Cardio training is a terrible way to lose body fat. Look, cardio can be healthy.  We've been saying this for years here at Mindputt. Well, a study just came out that proved what we've been saying has been right all along. They did a study where they compared cardio versus strength training versus cardio plus strength training. Guess what performed the best? Strength training alone. People who did strength training alone had more muscle and more body fat than people who did cardio, for sure, and even a little bit better than people who combined cardio with strength training. So when it comes to fat loss, just do strength training. If you want to improve endurance and stamina, that's fine. Do cardio. When it comes to fat loss, stop it, guys. Stop telling everybody to cardio. It's terrible. Oh, boy. We're all the fitness clowns that we're trying to counter that conversation. Can I just tell you that... Because we've been saying this for almost a decade on the show. For as long as we've been on the show, we've been saying this. Religiously. And this is the message that probably gets attacked the most by us. And it's the fitness influencers. It's the bros. It's the whoever. We're just married to that cardio. They try so hard to take us down. And through the years, we've been proven right on many different subjects. And this one, they haven't... There's studies that show that leaned in the direction that we're talking. But this is the first one that showed cardio versus strength training versus strength training plus cardio. Yeah. And in that study, the strength training actually did a little bit better than the combination, which is pretty crazy. But it does go right along with what we explained with the mixed messages and signaling that you're saying to the body and how cardio... Yes, it burns more calories while you're doing it. But it actually teaches your body to become more efficient. It actually teaches your body to slow down its metabolism over time. And our theory is the evolutionary one. Nonetheless, it's proven. I think that's the most significant part is, you know, knowing that in combination with resistance training and cardio didn't even outperformed that. And so it's like, okay, because that would have been a point of contention that I'm sure most trainers and coaches would have brought in. Well, in conjunction together, you're going to probably have that sound. Yeah, why won't you do both? Right. I mean, that's been the argument and the challenge I've had in the competitive world since I got into that. I mean, it's still happening right now. It's also how when people ask me, like, how do I know if I have a good coach or not?   If you are in a 6, 9, 12, 18 week prep for a show and you're already doing cardio in the first couple of weeks, he sucks or she sucks, whoever's telling you to do that. Because for this exact reason right here, especially on the competitive level when it is your job to hang on to as much muscle as you can to present the best buff version of yourself on stage, like that because if this is somebody who is like the average person and you want to have good cardio endurance and heart health and you also want to lean out a little bit and you want to be strong. Include more movement in general. Yeah, and even then, it's like it's not a big deal if you lose a couple pounds of muscle.   Look, cardio is one of the best ways to improve stamina and endurance. In fact, like if you're an athlete and you come to me and you say, you know, I want to get better at distance running or I want more gas in the tank for my particular sport, strength training definitely helps, but cardio, that's your go-to. Stamina endurance, that's your go-to. It also, when applied appropriately and properly, is good for you, so there's nothing wrong with it.  By the way, when you're talking about the average person and we're talking about their health, like athletic conditioning is important. When we talk about the average person, what you want them to do is you need them to lose body fat and you need them to have muscle. In fact, in this study, the other part of this study is they measured H, let me read this to you. So they were measuring also how the body responded to insulin or blood glucose, HBA1C levels. That's directly connected to muscle mass. So if you want insulin sensitivity, you're not going to be able to work out all the time and you're only going to pick for one form of exercise, like make it strength training by far is the most effective. But I mean, again, what's crazy about this is it even out, I mean, it was a small outperformance in combination, but think about it, they did more work. Yeah, I was gonna say, think about that. You're like, why would you do more work for less results? That makes no sense. Like the argument was like, oh, it's just as good or maybe a little bit better potentially. It's not, it's worse. So why would you actually spend more time putting, and for the people that are like trying to make the argument of the heart health thing, go interrupt your regular five by five training with 20 sets of squats and deadlifts and overhead presses. Watch how your heart gets pounding and how strong it gets from training that way. You do a cycle of that.   And I was training a lot of stuff where I was doing super sets and I knew I was in good condition, you know? I wasn't in the best running condition, but I wasn't enough running condition to beat the shit out of my friends who were training, running all the time to get in shape for this bike, whatever the muddy buddy marathon thing that we did. It's like, you'd be amazed on how good of endurance that you can get if you train that way even with weights. And so this idea that you need to get on a hamster wheel and run really hard till you can't breathe. And that's the best way for you to lose fat and or the best way for you to get just endurance. It's not, there's plenty of ways to do that through strength training. Well, I mean, look, if you were to look at, you know, health and longevity, we'll put that in a category. So health longevity, performance and athletic performance, you know, there's a lot of crossover there, right? But then there's the extremes, right? You can push performance to where you're taken away from health and longevity. And then of course, you know, health and longevity, if you're maximizing that, you're not maximizing performance. When we're talking about athletic performance, now we're looking at all the tools and we're looking at how to use them the best way, okay? That's a fact. But the average person, the average person listening to this podcast is like, I got three days a week to work out. I wanna get lean, I wanna feel good and I don't have tons of time that I can spend at the gym. What do I do? I have 45 minutes to an hour, three days a week. Strength train, strength train. What about the days off? Walk more. You've got it, that's it. That's like 95% of the way that. Almost everybody wants to be healthy, fit, strong and have flexibility in their diet and look good, right? Those are like the five core tenets that you get from almost every single person that's ever hired me are those. You get the occasional one out of a hundred that's very specific athlete or competition or thing that we're trying to do. Like that's so rare. Almost everybody listening will fall in those five categories and the best way to do that is through weight training and proper diet. Those two things will give you all five of those attributes. Talk about the good timing too for Dr. Lyon's book Muscle-Centric Medicine. How does she say it? We're not over fat, we're under muscle. I mean, we agree with that. That's what we've been talking about for a long time. She's 100% right. This study is proving that she's right. I mean, what's cool about this is I think this is going mainstream because this study went mainstream, right? So big news organizations. Yeah, New York Times made it up. Yeah, or picking it up and talking about it. Yeah, and that's cool because still today the average person would not consider strength training as a fat loss or longevity form of exercise. They still think of it as like, oh, you build muscle and strength, maybe athletic performance, but when it comes to health and fat loss that they don't think about it. And so I'm glad that this is coming out because the revolution, right? That's what we've been talking about. I think it's worth the beginning of it. I think we're at the beginning of strength training, getting it's, you know, it's due, right? It's gonna get it's due. It's people- Get the academic bump, finally. Yes, so now it's in what's gonna happen. It's gonna take another five years or so, but doctors are gonna start preaching it and the average person is to start applying strength training. And I know what'll happen in the beginning. It's gonna be done wrong.  But eventually people are gonna figure out like, oh, in order to do this properly, I have to train like those meat heads that I thought were just meat heads or whatever, but that seems to be the most, you know, that's the way to do this. I wonder if this, how this, you know, I didn't read it as deep as you did, how this can support the case for the empty stomach, you know, walking on the treadmill in the morning time before your day starts versus the guy or girl who gets on the stair master and bangs out an hour. I mean, this is how- Fasted cardio?  It's walking. It's low level intensity, steady state. It's like literally walking at speed 3.2 on a treadmill, which is a little bit faster than casual stroll on a treadmill for an hour. First thing when you wake up fasted like that was the amount of cardio training I would consider doing when I was competing. Yeah, but I think, and you've brought this up, I think the benefits of it, I mean, it's good it's activity, right? It's the early movement. It's getting up an hour early and moving. It's the behavior that it encourages, right? It gets you to move as soon as you wake up, which, you know, studies will show if you wake up and start moving, you're more likely to move later on unless you beat yourself up in the morning, in which case it's the opposite. Also sets the stage for more consistency and discipline with your diet. So when they do studies on exercise, what they find is when people start working out consistently, a significant percentage will also start simultaneously working on their diet. It's not true in the reverse. People who start to diet don't necessarily start to go exercise as a result of it. So I think it's the behaviors really. I think waking up, it also encourages you to probably go to bed early because you know, you're gonna wake up and do the walk. Yeah, I mean, you get up earlier, which also makes me tired that night. I get up, I start the day with walking, right? This isn't what I'm doing right now. This is what I was doing when I was competing, right? So I get up, walk at six o'clock in the morning till seven o'clock. Why I'm walking, I'm like also like mentally planning out my day of eating. Like the first meal I eat is a good, healthy choice. Versus had I not done that, could have easily slept until seven 30, eight o'clock, slow to get going. Maybe I make a good choice. Maybe I make a bad choice eating my first meal. So you're right. I'm sure there's a lot of the psychology plays into that also. But I think it just supports that as being a better strategy than getting on a stair master at four o'clock in the afternoon and sweating till you make puddles below you. I think, and this is the case that we made in the Resistance Training Revolution, I think when you're talking about the average person, you have to, you absolutely have to consider minimum effective dose because you're just, you're not gonna get most people to work out all the time. It ain't gonna happen, everybody. Relax, like the people in the fitness space who keep preaching this hardcore message of fitness, you're only talking to fitness fanatics. That's the only people that are receiving that message. The average person, we did this for over two decades, we train people. When I got really good, I got to the point where I could get the average sedentary person to exercise, structured exercise, two or three days a week on their own. And that was like a massive success. And I'm talking about consistent, right?  We're not gonna get the average person to turn into a fitness fanatic. It's not gonna happen. So we have to look at minimum effective dose. What do we do in the amount of time that's gonna be realistic for the average person that's gonna give them the most bang for their buck? And look, you're not gonna be able to string together multiple modalities of exercise in that. You're just not strength training. Oh, here, do strength training two days a week. And then on the other days, just find ways to be a little more active, not structured, but park farther away from the store, walk for five minutes or 10 minutes after breakfast, lunch and dinner, go for a walk with your wife after work, whatever. Just those things right there and the return that they'll get, muscle is so protective that when you build it, it protects you from your normal, sedentary, modern Western society life. Having more muscle is such a buffer against that. It's so important to do that.  I mean, good luck. You're not gonna be moving all day. Nobody does. It's just too hard. You have to plan it. I mean, look at our job even. Well, we're in the fitness space and we're sitting down 90% of time while we're at work. Yeah, we gotta be focused on planting seeds that grow within these potential people we want to change. So it becomes their own intrinsic motivation, their own pursuit. Like really the entire journey of it is theirs. I think that it's a weird thing as a fitness coach, we get this ownership over that and we wanna like steer and control. And that only lasts so long. Even if it does, if they do accept it and they get some kind of motivation externally from you, it's very temporary. So, we have to like approach it a lot differently to be able to get that pull and to make those smaller incremental changes is such a better way to look at it. Did you see my Instagram story the day that this came out, this study? Okay, so I posted about it and, oh man, where did I hear this from and did like a funny post of us and then referred to your book, right? And I hadn't been on Amazon to look at your book sales in a long time and see like in the reviews, like it's got almost like 1,000 reviews. And I think the average is like 4.7 or 4.8 out of five stars or whatever. And I actually went through and was like reading some of the reviews. I actually wanted to see the ones that didn't make five. Like I wonder what people said negatively about this book. You know the irony of what the ones, the people that started four. So like everybody five started, some people four started. So it gave it an average of 4.7 or 4.8. Do you know what the one thing was? No. This right here, Cardio. Cardio. Oh, the people would say things like, oh, this was a phenomenal book. I love everything in it. I agree with most of it. That would be like a four star, but some things I don't agree with in regards to Cardio. It was Cardio was like the one thing that people still can't hang on to, they cannot grasp that how could this be possible?  It's like burning the cultural. It is. I just thought it was so funny that like how many people were raving about the book and that's the one thing they just don't want to accept. Today's giveaway is MAPS Aesthetic. Here's how you can win that program. Leave a comment below this video in the first 24 hours that we drop it. Subscribe to this channel and turn on notifications. If you win, we'll let you know in the comments section. We're also running a sale this month. Our beginner strength training program, MAPS Resistance is half off. And then our correctional exercise program, which helps with pain, mobility, will help you get a better bench press, deadlift squat, overhead press. That's also 50% off. So if you're interested, just click on the link at the top of the description below. All right, back to the show. Just look, I want to be clear. Like if I could construct the perfect routine for the average person, it would have strength training as the foundation. You would have cardiovascular conditioning in there. You would have mobility and flexibility training. There would be a awareness practice, something like meditation or prayer or some kind of a spiritual that makes you present. That would be in there as well. And then there would be like sleep and lifestyle. I mean, if I could construct something perfect, then it would include all that stuff. But we got to stop preaching perfect because it doesn't exist. It just doesn't exist. So what we need to do is tell people, if you're gonna do one thing, which is we're lucky if we get you to do one thing and maintain it, and your goal is to lose fat, reduce your risk of diabetes, reduce your risk of cancer, improve mobility, give you the best shot at longevity, oh, and make you look good. And it feels like- Supplements weight training the most, mobility. I would argue it's even more valuable than cardio. And that's not even a thought anybody has. You know, and it's just one of those things it's like, I think it's something about it being mindless. You know, like the cardiovascular, we could just like get in the rhythm. Like I like that I just like, it's a psychological thing. I think that is the draw for people. Oh, I think there's a physical and visual thing that's going along with it too.  That too, yeah. You know what I'm saying? So there is, that's the major disconnect. And that's why some people are so staunch about arguing this, oh, these guys don't know what they're talking about. I mean, I lost 15 pounds last month.  And so in their head, there's no way you're gonna convince them otherwise that this is a better strategy. Now what we know happened to that person who lost 15 pounds by cutting calories and running every single day is they lost an 80% muscle. And so they really didn't get any healthier. You know what I'm saying? All they do is, and they lost a little bit of body fat, but they also lost equal amount or more muscle. So you're not in a better place.  You're arguably healthier when you were heavier. So it's like trying to convince that person that has felt that and physically seen that is probably one of the greatest challenges that we have.  Big hurdle we have, yeah. We're talking fat loss, not weight loss. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Big difference. Yeah, very big difference. Just weight. And muscle also, you don't want to just build muscle. You want healthy muscle. You know, what was illuminating was when we talked to Dr. Gabriel Lyon, she said, you know, we measure lean body mass, but we haven't had, we do now, but a lot of people don't have access to them. We've never really measured muscle quality. And she used this wonderful analogy. She said, look at a rib eye steak and look at a filet. What a great visual.  And she says, now athletes will as well, but that's access for energy. It's very different than a sedentary muscle that's peppered with fat within it. A fit, healthy muscle has less of that and it looks more like a filet. So now all of it measures of lean body mass. So that's the thing. So before with normal testing. So it's not just the amount of muscle you have, it's also the quality of muscle. And then that's a storage vessel for glycogen, which comes from carbohydrates and sugar, which, you know, look, everybody talks about insulin resistance and its effects on health.  It's not a majority, but it's a large enough percentage where it raises eyebrows. A significant percentage of people who develop type two diabetes are not overweight. They're not even overweight. They're like normal weight. And yet they develop this issue that we attribute to obesity. It's not obesity. It's sarcopenia. It's loss of muscle. It's the muscle, the hormonal muscle, organ of muscle, is not healthy or you don't have enough of it. And this is what's causing a lot of those issues. And then that causes issues with the rest of the body, especially increasing cancer risk. You look at the cancer reduction risks of building muscle and it's profound. I think it's like 25% drop across the board just from building muscle and doing nothing else. Well, I'm so glad you brought up the point that like, if I were to construct the perfect, healthiest, finished version of myself or my client's day or routine, of course it would include all of these great practices. It would include cardio. It would include spiritual gratitude or prayer. It would include, but you know, it's so funny. It's like the way I look at cardio is in that same realm of spirituality. It's not like somebody who was 200 pounds over weight came to me. Just go home and pray about it. You know what I'm saying? And let me know and get back to me in a month and see how that goes. That's where cardio gets in that journey for me. It's like, first I'm gonna tell the client the big rocks. Like let's address building muscle, let's address balancing out your nutrition. Then when we get those rocks in, it's like, hey, maybe we'll add a gratitude practice in there. Oh, maybe we'll add some cardio once or twice a week. We'll start adding these other things that is going to enhance your health, enhance your life that have tremendous value. But there's an order of operation of what matters most in the pursuit of being a healthier version of yourself. And cardio is not at the top of the list. You know what another challenge with cardio for the average person is that they perceive it as a simpler form of exercise because they go, well, I could just go run.  Not realizing that those physical activities are skills. They'd never been taught how to run.  So you stopped running when you were a kid. You don't run anymore.  First, your form's already off anyway, so stuff's gonna start hurting.  This is why the injury rates are so high. Your knees go, that goes to the hips. Now the beauty of strength training, although it seems more complex, now the truth is there's a lot more variety with strength training. There's a million and one different ways to do different exercises. It's super adaptable. I think that's a strength of it, not its weakness. However, here's what I think is great about strength training. People typically, not always, right? Cause if they do a class like body pump or circuit or whatever, but typically if they go to strength training the real way, like I'm gonna go get stronger, there is an emphasis on technique. There is an emphasis on form. There's a right way to do it. Whereas with running it's like, let's just go run till we're tired. All right, John, let's go. And we're gonna go until we're totally tired. And then the injury risk goes to the roof. So I think there's this misconception that it's this easier, safer maybe way of working out. It's not. Running is a skill. You lose that skill. It's gonna take a while to build it up. I used to tell my clients who decided that they wanted to train for endurance sports. And there was a place by my studio where there were running coaches there. And they would actually record you running, find the right shoe for you, and then they coach you. And I tell them, look, if you came to me and you said you wanted to compete in powerlifting and you've never lifted weights, I'd tell you, well, if we want a good chance at this, let's train for six months to a year first. And really protect things, make sure you can actually squat and deadlift and press. So I told them, go hire a running coach and train with them until your running technique is so good that even when you get tired your form doesn't break down too much. It would take them a year to get to that point. And then they could run without developing issues. Otherwise you're asking for trouble. I think we just over complicate this. I think it's not, I mean, literally, deadlift squat, overhead press, I'm gonna make the big five, three. Go practice those three movements and start with a weight so light you feel super safe and comfortable with it until you get the technique down. And then slowly add a little bit more weight every time you show back up and do that.  You're gonna see profound changes to your body. Do that, literally three times a week, practice those three movements. Or even how about this, you know, home gyms are getting more popular. Now I know they take up a lot of space now there's companies like PRX that literally design them. They have equipment designed specifically to use minimal space like very minimal. It folds into the wall, the squat racks and all that stuff is pretty cool. I think the average person would benefit from doing like two exercises a day. Like go out to the room with the rack, get the barbell, three sets of this, three sets of that, done. And just do that every single day. I think that would benefit the average person more than anything. Oh, I mean, a hundred percent. I mean, I'll just take three days. I don't need every day. I'll take three days. Three days are those three movements or you can divide it up over six days and do two and two. However you wanna do. But I just said there's a million different ways we can put it all together. And the problem with our space is we argue so much about like, who's more right about it? And we use these studies to try and prove our points. And it's like, meanwhile we lose the masses of people that are so intimidated to start moving in the right direction because it seems so complicated. And who do I follow? And whose programs should do this? And what diet should I do? It's like, dude, cut out process foods, eat whole foods. Don't even worry about how much. Just eat whole foods. Literally just get rid of them. The process should see what happens there. Hey, do these three to four exercises. Just practice them. Don't worry about sets and reps and weight and how many days of this. Like just practice them. Get good at them. And then once you get good at them and proficient at the movement, add a little bit of weight. Then after all the results that will come from the you eliminating process foods and practicing those movements. Cause you're gonna get, I'm telling you right now for the next three to six months, you're gonna see results just from that. Then when those start to slow down, then go invest in a program. Then go look at your, find your favorite fitness person to tell you how to get more nuanced about everything. But for right now, just doing that will make massive changes in 85% of the population. I know. Easily, yeah. I know, I love it. I love it. I think it's great. I think we're about to see mainstream start to adopt this, which is exciting to me. It's exciting because I remember as a trainer, God, do you guys remember noticing this in gyms when you first started?  I thought for a long time, cardio was the best way to burn body fat. Okay, as a trainer, like if you had asked me when I became a trainer at 18, probably till the age of 24, 25, okay? So for a while, you asked me, hey, I wanna lose a lot of weight real fast. I only wanna do one form exercise. What should I do? I probably would, ah, probably cardio. You should strength train too, but probably cardio if you really wanna lose body fat. But what I kept noticing in the gyms were my group X instructors versus my female trainers or my members that would come in regularly to hop on a treadmill and a bike versus my members that would go into the weight room, men and women. And they just, they looked different. They looked so different. Like the people who strength trained consistently, their bodies looked different. They looked leaner, they looked healthier. It didn't look like it took as much work. My group X instructors, they would bust their asses teaching class, I mean like hours of cardio a day, teaching classes and doing stuff. Then I had my female trainers who lift weights once a day for an hour and they just looked very different.  I've told you a story before. I had a trainer and a group X instructor both have a baby right at the same time. And it was cool because they come in pregnant, you know, do the whole thing. Obviously the female trainer lifted group X instructor, just a bunch of cardio. The recovery from the pregnancy with the trainer was insanely fast. Like she came back. And then the other, the group X instructor obviously did better than the average person. But I remember it took her a lot longer to come back. And what it was, it was the muscle. It was the muscle. I was so misinformed as a trainer doing this. I mean, I remember I would put clients on a bike as hard as they could for seven minutes then I'd pick up the weights and do three exercises back together. Then I'd put them back on the bike as hard as they could for seven minutes. And then I'd get them back. I mean, that was like training cycles look like that. It was crazy. That's how I was training my clients. All in this pursuit of burning calories like crazy. And I'm doing weights, right? So we're gonna build like so terrible. But I see this all over Instagram still. I mean, it's still prevalent in our space. People that have massive followings showing these exercises where they're doing dumbbell, lunge to curl to press and then doing jump rope in between or burpees in between. It's like, what are you doing? It's like, and the irony is that the better, more effective way is actually less work. That's the irony of it. Maybe that's what makes it so hard to believe. It is. Maybe that's actually the weakness. It is because everything else in life. It's gotta be harder than that. Everything else in life, the more you put in, the harder the work, the better the return is. Typically, right? Yeah. Oh, I mean, name something else that's not like that. I mean, if you work harder at school, you get better grades. You study more for the test. You do better on the test. You practice a skill and a sport as much as you possibly can.  You don't wanna overdo this.  And you can technically do too much. I guess chemistry. Yeah. And a little too much, you get exploded. I mean, I can't think of another really good example. Well, you know what it reminds me of, Adam, is after I trained people for a while and I trained these really wealthy, successful people and they would be like, you know, I remember one guy I trained. He's like, you could try making a lot of money per hour and work a lot of hours because you're not gonna get wealthy like that. Very few people are wealthy making a lot per hour. He goes, the way you get wealthy is you take that money and you put it somewhere and it makes money for you. That's how you get wealthy. And I remember him making that big point. And I remember he showed me on his, he had a calculator and he did the math. He's like, okay, fine, you make this much per hour. Look how many hours you can work. Would it work more hours? Or I could take that money and he would show me compounding interest and stuff. This is when I was young and it kind of understood it and some of it went over my head. I mean, that's a good example because I mean that resonates with me because I remember being fixated on types of professions that would pay me more per hour or had a big salary and like, oh, I gotta get there. I gotta get to the point where I'm making 100, 200, 300,000, I was so focused on that. And then I remember reading the book Millionaire Next Door and seeing the things that most millionaires had in common was not their profession. And in fact, things like teachers and engineers and these professions that aren't making millions of dollars a year were actually the most amount of millionaires. So it had nothing to do with their salary every year. It was that they had the ability to live well below their means, use their extra income to invest it in things that had compounding interest and then made money while they slept. And they just did that for years over years over years that turn into decades. And that all grew and grew and grew to the point where their passive income surpassed their income. Building muscle is your compounding interest. 100%. It does the work for you when you have some more muscle and the beauty is you just gotta get, send the signal, feed the body properly and the body does the work for you. It's actually what happens. Your body builds the muscle for you. You don't have to sit there and build it. You just send the signal. And then when the muscle's there, it's like having money in a wonderful- Got all the flexibility at your disposal. Yeah, you got compounding. It's like, imagine you have this amazing account. You wake up in the morning, pull it up. Oh, I made another five grand, just going to sleep. That's what happens when you have more muscle.  I burned more calories than I did last week because I got a little bit more muscle. Oh, my insulin sensitivity is better because I built a little more muscle. I mean, it's pretty awesome. So this is a little bit off the subject that I wanted to talk to you about because it came up in my feed today. And I don't think I've actually seen somebody do this before. Now, we've talked about grounding, right? And the benefits of it. And I think we communicate it different than I've seen some people communicate it, right? And I- I love this topic. And I like, and here, my- You have a less woo-woo wave looking at it. Oh, very much so loud, right? So I mean, those that don't know it, you have more nerve endings in your feet than anywhere else. There's like over 7,000 in your feet, right? That's a lot of nerve endings. I think your hands, I think your genitals have more, but your feet are up here. I don't think so. I think the feet are the highest. Really? Yeah, yeah. Maybe in density, but anyway, they're up there. Right, so, I mean, there's just a ton, right? So there is a lot going on neurologically, right? In that area. And yet we put these cast on our feet 90% of the time, right? And we do it from birth. So, I mean, just common sense tells me that that's probably not the most ideal thing or the natural or the best way for all those nerves to get stimulated. And so I can see the benefits of taking my shoes off, walking around. You're right. There's even density. There are more nerve endings per square centimeter. I like hearing you say that again. I don't think Doug heard you. Density. No, no, no. It's the right part. He's going to put it on his ringtone. Oh, you're right. Oh, you're right. Finally. Let's all call him again. So, I mean, my point though, right, is obviously that, I mean, common sense tells me that there's going to be tremendous value in connecting and moving and doing that. And it's just hard to do that in these big, cast-y shoes that we have. So, but then there's the woo-woo side that likes to talk about the energy that is traveling. Where they show the electron transfer. Yes. And so I saw somebody do this. I'd never seen this before, till literally today. It came in my feet. And I've heard people say this stuff, but I actually never see someone like, you try and use like the measuring of this. So, if you have your shoes on and you grab one of those, you know, electric, whatever I forget what they're called, the things that measure the electricity passing from negative to positive, those, the red and the black wires or whatever, you can put, you put one in the ground and then you hold one on your fingertips and then you have shoes on and you get like 1.2 reading or something like that.  All of a sudden it goes to 50. So, like, you know, 50 acts of the electricity is traveling through your body. Well, you're more conductive for sure. I mean, yeah. What they're doing is, this is what's annoying is that sometimes what we do is we notice the benefit of something. And then we try to find the most. Scientific way to put it. We exaggerated. Yeah, the most weird, like, you know, crazy. I don't think it's the most weird. So I think, I think they, people try, I think we're all guilty of this. I think even Eastern medicine. Yeah, but the answer's simple is what I'm trying to say.  I mean, maybe it is. Maybe it is. Like, I know where you're going. Like, sometimes the simplest answer is the correct answer. But we also, there's so many unknowns. Like, we act like we know everything about the brain and the metabolism and we know hardly anything about those things. But we act as if we know everything. It's like. Somewhere in that vein, there was like this manmade, well, all the pyramids are manmade, but there was like a recent one that was made, that was really tall. I believe it was in Russia. But planes would fly over it and they would measure the energy, like, emitted. And it was substantially high. And so as you walk in too, they do the same thing where they like measure the electronic frequency and it was like through the roof. So if there's a weird thing of like, conductivity for sure, but like. Yes. There's definitely something there. People exaggerate it all the time. I agree there's something there because it's been there forever. And if something's there forever, then there's going to be a co-evolution relationship. Sure. Just a period in a story. Okay, so, but here's why I don't like this, Adam. Because so here, what they do is they say that and Doug brought it up. Being barefoot can help your body absorb Earth's electrons. And then that's what offers health benefits. Okay.  So now instead of going outside and walking barefoot on the grass, put your feet on this mat that's going to do this electron transfer.  Is that? No, that's, God, that was the worst one. That's a new one to sell. That's the worst one. But it's like, oh, oh cool. You don't need to go outside and put your feet in the dirt because it's dirty. Just put your feet on this grounding mat and you'll get the same benefits. No, you're not. It's what you said, Adam.  Yeah, neurologically. Just period. If something's underdeveloped, it means your neurodevelopment is underdeveloped. If you're always in shoes and socks all the time, all the time, all the time. Imagine if you wore gloves as often as you wore- Well, anybody who's had a cast knows this. If you've ever had a cast on your arm or anything like a sleeve for a long period of time and then you take it out. Oh, yeah. Or even like an example would be your arm falling asleep because you left it in a position like that. What that is is like your body has stopped sending this connection over there. And then that period of time to get- It like primes it off. Yeah, it stops. If you don't use it, you lose it, right? So if you put your feet in a cast like that, your brain goes, it reprioritizes that energy somewhere else. It's like, oh, we're not really gonna need all these, all this energy going down to these 7,000 nerves. We'll send it to other places of the body like to think that that's not healthy and beneficial to reengage that and get them working and get them firing. It's just common sense in my opinion. How many people would survive today if they had to go barefoot and walk around in the woods or in nature, right? Nobody, I would be destroyed. I would be destroyed. So that's- A lot of people yelling. So that's a big part of the brain that's not developed. It's crazy how backwards we are culture at that minute. I remember the abuse I had took from my family over not letting my son wear shoes. I know, I'm so afraid.   He wants to take his shoes off.  Except for the bathroom and the gas station. Don't do it there. No, I hold him when we do those. Yeah. No, I mean, I just, I love that he wants to do that and I love that it doesn't bother him to walk over gravel and it doesn't at all because he's been trained that way his whole life. And I can see how stable he is. Well, this is how interesting it is, right? Cause it's all, your body is an extension in this essence of your brain, right? And it's like, you guys have read about phantom limb syndrome, how weird that is. Somebody will lose a limb, but because their brain for whatever reason perceives the limb to still be there, the person will feel like they have an arm. So the arm is gone, but they feel like they have an arm and it's, and it's localized there. And there's nothing they can do about it. Pain medicine doesn't work. Nothing works.  But I mean, how trippy, right? So here you are. Again, I'll use this example. Imagine if you wore gloves as much as you wore shoes for as long as you wore shoes. So since you could walk, right? So imagine if, since you could walk 90% of the time you had gloves on, how much less versatile and nimble and accurate would your hands be? You'd just be more like blunt objects, right? You wouldn't be, have as much security. Imagine manipulating things and touching things, how weird it would feel on your hands and over slapping it really. Over stimulation or under stimulation or you just, you just got to. Did you guys see the video I sent you guys in the thread of the girl who was drawing with all four? I did see that. It was, it's so mind-blowing. I wanted to like search to see. Like nice pictures. Like beautiful portraits of famous people. Bro, go to the, go to our group thread. I'll attend there. I sent it to our group thread like, like, just like last week I sent it. So it'll be a ways back. I mean, I've seen, I've seen somebody that was really artistic and did both arms. No, she's not in the video. Bro, she is sitting like this. With feet too. There's three pieces of paper in front of her. There's three or four pieces under on. And she's on a clear desk and she's drawing with her feet and both her hands at the same time. And it has her brain even work like that. She's trained it that way.  And I was like, is there a way this is CGI or fake? Because that's, that has to be one of the most crazy talented things anybody could possibly do. It's so interesting to me. In fact, the human body is so fascinating. Cause there's just, we think of develop, we're just talking right now about building muscle and building the body. What we don't realize is you're building central nervous system just as much, if not more. All the skills you learn, all the ways you move, that's your CNS. And your CNS will adapt just like your body. So if you lose contractile tissue, if you lose the ability, if you stop testing your nerves and how they perceive things, if you stop allowing your body to be in cold or hot temperatures. Sending to you. Then what happens is that your brain's connection to those things also reduces, starts to adapt, it starts to prune those things off. Just like you'll lose muscle if you don't, if you don't move or don't exercise. Bro, it is real. I just sent it to you, Doug, right now to our group thread and put it up so Justin can see it on this video. It's pretty wild. It is, this is crazy wild.  I don't know if I'm just like the only one is like so saffold by this. Like I thought it was totally geek out on stuff like this, like super human ability. I mean, and it's not like she, I would be impressed if she drew circles. You know, just be able to do it. Yeah, just to make four circles look, she draws like a beautiful portrait. She's not even looking at one in particular. You seen this before, Doug? I did, I did see it. I think it was somebody else I saw, but I haven't seen this particular one now. This is the one I sent you. Yeah, yeah, look at this. What? Yeah, she's doing eight. She's doing eight.  No, the YouTube channel, the YouTube people get to see this. Those are unbelievable portraits. Yeah, that's crazy. That she draws. How many people can do this? She's got to be like one of the only ones ever. I didn't realize there was eight. She's doing eight at once. Of course it's a woman. There's no way a dude can multitask like this. No way! Impossible, yeah.  We're gonna like two things. Look at that, look at that. I mean, and they're really, really good portraits. Elvis, Marilyn Monroe. I don't know who the other two guys are. Einstein. Einstein. That's that one dude that does those funny videos. That one Instagram guy, yeah. Look how good those are. I know. Who, he mocks, he's just like, hmm? Yeah. Isn't that wild? Yeah, yeah. I don't know how that, I think that one video doesn't even have that many views. I think some of you got like thousands of views. I thought for sure that. She's like watching... 5,600 views. She's like cooking dinner with his foot. Yeah, yeah. Cool, huh? Yeah, typing stuff over here. I mean, but really obviously the point of bringing that up just highlights the ability that your feet have. Potential, right? Yeah, I mean, to be able to do that is, I mean, the dexterity that you need, the control, the mind, ever that. I mean, that's... And then it's... You know what's even crazier about this? This is what's sad, is that we're so... We're just getting a tail too, you know. We're just really maximizing it. Just, what a tail. I'm just saying, man, that's it. 12, 12. You guys, 12. You guys stop watching.  I'm just... Imagine what she can do with that tail. It's so unbelievable. It wouldn't be a far fetch for me. That's all I'm saying. Somebody better have swooped her up, right? Yeah. Yeah, exactly. She's talented. You want to go, I'm busy right now, honey. I'm doing something in my head.  Hey, those of us, the listeners in our hardcore have been listening for a long time. Remember the story I told a long time ago? The story I told a long time ago.  That's like, that's old. You got to go back in time. It's a nugget for somebody who's who who listened for a long time. Don't point people backwards. Please don't do that anyway. Super. Well, now that we're talking about weird stuff, did you know that there's a like a... What would be alternative medicine? There's an alternative medicine practice called ureotherapy. Have you heard of this? Eurotherapy? Yeah, you're a... U-R-O therapy. Your anus? I was thinking like they only did in Europe. No, no, no. I'm going to read this to you guys because it's a... You wrote like a urologist? Let me just read this to you. BP Hold? In 1945, John W. Armstrong, a British naturopath, published a popular book about the alleged curative power of drinking one's own urine. The book, The Water of Life, a treatise on urine therapy, claims that urine can cure all major illnesses. Now, here's why I brought this up, okay? I'm on Instagram and I'm looking for Facebook. I think it was looking for topics to bring up. We know what groups you're following. I know what just happened. It's clear to get at what you follow. I'm trying to make the case. So listen to me, guys. You guys want to do it again? So I stumbled across and it was totally randomly. A lot of health benefits. You guys know I always bring breakthrough stuff to the... No, no, no. I was on Facebook and there was a podcast. It was like a health podcast. And there was even a guy who is apparently an expert on this. And he was talking about how amazing he is for his health. I'm like, there's no way. There's no way. So I Googled it and there's groups of people. They do it. Not only do it, but claim that it's like cleared their skin up. What? Yeah, dude. Yeah, but it's terrible for their breath. I didn't even know this existed. So I saw, I remember... You know what? Even if there are benefits. What was C'mon Grills' show? That was Bear Grills' show, Man vs Wild. Was that Bear Grills? Bear Grills did all those memes. He's always drinking piss, yeah. Yeah, yeah. I mean, he shows that as like when you, if you were out of water in the desert, the next thing you do is you pee and drink. Because at least to hydrate yourself a little bit like that would be the only time I think I would potentially do that. Right? There is that. Is it true that if you get stung by jellyfish and you pee on it, that that's what you need to do? Or is it just water? No, I think that's true. I think that is true. But what is it about the pee then? Some, I don't know if it's an ammonia thing or something in your pee that helps to kind of counter the pH somehow. OK, so pee is a real thing then. Yeah, but again, that's one of those things like did somebody just pee on somebody and figure that out? So Sal, what is the science to support? There is no science. There is no science. Come on. No. There's got to be something to get a whole group of people to do it. No, there's no there's no science, dude. You know, and I literally know very closely related to like breatharians and like fruitetarian like flat earthers. Oh, like really bizarre like people. Unfortunately, the real world treating a jellyfish sting by urinary anatomy actually caused someone in what Monica situation even more pain rather than relief. Urine can actually aggravate the jellyfish to release more venom. This cure is indeed fiction. Yeah, I've also heard about. Yeah, your wife's going to be pissed.  It's not working. It's like, trust me, honey. Give me some more water. How did I get stung by jellyfish at home? Where the hell did that come from then? Who started that? I try to convince Katrina. That's so by B. Trust me, this will work. It was a jellyfish. What's that? There's also check that out on DuckDuckGo. I don't trust Google. There's I know, you know what? The elites don't want us to know that. They don't want us to know that we can. They don't want us to cure everything. There was also, I also heard, this is an old, like this might even be, maybe you guys heard it because especially you, Jesse, because you play football, that if you have athlete's foot peeing on it, it was supposed to help. Did you ever hear that? I mean, no. Okay. Yeah. I haven't heard that one. Who sold you that one? I heard that. God, what did I hear that a long time ago? That sounds like one of your buddies pulled a prank on you. Oh, I know how to fix this, buddy. Well, still. I just put that cream on it. Oh, you got a shower me too.    And then wash it together. Like everybody got like athlete's foot, jacket, and I was like, I'm never doing laundry with all you guys ever again. So bad. Yeah, when you when you shower in public showers or you got to wear sandals. You always got to. You know what else I learned too? I had a doctor tell me this. I was talking, I had a doctor client and I was, you know, we were laughing. And I said, why is it that, you know, old guys in the locker room always put everything on before their underwear. And I put the socks on whatever. And he looks at me very seriously goes, always put your socks on before your underwear. I said, why? He goes, if you're in the locker room and you pick up any fungus on your feet and then you put on your underwear, then it'll get on your underwear. And then you could get an infection on your like jock itch or whatever. Wow. Yeah. So we say old guys do it. Old wisdom right there. I swear, bro. I'm not going to question old guys anymore. Ever. I feel like they know everything. So we've got to use the hairdryer for the balls. There's got to be some science behind that too. It has to be. I'm just going to fall asleep. I don't know what it is, but starting Tuesday. I think this just feels good. So by the way, so urine does not help with jellyfish, even on DuckDuckGo. Okay. But athlete's foot, yes. What? Because urine contains urea, which is good for fungus. Well, there you go. Fuckers. Wow, look at that. You can pee on athletes. Look at that. I got your back. One more. I got your back. Okay. Boom. Interesting. I just learned something today, you guys. Yeah, I didn't know that.  I had athlete's foot when I was younger too. I wish I would have pissed on it. You only had it once? Yeah. I only got it one time. Really? I used to get it all the time. Yeah. Really?  Really? I don't want to say that again. Did you wear cleats to throw with you? You're in the locker room, dude. Like, what are you going to do? I think mine came from playing basketball and staying in those socks all day. You have to have the fungus though. Yeah. I would just change it. Once I got to the point where I changed, I would have to change the socks. I think mine was Zandals is the move. I think I got a lot of mine because I did judo a lot as a kid. And so you're barefoot on the mats. Constantly barefoot, barefoot training because you don't wear shoes in judo. So that might have been... Right. Well, you get like staff's a real problem with that too, right? Like, yeah, if you get that in any kind of open cut or something. Dude, I knew it. Isn't it ringworm popular too with Jiu-Jitsu? I mean, it's not popular. Nobody likes it. I mean, it's not like popular like that. Like, it's common, I should say. Oh, look, it's here! Ringworm! Come on in! No, everybody, no, that's common. Yeah. But it's another fungal infection. You just put some...   Anything that has any... Try it. Wow. That's gonna stop you. Look at my psoriasis. Isn't psoriasis the type of fungus too? Could be. I think it is. Don't say that.  Not again.  It's disgusting. No, it's anyway. Let's change the subject. Doug got the... Speaking of skin, he's here at the workshop today. How about Doug? That's a great transition, wow. I gotta ask you, you're doing the beard oil. Yeah, yeah. What do you think of it? I like it. What I don't know is I don't know how different it is from the serum. They feel close. They almost, they're not quite the same. I haven't put my finger on exactly what is different. Maybe Doug could look up the... Yeah, I looked them up. For example, the good serum has very different ingredients than this. Oh, it does, okay. So... Is it good for tiny beard? I'm sure the beard is basically just for healthy, shiny beard. And then the one that was skin probably has stuff that is supposed to be beneficial for my skin. I believe the beard oil, since it does get on your skin, is also designed to help the skin as well. Yeah, I figured it would be okay for it. Obviously, it'd be silly. So you notice the difference when you put it on your beard? Yeah, it's shinier. And it keeps it, like, so I get, like, the kind of the wild stuff, you know, especially when... The wizard hairs will just go somewhere else. Yeah, we miss, like, we didn't see Vicki.  The one fitness influencer friend we have with his beard, it's all... The owl. Shave it off, buddy. Yeah, just stop, dude. Yeah, peeps on his face. It doesn't look good. So according to this, the beard oil is formulated to help the skin. So most beard oils are designed to... Just the beard. Treat the beard only.  That's what is designed to come out. Can I tell you guys? Oh, it is helped with itchiness and dry skin, too. Yeah. So I... So I just... Because the beard... It wasn't because I was told or I read anything, but it feels good on my psoriasis. So I've always... Because I have that on my side, on top of my head. So whenever I put on a beard, I always rub it in. By the way, are you noticing an improvement since starting... Since you started taking vitamin D? Yeah.  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Who go in and type about it for how many years now? He... No, you know what happened. Yeah, but I know... So he... So here's what happened. I'll tell everybody what happened. Yeah, because I called... He eliminated... Yeah, he called me. He eliminated his food intolerances, which is supposed to help autoimmune issues. And his autoimmune issues were getting worse and worse and worse, couldn't figure out what was going on. So he sent me a text. He's like, what the...  I'm like, are you still taking vitamin D? No.  And he did. And now you notice right away. Yeah, yeah. God. You know what it is, bro, is that because of your Hispanic background, like I'm dark-skinned, too? We... Unless we're in the sun all day, we're going to be low on vitamin D. I mean, I think that... I've told you that before, that I speculated on. And that's actually when I noticed what I just happened. It wasn't until I transitioned in my mid-20s, and that actually was about four or five years, of working under fluorescent lights all day long. I was all through childhood, even in high school and junior college. I was like an outdoor. I worked out... I worked on a farm. Constantly. I was always outside, wakeboarding, I lived on a lake.  And then all of a sudden, I get into a profession where I'm in a... That's... Dude, my dad. My dad got his... My dad was... He's getting... You know, he's already got arthritis throughout his whole body, so he thought it was just progressing. He was getting all these aches and pains and low energy and all that stuff. Now, my dad's always outside. He's outside. You know, I've shown you guys videos of my parents' backyard. He looks like a... It's a garden, right? He's out there constantly. He's always doing things outside. Gets lots of sun. He did not think his vitamin D was an issue. Anyway, he couldn't figure out what was going on. He's like, let's just test it, see what's low. And it's because, especially if you have dark skin, you don't convert vitamin D from the sun very well. Your body, our bodies basically came from... We need a higher volume of it, right? In comparison to someone like Justin, it just needs a little bit. Justin and Doug walk by the window and they got vitamin D for a month. Yeah. You and I... I know, I think... Well, I mean, I remember when the first time I tested, I was taking vitamin D. I was taking 5,000 I use a day and I still was... I was still really low. So are you going 10 right now? Yeah, I take 10,000. So, and it only took three days for me to notice a difference. Wow. My psoriasis was getting... So how frustrating is this for me, right? The whole reason why I'm even doing the protocol for the diet is primarily for the psoriasis. For you to call me at night. Oh, I was... So, plus it's not like I don't go try to do my own digging myself first, right? So it's not like I just default. I'm like, oh, tell us, Steve, Dr. Sal can tell me. I'm like, I've tried to like figure it out, troubleshooting all the things, manipulating all the controls.  I'm tighter on my diet than what I was before. I've eliminated this dairy completely. I found any of the little places where I thought I didn't realize I had. So that was all done.  And then I'm like, and of course, I'm not on my vitamin D. Other thing, this morning you did thymus and alpha for immune system for your cold. Are you noticing anything yet? It's hard to say, because you also gave me the Sudafed. Your Sudafed helps. I want to see how you feel tomorrow.  Because I had a mild cold last week and then I got the thymus and alpha and I did a bolus of it. So like I gave you and a significant difference the next day. Yeah, I'll report back tomorrow. Okay. I mean, it's hard to say right now because I feel better than I did when I first got here for sure. But it's hard to say if that's from the Sudafed. Hey, I got to bring one other thing up. Did you see the UFC's new partnership? Did you see it? Oh yeah, Bud Light. Bud Light. Bud Light, one of the biggest contracts they've had, right? Interesting. Hey, that's a smart move. That's a whole move. That is a smart move. That is Bud Light trying to countercorrect. They are hard trying to steer in the other direction. Like how do we get back these people that we lost? Yeah. Let's go sign a contract with Mixed Martial Arts Organization. Do you think it's gonna work? I don't know. That's an interesting, that's interesting. It might. I kind of hope it does for them.  It's all about the consumer. As long as they're trying to actively win their customer base back, I think, you know. I mean, that's admirable. I'm rooting for them. Yeah, you know, that's a good question, right? So like, you know, one of the things that, probably one of the things that I think that people comment about us and our business and the way we operate is the authenticity of it. Staying true to ourselves, right? There's plenty of things that we could do to make more money or try to appeal to a demographic of our customers or like we just have agreed that we would stay true from the very beginning of the things that fulfill us, the things that we would like to do, our beliefs, our values, like, and if we don't get paid more because of it, then hey, so be it. We'll find another way to make money. It's not worth it, right? So, you know, when a company makes a really bad mistake that way, pandering, I'm not a big fan. And just because they go back, that just showed to me, that just shows how it means nothing to them. It was deliberate. That's right. And it's not endearing. It's not like... But that's if you think it always meant something. It didn't mean anything anyway. Like, these companies are so big, they're just going to follow the consumer. I mean, look, you see these companies and how they virtue signal. You ever seen the ads? Yeah, but even more... You ever seen the ads, by the way, during Pride Month on like car companies and then watch their ads in the Middle East? Very different. So, yes, they're just trying to attract consumers. Yeah, but this has only happened in our lifetime, right? Or even the last, like, say 20 years that big companies are outward speaking about politics. It used to be a thing that you just stay away from. Like, why would you alienate a percentage of your audience?  It's the same with sports, too. Yeah, same thing. Sports has done the same thing. I'm just not a fan of that. I wasn't really a Michael Jordan fan growing up. Like, I was more of a Magic Johnson fan, right? So, I wasn't a Michael Jordan fan growing up. But one of the things I loved about Michael Jordan was that everybody wanted his opinion on where he's... And he always stayed out of politics. Like, basketball is my game. But that's where I spend all of my time in, like, and he would just avoid getting involved in that. Like, I just appreciate... Very smart, yeah. And I appreciate that. It's like we... Everybody watches him not for that. And I can't stand how someone like LeBron James and this movement now of like, oh, you have this platform. Therefore, you should have to say something about something. Like, no, you shouldn't.  Why should you go in that direction? I'm just not a fan of that. And I feel like companies the same way. If you have an opinion you're passionate, that's fine. But it's obviously fake, you know, half the time. But I mean, these are companies. They're big companies. Bud Light, you know, Anheuser-Busch, they employ a lot of people. And I think this... Look, it's the message is being sent. And that consumers are saying, we don't want this. We want this. You went too far. You're not going far enough, whatever. And the market will fall. And that's what the market does. Whenever people get mad at the market, whenever people get mad at companies or products or media, you have to realize one thing. You're looking in the mirror. It's reflecting the consumer.  But a lot of people are. So it's like, this is just reflecting the consumer. If the consumer stopped buying this stuff, it wouldn't exist. Well, that's why I think it shows it worked. The consumer response worked. And I think that's always a good thing to recognize is that we vote best through our dollars. And, you know, everything that's going on in the world and politics, we really have no control over most of that. But what we do have control of is our purchasing. Well, that's the part I think I'm most happy about is less about Bud Light and more about the consumer who actually disciplined themselves not to go with their dollars there. Even if maybe you love the way Bud Light tasted, you said, hey, I'm not a fan of them taking a stand or getting political.  I didn't watch the NBA for a year. I mean, that was hard for me to do. You guys know how much I love basketball? I love basketball. I watched preseason. That's how much I love basketball. Watch every game the Warriors do. But I need them to pickleball. Huh? But I mean, I didn't, I didn't like that they were getting so political. What, two was it? Two years or now three years ago it was. And so I stopped watching. That was the only, that was the way I would protest, right? It's like, okay, I'm not going to, you're not going to get my viewership, which will hopefully affect viewership, which will hopefully affect advertising dollars.   That's all I'm going to do. Although it is coming from the top down in some ways, right? What is it called? S-E-G and, you know. S-G. S-G, sorry. S-E-S-G and other stuff. So, yeah. But I mean, consumer still has the power. So that's it. I got a, I got a shout out for everybody. Well, it's here. This is a, you're not going to learn anything about health or fitness or anything like that. But if you like weird stuff, if you like learning about conspiracy theories. Oh, yeah. Scary stuff. This is definitely a page that Justin follows. I know I follow it. It's called Morbid Curiosity. It's on, it's on Instagram.  Some of it's true. Some of it questionable. But it's all weird and a lot. It's called Morbid what? Curiosity with a K though. They spell it. Morbid Curiosity. Is it on Instagram or YouTube? Don't follow them. Yes, you do. I'm going to. I guarantee you've shared stuff on that. Okay, what page? On Instagram? Instagram. Instagram, okay. Yeah, check it out. Got it. Organifi is a company that makes supplements, organic, that help you with wellness, health, and performance. They have a new product. In fact, I love it. It's called Organifi's Chilajit Gummies. This has real chilajit inside them, but they taste delicious. Lots of health benefits from boosting testosterone, balancing hormones, reducing inflammation, and helping with cognitive performance. They have lots of other products as well. Go check them out. Go to organifi.com. That's O-R-G-A-N-I-F-I dot com forward slash mine pump, use the code mine pump, and get 20% off. All right, back to the show. Our first caller is Steve from the Netherlands. Steve, what's up, man? How can we help you? Hey, guys. Oh, my God. I can't believe it's you, guys. Hey, what's happening? I've been listening to you. I've been listening to you, guys, like since Quee Quad Times, man. Wow. To good old days. And, geez, it's crazy to see you guys here. So, yeah, obviously, got to thank you, guys. We're going to keep that part short because I know your time is valuable, but you guys have helped me through so many things over the years, and also mentally now because this thing is about burnout that I'm about to ask you. And I've been actually listening to you guys more for the fun of it than actually, you know, like getting two words of workout. And now it's time for me to get back into it. And that's kind of what my questions are going to be about. So, a little background information for me. So, I've been lifting for about 12 years, kind of shifting between hypertrophy and strength. Obviously, the first three years were just screwing around with dumbbells and whatnot and just doing whatever, but getting continuously better with the help of you guys as well. In the meantime, the last three years, I've worked as a group instructor and a manager for a gym that did reformer and boxing classes. So, yeah, obviously knowing that wasn't the most optimal way for people to kind of like get, build muscle and stuff like that. It was still a great way for people to stay fit, including myself. But after that, yeah, I got into a burnout, a really, really severe one. Also, a little piece of side information. When I was 21, I spontaneously contracted a hernia on the left side. So, I walked with a limb for about a year or so. So, from that came that my left side actually got weaker and remained weaker than my right side. This is also just due to ignorance and not wanting to let go of my compound lifts and just kind of working through it. But it's been also gave me some, what do you call it, injuries over time, which I also have to really kind of consider now. And, yeah, I've been dealing with like inflammation on the right shoulder and just in general, like my right shoulder is just inflamed and it just doesn't feel right. My left shoulder is a lot more mobile and my right shoulder is always super tight, which I noticed a lot during the bench press. So, yeah, that's kind of like the background information. And the question would be, first of all, considering the information that you guys have and knowing that I've been burned out for about like, I'd say it's been about a year ago. So, I've been slowly, gradually working my way to the gym again to just start, to just kind of work out for a little bit. But like, how do I go from here? Yeah, what's your advice on that? Like, how do I get back into it and not only back into it, but like better than ever, you know, working out those, that shoulder, working out that, yeah, the instability in my body and also the mental aspect of getting back into it. Yeah, we have to deal with the burnout first, so I need more details on that. When you say burnout, what are the signs and symptoms of that? Yeah, so, well, it was severe in a way that the first three months for me were just kind of like, like, disassociated from life. Like, I was working through a burnout for already half a year. Like, that's what my doctor told me, considering the symptoms that I had been having, which were like severe fatigue and that kind of stuff. So, but it happened in November. Yeah, actually literally a year ago, that's when I called in sick and that's when the burnout really became a thing. And yeah, in that period of time, it was just, it was nearly impossible for me to even get out of bed. You know, it was pretty crazy and I had to work through a lot of psychological stuff, which I have been doing. So, I feel a million times better than I did at that point. The biggest, I think the biggest challenge for me right now is my physical shape. Because, yeah, you know, like for a year to not have properly worked out, to have been very sedentary to, you know, like, have gone also through a lot of mental stress, which is obviously also causing a lot of damage to the body or, you know, needs more recovery. So, I just noticed like, I'm super out of shape, which is really kind of messing with how I used to think and how I used to be. And this is kind of why I'm at a loss, because I feel like I want to just kind of jump right back into it. But I also kind of feel like that's not the way to go. Yeah, no, I wouldn't do that. But what contribute, because what you're saying, yeah, it sounded like you got into some pretty deep depression, maybe some anxiety. What contributed to that?  But were there other life stressors happening at the time? Like, what were the factors that you've identified that contributed to the shutdown of your body? Right, okay, yeah, so that would be just like, overworking like crazy, which originated really, now that I've gone through a lot of like, therapy and stuff like that, originated from my youth, which kind of, you know, like, without going too deeply into detail about that. But it really turned me into this crazy people pleaser without any boundaries or limits, also towards myself, you know, so I'm also the type of person that tends to over-train, like, and then really to up to a point where I'm, where my body just kind of like, gets super inflamed or super injured, just because I wanted to squeeze out that last rep or do that extra set. Obviously, knowing that, especially this year, listening to your podcast and hearing you guys saying, over and over and over again, like, more is not better, more is usually worse, you know, hit the sweet spot, do what's right for you. And I found out this is the ultimate time, like the perfect time to actually start listening to that advice and do it right from here, you know. Yeah, no, that's excellent. I'm glad you're here. So there's a, there's an order of operation. An order of operation in this particular situation.  So, because if you don't, if that doesn't get addressed, by the way, exercise, diet, sleep, lifestyle addresses, if done right is so effective to improve your mental health. If you don't address that, then going after muscle gain and fat loss and performance, that's not going to work, that you just, you're either going to burn out again or you're just going to be stuck in the same place and find yourself very frustrated. Now here's the silver lining.  So generally speaking, Steve, I want you to approach because, you know, fitness and all the things that encompass health or all the things that we know as fitness professionals that we can do to improve someone's health, they can be molded, shaped and modified almost an infinite different amount of ways. You can do it to push endurance or strength or in your case, help with your mental state. So generally speaking, you're going to have to work out and be active and eat and sleep and live in a way to improve your mental fitness. So what does that look like? Probably going to be walks. You're probably going to do some walks where you find yourself being present. You're probably going to do some strength training, but not much, maybe a couple of days a week. In the gym, when you're doing the strength training, the idea is you mentioned that you got disassociative. Okay. So what I would do with the strength, strength training can be an incredibly valuable tool to put yourself in your body. It could also be a way to get out of your body, right?  So what I would want you to do is go to the gym one or two days a week. Now this is how you're going to start and just feel the full range of motion. Feel the movement, feel the body, feel good. Your goal isn't to push. The initial goal is not to push performance. Remember though, the performance and all the other stuff is going to follow along if you do this the right way.  I'm going to focus on connecting through the movement. So as I'm doing the squat, for example, I want to feel the bar. I want to breathe through the movement. I want to feel my body feel good. Go through a nice range of motion. The intensity is moderate at most and that's it. And you're going to pick movements that allow you to feel most of your body. So squatting, deadlifting, overhead pressing, rowing, bench pressing, and then priming, stretching where you're really in your body and really trying to feel your body. That's how I would start. As far as diet is concerned, I would, at the top of the priority, is going to be easily digestible foods. Okay, because when you're talking about the gut brain axis, what we want to do is minimize inflammation. So high protein is great for goals, okay? But if you get past a certain point, you notice that it's causing digestive issues and back off. It's okay to sacrifice that for digestion. So everything that you eat, I want you to really think like, is this a really easy meal for me to digest? How am I going to feel afterwards? So you should feel very light. It should put very little stress on your body. So this may look like gluten-free grains, proteins that are easily digestible for you. So for some people, that's beef. Other people, it's fish. Other people, it's chicken. Well-cooked, very well-cooked, boiled vegetables to the point where it's almost like a soup, very easy to digest. And then just don't worry about the strength, the fat, the muscle. That will follow, but don't pay attention to it. I know that sounds funny, but don't pay attention to it.  And then the walks, like when you're walking, pick walks where you enjoy the scenery.  And on those walks, allow yourself to be present. You would be surprised how quickly your body will rebound if you approach it this way. Otherwise, it'll take a long time. So that's it. Just literally, generally speaking, all your attempts should be to improving your mental health with the tools that you know how to use. Yeah, I actually like map suspension. And my reasoning for that is a lot of the clothes chain movement. And to be able to feel your way through a lot of the exercises like Sal's describing, and if intensity has always been the issue and overdoing it, to be able to go through that full range of motion and just pay attention to all those little nuances where your body gets thrown off course and you need to stabilize and you need to control with your core. And in terms of really feeling your way through and being able to get in your body and to be able to have that mind-muscle connection, I think that's a pretty good place to start if you've been off your plan for, would you say, a year or something like that? So for me, that would be my suggestions to throw that in there. So I want to address some of the things that you didn't say but that were up on your question that I'm looking at right now. I agree with Justin. I really like map suspension for where you're at right now. Plus, I think that it addresses some of the mobility, shoulder instability stuff that you're talking about. So I think that will help support that. So I'm on board with that. You asked questions about cutting or bulking right now. To Sal's point, I wouldn't worry about trying to do either or. Just to feed your body when you're hungry, eat whole foods. That would be the advice right now. Like you're trying to take care of yourself. You're not trying to make moves with your physique yet right now. So Cardio, you asked a question about that. Also, I'd say drop that. You're not paying attention to that. Walking would be your form of Cardio like Sal was saying. Body dysmorphia for most all your life. I mean, this is really important. Whenever we talk to anybody that has dealt with this, this is where the weighing and measuring and tracking the food and the scale and the mirror and all that stuff like that is not a healthy way to start your journey. So all those things are going out the window for me. I don't care about the scale weight. I don't want you getting hung up on exactly which it's like literally to Sal's point of going in there, feeling your body, feeling good. Your measure of success is how you're feeling. Or are you positive? Are you getting good sleep? Is work going well for you? Are you getting up and feeling energized? Do you have sustained energy throughout the day? Do you feel tight and strong? Do you feel a mobile like these are the things that you're thinking about throughout the day? And then we'll build upon that. I think after suspension, either a map, Santa Polak or a map symmetry is probably the direction I'd go. But I like that as far as advice. Yeah, that's a good one. And two other things I'll add, Steve. Make sure you go to bed at the same time and you wake up at the same time every day. Really prioritize sleep. That's the most impactful recovery thing you're going to do is get good sleep. Like an hour before, prepare yourself for sleep, go to bed at the same time, wake up at the same time. And then you're also in the Netherlands.  I'll guess they're probably not optimal. The only way to know is to get them checked. And if you suspect that they're low, then I would supplement with a good vitamin D3 supplement. And then there are other supplements that can help with your body's ability to adapt to stress or recover from stress. Ashwagandha is one of my favorites. Most people respond really well to that. Go ahead. Yeah, actually, I did order Ashwagandha on your, because you guys have talked about that many times. And also because a friend of mine who has ADHD, I found out I have ADHD as well. And tends to help with that kind of stuff a lot too. I think everything that you guys are saying is making a lot of sense. It is something that had been popping into my mind like, okay, maybe it's time for like that kind of approach to really drive it back to the base level first. I'm actually quite happy for you guys to kind of confirm that. And also the working through the range of motion, because that has been a hard thing for me. And as you're saying, like you can also disassociate in the gym, you know, like even though you're supposed to be getting into your body for me, usually it would be a way to mentally get my frustration or anything out there. And then kind of not really paying attention to how I'm doing the exercise. And that would usually screw me up, you know. So that's really great advice. I'm not going to pick up on that. That's a good one. I usually also take magnesium, but like the good kind, because I know a lot of magnesium is not taken up in the blood. If it's like a bad supplement. And look into the vitamin D, Steve. Make sure because being in the Netherlands, and you look like you have more of an olive complexion, you might be deficient, you know, in D or low. And that'll really make things. It's pretty common out there, yeah. That'll make things really hard.  This is where the trust is going to have to come into play. It will progress. This is the irony of what we're talking about. You will progress in those things if you don't look at them. Okay. If you look at them, they're not going to progress. So remind yourself of that. Like when you get that itch, like, oh, am I progressing? I want to flex in the mirror. I want to measure my arm. I want to weigh myself.  Remember, like, it's only going to improve if you don't look at it. Literally, like, I got to not look at it and then I got to trust that it will improve. Now, I'm going to tell you that you're probably 90 days out from feeling way different. So, you know, the question I have for you is do you think you could tough this out for 90 days? Can you do this for three months? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that's the whole thing, right? Like, after having this burnout, it's kind of like, well, I survived this, you know? So it's not like it's going to be a massive challenge for me to actually do it this way. It's probably going to be easier for me than how I used to do it because I think how I used to do it was, ironically, a way to sustain myself physically to stay fit enough to do what I was doing. And at the same time, I was destroying myself because it was a way of, like, it wasn't a, what you call it, like, it wasn't a sustainable way for me to go about working out because I used to work out five days a week, but I probably shouldn't have done that considering I was already mentally completely burned out. You know? Well, Steve, we're going to send you map suspension, but here's what I want you to do. I'm going to give you 90 days. I want you to contact who you emailed to get on the show and I want to do a follow-up with you, okay? So I want you to follow up with you about 60 to 90 days out. So we can check in on you and see how you're doing. Maybe help you stay kind of on track because you know you're going to talk to us. So let's do that, but we'll send you map suspension for now. Dude, that'd be amazing, man. Like, because I need to kick it. Like, I need some kind of accountability for this one. Yeah, I figured it. I thought it would probably be a good idea. So, and I'd love to follow up. I'd love to see where you're at in about 60 to 90 days. So let's do that.  Damn, that'd be awesome, guys. Thank you so much. You guys, Steve. All right, Steve. Take care, man. All right, you guys take care.  And yeah, man, keep doing what you do because you guys are saving lives, man. Thank you. Appreciate it. All right, cheers. You know what this reminds me of as I was talking to him? Do you remember in Super Mario Brothers where you're in the haunted house and there's those ghosts? And they only come after you when you don't look at them? We don't look at them, yeah. If you look at them, they freeze. Literally. What reminded you of that? Of what we were talking about, like, don't focus on the scale. Don't focus on them because I've been there. And when you start to focus on it, then it stops happening. You literally have to not look at it. You have to, like, not look at it. Focus on health, focus on health, focus on health.  That's so crazy. But the second you focus on it, then things go out the window because you start doing things to fuel the aesthetic drive or the body dysmorphia. Yeah, good goal for him. I mean, the program should last about that long, right? So a good goal for him is to just not even check until the end of it, right? So I think, and I think if you have something in mind, like, I mean, at least I'm better that way. Like, if I'm like, okay, I'm not going to do any of the weight scale, measure, body fat, you know that stuff until the end of this program, all I do is focus on what the guy said and then afterwards I'll check in. I think that he'll be all right. So hopefully he reaches back out and we'll see how he does. Next callers, Josh from California. Josh, what's happening, man? How can we help you? Hey, guys, how are you? Good, good. How you doing, man? Uh, I'm hanging in there. Um, my, my question was, uh, you know, I'm, uh, I'm getting a little bit older, almost 50. And, uh, I can, you know, I can get my weight to fluctuate, you know, kind of how I want. I can go up 10, 15 pounds here and there, but I'm always stuck with this, you know, little tummy that kind of never goes anywhere. You know, I'm, I'm in a deficit. I feel like I'm kind of doing all this stuff that I'm supposed to be doing, you know, just kind of found you guys and, uh, you know, have been listening very intently to all your good advice. So I figured I'd call the pros. Yeah, no, good. So first of all, you look phenomenal. Yeah.  You look like you're pretty lean now. Do you know what your body fat percentage is at? Uh, I've done a couple of the, like, scans at the gym and stuff like that.  Okay. Josh, sorry to interrupt myself, but I just, this question is like, I remember when this happened to me and it tripped me out. So have, have you been listening for a long time? Or just recently? Yeah. Yeah. Real long time. So I got out of high school. Do you remember, do you remember, um, no, no, no, listening. Sorry. It sounded like I said, listening. Listening. I'm just like, Listening to the show. Yeah. Yeah. No, I got cold right now. So it's my bad. So did you, uh, have you been listening to the show for a long time? Uh, no, probably just like maybe a month. Oh, okay. You know, I'm kind of banging through your podcast. Okay. Okay. So I, so I've, this, I remember when this happened to me when I was getting ready to compete and it would trip me out because I was like really lean and I still had like this, this pooch and this, this belly fat that like everywhere else in my body look lean. And really what, what I attribute that to is just I, I'd never gone leaner than that. Like kind of 9% was like the lowest I'd ever been in my life. I'd never done like six or five or something like crazy shredded. Oh yeah. And I found that even when I got all the way down, I still had this tiny bit left over.  And that was the last place that it went and it's still the first place to come back.  So it just took me pushing to a level low enough to finally get rid of that area. And everybody has this, it's just a different area. It's for everybody. Like it's like an area where you tend to get the body fat first and or if you carry any body fat, that's kind of where it hangs out. And until you get to a level of leanness that you've never seen before, it'll probably kind of always stay there until you go even lower. And so if you do a good job of getting leaner than you've ever been, and then when you come out of that diet to get you that lean and put on good lean mass and you don't go binge afterwards, you can get rid of that and hang tight with that. Like after I competed, that was gone for a really long time. Now again, I've gone up in body fat percentage so of course it's back but I know what I have to do to get rid of it is I have to take my body to a leanness that it just doesn't see. When you were at 9%, what did it look like in that area? Was it gone or did you feel like you still had some? Oh no, it looked identical. Like it never seems to, never seems to budge whatsoever. And yeah. Okay, Josh, what Adam's saying. So look, the first place he gained, it's the last place he loses it. Everybody has that spot. So you're going to have to try to get below 9%. And it's probably, you probably were ripped everywhere else except for there.  But I'm going to help you out a little bit as well with maybe optimizing your hormones a bit. Now this is, we're starting to split hairs here. Okay, but we are already splitting hairs with this question because you've got down to leading 9%. Yeah, you already look phenomenal. Yeah, most men will not get to 9% body fat. It's really hard. It's a hard thing to do. Okay. So I'm going to give you two piece of advice that I think will help. One is aesthetic. And the other one is literally to address the body fat, the stubborn body fat. You see, so let's start with the aesthetic first.  It wasn't until I built the muscles of my abs that I could see the six pack. Now I got a six pack at 12% body fat, whereas before at 9%, I didn't have a six pack. Now, why is that? Well, when you develop the muscles of the core, they stick out. Tightens the skin around that. Yeah, and it just stick out. You got visible muscles. So most people when they train their core, don't train their core in a way that builds the muscles because we tend to believe the core for some reason is different than the biceps or the back. And so we do super high reps and low respite. So what I want you to do is pick high tension core exercises. Just give them no BS. I am. Okay. So I'm going to give you a program that's specifically designed to build the muscles of the core.  But the program, I really break down the form. I want you to do exercises where you're doing like eight reps for your abs, where you're like building the abs. And then what will happen is they'll stick out more and you won't have to get as lean to see it. And it'll look, you'll look a lot leaner as a result. Now, here's the second part to address the belly fat. Now this is splitting hairs, but again, because you've already gotten so lean, this may be an effective. I noticed in your question, you said that you have an eating window between two to eight. You do that every single day? Yeah, pretty much. I mean, just with the way my lifestyle is, you know, that ends up kind of being what it is daily. Every once in a while I'll have a breakfast, but usually not. Okay, so again, this is splitting hairs, but we do know that cortisol tends to promote fat storage in the midsection. Okay, and we can see this in people as their hormones start to change as they get older. Women really notice this because they go through menopause, big hormone change, that they start to store body fat differently than they used to. So it's like all of a sudden, you know, they used to store it a particular way. Now they're storing it more on their belly.  I used to just have it on my hips, on my thighs. Now it looks like it's on my belly type of deal. So hormones can influence where you store body fat. The way that you get cortisol to go down, one of the ways is to eat. Okay, you want to eat. So if you wake up in the morning and cortisol is supposed to spike in the morning, but you don't eat, you may be encouraging the levels to stay high a little too long.  It doesn't have to be a lot. It could literally be, you know, three scrambled eggs with some cheese. It could be a protein shake with a scrambled egg for the fat.  Insulin opposes cortisol. So you can throw in some fruit there. One or two small meals and do that while you're doing this process that we're talking about. And then put yourself in a calorie deficit. And the way that you should do the deficit to maximize what you're looking for is a three to one ratio of cut to maintenance. Okay, so you'd be in a deficit for three weeks, do a one week of maintenance, three week deficit, one week maintenance. It's a slow process, but this is going to ensure that you don't lose tons of muscle and of course strength drain the whole time. Can I counter just a little bit of that? Just a tiny bit. Like everything that he's saying I'm on board with, I actually would like for you to run the No BS Six Pack program we're going to send you in a bulk for a little bit to help you burst. Yeah, first to build the abs and then follow that advice. So maybe like a four week cycle.  Like you're trying to get them strong. Yeah. Follow that program to a T to build your abs in a slight calorie surplus. So you're trying to gain at this point, but not a lot. You're just trying to stay hot, well fed or a little bit above, right? So don't worry, but we're not worrying about body fabrics is not worried about weight right now. I love this. Then transition to exactly what he said and go in a cut and then take yourself to a leanness you've never seen.  It'll go. Yeah. Promise you that. Yeah, Josh, I mean, I've experienced same thing. For me, I'll get lean in my arms, shoulders, legs, that's first. Then I start to get it off my obliques. Then it comes off my back. Yeah, low back. And then the last place for me to lose it is right around my belly button. And what's crazy about it is I'll get down to I don't know, 10-ish percent body fat.  But up until I get to about 10%, it doesn't move. It's like the same. Everything else gets lean and veiny and I got this little bit of stomach body fat. Then I get down like 10-ish. It's like every percent, like I go down to nine, eight, seven.  But the approach we're giving you is the one that's going to minimize any muscle loss. And again, we're going to try and build the abs. And what might happen if you do this right is you'll get down to nine, 10%. You won't need to get any leaner because the midsection will be more developed. It'll just look leaner. Okay. Cool. Awesome. Thank you. Thank you so much for taking my call. Yeah, you got it, man. Yeah, keep us posted. I'm curious to see how this goes. This was a really stubborn thing for me. And it took me a long time to figure pieces together. It didn't happen until I was in my 30s before I finally figured this piece out. What does your normal workout look like, by the way? Because we're going to send you the ab program, but what is your normal strength training look like? You know, I lift every day. I just kind of do, you know, I kind of settled into this routine where I just go do a little bit of cardio. I lift, you know, 45, 50 minutes. And then I hit the sauna and then I'm out of there. Okay, great.  Kind of. Oh, bro. Can we just keep it rolling? Can you, if we give you another program, will you follow it? Yeah. Because I think if you did MAPS anabolic in combination with the ab program, they work perfectly. Yes. And it's so different from what you're doing right now. Yeah, you'll get some muscle. It'll be a novel stimulus, which will really help build muscle during this four week bulk and then do the cut. Here's how you combine the two. Okay. There's foundational workouts in both programs, alternate the foundational workouts. So one day it's MAPS anabolic, foundational workout. The next day it's the six pack program, foundational workout. The next day is MAPS anabolic. So it's five days a week. You'll be in the gym. Two of those days will be focused on the core. The other three are full body. And I think it's novel enough where you're going to see some muscle gain with us too. Yes. Okay. Yeah, I love changing it up, but I also, I can definitely follow routine, man. And I can just get in there and grind on it. So. Perfect. Whatever you guys recommend. Yeah, yeah, yeah. If you trust the process right here, we got you. I promise. We'll send those to you. Yeah, I trust you guys. Awesome. Thanks. Sorry, what was that? No, no, we just said awesome. Oh yeah, thank you. Yep. You got it, man. All right, take care. Take it easy. So first of all, I love the fact that we get to do that every once in a while, because that's such a unique question. Yeah, because he's figured out, it looks like he's figured out a lot of others. Oh yeah, and that's the point I wanted to make clear to the audience, right? Because sometimes we don't talk about stuff like this. And there's a reason why, because I think 90% of the people don't need advice in this direction, right? They think they want this advice because the... But they haven't figured out the big one. That's right. And so he's kind of an exception to the rule, right? The guy looks incredible. And if he was my client, I'd also be reminding him that, right? As we're training all the time, like, hey, bro, you know, you look really good, right?  So, but you know, hey, you got a lot of things dialed in and you're curious about that. And I've experienced that personally, so I know it's like to feel like, hey, man, I'm so lean, but this little area just won't go. It's always the inner thighs. Lost to go. It is for you. Yeah. Yeah. I really hate it.  Everywhere. Is it really just evenly dispersed? It's just hollow. It's actually, you know, you actually do, you know, that's part of why I think you look good fuller. Like I like, if you and I increased our body fat percentage the exact same amount, you look way better. Adam, just get a belly. I would. And I lose my arm, like my arms and legs go and then I get a bell.  Bro, I will literally, you know what? You're like the chick that all the chicks hate. You know what I'm saying?   Bro, let's see. I got plenty of junk. Dude, it annoyed. Listen, when I would mess with this, literally, this is how I, my extremities get cross striations before I would get a six pack. Like cross striations of my quads. I get striations of my glutes, but I got a pooch. No, this tripped me out because I had never really been below like 9, 10% body fat. And, you know, so even, and I remember as a kid, like so as a kid, like my abs was my thing, right? Cause I didn't have arms. I didn't have legs. Might as well have abs. Yeah.  And then I got older, put on a little bit of body fat. And then when I got lean, like that, it just stayed right there.  And I was shredded. Like you said, striation in my legs and arms. Yeah, savior. And then I had this little, this little pooch thing and it didn't go until I hit body fat percentage I'd never seen before. And then you know what's weird about this? This is all observational. Zero science to support this. Once you get rid of it, it's easier to do it afterwards.  Maybe it moves into something easier. But once I got rid of it, it was easier to get rid of each time. Well, I agree too. And also what happens is you get that shredded. So you finally, you force the body to go find any last bit of body fat you have anywhere because you get to so low a body percentage. Then if, as long as you stay on your routine and training, when you add back the calories, it gets partitioned to building muscle. It's weird. It doesn't go there. And so if you can, if you can get rid of it and then stay consistent with your training and not overindulge on the diet, you should be able to maintain it off. Our next caller is Lucan from California. Lucan, what's happening? How can we help you? Hey guys, how's it going? Good, great. Awesome. So I have this written out. I'll just get into it. First, I wanted to say thank you. My friend introduced me to Mind Pump about two years ago, and I haven't looked back. I made progress physically, mentally, and basically all aspects of my life. I don't have the exact words to describe the positive influence you have on young men like myself. But a thank you to the four of you and the entire Mind Pump team is well deserved at the very least. Thank you. Yeah, awesome, man. So now for the selfish part. In the email thread, it said not to change the question. However, some time has passed. I believe that the context that I have to add will aid in your analysis and recommendation. So I'm on the last week of MAPS anabolic. The program has been amazing. I switched my eating habits to incorporate the whole meals, minimally processed, and I've really seen a lot of strength gains and aesthetic developments, especially in the shoulders, lower body, and arms. My girlfriend sort of wants credit for the lower body stuff, but I'm going to attribute it to you guys. Don't tell her, though. We'll make sure. Trust me on this. My question is too prompt and the second one will be based off of like the first answer. But I really just wanted to look at what I should program next. I have my eyes on advance, but I also think an explanation of my goals may influence your recommendation. Right now I'm strength training, so I can strength train for the future and the rest of my life. I would love to be doing pull-ups and hitting the gym well into old age. So given the fact that I'm 23, how do I program my workouts now with that in mind? Oh, good. Yeah. Great question. All right, I'm looking at your question. You mind if I go through some of the stuff you said in there? Yeah, totally. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, you got a lot of stuff dialed in. You're eating mostly whole natural foods. It looks like you're hitting your protein intake. You're walking after meals. You're asleep. Here's where people of your age always screw up, but it says here you're going to bed at 10 and waking up at 6, so you're prioritizing your sleep. Yeah, that's good. You got great results with MAPs and Ebola. The way you... He's also playing in a men's league, so you're taking care of your athleticism too, so you're doing a lot of... Because I would have actually moved you into performance, but if you're doing stuff like that to complement... You're moving in multiple planes. And you're... The way you work out now is the way you're always going to work out. Now, that doesn't mean the workout's going to look the same. It means that considerations are going to be the same. Is this appropriate? Is this going to work for my body, knowing the context of my life, my recovery and all that stuff? At your age, everything you're doing, you look very healthy.  You got great results with MAPs and Ebola. I think anabolic advance will be fine. You just got to be really good with your protein and your sleep because anabolic advance is definitely another level of intensity. You may need to... I'm not saying you will, but you may need to pay attention to outside activity while you're doing MAPs, anabolic advance. Because if you find doing the Men's League with anabolic advance is too much, then one is going to have to give. Otherwise, you're just going to be throwing too much at your body. But I think there's... You'll be totally fine with anabolic advance. And are you going to try and bolt? Are you still trying to gain muscle still? Yeah, so I got to like 200 pounds. I used to fluctuate between 190 and 200, and now it's like 200, 205. So I think I'm in a prime to really just like... Either take down the scaffolding or just keep maintaining where I'm at. I would go in a little bit of a bulk. Be consistent though. Don't go crazy because sometimes what people will do is they see the strength gains, the weight gain, and they start to do this kind of dirty bulk. Which you'll gain muscle on a dirty bulk, but you're also going to gain a lot of body fat. It'll make it hard for you to bring it down. So I would be consistent with a nice clean bulk. MAPs and Ebola. And the gains that you got in anabolic, you're going to see now amplify. So long as your recovery is going to do that, anabolic advance is going to make your muscle gains really take off. I want to address the... I want to be able to train till old age and be able to do all this stuff. The thing... And you're perfect right now. Like everything you're doing, I think is a great, great balance. The thing that... The most common thing that changes as we start to get older is the athletic pursuits that you're doing right now. And so that's where real consideration will need to go into your programming. Right now, you train kind of like a bodybuilder in the gym and outside you play sports. You're getting this nice, well-balanced, not only physique aesthetically, but also functionally because you're moving in all these different planes. You're also training a little bit of endurance and cardio in there. And so you got this beautiful balance. When that starts to shift and change is when you have to then become cognizant of it and go, okay, how do I need to implement some of that stuff into my training routine now because I'm not doing that outside activity. So long as you maintain this, you're going to be okay. I mean, you're going to... I mean, do it as long as you possibly can or until you stop. But just be mindful of that of... Because this was me in my 20s. All the way until I was almost 30. In fact, it was not till 29 when I stopped playing in intermule leagues for basketball. But I'll tell you what made... What happened was I had four seasons in a row of major injuries. And the reason why was because I kept pushing the weights to get big and bulkier because I liked the look, but I still love playing basketball. It was too much. It was too much. I got to a point where 230-pound me couldn't move on the court the way and I just wasn't doing the work necessary to be the basketball player that I wanted to be and my body kept injuring me and telling me that yet I was still ignorant and kept ignoring it. So just be mindful of those things if you keep pushing the weight, at some point it will start to probably conflict with whatever sport you're doing. And so if you start noticing nagging pain, joint pain or potential injuries or injury happens, be aware that that's what's going on. Yeah, I think too like another consideration. We have map symmetry is something I would suggest as like a way for you to kind of come back and reassess in terms of like just joint stability, health, and then also to like how you're performing left side versus the right side and where there's any discrepancies. And so if you just cycle that in once, twice a year, in between your other programs, I think you get a lot of benefit out of that too. So that way too when you're going forward, you can kind of bring that all back up so you're performing at your highest. Yeah, I think there's a question too about trigger sessions up here. With anabolic advance, don't do trigger sessions. However, if you like to do like movements throughout the day, mobility, you'll never go wrong with mobility. Here's the difference between you now and when you get older. Let's say you focus on maps, anabolic advance for three months, you stop doing outside sports. Like I just want to get muscle right now. Totally fine. You'll lose some athletic ability. It'll bounce back real fast though after anabolic advance. If you go and play for a week or two, it'll come right back. As you get older, that's a lot harder to do because your body, literally, there's an old saying, if you don't use it, you lose it. Okay, that is one of the best fitness sayings that exist because literally, your body will get rid of abilities that aren't practiced. So what they were talking about, like as you get older, if you stop running, literally your body will forget how to run, literally. Like you just have to train it back and it takes a long time. If you stop running now for a few months because you're lifting and then you go run, it'll feel weird for a week, but it'll bounce back. You try that at 45. It's going to take you three months to get back into it. That's the main difference. So that's kind of what we're all mentioning. That's why I like mobility during the day while you're doing anabolic advance. But it would be fun for it. Are you taking any supplements? You take creatine? Yeah, so I take creatine, ashwagandha, fish oil and colostrum post-workout. Oh, you're good. Yeah, you're good, bro. You're doing a lot of good things. Yeah, you're doing good. At your age, you're doing great. I can see you're going up to a good 215 with some good lean body mass. Boys and I all send over advanced anabolic. Awesome. Awesome. That would be great. And real quick, just with those trigger sessions, so I want to make sure I'm not overdoing it on the off days. So stay away from the trigger sessions, but is it like, okay, I mean, focus on the mobility, focus on like the walking and like the cardio. Is it okay to like, you know, get hot, like get in the sauna?  On those days. Oh, yeah, absolutely. Yeah, sauna's great.  What's the link? Is it Maps Prime Pro? PrimeProWebinar.com. PrimeProWebinar.com. If you haven't watched it. Yeah, and I have Prime Pro, so I'll be definitely diving in. I haven't really like looked into it, but definitely we'll get into that and learn more. Okay. The webinar gives you structure. So if you want something to follow, and I take you through. Yeah, so check it out. Okay, awesome. Yeah, thank you so much guys. Keep up the great work. Thank you. You too, man. All right. All right, bye. Love to get my hands on that kid. Good, good, good. Right? Good kid. Was that fun? Oh, yeah. He's doing all this stuff now. I could put 10 pounds of lean body mass on him if I could train him and watch him. This is why I wish, this is why I wish with somebody, super athlete, somebody existed when we were that age, dude. I was so off on so many things. Oh, I, oh my God, dude. He's so far ahead. How much time? He's getting sleepy and whole foods.  But would you have listened? Maybe if they were like the top podcast I would have listened. Yeah, no, totally. Although I had, I told you guys a story.  He literally was like, three days a week with full body, eat a lot of fun, protein, whole natural. I'm like, okay, buddy. Yeah. You don't want to tell me the secret. That's fine. You know what's funny? Because like my, my girlfriend at the time, her dad, who was like, it's total hippie guy was like, really trying to get me on whole foods. And I was like, wow. Still incredible. Junior. And you know, as hippie doesn't know he's talking about. Yeah. That's a good guy. I don't know. I wish I would have listened. I don't, I don't think me going back in time could tell me what to do. But I think me, if I had found this podcast. That's that would have done. That would have been the authority. Right. That's how it would have worked. It would have been like, oh, I like these guys.  And then, and then, okay. I'm sorry. And then it probably had to hear it. Yeah. A few times.  Our next caller is Jennifer from New Jersey. Hi Jennifer. How can we help you? Hi guys. So I have been after pull ups and chin ups for years. I have a strong back. I have no problem activating my lats on a lat pull down row machine during an active hang on negatives or isometrics. When I try to perform a pull up or chin up from a hanging position, I have so much trouble activating my lats.  And I'm not sure if this is because I have hypermobility in my shoulder joints, but I do a lot of different variations to become stronger in all positions, negatives, holds, assisted pull ups and chin ups. More recently, I've been doing chin ups to where I lower myself as low as I can go. It's not a fully locked out position. I feel like I'm cheating the reps, but low enough so that I can still pull myself back up. I know I'm strong. I have a 315 pounds back squat. I can bench 130 pounds. And I get so frustrated that I cannot pull myself up from a strict position.  And I've actually attached a video of two chin up singles and two negatives. Yeah, we're watching it right now. Jennifer. We can't help you. Yeah, do you think so?  Yeah, listen, listen. Do you think you might be a little too hard on yourself? Everybody's got a grip on it. Yeah, I think so too. What do you think?  Maybe a little bit, but I feel like it's one of those skills that I just want to be able to pull myself up. And it's frustrating. I've been trying for such a long time. You don't get to be great at everything. Just take it on the chair. We'll talk to you later. No, look, here's the deal. Okay. All right. This is straight up, by the way. You squat 315. I saw your video of a pull-up. I can tell you have a well-developed, lower body glutes. Looks like quads. Those aren't helping you want to pull up. So you're pulling up. I can't wait where he's going. You got some muscle on your lower body. It looks phenomenal. And you're pulling that up. So that's going to make it hard. Okay. Number two, your question is active in your lats, or is it that you want to do more pull-ups? Because we're not going to be able to do both at first. Okay. You're not going to be able to have a mind-muscle connection to one of the muscles involved in an exercise where you're doing singles. When you're doing singles, and it's a hard exercise, do not try to isolate or connect. You're just trying to perfect the movement. You don't get to connect and isolate until you're able to do so many reps. And then you can slow down, squeeze the lats, and start to feel things out. Okay. So I'm going to give you a little bit of advice with to help you with the pull-ups. It has nothing to do with getting your lower body to stop being developed. I think you should keep doing that. Don't do that because I think that's more important. But with your pull-ups, I don't mind you. I would in fact encourage you to jump into the pull-up and to do a few more reps. So instead of starting from the dead hang, jump and do a pull-up and do sets of like three or four reps. Then as you slowly get stronger, do less of a jump and progressively overload yourself until you get to the dead hang and you can do more. The last thing I'm going to add is frequency. Instead of training pull-ups on back day only, I want you to reduce the volume of back day. So maybe cut the volume down by half on back day.  So get a pull-up bar in your house, walk up to the pull-up bar, jump up, do a couple pull-ups, and then leave it alone. Nothing crazy, nothing hard, but just practice that like twice a day on a daily basis. But you have to cut down the volume of your back workout to make up the difference. And then you should see yourself get stronger with pull-ups in a pretty good amount of time. I also have a little bit different. So have you ever done any scapular pull-ups? Do you know what that is? Yes, I have in the past. And again, like it feels like I can do it. I can do a scapular pull-up. But if I were to try to go from a scapular pull-up into a regular pull-up, I can't get out of that. Like I can't activate further. Right. Once you have to bend your elbows, like it's sort of a disconnect there. Is that what you're saying? Yeah. Then just do the scapular pull-ups. Yeah, just the scapular pull-ups. And focus on getting that strength there in terms of generating force. So really, there seems to be a loss of connection that we can enhance that by just adding a bit more tension. Like as you're in those scapular circles and you're going through the circle of it, you want to really try and squeeze and generate as much strength as you can in that movement. So I would work on that. And then to like, I mean, it really is just repetition at that point. So the guys, I don't have anything to add to their advice, except for I would just be, I would be in your head more.  That's what I would say. I'm like, you're literally the squatting and deadlifting that you're doing. Like that amount of muscle in your legs is making it incredibly difficult to pull your body. And it's not like you're out of balance. You have a very well-balanced physique.  I would literally, if you're my client, I'd be like, I don't even care that you can't do the, you know, five pull-ups. Who cares? You know what I'm saying? What you're accomplishing outside of the pull-ups is so incredible that it just, there's give and take in this game. Like you're not always going to be awesome at all the different movements that are out there. And a lot of times, if you get really, really, like you're, when you talk about your squatting, what you can do squatting is like in the 1% tile. So that, and that works against somebody being good at pull-ups. If you're, if you are, okay, in fact, think of the 1% of men's squatters. They're not good at pull-ups. They're not good at pull-ups. No. Why? Because they have incredible legs. Their legs are massive, their glutes are massive. And then they're strong down there because they're so good at that. And so you're just not going to be great at pull-ups. And I wouldn't care so much about pull-ups that I'd want you to go lose 10 pounds of muscle in your legs. They look phenomenal.  That's what I'd be telling you. At this point, if you really, really, like, you're like, oh, this is a fitness goal. I've always wanted to do this. I hear you guys, but I think it's cool. I want to go after it. You're going to, at this point, have to modify all your training towards the chin-up. Right. So this is not like, hey, can I keep doing what I'm doing? And they add stuff. You'd have to sacrifice other things. You're just going to have to, yeah, you're going to have to take volume off other areas. And I wouldn't want you to do that. And look, if you were my client and you said, hey, what do you think? I'd say who cares? Yeah. But if this is, look, I get this. You might have this goal and be like, I just want to do this. So I don't care. I hear what you're saying. I just want to do this. Then what you do is you reduce volume in other areas. You don't focus on building in other areas. You literally cut the volume, cut the sets, practice pull-ups on a daily basis, and try to get stronger. The pull-ups give yourself 8 to 12 weeks of that, and you'll get stronger at it. You'll definitely get stronger at it if it's that important to you. How's to your stability in your overhead position? Pretty good. I think I do have a little bit more of hypermobility. I'm stable. Like, I could do an overhead squat position-wise, totally fine. But it almost like, if I'm hanging, I kind of like pop right back here. And I almost lock out. What's the hardest part? Is it the depression of the shoulder blade? Where do you feel like there might be a little bit of instability? I would say, as soon as I go to try to bend my elbow. I can do a chin-up if I'm 90% locked out. Kind of like what Sal was saying, I have been kind of jumping into it and just allowing myself to get as far down as I can. But if I'm 100% locked out, I'm not getting back up unless I jerk myself out of the hang position. Okay. Yeah, I mean, literally- I'm curious about that, whether to recommend overhead carries with that as well. Yeah, Jennifer, if you tailored all your programming towards getting better at the pull-up, so cut the volume on your back workout, cut the volume on your shoulders, your chest, your lower body, practice pull-ups on a daily basis, you're going to get better at the pull-ups. Yeah, you could totally get better at the pull-ups. But I mean, what sacrificed this amazing thing that you've built? That's where I would be getting on to you all day. If we were in a pull-up competition, I'd go win it with you and say, this is what we're going to do. We're going to completely cut out legs for the next two months.  But then I'm going to lose all that great work. Nah, I wouldn't let you. Yeah.  But I get it, look, I get it. I've done this with goals where I've sacrificed. I get obsessed with some things like this. So I get it. Just to prove to yourself if you can do it. Yeah, just to prove to yourself. So I mean, there's no wrong answer here. But we're like, if you were our client and you came to us and said, hey, should I, we'd be like, why? That would be my answer. Who cares? But you really want to do it? That's the advice I gave you is the way to do it. And you'll get there if you do that. If you try to add stuff to your current routine, you're not going to, it's not going to happen. You're going to have to cut volume at other areas, for sure. Yeah. I always said for a long time, I was like, my lower body is just too heavy to pull myself up. And I guess there is actual truth to that. Oh yeah. Yeah. You ever seen Justin do a pull-up? Absolutely.   I mean, there's a handful of chicks I've ever trained that can squat, not even a handful, 315.  That's incredible. Yeah, that's really sure. Like, you're so... Do you compete or is this just for fun?  I just love being strong. Yeah. Were you an athlete? Were you an athlete? Did you compete in any sports, or you just like to lift? I played volleyball, but yeah, I just kind of... I just lift. My husband is a... He graduated with an exercise science degree. He trains athletes, so I just have him do all my programming for me. He's doing a good job. There you go. Yeah, yeah. Tell your husband we said he's doing a good job. Yeah. How tall are you and what's your body weight, if you don't mind me asking, Jennifer? Yeah, I'm 5'7". And I'm about 155 right now. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You're... Girls that do a lot of pull-ups are like 5'1", 100 pounds. And it's because they're tiny.  You have a well-proportioned lean physique.  So like the best... The best pull-up people in the world tend to be really just tiny people. And because you're lifting your body... I bet you could do a pull-down with a tremendous amount of weight. To get that rock and roll body weight. In comparison to other... Exactly. Have you ever considered doing a powerlifting meet? I have, but I just don't know if I can bring myself to push myself to that extreme. And I feel like my squat and my deadlift like way out do my bench. So what? That's a three-lift total. If we send you mass powerlift and you follow it... You're really strong in the other lifts. I'd love to follow up with you. Yeah, I think you could go in right now cold and actually do pretty damn well. Yeah, yeah. Have you... You want to program? You want to follow mass powerlift and then follow up with us? Yeah, that'd be awesome. All right, Jennifer, we'll send that over to you. I would love it. I like this plan. Yeah, yeah. I like this plan way better. I'd like to see... Who cares about pull-ups? Yeah, pull-ups for the birds. We'll send that to you, okay? And then if you follow it, follow up with us. I'd love to see where your numbers go. Yes, please. Okay, awesome. Thank you so much, guys. You got it. Thank you. Another case of... Pro. I'm not perfect enough or I don't know. I have to figure... I get it by the way, you know. No, and you're right. I know, I'm sure I'm going to upset some people because I said what I said, but the truth is this, like, okay, listen, if you want to get really good at pull-ups, and I am... We're all this way. We're all this way. Yeah, we'll pick something.  Like, okay, when I decided I'm going to get... Become mobility guy. Like, I knew I was going to sacrifice a look and a... Doesn't mean you can't have kind of both, but it's like, if I'm going to get really great at that, that became my all focus. Yeah. I let go of everything else. I'm not going to worry about anything else. I'm going to get so good at that. And I did. And of course, I wasn't quite as strong and I wasn't... I didn't look as great as I did on... Who cares though? That was my goal. And so that... And so she has to have the same attitude if she really wants to get good at squatting. And I'm like, why? I mean, unless you're going to do... Well, also, like, you know, I only asked this because she seemed pretty confident, so I thought it was okay because some people are sensitive. But she's 5'7", 150 pounds. She's lean. Based on that video, she looks like she's in the 17% body fat. She's obviously very fit. But she's not a 5'90 pound girl. So to do two pull-ups at that body weight with her lower body, I mean, she has glutes on her. And 5'7", is long. That's what I'm saying. She's got a long way to pull up. That's strong. Yeah, so she's got one of the strongest lower bodies we've had ever call in before as a female. And then she's also 5'7", so she's got a long way to probably travel. Like, that is like so difficult. Yeah, that's why it's so hard. I hope she does the powerlifting meet. I would love to see her.  Squat and deadlift and see what she puts in. And her husband does her program. He's obviously doing a good job. So that's awesome. Good deal. Look, if you like the show, head over to mindpumpfree.com and check out all of our free guides. We have free fitness guides that can coach you and help you with your fitness goals. You can also find all of us on social media. Justin is at Mind Pump Justin on Instagram. I'm at Mind Pump DeStefano. And Adam is at Mind Pump Adam.