get him, Justin, get him. Look at that. Sal's been losing a lot lately. This evening he was together. Yeah, maybe the last time I lost. Rock and roll. I met up with somebody there yesterday. Rocking, well, I mean, it could very well be, but I mean, rolling? Who the hell's rolling? I know, I don't know. Apparently that's how they did it back then, maybe. I don't know. I roll, I roll every once in a while. You don't do the rolls.  Yeah, yeah. No, definitely. Just do a couple rolls. The origin of rock and roll. That's kind of weird. Passion and out of control gets rolling around every once in a while. Just sucks when you're on it. Okay, from rock, move back and forth, and roll, originally a verb phrase common among African-Americans meaning to have sexual intercourse. Thank you. Wow, Justin. Hold on a second. Justin wins. Technically. What's euphemism? No, he's right. He is right. Wow. He is right. I did not know that. Wow. Wow, so it means to bang. Yeah. To have sex. Of course it does. Lots of, yeah, I don't know. That's why I think everybody was so offended, you know, with like the gyrating of the hips and all these different movements and that style of music was like, because all the Puritans, you know, back in the day, like. Yeah, no wonder Elvis was such a bad guy. Well, dude, because he's used thrust in the hips and he's playing face with it and playing rock and roll. Yeah. You know, it's funny is that you can't shock anybody anymore, can you? Yeah. No, you can't.  What is that one where they do penis puppets? There's like a whole show where like these guys get up on stage and they fold it into puppets. Yeah. Yeah. Huh? See, I'm just dropping all kinds of new things for you, Adam. That's it. That was a, it's like a play, right? Yeah, it's a play. What are you talking about? So guys go on stage and they use like that.   No. Come on, Jeff. That was just you and your friends. Justin, what are you talking about? You're alone on this. Every boy did that, dude. No, just you and your friends did that. I was like showing it to everybody. I was definitely figuring it out. Wait a second. So this is the bat wing. Yeah, man. So this is, well, you pull it all. I don't want to talk about it. Google it, Google it. It's something to do with your scrotum. Wait, wait, wait. So this is like a like full on production. This is they travel around and do puppets with their junk. They make like, they don't they don't do it. They don't play music or anything else. I just do that. I think it is. It's like it's kind of comedy and it's like anyways.  Yeah, so it's like, you know, Aunt Eater. Or like, you know, Doug is over there nodding his head like he's been to a few of them already. Is this true, Doug? Have you been to a few? Yeah, they're amazing, really. Wow. The bat wing. The bat wing. That was your favorite one. And the Joker. The Joker. Not the Aunt Eater. Well, one time I saw these monks who, you know how you sometimes you see those Chinese monks that and they'll to demonstrate their strength.  Which I don't I don't get that. But anyway, there were some that that would literally maybe they were Indian.  And the just to show their I mean they got they got wing strength. Yeah, I've seen that. And if you think about it, let's say you're let's say that's your opponent. Let's say you're going to get a fight here. We're intimidating.  He can take it.  I'm not touching that guy. No, what's going to happen to me?  Fighting this guy. New maps program. That way it happened. That's bad. Justin's going to be the model on this one. Hey, I got this guy's disgusting. Worked my whole life for this moment. You're your buddies. Yeah. You mean my buddy check this one out. Hey, no, you're doing it wrong. Let me help you. That's gross. Anyway, hey, so you have to hear some some cool science transition out of there was this the study that was done on on people and they were trying to see how effective we are at identifying whether or not someone sick just by looking at their face. So just by looking at a picture of someone sick. Yeah, I actually stream cases. I'm sure you could tell, right? Well, some obvious signs. So check out the study, right? So this was published in the journal, Proceedings of the Royal Society. So what they did is they injected people with this. What did they inject them with? They injected them with something that activates the immune system. It wasn't something terrible.  But they OK, by the way, you have herpes now. Oh man, no, we can tell. No, they administered and injected of a lipopoly saccharide, which is a molecule found on some pathogenic bacteria that provokes a strong immune response. So didn't necessarily make him sick, but activated the immune the immune response.  And it's so they took a picture of the person when they were healthy and a picture of them after they got this injection.  Yeah, well, it's the 62 62 people looked at the pictures and with 80 over 81 percent accuracy could tell we're able to tell which one was sick. Yeah. And it supports the notion that humans have the ability to detect signs of early signs of illness after exposure to infectious stimuli. Isn't that kind of cool? It is. But those are one of those studies that like possibly like Johnny Depp. Like he always looks sick. He does a little bit. Yeah, I mean, you might be you might be wrong. I don't like girls like that. Well, that's probably why it's 81 percent, not 100 percent accurate.    That's what they were able to. Yeah, I mean, if you think about evolutionarily speaking, it makes sense. You don't want to tell if somebody's sick by looking at him, right? Yeah, I feel like it's kind of obvious though, too. Like when you're when you don't feel well, you you you're you're not smiling and laughing. You know, you don't have like this joy, joyful looking face.  Well, so I'm looking at the pictures because they actually have pictures of the people and in both sets of pictures, they were they were they were told to look neutral. So it's like one of they're trying to just kind of that be too obvious. Adam, what's I mean? Which one is sick? The one who's like smiley like wipe his nose. But I mean, don't you feel like that? I mean, to me, that's that's the obvious sign. Like when somebody is normally a happy, go lucky person, then all of a sudden they're under the weather. You ever meet someone like that, though? That's not they don't have any of the classic signs of poor health. Like they're not obese, they're not whatever. But you look at them and you're just like, that guy didn't look or that girl doesn't look something doesn't look healthy about them. You know what I mean? We're real good at finding inconsistencies. Yeah. Like like pointing like, especially kids, if you hang out with kids, they're so brutally honest about those things. But you know where I see this a lot? I'll see this a lot sometimes in people in the muscle building, body building space who are on a ton of steroids and over feeding themselves. And they have, you know what I'm talking about, right?  Just vein-throbbing. You know, that's funny you bring that up because that brings me up to a hot topic that's been going around in my DMs because since that last episode that we did a couple of weeks ago, we talked about the health at any size. And I totally offended at least one or two people that, you know, responded to that and felt they were pissed off. What were they pissed off about?  And they singled me out personally that I guess whatever rant that I went on, I don't know how much more I was, I must have been more aggressive about how I felt about it in comparison to you two. And I went on some sort of a rant about it. And then I posted a poll the other day about the study we talked about with the projection of over 50% of the country being obese by 2030. 2030. Yeah. Now that's according, that is if we stay on the current trajectory because we don't know if it changes. Right. And so I did a poll obviously to stir the pot a little bit that just said, you know, do you think that health at any size helps this issue or makes it worse? And I think 98% people thought it would be worse, but there was the 4%. And 4% of the following that I have is still, you know, 100, I think you've almost a thousand people voted the other way, which so I've, you know, got a thousand people that are irritated at me right now.  I'm, for example, I run marathons. I do tough mutters. I do this, I do that, I lift weights. And when I do my skin fold measurements, I'm still considered obese on the chart. And I said, well, just because somebody can do a tough mutter, run a marathon and do all this stuff, doesn't necessarily make them healthy either to your point that you're making right now about bodybuilders. Just because somebody has a ton of muscle on their body. And low body fat. Right. And low body fat doesn't mean they're healthy or the healthiest version of themselves. Also, they're missing the point. The point is that let's say you, let's say you do have a lot of body fat on you. Let's say you do have what would be considered an obese body fat percentage, but you do exercise on a regular basis. You do have good stress management. You do get good sleep. And although you eat more than you need to, the food that you do is healthy. Okay. Can you still be healthy? Yes. Could, are you as healthy as you could be if your body fat was lower? No. So in other words, what that means is at some point, high body fat takes away from your health. Now that doesn't mean that you're necessarily unhealthy. It just means that it's a detriment to your health. You could also have somebody who eats not as good, but because they exercise and do other things to offset it, doesn't mean they're as healthy as they could be. At some point, high body fat percentage will be a detriment to your health, regardless of anything else. That doesn't mean you're necessarily unhealthy. It just means it's now taking away from. I definitely think you can have somebody like that. It exists, but it's such a small group of number. In terms of, if you're going to judge a movement of steering people in the right direction, I just don't see it. I don't see it. I see a massive crutch that's waving a flag of, well, any size I could be healthy. So I'm going to accept this of who I am versus that person that is making healthy choices, eating a lot of healthy food. I just don't see that happening. That's where somebody got it. Somebody was offended because it was somebody who, the website that's dedicated to, what's the acronym? I don't even remember what the acronym was. Health at any, healthy at any size. Ass, or something like that though, right? You remember what it is done? Yeah, it's healthy at any size, right? I think it is, I think Justin's right. I think it's H-A-A-S, something like that, right?  Oh, hey. Oh, man. There it is. Hey. And they are saying that this, the message was received by this person and it's changed their life. And that they, it's what's helped them get back into shape. Yeah, well, here's the message. The message is you should always love yourself. That's number one. Right, 100%.   That's not true. If you truly care about yourself, you'll be, you won't be overweight. Your body doesn't want to be overweight, just like it doesn't want to be underweight. Being overweight isn't necessarily, is typically not as healthy as being an appropriate weight, just like being underweight is.  I mean, and of course there's individual variances, maybe, maybe based on your current condition and standards and the context of your life that is the healthiest that you can accomplish. But you can also be honest with yourself and say, okay, I'm not optimal. This is an optimal for me. That's very simple. That's what it is. Be honest with yourself. Exactly. It's very simple.  Okay. That doesn't mean you are fat.  And you don't need bottom line. You don't need to, you don't have to identify with. You're not locked into that. You are not fat. You have lots of fat on your body, which is unhealthy for your body. That's a fact. And if you're reading that high, it is a fact. It is unhealthy for your body to have that high of a body fat percentage. It doesn't mean you are fat. You don't have to identify that. It's a reflection of the choices that you make, which may be over consuming food, which is most likely and or both not moving or exercising enough. And maybe you are somebody who does exercise and can run and do those things. But if you are reading obese, you are still, it's always comes back to law of thermodynamics here. You're obviously eating more than you're exercising and you're putting on body fat. It would be like if someone came up to me, let's say I'm at the bar with you guys we're hanging out, we're drinking, someone goes, oh my God, Sal, mind pump, you're drinking alcohol. That's unhealthy. And I'm like, actually, you know, it's healthy when you, no, yeah, you're right. I'm having a good time, you know, like it's okay to be honest with certain things, but that doesn't mean you need to hate yourself and it doesn't give anybody the excuse to belittle you or make you feel like you're less than human. Right, yeah. Because nobody is perfect and nobody treats themselves. Definitely inside. Perfectly, you know? So the problem with being overweight is it's a very visual representation of maybe something you're not perfect with. You can't look at someone and see that they have a credit score of 500 or that, you know, that they're terrible with their friends and stuff like that. But sometimes you can look, oftentimes you can look at someone and say they're overweight and unfortunately, that makes them targets for a lot of people. And I know, I think that's where this movement came from.  Unless they did something terrible to you, you know, you go up to, because I see a lot of fitness people like that and makes them feel righteous.  Right, or like the message you brought up the other day about correcting one of the trainers that we know, which is the, oh, there's more enough time in the day you can do this and that message of pointing that out to them, like, oh, you're lazy or this. It's not that. Like I can totally have empathy for that person and I don't think that I'm judging that person, but it's a fact.  It is detrimental to you. That's it. It is not healthy. We need to maintain some standardization. I mean, we just need something out there that, you know, people can try and achieve and acquire a better version of health.  But it's, we're talking about, like, the majority of people out there. Yeah.  It's not necessarily, but it would also contribute to your health. So what I mean by that is, if you're overweight, it's because it's a side effect of a lifestyle. And that lifestyle is a side effect of your state of mental health and psychological health. And if you're eating too much, it's not good for you. And it's not, and the reason why you're eating too much is probably because you're not at the most healthy state of mind. When I would work, I've worked with a lot of clients who struggled with weight a lot. It was one of my favorite categories of people to work with, people who were in the severe obese category. And I eventually became very successful training these people, but it wasn't because it was because I realized getting them to lose weight wasn't going to make them happy. I had to get them to learn how to be happy first. Then they would start to lose weight. It was always that. I have never met somebody who was, and I have trained hundreds. I also love this category of somebody who is morbidly obese, and they're trying to change their life and they come to me. And what I always figured out, it wasn't this, they didn't understand the science of nutrition. They didn't understand the science of exercise. There was something else that was underlining that they weren't addressing. And a lot of times, it was something that they were unhappy with and they were coping with it through food and the lack of exercise. And it wasn't until I addressed that and helped that out did all the weight come off and stay off for the rest of life. It was always that. It was never like, oh, I just didn't know what I was doing. And I got to this point. It's no, I was mindlessly eating for so many years and trying to bury something. Well, that's why it's different because it is like, the message is love yourself. That is where you need to be in the state of mind because it is so psychological coming in. A lot of times where people find themselves overweight and obese, their state of mind is a major contributor to that. And so finding that way to love yourself again and to want to improve yourself is everything. Not to just love yourself and become placing in that but not work on yourself. Yeah, it's just, you know, and it's funny it's, I think I feel like modern life is just a whole series of figuring out how to medicate yourself in one way or another. You know what I mean?  Why? Because they need to loosen up so they can hang around with people or people that smoke in the cigarettes or I got to have my coffee every single day or I got to use food. I got to use food to medicate. So it's look, if you're listening and you're obese and this is your issue, that's fine, you know, work on it. But it doesn't make you worse than everybody else.  Everybody listening has got to deal with something that they're working through but it doesn't help to not be honest about it. And what some people do with the health is the health at any size movement is they interpret that as it doesn't matter and I'm healthy and it doesn't affect me in any negative way no matter how overweight I get which is just plain. Not true and I think and that can be hurtful. Although I don't think that's the movement itself. That's how some people interpret it. That's where you get some of the issues. And of course, there's a lot of individual variants. One person can be obese and have far better health than someone else who's at a normal body weight or so many factors that play into that. But at the end of the day, if you, your optimal health is probably not obese regardless of your fitness level and all that stuff. I mean, speaking of anecdotes, there was an article of this woman who was talking about her secret to longevity. She's 104 years old. So she got interviewed to, she got interviewed by a news network. Like what's your secret to living? The people that make those are always like cigarettes and baking. I know it's always crazy. If they make the news. Smoking meth. It's funny you said that. So I'm going to read from the article. If you're going to live to 104, you might as well do it in style. Teresa Rawley of Grand Rapids, Michigan just celebrated another birthday on January 1st. She's 104 years old. Her secret to longevity? Drinking lots of Diet Coke. Every single day she drinks one. She just amounts it just to that. She's been drinking Diet Coke for decades every single day. And she says that that's the secret to her. Sponsored by? Living alone. There's people that are like that, right? That I think that are just, this is, it's like we talk about this with bodybuilding, genetic. This just shows you how genetics, God, I was just talking to my brother-in-law about marijuana strains like this.  When you do, like when you grow marijuana, there's all these teas and recipes and measuring the water, PPIs. You could do all this stuff to try and get this flower to be amazing. And you can, you can really manipulate it to make it super high, potent, make it smell super strong, look frosty and amazing. But at the end of the day, nothing is more impactful than getting incredible genetics. If you get like the original cut of, of a, a plant and it, and it was taken well care of and it's got good genes, sometimes you could just give that sucker water and it will end out out producing the thing that you spent thousands of dollars on all these formulas to try and get it to produce. So the same thing is, is with this. And I totally lost my train of thought how I was going to take it from marijuana. Oh, about people living a long time. Yeah, exactly. They, there's some people that are so speaking of marijuana, you forgot.  They were genetics, but it's also other factors in their life. Like maybe this, maybe this woman has amazing relationships with the people around her, which, which that has a huge impact. Maybe her rest of her diet's healthy. Yeah, but even those, but even though, even those things, I would still make the case that genetics still play a larger role than- Dude, my great grandfather, bro, since he was 12 or 13, so right around there, started smoking cigarettes. And this is back in system. There's no filter. So he'd roll them up in paper. And as a matter of fact, as he got older, he would buy rolled cigarettes and he'd cut the filter off because he hated the filter. He's, he chained smoke. Do you know what that means? That means as one is going out, he lights it with another one. So for morning till bedtime. Yeah, my grandma was like this. The only time he stopped smoking is when he would sleep or eat. Or eat, when he would eat, he'd put the cigarette next to him on the ash tray walking cloud. And then just constantly, he was 94 years old when he finally died. The guy was just constantly, he lit his bed on fire a couple of times.   Yeah, and it would fall and light the sheets on fire. That's crazy.   Yeah, I'm not saying, but you're right.  Anyways, I want to tell you guys about something cool that I just read about Texas. Texas is kind of an interesting state, isn't it? It's, yeah. They have a lot going on there. It's much different than California, that's for sure. So in Texas, you can actually, so here's, there's a law in Texas that states that any two individuals who feel the need to fight can agree to mutual combat through a signed for or even just verbal or implied communication. We talked about this a long time ago. Wasn't that in Canada though? There's another place that has this. There's a term for it, right? Isn't there like a dual virtual combat? I think it's all something like that. Now, as long as no serious bodily injury occurs and both participants know what degree of risk they're taking, it's a defense for a criminal or civil suit.  You could say, no, no, no, no. He walked into this. We agreed. We agreed to a fight. I love this. So do I. I love it. I love this. Not because I love fighting. I think people should fight because I feel like there should be consequences.  Let's go outside. We don't need to go run and get dad to come help you with your own fights. You know, like handle your business. See, I feel like in a place like this, if you're in a bar and you go, okay, let's go outside. Let's agree to this and let's go outside. Someone record it. And you'll see who the real tough guy is. Hey, if you've been around, I've been around situations. I've been a part of situations like that, where that happens. And you know what's funny? Afterwards, a lot of times, they guys hug it out. Yeah, they're cool. They're hanging out afterwards. They're hanging out afterwards. It's a respect. It peaked. We're mad. We're so angry at each other. We want to do get out. We agree.  Let's go see who is tougher. That's right. They end up rolling around. People don't understand that. I think that we've gotten away from that.  But it's like, dude, sometimes you just have to get it out. Like you got, like that energy like exists within, if you believe we're animals. I mean, that's the natural animal instinct. There's, I mean, there's healthier outlets for it, for sure. There's different times too. There's like sucker punching someone or you and your friends beat someone up or you use a bottle or you hit them over there versus, okay, let's go outside. This guy over here is going to record it so we can say we're both going to fight.  And let's do this. Those are the rules. No one's going to jump in and then let's do it. Now, is it violent? Sure. There's still somebody's going to get hurt, but way more civil way more civil than what happens at bars where, where, you know, guys look in one way and someone hits in the back of the head or people jump in. That's one terrible, but I find that hilarious how that's in Texas, not in California. No. Now in California, the winner goes to jail. You know what I'm saying? We both agreed, but I won. I'm going to jail.   Dude, did you guys hear about that bodybuilder that was trying to marry his, his sex doll? What? Yeah. I think Jackie posted this in our thread where every now and she sends like an article. I knew this was coming, bro. And it was like, so in Kazakhstan, I think is where it was this bodybuilder guy.   What? Like really got into her, got cosmetic surgery for her. And then decided, well, let's make this official. And now is marrying. Did you just make that up about her having an Instagram account or she really having an Instagram account? No, I'm serious. Doug, please. Oh my, oh my God, you found it. There it is. You found it. Please give me the Instagram. I want to see.  You know, it's like, what? Obviously he's not. Obviously not. Obviously not.  So here's the part, here's the part that I think is crazy. Well, okay, what's the Instagram account? I'm trying to, you just, what is it? You have it right there. What does that say, Doug? I mean, what? Margo party. Margo, underscore? Yes, margo underscore party. Oh, fine.  So here's the part that's crazy. I mean, she's hot.  Adam's like, give it the five years. She's got a hardcore Valencia filter going on here. It's hot. I don't think you can refer to it as a she. Yeah, really? So it's a doll, bro. She does. I mean, he does.  Yeah. Then he decides I'm going to marry it. It's a doll. Why are you going to marry it? You can get as many as you want. Right. Makes no, she's not going anywhere. Now you're limiting yourself.  Done. Get home from work? Now is, is, is Margo supposed to be her or it and he's someone or is his name Margo? Wow. You guys got to go through his pages. I literally have no idea. He's actually like a good looking dude. That's what I'm saying. How many followers is he have? Well, Margo, if Margo is him or her, I don't know. She's got almost, he or what, I don't know. I'm pretty sure it's the girl's name is Margo. I can't color her. It is got almost 80,000 followers. Way more than I do. I know.  Who takes a picture like that? He's like colder up. Wish we had a sex doll for her co-host. I don't like the way he treats her though. You can tell he's not very nice. He's too aggressive. Yeah. She's never taking her out in public. What does that say about us though as a society that 80,000 people find a need to follow this person? 80,000 people are following a sex dolls account.  You know, like let's do what's next.  Oh man. You know what's going to get really weird when these because they're going to take over the IG model space.  I don't think we're that far off from that. That's going to be weird, man. It's that Westworld. So I can't wait till that second season comes out. That comes out early or soon, doesn't it? I hope so. You know what started that I haven't watched yet is you. That just dropped. Oh, that's today. I'm going to go watch that. That's going to be really good. I know I'm excited.  I thought you were going to transition that when I brought up the bacon and cigarettes. I thought that was a perfect segue for you. No, no, no. I tried to assist you and you just missed it. Yeah, whatever. Yeah.  No, this is good though. Yeah.  I'm with you. Porking. Thanks, Justin. Yes, I got you so.  Yeah, it is dry. This was marbled. It was delicious or whatever. I asked my my aunt where they got it. It's heritage pork. You know heritage. So you know heritage pork. I never heard of that until recently when you when you did a butcher box commercial and you brought that up. I didn't even know that was a thing. Yes. So heritage pork is more marbled. It's got more of a creamy texture to it because they let the pigs roam around. They eat all over the land and they gain more body fat in the meat to withstand the temperature changes and stuff that are on the farm versus keeping pigs contained inside. Pigs are supposed to have control in the climate and everything inside. They're supposed to have a certain level of fat on their body. Now that seems that's different. The grass. Right. That's different. Different to grass fed meat. That's that's funny that that that way that works that way for pigs because it's the opposite with grass fed beef.  No, they regulate their body temperature through colder climates with more fat. And then of course they they're treated better because they they roam around and rubbage through land or whatever versus because what happened with pig with pork remember when that whole like the other white meat remember that whole campaign. Yeah, that's when everybody was demonizing red meat. So the pork industry was like oh white meat, we can make it leaner and it's white. And the way they did that is they kept the pigs confined and so you get that dry pork chop or whatever heritage pork. Obviously, you know, you need more land and stuff for it, but it's more it's more humane and the meat tastes so much better. So I heard I don't know if this is accurate or not, but that like Christopher Columbus was responsible for bringing over like the wild pigs in North America. Well, I know that they brought them to Hawaii and they there's so many of them over there. Well, that's definitely. Yeah, that totally changed the landscape. I think it's legal in Hawaii for you to kill up one or two pigs every day. Anybody? Isn't Texas like that too? I don't know. Texas is where you could shoot with a machine gun out of a helicopter, right? Exactly, yeah. Wow, that's a little too much. Really, you wouldn't want to do that? Just in a heli or just machine gun? I'm going to remember that when I book a trip for us. It's going to save me money. I got to get three. Doug, you want to go, right? No. Come in. No, the original father of the American pork industry is Hernando de Soto. He brought the world America's first 13 pigs to Tampa Bay, Florida in 1539. Wow. That's interesting that we have that documented. Like somebody's like, you know what? Hey, make sure you write this down. First 13 pigs coming over here. Like you would have thought to do that. Yeah, I know. Is that true? Right. That's why I'm saying that.  Yeah, I know. Maybe Justin's theory is right. That it came over with Columbus. With Columbus? Yeah. Well, yeah. Who was he part of that whole voyage? No, I think Columbus was before. What's the song? Something, something. 1492. Is that it? Okay. So he came before. Good job, Justin. You're remembering stuff today. Thanks.  Anyway, here's another thing. Do you guys get messages from people who are looking for alternatives to caffeine for energy? Like when they're trying to wean themselves off caffeine? No, all the time because we talk about that. Yeah. So, Rodeola. Rodeola's got to be. It's not, some people don't like Rodeola, but most people do. And Rodeola is one of the only non-stimulant type of herbs or plants or whatever that has performance-enhancing qualities like caffeine. So, in replace of, or are you saying? In replace of. Okay. So, let's say you're going off caffeine. Yeah. So you can kind of wean off a little bit. Yes. Because caffeine is, look, caffeine feels so good when your body's sensitive to it. When you're desensitized because you're having it so often. It just keeps you normal. It just makes you, yeah.  Yeah, amazing. It's like a magic drug or whatever. Yeah, yeah. So, going off, going off of it, I think is very, very important.  So, Rodeola is something you can take in the interim.  You'll get, it'll give you energizing effects, could help with your mood. The Soviets did a lot of experimentation with Rodeola. Now, is that in the red juice? What's that in? That's in the, yes it is. It's in Organifize Red Juice. They have beetroot powder in there too, which is good for performance. Rodeola, and they also have cordyceps in there. So, that's probably a really good alternative for somebody who is trying to come off of caffeine, but still want some sort of performance gains. Yeah, okay. 100%. And it's also has, it's an adaptogenic qualities as well. So, it's really good for stress. Now, some people taking too much Rodeola, makes them not feel so good. So, you'd have to test it out for yourself, but most people seem to have a good response from Rodeola. And again, it's one of the more studied adaptogenic compounds out there that has actual clinical proven positive effects on performance. Is that considered a mushroom or no? No. It's not. No, no, no, no. Okay, because doesn't the four sigmatic guys have that too? Or no? Do they put Rodeola in their stuff? Yes. I think they might put some Rodeola in their stuff as well. Oh, yeah. Wasn't it the impression that it was a mushroom because of that? No, no. But it's, that's not it. Along those lines of just kind of cognitive function, that kind of stuff, there was this big article I read on mental health.  Experts are really making the case that we should make exercise the first prescription for people with mental health issues like anxiety and depression. This is starting to go like big time mainstream. This recent? Yeah. Yeah, this is main. I'm going to try and pull it up because I thought it was really interesting. Do you remember where you read it out? I'm going to try and find it right now. Well, that's a big angle. I mean, addressing mental health in general. I mean, everybody's sort of fixated on that right now just because you could, you could see just, you know, the anxiety is just rampant among the population. Here's what it said in the article. It said researchers at the University of Vermont believe exercise should be prescribed to patients with mental health issues before psychiatric drugs. And then in a study of roughly 100 volunteers, 95% of patients reported feeling better while 63% reported feeling happy or very happy. And the researchers suggest that mental health facilities should be built with gyms moving forward. Gentlemen, I swear to God in the next two or three decades. Yes, we're totally getting there. Do you think we'll see that in our time where like hospitals actually have like on floor 13 is like your whole fitness center and then there's like a training staff and everything and that's part of... As medicine gets more expensive as it becomes much more unsustainable, it's a cheap and it's super effective, actually more effective alternative to psychiatric drugs for a lot of people because it doesn't have any negative side effects. You exercise properly, it's all plus from there. And so what they're saying, they're trying to make an argument, this is a mainstream argument that if you go to the doctor with mental health issues and stuff that that's the thing that they prescribe and that they have a gym built into their facility. That's so cool. I mean, I saw a mini example of that when I was in Chicago and I was doing an internship at I think it was Condell Medical Center, but they had like an indoor track, they had a physical therapist, they had all the cardiologists, they had like every specialty on staff in these offices all the way around the complex. And so you can make appointments at any of those and then you'd have like the personal trainer down there working everybody out. It was like all in-house in one facility. It was pretty cool. Well, I don't know about you guys, but when I would train clients, the biggest changes I would see would be in their mental state, way bigger than the physical. And in fact, that was what they would report to me. They'd report to me that their state of well-being and how they were at work and how they were, I had one, I used to train one guy who, I don't want to give too much detail because it'll give him away and a lot of people around here know him, but I used to train one guy who, he was well known for being a bit of an asshole in his field. Anytime I'd bring his name up, other people who worked in that same space would tell me, oh, so-and-so?    No, it's not Rick.  I've been training clients forever, in fact.  Yeah, if someone's kind of, I laugh it off and sometimes I'll feed, I'll give it back to them a little bit, whatever, and I have fun with it. So it kind of made my day interesting. So I trained this guy for years. Well anyway, later on people would come up to him and be like, what have you done with so-and-so? Like what do you mean? We're just working out. Like he's a totally different person. He tells jokes at work now. He's giving people hugs. He's like a completely different transformed person.  True transformation. And everybody started referring, people started getting referred to be left to right. His personality changed. What's happening? That was cool. First question is from FelixFlex89. Is it counterproductive to do low reps and high reps in the same workout in terms of strength and hypertrophy? When they do studies on this, typically the studies are in the same week. But I'm not too familiar with these different rep ranges being in the same workout. I've read studies on it. And it's actually, they're almost the same as somebody who is actually phasing. And this is kind of what we've talked about this before. So it's like doing some exercises under five reps, other exercises 15 reps or 12 reps. And each one has a different type of adaptation on the body. Yep. And there's lots of benefits to doing this. Now the drawback, the main drawback of training this way is how tough it is to try and measure feedback or measure what's working well for you or what's not working well for you. Because you have so many variables in one workout, it's hard to say, oh wow, is it the hypertrophy type sets that I'm doing that I'm getting this great performance or this great strength gains or this great muscle that's being out of my body or is it the low reps and strength training exercises that I'm doing that's doing that. So when you compare in studies, totally fine if you were to do it this way. I'm not a fan of teaching it that way nor training clients this way because as a coach or a trainer, I'm always trying to measure and pay attention to, oh, in this block of training for the next four weeks, we're going to be following these protocols. And I'm looking at feedback. Are they gaining weight? Are they losing weight? Are they building muscles? So an application is just, it doesn't, and I experienced the same thing. An application with clients and with myself, it works better to stick with a particular rep range in style of training for a period of anywhere between two to maybe five weeks. And here's the other part that nobody ever talks about. There's a different mental state. Oh, good point. When you go into training low reps than when you go into training high reps, there just is. When you're low rep training, it's typically longer rest periods. I'm trying to really focus in. Focus in on the exertion with high reps. I'm trying to withstand the stamina. I'm trying to withstand the burn and the pump. It's a totally different mentality. And do you think that your mental state can contribute to your performance and your progress? I mean, absolutely. Yeah, it's a huge part. Absolutely. So I don't like to necessarily do this too much. Now that being said, some body parts and some exercises just work better with higher reps.  That's always going to probably be in the higher rep range in comparison. And when you're talking to somebody who is a advanced lifter, they've been lifting for a long time and they already understand how to phase their workouts and manipulate rep ranges and tempos and exercises. Then having a day where you decide to lift this way is not bad at all. Completely okay. And you're not taking steps back or you're not maximizing your gains with it. Completely fine. I do it occasionally all the time. But it's not... I don't think it's an ideal way when programming because it's difficult to measure and get good feedback if you're throwing the whole kitchen sink at your body, knowing what is really working right now. Yeah, I've actually steered away. I used to do that a long time ago. I'd be guilty of doing... I'll do bench press, for instance.  And so I'll just do a nice arm pump or something like that. Now it's like, what's the point? Just stick with what my goal is and stick to the plan. And so I'll be more likely to stick in the rep range that I'm doing for that entire workout. Next question is from Dave Krett. You talk about warm-ups, but what about warm-downs? Oh, is it warm-downs or cool-downs? You got a warm-down, son. So a warm-up or what we like to call priming is preparing your body for your workout. There's an optimal way to do it. It's by activating muscles, quote unquote, activating muscles that need to be activated by getting your body to move better by improving mobility so that when you go into your workouts, more effective. But then you're done with your workout.  Now you can, you can just stop your workout. And it's not gonna really be too detrimental, but it's also not optimal. Post workout, you can get some of the best deep stretching, some of the best foam rolling that you'll get ever because your muscles are pumped, they're warm, you just had a hard workout. Some deep stretching, if you do it right and breathe properly, can also bring your heart rate down, get you more in a parasympathetic state. Well, that's really the angle I would go the most in terms of like the post workout mentality is really trying to get into that calm state and how you get there is, there's various methods, but I know in prime we had it where we're trying to solidify certain positions and so like going into static stretching or things like that, but the breathing is really important with that to calm the nervous system down to get you to that state where now we can actually start the recovery process. Well, there's a lot of benefit for just that reason right there for someone who's trying to optimize recovery and get their body into that. Especially if you know what kind of workout. So I don't know, I'm probably one out of every 10 to 15 workouts. Do I probably put some energy and focus in this area? For me, it's normally when I really get after it.  But when I do, this is the time where I see a lot more value and getting into that parasympathetic state because if I'm going to go eat and recover from that and I know how hard I push myself, the harder you push and the more extreme you go, the longer it's going to take for you to get to that other state. So doing something that's recuperative or calming or relaxing like sauna or foam rolling or static stretching will help promote that like get you there faster.  Not an ideal situation. Right, right. I personally love the post workout. If I have time for it, deep static stretches. This is when I see value in static stretching. I'm not going to work out again. So static stretching can cause you to lose some temporary strength and all that because you're getting no looser or whatever. But post workout when I have a really good pump and I hold stretches for 30, 40 seconds long stretches and I do this throughout the whole body. Boy, does it feel phenomenal. I seem to get a better pump through that stretching process. I feel like I recover better and I just feel better. It does put me in that kind of relaxed state. Now I, we recommend these, you know, post workout, you know, what we call post priming sessions or cool down sessions in our program maps prime. I think they're overlooked. I think people look at our program and do the pre priming and forget the post priming stuff, especially when it comes to correcting recruitment pattern type issues like foam rolling is very effective post workout when you're already pumped and whatever, go through and foam roll the muscles that tend to be tight or whatever, and then see how you move, see how it affects the following workout. That's really the gauge of my opinion is how much better are your following workouts because you did that. I also feel that and it's hard because it's hard to measure this, but I also feel like it mitigates how sore I get too. It does. So just like that's why I used to love getting like a deep tissue massage right after like a hard leg day. And if I can get a massage from Katrina the day that I trained really hard versus a day or two later, like if she hits me after a really hard leg day, two days later, I'm at the peak of how sore I am and I'm sensitive to touch, like so she can't get in there and really work me versus the day of or right after a workout, which is ideal, right? And getting a deep tissue. I noticed that I don't get nowhere near as sore as I would have if I wouldn't have done anything. I feel the same way about a good phone rolling session post hard workout like that too. Next question is from Ronert Nacho. I have a persistent nod on my left side of my neck and a nod on the right side of my back. I get relief when I work out, but the pain returns when I finish exercising. How can I better target these areas to relieve the pressured stress? All right. So these knots, we don't really 100% know what they are. We kind of know why we get them, but we don't know really what they are, but the prevailing theory is that there's a segment of your muscle that's under a kind of a low level of flexing. So it's like, imagine you flexing your bicep, right? So that's a full flex. But now imagine your bicep is just kind of tense a little bit, but it's like that a lot all day long. That's going to cause pain. It's going to make it feel like a knot. Now, why does it go away when you work out or why does it go away when someone pushes on it like a massage therapist? Because when you work it out, the CNS relaxes a little bit, things warm up, you get inflammation out, you're working out other parts of your body, or when someone's pressing on it like a massage therapist, that is telling the CNS to relax as well. And then it goes away. The reason why it's temporary is because you never fix what's causing it in the first place. If you don't fix the root cause of that issue, it'll only ever get temporarily better. It'll never get permanently better. So I would suggest if it's in your neck and your upper back, I would look at your mobility in your shoulders. I would look at mobility in your thoracic spine and see if there's any muscle imbalances because your body's holding itself in a way that's suboptimal and that's what's causing the knots. And the reason why it's suboptimal is you're not moving in the best ways possible, the ways that use your muscles, utilize them in the best ways. This reminds me of a question that we recently got about if they're suffering from upper cross syndrome. Here's an example of somebody that would be considered probably suffering and I'm speculating, I don't know for sure, without seeing this person, but more than likely suffering from upper cross syndrome and what can cause that. This is really common in somebody who has forward head and rounded shoulders. So addressing the shoulder mobility and thoracic mobility, that's areas that you address when you have upper cross syndrome. And it's that being in that state all day long, whether you're sitting at a desk or working on computers or you drive somewhere and that sitting in that position that long tends to lock up or cause these knots and that's where you get that chronic pain feeling and until you relax the CNS or work on that, that gives you that temporary relief. But if you don't fix the posture and start working to address that, it'll just be a band-aid. You're constantly just putting a band-aid over it and keep reopening the wound. So the zone one in maps prime, that's what addresses this. That we have you go through a zone one test, it's pass or fail. More than likely you fail from there. It tells you what movements that you should be doing to help correct this and prevent it from happening versus just fix it. You could fix it by getting the deep tissue massage or working out, but you want to start working towards preventing it happening. Yeah, and I know our wheelhouse is more of the exterior like muscle, like the major muscle groups versus like fascial tissue. But I know books like anatomy trains that kind of like map out and highlight a lot of these fascial lines that really like put you in a lot of these fixed positions that you reinforce from your daily patterns over and over again. And so it is one of those things that this has to become like a ritual of being able to wind that back and to come back to optimal posture. It takes a lot of like little frequent attempts of putting yourself in those type of positions as much as you can. All right, next question is from Amanda cat 31. I have heard that pronation distortion can be caused by not doing enough ab work. I have severe pronation distortion, but I train my abs two to three times a week and have a six pack. Are there any other causes of this distortion? Are there any ab exercises that correct it? I've actually not heard someone use this term before. Yeah, so pronation distortion is when your foot pronates strongly, right? So it flattens out. Okay, but she's referring to your abs. I know, which is kind of strange. Okay, that's what threw me off. Okay, I've never heard someone refer to their abdominal region to to be causing it. Well, let's we can we can discuss it a little bit and speculate because I haven't either, but technically maybe. So again, pronation distortion, the your foot flattens out so that the your arches kind of collapsed and your foot tends to turn out a little bit, causing your leg to turn out a little bit. So sometimes you can see this in people when they'll wear tennis shoes and the inside of their shoe is super worn out. It looks like their foot is pushed to the inside and they, so that's pronation distortion. Something like 60 to 80% of people have some degree of this, but it can get pretty extreme and it can cause problems.  It's really common. It's really, now ab work and core work. Can this contribute to it? Maybe with poor core stability. More likely it's a weakness of the ankle and foot and not just weakness, but an imbalance. Well, okay. So I get where this could be, whoever told of this could become, because if you have poor control, the lumbopelvic hip region, right? So if you have very like poor control of that and because you have no core strength, that could cause your femur to internally rotate, which then causes the feet to pronate down below. So I could see how that could contribute to this problem although I would work my way backwards, right? So I would actually address my connection to my feet, my ankle mobility, then work my way up to my hip. At least this is what I did for me. So I have this, right? So I had my foot, especially on one side, excessively pronated and it was really obvious when I squatted deep and it would also cause pain to run all the way up to my hip. So I had to relieve that by like foam rolling, like my IT area and so that to give me relief. But then I had to do exercises for my feet. So a lot of my barefoot work that I would be doing and start working on better control there so I could keep my feet from flattening out. Some of that was ankle mobility and feet strengthening type exercises like tippy toe squats or just being able to hold your feet in a calf raise and your ankles in a neutral position. That was some of the work that I did for my feet. And then I worked my way up to my hips, my 90-90 and then of course to reinforce that and keep me in a good, stable place having strong abs. But where you're having an issue with, oh, I have a six-pack, you can have a really strong abdominal region but not holding your hips in the most optimal place, if that makes sense. Oh yeah, you could have very developed muscles. You could be lean and they could look strong and they might even be strong but your recruitment pattern may be totally off. Look at pro bodybuilders, some of the most developed athletes in the world and oftentimes you'll find poor movement patterns with those muscles.  So think of when you walk. Now imagine, when you walk naturally, when your right foot steps forward, your left arm also swings forward so it's this counterbalance. Try walking where your right arm and your right leg move forward at the same time. Try walking that way. It feels really weird. Now imagine if that was your recruitment pattern. Imagine if that's how you learn walking. It would take you a second to learn how to walk the right way but then when you did, you'd feel a massive difference and would feel far more comfortable. So if you have a poor recruitment pattern, doesn't matter how big the muscle is a strong in fact, I would say this, big strong muscles with poor recruitment patterns can sometimes be more difficult to work with because they're so big and they're so strong and because they're so set in their ways, if you will. Now in my, I haven't never worked with anybody who's had this issue because of core. Problems, usually the root cause is coming from the foot and the ankle and then maybe the hip. Now the hip of course goes up to the core so the core could also, I'm not saying that's not, it's impossible. It's just not, it's just rare that I've seen this. So this person's saying I've heard that this comes from the ab work unless a movement specialist is the one that told you this, I highly doubt it. I highly doubt it. Yeah, unless, I mean, it's obvious that you're not able to gain stability and you're kind of using that outward kind of push with your feet to regain that sort of stability and created like a pattern that solidified that. But yeah, I would definitely agree with the guys. It's really, it's a repatterning issue. Like we need to start really like using that as an exercise to walk a specific way to then start forming those new patterns to go on from there. Well, if you lack good control internally and externally with the hips, which- Meaning you can't turn your leg in or out of work. Yeah, yeah, yeah. If you lack good control there externally and internally rotating the hips both really well. And that also will be worse if you don't have good control of your core, right? Because it's all connected. It could make the issue worse. So I could see potentially whoever told you this, I'm not going to come out and argue it and say, they're wrong, especially if they're somebody who's actually assessing you and seeing you. Maybe they see that you have an extremely weak core. And maybe they notice a breakdown when you get down in a deep squat with a loaded barbell. And then that's where all this breakdown happens. The femur rotates in and the knees collapse in and then the feet flatten out. And that could all be starting from you just having a really weak core and being able to hold your hips in the right position when you get deep into a squat. I don't know. So I could see where it could be a part of the problem. But just getting a strong core like what Sal was saying, like you could get a strong core and it not have the optimal recruitment pattern and that not help the issue. No, I mean, I've worked with clients who've got phenomenal, could do tons of crunches and sit-ups and all that stuff. And they'd have back pain. And I'd have to go in and change their recruitment pattern. The back pain would be gone. But no, I doubt this is caused by your abs unless again a specialist examined you and said this is coming from your core. I highly doubt it. My guess, my strong guess would be that it's coming from your ankle, your foot, or your hip. Those are the places that I would look. MAPS Prime Pro would be a good program for you to take a look at and see if you can figure that out. And with that, go to mindpumpfree.com and download our guides. They are all absolutely free. They cost nothing. You can also find the three 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.


Why did we learn Python Uni? Because we had to become a senior machine learning engineer before we had the time to learn programming Before we start make sure, you know, we're talking about Python 3 not Python 2 actually a bit of Python 2.7 is also okay geared towards children and PhDs children and PhDs Python I know Python, which means I know machine learning AI data science computer vision big data Carousel, TensorFlow, scikit-learn, PyTorch, OpenCV, deep learning, NLP Huge community of kids now. I didn't learn Python in an online course actually never really learned it lists are arrays Tuples are arrays, sets have no order, dicts are arrays, comprehensions are arrays, NumPy arrays are arrays No more semicolon errors. Only white space errors. Where is that error? Enumerate, enumerate zip, oswalk Tuple unpacking. It's not dynamically typed. It's strongly dynamically typed. In Python We don't do constants. We only do change. Who put the main function at the bottom of the file? Equality is not identity. Is not Identity. I can do in Python in five lines, which you can do in C in 50 and it will take 10 times the time to execute. Oh, I didn't I didn't say that wrong, right? Booyah who needs brackets anyway? All these people with their illogical syntax sugar might need brackets You can return multiple values, multiple values, multiple values. Are you to me? No, I learned all of this on Medium. How many libraries does it take until I can actually put Python as my status on LinkedIn? Like 3, NumPy, Matplotlib, pandas, pandas, pandas, or maybe 2, you know, because we start counting from 0 STR minus 1 double colon 0 minus 1. Huh? It's that smart engineering Fast and that's engineer. That's smart.   Oh, the shirt goes into the genes in C++. Everything takes so long You have to write int main declare variables. It's literally just the execution. That's fast. Who cares. It's about the Scientific revolutionary data science machine learning NLP big data that you're going to do with your software Or you can automate your coffee machine, which does the coffee that helps you make the scientific advances in Lua ideas to code Why can't I just run this in late tag late tag? Oh, this is a Python interview. All right, Python Why am I so good at this? I've never written code before to pull open bracket. Oh, this is machine learning Oh, this is data science a big data NLP computer vision AI, you know what that is? I can give you a quick tutorial. I just learned that on you on medium just an hour ago That's a machine learning generative adversarial networks. Have you heard of them? Me neither? Let's check it out Oh, it's really easy to find the documentation is just one page almost there almost there Where is the async with? All right. Oh, you want to learn Python? We can do it just right now You don't really need to learn anything or you need to learn at least three libraries Panas, mapplotlib and NumPy Fundamental well the good thing in Python is single and double quotes are not differentiated because you don't need to Sight properly. It's not late tag. Sadly. Are you convinced? Should we do a tutorial? I mean, should we read a medium write a medium block? Let me show you a graph real quick I'll let me introduce you to a graph real quick this represents the amount of memory used by C for my program and this represents the amount of memory Python uses my screen is not big enough


It was really stunned by the other half of Reconstruction, which we never paid any attention to, which was the money debate. There was a huge debate about money during the same time. There were two great issues. What do we do about the ex-slave, and what do we do with the money? Because the North used greenbacks to finance the Civil War. They didn't want to tax people, so they just printed money and made it legal tender. It's $240 million in greenbacks, which are purely paper money. They have no value other than what people are willing to believe is in them. And they're very successful during the war. They don't cause a lot of inflation, and they allow Lincoln to prosecute the war without having to raise taxes, and it keeps the sort of massive dissent under control. But after the war, what do you do with them? What's an interesting question? One argument is you just get rid of the greenbacks. They're not real money. They don't have any real value. They're a lie. They're a fraud and a cheat. Burn them. Some people would say, contract them, and they'd call it contracting the currency. Bring them back in, burn them, destroy them, and go back to real money, which at the time was supposed to be gold. And the other argument is that we need more paper money. Paper money is just a social convenience. It's whatever we say it is, and we should get rid of gold. The document comes out of that debate. It comes out of this debate about the nature of money. And as I started to look at it, I got really fascinated by that question. I mean, why not use paper money? What's the argument for gold? And when I started to read the arguments for gold, they became really fascinating and absurd. I mean, they're superficially rational. Economists in the 19th century will go through this long rational explanation about prices and supply and demand, and then you'll finally get to the core of the metaphor, which is gold just is valuable because it is. And that's always there. It just is. And sometimes they'll say, God made it to be money. And they say this, I've seen this again and again, God made gold to be money. Okay? This is the money. This is going to be burned for heat. I mean, it's really, it's that clear. And there's this what you would have to call a fetish about gold, that it has this magical value that's independent of what people think. It just has this magical value. I got really interested in that question. This NASS cartoon was produced as part of the attack on paper money. NASS was a really strong, hard money guy. And he referred to paper money as the rag baby. That was his name for it. This paper money was often referred to as rag money. It was made of rags and old rags, rags and trash, and plated paper trash. It's like, this is part of an argument against paper money. And it's a really good expression of the gold standard position. It's a really strong expression of the gold standard position. And because NASS is good, it's pretty coherent.


From the SiliconANGLE Media Office in Boston, Massachusetts, it's theCUBE. Now, here's your host, Dave Vellante. Hi everybody, welcome to this edition of theCUBE Insights, powered by ETR. In this breaking analysis, we're going to look at IBM's systems business, and specifically, the IBM Systems Z, and talk about the impact that it's going to have on IBM financials. Now, Alex, if you would kindly bring up the first slide, so this is data from ETR's spending intention survey for the second half of 2019. They ask customers, compared to the first half of 2019, what are your spending intentions on the second half of 2019, specifically for IBM? So you can see the end here is 448 customers out of their panel of 4,500 of which around 11 or 1,200 answered this question, specifically cited that they were IBM customers. What this data shows is 21% of the customers said we're going to increase spend in the second half relative to the first half with IBM. 52% said we're going to stay flat, 14% said they're going to decrease. You see, 6% said we're going to basically leave the IBM platform, and 7% said we're going to bring on IBM as new, we're a new customer.  Now, we've been sharing with you this ETR data over the last several weeks and months. 8% is not great. IBM, according to ETR's spending surveys, are losing share relative to the overall market. We've covered this pretty extensively. We covered the Red Hat acquisition and talked about how that, IBM intends to supercharge its cloud business, specifically with Red Hat, I've said, I've been on record saying this is largely a services play where they're going to basically take Red Hat as an application development platform and help their customers modernize their systems from using their large services footprint to do that. But so, and I want to talk for a moment about the IBM business overall. IBM is all about mission critical work. The IBM Z, their high-end systems, their related database, it's all about mission critical work. IBM shared some data with analysts recently where they talked about, if you look at IBM Z, IBM's security business, it's database, particularly DB2, it's middleware, it's application management services, and it's infrastructure, and all that sort of consulting work that goes around that. Add that up, it accounts for 60% of IBM's revenue. So this is why I want to spend some time talking about IBM Z. I mean, it's a kind of a boring but important topic. It used to be the heart of IBM's business, it used to drive entirely their income statement. But in fact, today it's still very critical. All those pieces that I mentioned account for 60% of that business. So Z is critical for driving IBM's systems business and that gives air cover for IBM's business overall. So Alex, if you bring up the next slide, what I've done is just pulled out some quarterly data of IBM's systems revenue overall and then juxtapose it against IBM's Z revenue. This is growth, this is just percent growth. So the blue is IBM Z percent revenue growth relative to the previous year, this is in constant currency by the way, and as well it excludes the elimination of IBM's systems X business, the Intel based business. So it's normalized for that. And then the orange is the overall systems growth. So you can see that the blue grows virtually immediately after IBM announces a new system. So for instance, in January of 2013, IBM announced the Z13. We were there with theCUBE to cover it. We talked to a number of practitioners. What big banks and big mainframe customers do, and by the way, 25 of the world's top 25 banks run on Z. Huge proportion of retail giants run on Z. Why? Because it is the system of record and the top system of record along with Oracle in the world. I'll talk more about that and you can see here, Z13. So we talked to a lot of practitioners at the January launch and they told me they buy this thing sight unseen because they know it's going to drive revenue for them. If they can get more power, more performance, lower cost, it drops right to their bottom line. So you can see 2016, even though there was a kicker in there of the next generation, not next generation, but a kicker to the Z. I didn't show it here, but bad year in 2016 in terms of growth. You can see the blue is proportional to the orange. It drags it down in a year. Z14 is announced and you can see when the Z14 was announced in July of 2017, just right after that, boom, big uptick in Z revenue and proportional systems revenue. So you're on this sort of two year cycle of Z announcements and you can see 2019 in the first half has not been great. IBM just announced the Z15 in September. So we fully expect that in Q4, you're going to see that uptick. So we wanted to share that with you. Next slide, I just want to make a couple of points about IBM Systems Business. It's about an $8 billion business overall in terms of annual revenue. It comprises Z power and storage. Says they say, systems Z drags a lot of software. It drags the storage, it drags services. It's about a 53% gross margin business. The storage business is actually, I think a good gross margin business, I think probably higher than power. The server business is not the greatest gross margin. I think mainframe is still pretty good. IBM and Oracle dominate the business for systems of record. Oracle with Exadata and IBM with Z. Now you might say, hey, Exadata is growing and Z, I just showed you the sort of fluctuation but overall it's sort of flattish. Maybe it can eke out growth and actually can show good growth in one year but if you normalize it over a couple of years it's pretty much a flat business or declining business. So you might say, well, Oracle Exadata is growing but that's because Oracle is replacing its entire hardware business and much of its related software business with Exadata, all that wood behind one arrow whereas IBM has a more diversified portfolio and so that's kind of apples to oranges comparisons. Now the ETR data shows that the storage intentions for the second half of 2019 really flipped to positive territory. Servers were still negative but improving and so as I showed you in the previous slide I definitely would expect the systems business to have an uptick in Q4 and it's dragging storage with it. IBM synchronized the storage announcement, the DS8000, well not great with model numbers but the recent storage announcement with the mainframe announcement, I'll make some more comments about that but it seems that IBM's trying to do a better job of synchronizing that. IBM's also going to smooth out its systems revenue, I believe, I mean it's right now, it's very cyclical but I'll make some comments about that in a moment. So IBM System Z and Exadata are unique in that their IO is tightly integrated. These are purpose built systems and the storage is in the IO are purpose built for the systems of record. So they're very, very low latency. Giving example Oracle, Exadata, recent announcements at Oracle Open World, I think 18 microseconds latency. IBM with its recent Z announcement I think is even lower, I want to say 15 microseconds but don't hold me to that. Whereas if you compare that to traditional systems you're talking about maybe 200 microseconds, in other words those systems that aren't purpose built for systems of record with integrated IO. The IO is hardwired with custom silicon and ASICs and so it's ultra, ultra fast IO which means you can push 10 times the IO through the system. So very, very high performance relative to what you saw in kind of previous generations. Why do I spend so much time talking about this because this is a harbinger for future systems developments. Talking, within two to three years you're going to see the mainstream systems with this type of low latency. So you might also say wow, that means that IBM and the Exadata business are in big trouble. No, these systems are not going to be replaced and not going to be migrated. It's too risky, it's too expensive. We've talked about that a lot on theCUBE where it just doesn't make business sense for people to convert off the Z mainframe. There's too much custom code, they'd have to freeze that code for many, many months maybe even longer. They'd risk their business. They can make much more money purchasing the next generation of system as long as the Z mainframe continues to add function which it's doing, same thing with Oracle Exadata. Years ago IBM announced support for Linux. Obviously Red Hat is now another key piece of that. They just, recent Z15 announcement, encryption everywhere. They announced a hybrid cloud so basically bringing the Z to cloud, really strong security focus. This cloud piece is interesting. We talked a lot about cloud 2.0, bringing the Z in the systems of record to cloud is something that IBM has said that it intends specifically to do. That will begin to potentially smooth out IBM's Z revenue. It's ironic, in the late latter part of the 1980s, kind of a financial game that IBM was playing they converted their rental base which was a monthly income stream to purchase. When they did that, it created the effect of showing up on the income statement and kind of hiding the trouble that IBM was really in. When that transition ended, IBM really tanked and that's when IBM got into big trouble, the whole downsizing trend, Gershner came in, they bought PWC and really transformed the company but the Z as the system of record or the old 3090 has lived on. Now we're seeing that dynamic come full circle where over time, IBM can shift from an upfront pay to a subscription which is, as they say, coming full circle. It's going to be interesting to see how that transition works. The other point again, storage seems to be synchronizing its product cycles with Z at least at the high end and so this is likely to carry through to Q4. We see from the ETR spending data that storage intentions are up. I think the net score was up 5% versus a negative from the previous quarter. Servers overall were still down. They don't have a question specific to Z but I would fully expect that Q4 of this year you're going to see a nice uptick in Z revenue and as I pointed out before with that 60% number, this is going to provide another halo effect for IBM's overall business. Will it be enough to propel the stock? Probably not. It's factored in the analysts understand these product cycles but it's something that I wanted to shine a light on because again, it's one of these sort of important topics that not a lot of people talk about. People kind of roll your eyes when you talk about the mainframe but the mainframe is here, it's alive and well and what I call mainframe Oracle Exadata and IBM Z are really sort of the two companies that are prominent in that space and while they might compete to my earlier point you're really talking about each company having its own install base and as long as they keep investing in R&D and keep those product cycles coming I would expect that this business is going to be healthy yet cyclical for a long, long time. This is Dave Vellante for theCUBE Insights powered by ETR, we'll see you next time. Thanks for watching.