Welcome, I'm Diane Meyerhoff, host for TownMeetingTV's Essex Select Board Candidate Forum, part of our ongoing TownMeeting 2021 coverage.  We welcome your comments and questions. If you're watching this program live, please join the conversation at 862-3966. We also ask that you mute your computer prior to calling. The ground rules for tonight's forum are the candidates will make opening statements of up to one minute each, and they will answer prepared questions for up to two minutes with a possible 30-second rebuttal. I am joined by Tracy Delphia and Elaine Haney, the incumbent. Thank you both so much for joining us. Thank you. Thanks for having us, Diane. We, Tracy and Elaine are running for the three-year select board seat, so that's what we'll be talking about tonight. We are going to start with opening statements from each candidate. So tell us why you're running and how Essex will be different if indeed you win the seat. And we will start with Tracy. Good evening. I grew up in a very small town where my father was a volunteer firefighter and he sat for years on the town council. I've always believed in service above self, and I walk the walk in that respect. I'm always giving of myself to the benefit of others. I'm a nationally certified public sector manager and will not only bring those skills, but my experience in process improvement, leveraging efficiencies in state government and municipal government, relying on data to make decisions. I'm an advocate for increasing transparency by expanding public involvement in our community. When I interviewed for appointment to the select board in June of 2020 after Annie Cooper's resignation, I stated that I was already planning on running this march, and I strive to fulfill the promises I make, so this is an example of that. Great. Thank you very much. Elaine, your opening statement. Thanks Diane, and thank you town meeting television for hosting us. So I am running for reelection to the select board because Essex has so much good stuff happening and some of which I helped start and I want to see it through and I want to see it grow. Some of the things I'm thinking about are the continuation of our conversations in the community about racial equity and inclusion, as well as the start of our housing commission and helping that get off the ground and continue their work and revitalizing the economic development commission and including business support for all of the businesses in the entire town. I'm really eager to work on those initiatives and of course, depending upon the outcome of the vote in March, if merger passes or if merger fails, there is still a lot of work to be done on taxation and representation and if merger passes, it's going to be a very complicated process and it's having been there at the present to start the process. I'm really looking forward to seeing it through. Great. Thank you both very much. Appreciate it. I'm going to go on to the prepared questions and talk about ballot items. So of course, the big question that we've already alluded to is the merger of Essex Junction in town of Essex and over the years, certainly in the forums that I've done, we've talked a lot about the work that's already been done to consolidate communities. Talk us through your position on the merger, what you encourage voters to do on town meeting day and we'll start with Elaine and that's two minutes. So you're right, Diane, consolidation over the last several years has saved Essex taxpayers a lot of money. We estimate it's around $3.4 million over the last several years and we've also done that with no decline in the quality of service. We are still plowing our streets and sidewalks. We are still delivering high quality child care. Our libraries are open, except for COVID and we are doing everything that our residents expect and want from us and I expect that to continue if merger passes. One of the goals of merger is to maintain the high quality of our services and I support it because I also want Essex to be prepared for the future 25 years from now, 50 years from now. We need to take steps today in order to be fiscally responsible, increase our efficiencies and eliminate whatever duplications we can so that we're ready to meet the challenges of the future. Communities in Chittenden County are talking now about regional partnerships that will take the entire county into the future and so Essex needs to do the same thing in order to be able to maximize the value of our taxpayer dollars to maximize our purchasing power as two entities joined into one and to ensure that our taxpayers are paying fairly across all services and that services are delivered equally amongst all residents. So I do support it very much. Great. Thank you. Tracey, we're talking about the merger. As is everyone. Yeah. I do agree, Diana, have been great strides to consolidate community service over the years and I fully support the continuation of that consolidation and streamlining delivery of those services. This better serves the community, the population. The current merger plan doesn't have any details as far as how those departments will be reorganized and consolidated. And from my experience, a plan that doesn't include all of the details is full of risk. Also absent is planning for how those services will continue to be equitably delivered throughout the period of consolidation. As you know, when you try to consolidate two large departments, you need to find, you need to do a gap analysis. You need to find out where the gaps are, where the overlap is as far as public works is concerned, where the route separation will be, where the new routes will be, where staffing levels are for those routes. There's a lot of details and the current plan simply says that the departments will be reorganized and consolidated in that way. I'm not opposed to merger, but I feel that these details need to be part of the plan. I've not advocated for or against merger for a very, very simple reason. The topic will be decided at the same time as I'm hopefully elected. I firmly feel that the person elected needs to have not advocated for one position or the other. We are a community divided by this issue and advocated, advocating for one course of action before the voters get to speak and decide on that final decision. In my mind only serves to perpetuate the divide. We really need someone who is impartial, who has not taken a stand, and who has the experience with these large projects to be able to see it through one way or the other. I'm ready to do that. I have the experience and I am very willing to hit the ground wanting. Great. Thank you. You both are doing excellent on your timing. I appreciate that. Elaine, did you want to have a rebuttal? Not a rebuttal. Just a clarification. Okay. I just want to point out that the information that Tracy is saying is missing from the charter is actually not stuff that's really supposed to be in the charter. Organizational development and the personnel organization and the way consolidation is supposed to occur is the purview of the town manager. The select board does not have authority over that. And so we know that the town manager will be bringing in experts to assist in organizational reorganization of various departments, particularly the fire department. Because we are not experts in fire departments. We are not experts in wreck departments. We are going to be using the town manager's expertise and his authority as well as the expertise of people who have, who understand how these kinds of organizations grow and develop. We will rely on their expertise to do that work and take their recommendations. But that's not something that really belongs in the charter. And Tracy, did you want to respond to that? I do. I fully understand that those details do not belong in the charter. What I would advocate for is that there be a comprehensive, all-encompassing plan that presents it from speaking with many, many people over the last month. I'm surprised I'm not hoarse yet. People are craving those details. They want to know what these services are going to look like, how they're going to be delivered, how wreck programs will be consolidated for their kids. So, yes, I understand that it's not in the charter, but I would like to see, as many people, I'd like to see a comprehensive, fully thought-out plan that doesn't belong in the charter. That's how it happens. It's important for many people. Lane, do you want to respond to that? I know this is a big topic, so I don't want to cut this one short. Just to say that, we definitely know that residents are dying for more details. We are at a phase of this process. The charter is needing to be approved by the voters, and then when consolidation, if it passes and consolidation is on the table, the community will be at the table to help talk about what they want to see in their wreck department and what they want to see in their fire department with the help of the manager and perhaps some outside expertise to help us make those decisions together. But it's not something we can put in the charter now. Tracy? Just to state again, I'm not advocating it from the charter. I would just like to see a supplement plan in combination with that so people know exactly what they're voting on, because there is that on loan. OK, I think we'll wrap that one up for now. But I should let folks know, of course, we'd love you to call in if you're watching the show live at 862-3966, because we just talked about the big question, so I have this feeling there might be some people out there who want to talk more about it. But we'll move on for now. Let's talk again more about town meeting and that's this year's town budget. Do you support the Australian ballot? What's the impact for residents who like to perhaps bring amendments to the floor at town meeting? So we'll start with Tracy, your turn. I do support the budget. I'm even more supportive of the time spent receiving feedback in the back and forth with Mr. Adams during the budget public hearing to see that in action was really something. It was great to see. I voted in support of moving to Australian ballot back in November. And I'm glad that it's here and we're going to be voting by Australian ballot in March in a community of our size. Australian ballot does make the most sense to truly capture what the entire community wants. It's hard for people to show up on one night and cast their ballot. I see this as an all encompassing collection of everyone's ideas and feelings on the budget rather than just who shows up that one week. Do you feel it's more scalable? And again, it also allows for more voter input. And that's something that I will always, always support in getting input from more people. OK, great. Thank you much. Elaine, we're talking about the budget. Did you support it and Australian ballot? I absolutely do support the budget. I'm very proud of some of the addition that we have to the budget this year, like stipends for volunteers and increased funding for racial equity discussions. I also am happy that we're going to be eliminating the highway tax, which is a tax that is paid by residents who live in the town outside the village and that will be moving, hopefully with voters approval, moving the village's rolling stock fund into the town budget for allowing people the entire community to pay equally for all of the public work services that we have. Australian ballot is great. We have been advocating it for quite some time. I had been thinking about it as a part of the merger package, but it's something that can happen independent of that. And as part of the Essex governance group several years ago, that was a recommendation that we switched to Australian ballot. I'm so glad it finally got here. Essex has had traditionally low turnout at town meeting, you know, about 175 to 225 people, and that's like 2.3% of registered voters and they're deciding a $15 million budget. The growing pain of that, however, is that when we did our first set of public hearings regarding the budget, Tracy referred to Mr. Adams. He was one person who affected a change in the budget, and that felt difficult to me because we were trying to move to Australian ballot so that more people could have a say on the budget, but it's a growing pain. We're shifting and we're moving to something better. If you're deployed, if you're a single mom that can't go out at night to go to a meeting, you're an elderly person that doesn't want to try to have at night, Australian ballot is the great solution for that. And we are a much larger town and it's a better fit for us. Okay. Anything more with that? Looks like that one's pretty good. Okay. So again, you know, let's remind everybody, we'd love you to call if you're watching the show live, 8-6-2-3-9-6-6. Let's move on to racial justice. What are the opportunities for addressing racial justice and how will you use your select board seat to meet this challenge? And Elaine, you'll start us off. Thanks, Diane. So in the summer, after we all witnessed George Floyd being murdered on television by municipal police officers, I got a lot of emails from residents saying, what does Essex do about use of force? What is Essex's policy and do people of color feel safe in Essex? And so not seeing a lot of action in terms of interest in starting up the conversation at the board level, I instituted a conversation about it. And it was a difficult conversation, but the end result of it was the formation of a racial equity task force. I'm really proud of that. They have gotten started. They are speaking with the community. They've done surveys. They've done listening sessions, and they have a retreat next week to continue their work. It's a partnership with the school district, the police, the community justice center, residents and representatives of the boards. So I'm really looking forward to the recommendations that are going to come from them. And moving forward in the budget, as I said earlier, we've included stipends for volunteers for committees so that they can pay babysitters for their kids when they need to come to meetings. We have increased the budget for facilitating racial equity discussions, and we've included funding for body cameras and video storage for the police. So I feel like our community is making really great strides there, and we still have a long way to go, but we've gotten started. Tracy, we're talking about racial justice and Essex. There are some very encouraging conversations happening in our community around this important topic, and I'm grateful to be a part of that. Initially, I took a step back after that meeting to allow the BIPOC community to engage on a level in which they were comfortable with being very understanding that I'm, dare I say, a middle-aged white woman, and I did not want to interpret incorrectly. I did not want to influence what was being said simply by my presence in the room. So I'm starting to join in on those ongoing conversations, and I'm very happy with what I'm seeing. I'll use my select board seat to create a space to continue and expand the listening sessions and learning opportunities. I would also like to form a standing committee to research and make recommendations on how we as a community can improve in this area. I'd also like to implement a training on implicit bias so that we can better identify our own biases and those around us. It will allow us to name our biases, own them, and move forward while being aware of them. And I think that that is really the underlying concern that we all have to deal with, because we all have time. And I see that my time is about up, so I will yield. You've got 30 seconds if you like it. Yeah, I just wanted to make a comment that when this topic did first come up, I was a bit concerned by the initial reaction that I saw in that meeting. The initial reaction wasn't how can we help, but it was when can we find time in our busy schedule. And I for one was a little embarrassed at that reaction. I made this comment that evening and I'll make it again now. But when members of our community do not feel safe or feel they're singled out simply due to the color of their skin, the response should be to make that topic an absolute priority, not a scheduling concern. So I'm glad to see that this is moving more into focus. Okay, great. And we have a caller. So we're going to go to our caller for now. I believe we have somebody queued up. And please mute your TV or computer before you ask the question. Almost. Pardon me? Yes, there you are. Please let us know your name. Welcome. Betsy Dunn. Hi, Betsy. Thank you. What is your question? Oh, this is to Elaine. And it is, you are saying that we give high quality child care and want to do it equally. And in previous meetings at the select board, you said that people from the town outside the village, the TOV would have equal access to the childcare. Today I learned that there's a long, long waiting line and that they cannot just get into the childcare. They're going to get on the end of that waiting line. And that there is no room for the people who are on the waiting line at this time. So how is that going to help the, how is the childcare going to help the town outside the village? Okay, Elaine, you can get started. Sure. So I cannot speak specifically to the very big details about how the childcare system would be put into operation. However, what I can say is that if merger passes, the recreation departments will come together and talk about the needs of the community and be able to make adjustments to staffing and locations and timing and cost. So that all of the families that are in need of childcare can at least have an idea of what the availability is and that they will have room in their enough spaces and enough instructors and classroom help to put that all together. There is definitely a system that needs to be developed to accommodate larger numbers of children. But I'll also say that during COVID, the childcare provided by the YMCA to the town outside the village families ceased to exist because the YMCA was not able to fulfill their contract in a way that would meet safety requirements and so they pulled out. And town outside the village childcare was left with no providers. So EJRP stepped in and provided childcare almost seamlessly and they were able to do it very quickly. They were able to accommodate all of the children and my expectation is that should merger pass, we would simply continue with that and then work together to build it into a system that is reliable and has enough room for the demand. Okay. Tracy, would you like to answer that? We're talking about the availability of childcare for those outside the village. Sure. This is sort of a culmination of what I was speaking to earlier about the details not being there. I understand that in COVID times, we do have a system that's working. But what that will look like post COVID, what that will look like down the line when we're in that transition phase of consolidating the department, how will that change? How will services be delivered? When you're talking about childcare for working parents, nothing is more important than knowing that their children have childcare and that they're safe. I also heard on that, Betsy, I think the same meeting that you're referring to where, instead of the blanket statement of, oh, everyone will have equal footing in EJRP for childcare, it's my understanding that only slots as they open will be equally available for town inside the village and town outside the village. So I would really like to see more details on exactly what that plan is and how those services will be delivered going forward. Okay. Well, people are calling in. So we have yet another caller. So we're welcoming another caller to the discussion. Hello there. Do we have another caller? All right, we'll give it a second. Oh, there we go. Hi there. Who's calling us tonight? Hi. Hi. Sure. Mike, are you ready? Yes, please. Okay. My name is Patty Davis from Essex, town outside the village. And my question is to Tracy and I'm wondering since we've lived here just under five years, I've noticed that Essex merging of services and all this consolidation happens now without public input. And I want to know how you, Tracy, would change the current setup of the select board that makes these decisions of combining services without voter approval. That's my question. Okay, thanks so much. Thanks so much, Patty. Tracy, please start us off. Patty, thank you for that question. I think it's all about taking a multi-pronged approach. We could have numerous listening sessions on any topic. We could have, it doesn't have to rise to the level of the public hearing is what I'm trying to say. What I would like to do to gain community input and have sort of a level playing field where folks don't feel it necessary to come to an official select board meeting but have listening sessions once or twice a month go and sit at a coffee shop, host a Zoom meeting or a team meeting just to sit and listen and listen to really learn and understand the input and the advice of the people that I would represent. There is also the opportunity to put advisory items on ballot just to gauge input and feedback from the community in an official capacity on items that we're working on and we're thinking on. And I would really, really like to see that. During my time speaking with residents, I have received a lot of feedback that members of the public do not feel as though they don't feel comfortable coming to select board meetings and speaking up to voicing their opinion. They fear reprisal from their neighbors who have a different opinion than them, which is a problem. We need to fix the divisiveness in our own community and allow for that open exchange of ideas and communication in a way that's not threatening, that's not, you know, as overwhelming as going to a select board meeting and speaking on the record but having that capacity to have that bi-directional interface. Great. Okay. Thank you. Tracy, Elaine, we're looking at Patty's question about transparency and public input for the merger. I think it was more about consolidations in general, actually, is well, at any rate, I agree with Tracy that having conversations with community members is essential. And until COVID came along, we were all able as board members to be out in our community talking to our residents. And that is something that I've done for a very long time. Having folks attend meetings is important, but you also get a lot of opinion from just being out in the community, using the library, going to the rec department, being out at the high school, picking up your kids. I mean, it's an important thing to be every day in the community, listening and having your ear to the ground. Another important aspect of the consolidations in general and in merger is, you know, one of the goals is to make the service quality maintained throughout, regardless of the changes. And that doesn't necessarily impact residents so much as it impacts our staff. And so the goal is to maintain services, but how are we going to keep them maintained if we're consolidating? And staff members are essential to the conversation and we talk to them all the time about, well, what would it mean if we did this? What would it mean if we reduced the budget here or if we moved that over there or if you started sharing equipment? And in the end, the voters always have the final say because whatever consolidations we come up with end up in the budget. And when we have, for example, I think in 2016, we did the public works budget. We moved the village public works into the town general fund budget and we had a long conversation at town meeting. We had lots of conversation about it prior to that and we had Q&A sessions for the public and then the public voted yes. So when the public votes yes on our budget, that is one way that they are weighing in to say they approve of the changes we're making. Okay, great. Thank you both and thank you for the callers. We appreciate hearing from the voters of Essex and Essex Junction. We are actually coming to the end of our time so I'd like to give you each a minute to do a kind of a closing statement and anything we didn't get a chance, we didn't cover as much as I'd hoped but we got the big topics. So let's start Elaine with you. Sure, I want to just take a few seconds to address the comment regarding scheduling racial equity conversations. That was not a comment about scheduling. It was a comment about the dedication of enormous amounts of time to the most important conversation we should be having in our community and just whipping it off with a few public hearings is inappropriate and not having the time to do it is something really important to talk about and so we budgeted money to call on facilitators and to help us do it right. So in general, I'm running to be re-elected to the select board so that I can continue the good work that we're doing together. I'm looking forward to working on continued racial equity conversations, continued work of the housing commission, continued work of the Essex Economic Development Commission and building a strong community regardless of the outcome of our merger vote on March 2nd and I'm hoping that our community is going to continue to look forward to the future and we'll all work together on becoming as sustainable as we possibly can financially and operationally and to grow forward together as one community. Great. Thank you, Elaine. Tracy, closing statement. Thank you. As I said before, I've been speaking for a lot of people in the last month. There's a general feeling from many people who don't speak up, that don't feel comfortable or even welcome making statements with the select board. Things have gotten pretty divisive and heated lately. This to me is a huge problem that needs immediate intervention. No one should ever feel as though their opinions aren't welcome or taken seriously and they shouldn't be afraid to speak up. Any candidate stance on any issue is far outweighed by their level of integrity and character. While I can't tell you how I would vote on any specific topic, I can promise you that I will approach every decision with common sense logic and eye on the financial implications and looking at the data. Every decision we make should stand on the solid foundation of data and community input and open session that backs up that decision. I've spent my entire life serving others in one capacity or the other. I have the skills, experience and dedication to serve everyone in Essex and I would very much appreciate your vote. Okay. Thank you both so much for joining us tonight. We really appreciate it and we should tell everyone out there to stay tuned to Town Meeting TV, sorry, for more candidate forums. And most importantly, to make sure they vote early in early ballot or in person on Tuesday, March 2nd, Town Meeting. And I'm told that the voters in Essex should be getting their ballots by next Tuesday and if they don't, you should call the Town Clerk by Friday if you don't get your ballot. So they're all being mailed to every active registered voter. So it's important to let folks know that but you can always vote on Town Meeting if you prefer in person. And very importantly, Tuesday, March 2nd, we will have Town Meeting TV, we'll have its live results show beginning at seven o'clock. So we hope everyone will join us. We'll have results early and we'll have them out as quickly as we can. So again, thank you both for joining us and thank you all out there for watching. Good night. Thank you.


In this episode of Mind Pump, your favorite fitness, health, and education, uh, and entertainment podcast. Don't lie, it's your favorite. Uh, we answer fitness and health questions asked by listeners like you. Um, and in the beginning of the episode, we do our introductory portion where we talk about current events, we mentioned studies, sometimes we mention our sponsors. So I'm going to give you a breakdown of what happened in today's Mind Pump podcast. We started by talking about occlusion training. This is a training technique uses lightweight, uh, that actually builds a decent amount of muscle. It's also known as blood flow, uh, restrictive training. So you might want to look that up. It's pretty cool. Then we talked about how you should go back to the gym when your gym reopens. And most of you should probably go easier than you think. A lot of you are probably going to overdo it the first week you're in the gym. Chill out.  Interesting speculations. Then we talked about the top fetishes in each state. This is where it got weird. This, it got pretty weird here. Then Justin brought up a show on YouTube called what we do in the shadows. We talked about the curse of knowledge. And then we talked about hallucinations. Oh, by the way, we have a free class this Saturday. It's a webinar Justin's going to teach you how to self assess your body. Come on. Let's come hang out and had a prime your body before your workouts. It's a free. Again, it's a total class. He teaches you. He uses Doug as a student in the class. That's really, really fun. And the, when the webinars are going on live, we will be on their live answering questions. It's unlimited. It's free. Sign up at mapsprimewebinar.com. Then we got into the fitness questions. The first question, this person wants to know how to lose fat without losing muscle. This is a great question because studies show that when people burn body fat through diet, they often lose just as much muscle. So how do we stop that? The next question, this person is looking for a second source of income, wants to do nutrition coaching online and wants to know what online programs we recommend. Now our favorite online certification course for nutrition is NCI certifications. We love them. We work with them. And we actually have something for you. Here's what you do. Go to ncicertifications.com forward slash mind pump. And you'll get a copy of nutrition coaching secrets audio book for only $1.99. Go check that out. The next question, this person understands the difference between flexibility and mobility. So what do flexibility and mobility drills look like? What makes them different? And the next question, when taking a protein shake before bed, should I try casing? I heard casing. It has slower digestion. It's better for before sleep. Is it better than whey protein? Also this month, all month long, one of our best at home workout programs, MAPS starter is 50% off. This is a great program to get you back into working out. It's a great program for new people. It's a great program if you're advanced and you'd like to revisit, good form, stability and control. All you need to follow this program is a stability ball and dumbbells. That's it. And you can do the whole workout. Here's how you get the 50% off discount. Go to mapsstarter.com. That's M-A-P-S-S-T-A-R-T-E-R.com. And use the code starter 50. That's S-T-A-R-T-E-R-5-0. No space for the discount. How come you guys didn't say anything? About what? Your haircut? You haven't? Come on, bro. Lack of haircut. Yeah. It's getting pretty bad. Jess got a conversation with me about it last night. Shouldn't we get a talk, huh? She call you Wolfman now or what? She's like, we have to do something. Tony Danza. I mean, I imagine she could cut it for you.  She didn't want to. Bro, listen. My lady at Supercuts is hella good. Not the lady with the eyes. She's certified in everything. Pretty sure they get most of her trading from YouTube. What are those lizards that changed at Chameleon? That was the lady that cut my hair messed up that one time. She's a lizard? Oh, so she had the eye that went, beer. Yeah, it was one went this way, one went that way, and then she was cutting my hair. I'm like, that's probably not going to affect her haircut ability. I'm sure I'm fine. Not at all. And it did. It did affect her. That's strange. No predators can get it from behind because she's looking in both directions. So maybe she's going to trim it. No, that's not what I'm talking about.  No, what'd you do? Went close. Look at that. You getting bigger right now? I still don't see anything. You don't see the extra half a quarter inch? You guys can't tell? No, what have you been doing? How many rubber band bicep curls did you do before you came to the podcast? I did. I've been doing occlusion. I haven't done it in a long time. Oh, yeah, occlusion. When's the last time you guys had occlusion training? When we talked about it on the show. Since you talked about it. Yeah, I did it right after we talked on the show. It was not that long ago. Like one time after that. You got to do it consistently, you know? Just like we did back in the day. I do it with my calves. You still do them? No, I don't. When's the last time you worked at your calves? Honest. Wow. Long enough that it takes me a while. It's why I still wear pants. Yeah, it's still winter. Tumble we didn't give through the matter. Summer's not here yet. I hit my calves twice this week. I did standing calf raises with no weight and they got sore. I was like, whoa. I just looked at mine.  Pretty good. Yeah, whatever dude. I'm good.  I get them calves. No, no. Yeah, you'd be walking around tree stumps. Yeah, exactly. It's not sexy. No, but the occlusion, it works, dude. Every time I do it, I'm always like, dang, this is pretty cool, you know? I just use the knee wraps and at the end of the workout, I do a few sets with the light barbell and some close grip push-ups just to get a pump or whatever. And it's sure enough, it works every single time. You look amazing. Thank you very much. I really appreciate that. I didn't know I needed to do this here too. I have to do this at home. Affirmation? Yeah, it's like, come on, dude. Well, you look so good today. Like, come on, dude, it's exhausting. Fine. You look good, Sal. You know what, you just should know that. Whatever. Yeah, you are the chick of the group. Yeah, what are you going to do? So that leads me to this about getting back into your workouts. I've been getting messages from people like, how do I get back? What should I do? My gym's reopening or whatever. Obviously, they're not in California because California is still, nothing's open. But other states are opening up and stuff, and people are getting back into it. And the advice I'm telling them is this, because I fall into this category also, go easier than you think you should go. Go much easier than you think you should go. Because whatever you think- That has to be a message right now. Whatever you think, when you get back, if you're taking a break, whatever you think is the right amount is almost always too much. I've challenged a couple guys on Instagram, we've been talking back and forth about this exact conversation. And I said, I know that our Map Starter program looks like it's geared towards the super basic or person who's never trained before, and it is for that person. But it also can be used by someone like you who's been lifting for four or five years, but you've been off for two weeks, three weeks or more, because you haven't been doing much or anything at all, and watch what that program will do. And that's where you should probably start.  Like why would I do that? But it's true though. It's the right dose. You don't need to do much when you first get back. Well, I think the confusion is that we're saying you don't need to do much and they're thinking, but if I do more, I'll get there faster. That's not true. The right amount is the amount that gets you there the fastest. Any more than that gets you there slower. Any less than that gets you there slower. And in my experience, okay, this is just in my experience training lots and lots of people and myself, the few times I've taken a long break or I've had clients taking a long break, you almost always overestimate, you know, how, where you should start. Like, oh, okay.  I'm gonna do like seven reps or six reps and then I'll be fine. And then for three days afterwards, like they're sore, totally fried. And that just slowed down your progress. Go easier than you think. Give yourself at least a couple weeks of that kind of gauge. And what you'll see is you'll see your body bounce back very quickly. Well, the truth is if you've been doing nothing, okay, or little to nothing for two weeks or more, almost nothing will actually stimulate a response. Just a little more than that. A set of something, right? Of, if you went through and really, if you went through every muscle group and did one set of it, and that's more than what you did the previous two weeks of your training because you haven't been training at all, that will stimulate. It will get you moving in the right direction and it leaves you lots of room to build volume on top of that. Really hard for, I feel like when I communicate that to my female clients, they adhere to it really well.  Women just, I don't know if they're smarter or what, when you communicate that to them, they hear it, they go, oh, that makes sense. They just actually listen. Yeah, it's like, oh, that makes sense. That's different. I'm gonna do that, right? And then they follow it and they see great results. You tell that to a guy.  You tell that to a guy and it's exactly what you said, like, oh, okay, so if he says, I just need to do less, I'll just do more. They pretend to listen. They go, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I'll totally do that. Yeah, I'm not doing that. Yeah, that's what's going on in their head. Dude, how many times has your wife blasted for that? I get blasted daily for that. You said you would, I did. I did. Oh, man, I was just trying to get out of that conversation. Why did I not remember anything? I can't get better at this. I can't remember anything. No, it's true. It depends, though, Adam, on the situation. You're right with men. That's the thing. Like you tell a guy, it's like telling a guy, hey, go lighter.  You're like, hey, that's a good idea. Add weight. Yeah, let's see how heavy I can make this app. How many times have you trained a client like that? What are you doing like an incline press with dumbbells? I think I got this. Yeah, and you're watching them, and you're like, this might actually be a little too heavy, right? And they put it down like, what do you think if we go up? Like, I think I give you the 45s? Yeah, yeah. No, no, you can't. We're not there yet. No, no, you can't do the 45s at all. Anyway, dude, I've been DMing people and back and forth and people are talking about their own industries and how much they're being impacted. And I had a massage therapist contact me through DMs and talk about how bad their business is being hurt. Jiu-Jitsu instructors in schools. These are all close contact businesses.  People think black markets are drugs and guns and that kind of stuff, but that's just a type of a black market. Black markets, all they are are markets that are not approved by the government. That's all it is. So like in the Soviet Union, they had a vibrant black market for American tennis shoes and jeans and music and food, milk and meat and things like that. Like they had big black markets in the Soviet Union for that because it was so controlled that they, because markets will exist whether they're legal or not. Right. There's an example is like what we see and still I think today is this way with like cigarettes in New York. Yes. Yes. Because they tax it so heavily that you go buy it somewhere else and then they sell it under the table. Right. Because the markets will exist whether we like them or not if there's a high enough demand. If there's like, look at drugs, right? We, that is the most regulated market in the world in the sense that it's the most, you know, prohibited. Illegal, yeah, most real. It's super prohibited. You can land yourself in jail for life for just possessing a certain amount of certain drugs or whatever. And yet the black market for drugs is a vibrant, you know, billions and billions and billions of dollar market just in the U.S. alone, not even talking about the rest of the world. What if these shutdowns and shelter at home, and I mean L.A. just talked about how they're going to be shut down for three more months. It is.  It already, I'm not going to sell people out at all, but I've already had multiple conversations of people. I know quite a few. Yes, that are definitely doing things right now. Cash under the table, paying employees under the table, still servicing clients as if they were, and I was talking about the fitness space, I'm talking about other spaces too. Haircuts, anything. Yes, nail salons, haircuts. That's all, it's all happening right now. Dude, how interesting, you know what I'm saying? Because I think, look at L.A.  I think the unemployment rate in L.A. was like 50%, I just read, which is insane. You can't tell me there aren't going to be, you know, people making tacos for people on the side, cutting hair, you know, gardeners, massage therapists showing up to people's houses.  And then here's my fear, when they wreath open things, some of these people may be like, hey, cool, I'm going to keep doing it this way. I'm making all this cash or whatever. Well, and not only that, but so I told you, I was talking to Scott the other day, and he was telling me the way that some of these rules are with the SBC loan, right? Oh, gosh. Yeah, nothing like what everybody thinks. I can't believe, well, I can believe it. Yeah, no, that to me is insane. So you have a lot of, now I feel for the people that are trying to do things legitimately, and they're saying, okay, like, yeah. They're getting screwed. And they're still getting screwed anyways with these loans, because when they approve this stuff, there's 5,000 different lenders that are going through the loans. And the SBC tells the lender that it's off their rules. So the lenders now have what they want. And let's be honest, if you're lending money, you don't want it to be forgiven. You don't want it. You have stipulations. Yeah, I want my money back. Of course, yeah. So the banks that are- Nothing is free. Dude, people get, it's so crazy to me. Oh, we're just getting this money. They're like, oh, this is great. Everything, we'll just get a loan, and everything's going to be hunky dory. They're the ones determining all the rules. Well, listen to what Scott told me he has to do. So he was one of the people that was on the front end, got the loan right away, right? So one, he gets it, and he has to pay it out within, I think, two weeks and show that he's giving it to his employees. He has to pay it all to them. To all do his employees. Ride it right away and show that it's keeping them afloat and giving them money. Well, here's the shitty part. He's got to pay all them, and they can't do work for him, because they're closed down. But he has to pay them to help them out. Well, one, that screws them with the inability to get unemployment. Because they're getting that. Because they're getting that money. They don't get the unemployment. Then on top of that, they're not doing any technical work for him. He's just keeping the business afloat by being able to pay his employees. But then he has to pay taxes at the end of the year on that money. So he now has to pay taxes. And operating costs and everything. Where's that going to go? It doesn't stop, right? And he has to pay taxes on labor that he was given free money for to pay for that he didn't get. Does that make sense? They don't do any work for that money. And he has to pay that. He's paying them that money. And he has to pay them that money. He can't just put it away for a rainy day in case they need it as a reserve fund. He's got to show that he's spending it on his people. And every business has different needs. So to give money and then to say, you have to spend it like this, it's very inefficient. Oh. Very, very inefficient. And then there's a payback structure, right? Where they have to pay back X amount of dollars? I think he said like four grand, and it kicks in within 60 or 90 days afterwards or something like that. Well, see, here's the crappy part about all this. They didn't know this when they got the loan. Right. And he can't even give it back. Oh, yeah, that's right. They won't take it back, huh? Yeah. This is crazy. Well, you know what? It smells of a racket. When this all went down and they were talking about this emergency money that they were going to give to businesses and they pushed it through really fast, legislators are like, we need to do this right away. And by the way, when the left and the right agree on something, that's when you should be careful.  Apprehensive. So they're like, we need to push this through. And so when they do that, they spend very little time on how it's going to work, what it's going to look like, they just push it out. Then after the money's out, then they tend to go back and say, okay, let's audit everybody. Which is such bullshit, because the only bit of dragging the feet that happened between the left and the right was like, who should get what money and what more? Who gets more? And like, oh, the right or the left one and more money to go over here, the right one to go over here. But no one's talking about like, is it going to be effective? How are these people going to actually implement it? Like, terrible. When does it stop? How do we cap this? Well, so I mean, I have friends that have been unemployed now for a little while and they haven't gotten any unemployment checks from California at all. My buddy got his first one. He did, how long is it, how long did it take him? Well, I mean, he just got it like literally two days ago. And I don't know, what has it been, 60 days since it's been. Oh, yeah. And California I think is 50, if I'm not mistaken, 50 billion dollars over, like what's it called? Their budget. And so they're going to ask for a federal bailout. But here's why they're under fire. They took 125 million and gave it to undocumented workers in California. So they're 50 billion over budget asking for bailout. Meanwhile, they gave 125 million. So you want to kill our actual economy of businesses out there and give it to people who don't even, aren't even legally doing that. Explain to me how, now how does that fly under Trump? Because there's no way Trump would allow that to happen. Remember, the states have a certain amount of power. They have a certain amount of power. Federal government has a certain amount of power and there's certain things that the states can do and the government, I mean, the feds could come in and sue the state and try to, you know, good luck with that, right? So it's crazy, right? It's a very weird world we're living in right now. It's very, very strange. I flip flop every day on like just how bad it is because you get, you read one article, you hear something from one person and then the next day it's the opposite.  You know, there's, so there's a lot of... That makes sense though. Yeah, you have the Twitter's, the Facebook's, the Google people, they're all still making the same kind of money. They're all just working from home and they're at home all day long and bored.   So I can't get puzzles. So people, are puzzles hard to get rid of? Yeah, they're hard to get rid of. Are you kidding me? Yeah. What do you mean, like they're sold out? Yeah, all the ones I've looked at are sold out. I'm sure people like DM me some links for other ones, but I haven't found any that I liked. Yeah. Oh man, that's puzzling. So puzzles. Oh my God, I'm bad dad too. Sorry, sorry about that boys. Anyway, crazy. So you always want to hear something cool that I looked up the other day? Yeah, it's here. Fetishes. Yeah, so it's a nice turn right now. Yeah, you like that? Great, excellent. No, there was this site that... I bet those are through the roof though right now. Well, porn searches and stuff? Yeah. Oh yeah, through the roof, totally. Yeah. I know that the traffic on some of the top porn sites are through the roof, but this website went through Google searches and whatever and looked up like the top searched fetishes per state and the top searched fetishes in the United States. So here's a trippy thing. What, so I'm going to go down the list. This is one, two, three, four. What do you think the fifth most searched fetishes in the United States? What, the fifth? Yeah, because it's... I couldn't even give you the top four. Okay, well, all right, fine. I'll go through the top, right? Yeah, yeah. So give me a couple so I get an idea what that... Yeah, so SNM first, right? Settle message-ism. Of course. Group sex, number two. Just sadism, number three. Sports gear. Crush videos. Sports gear? Sports gear, number four. I don't understand that. Okay, so now is this all under the umbrella of like pornography or is it like any fetishes? Like somebody who just like, what is that in case? Like when you're looking at the list, is it all related to porn? It's all related to sex. So it's sexual fetishes. Okay, that's what is sexual fetishes.  Yeah, so sports gear, number four. Sports gear, like they're huffing it? No, bro. Don't you remember like... What? Remember... What do you mean huffing? I was thinking in the locker room, you know, like... You know what I'm saying? Like that was porkies, I think. Disgusting. Like sweaty gear for like pro athlete straps. They're not working right now. I was saying, some people like that. You, he might be right. I mean, if you're an NFL player and you're not playing right now and you need some side cash... You need to sell your jock straps. Yeah. Hey, remember, I don't know. When it dug, it told us that they had vending machines... It was big in Japan. ...in Japan that would just... Yeah, panties. ...stinky underwear. No, there were panties that were worn. Yeah, worn panties. That's girls too. Yeah, but I mean, maybe Justin's right. You're making fun of him right now, but he could be right. Maybe that's... I 100% think Justin's right. I 100% people buy...  It's so weird. Well, I heard a new one. Duncan Trusley was on Joe Rogan's podcast. He was talking about like, people getting stuck in the mud as a fetish. What?  Why? For some reason, because they're like, help me, I'm in the mud. I can't get out. Humans are... Humans are weird. It's just strange. We're so weird that we get into weird shit that it doesn't make any sense. Now, don't you... See, it does, though. Don't you... Do you guys subscribe to like... What do you mean it makes sense? Well, I'm alluding to that. Let me finish here. Don't... Do you guys subscribe to like Freudian theories that it's like some childhood thing that causes something that happens to you? It's an imprint. Yeah, it's an imprint that happened. So when they were kids, the first time they orgasmed, they were trapped in mud. No, like their parents were having...  That's what it is, right? Isn't it something like that? Don't you... Do you not subscribe to those theories? It may be. Maybe. I do. Yeah. Well, I mean, it's coming from somewhere. Something. It's got to come from somewhere. Well, here's number five, armpits. Yeah, apparently armpits is a fetish. Number six, balloons. Balloons? Yeah.  Why don't you like them? I don't know why I still like them. You actually don't like them. Pop them right away. Really? Yeah. Yeah, that's a fetish. Yeah. So now like... Okay, now name a state. And I'll tell you one of the top fetishes in that state. Well, compare two that are like really different. Like, give me like Texas versus California. Let us guess. You say the fetish, we'll try and guess the state. Well, so Alabama. I don't even know what this is. Yawnee egg? I don't even know what that is. Y-O-N-I egg? Yawnee egg. What is that? Yawnee egg? Yeah, googly, a yawnee egg? Yeah, Y-O-N-I and then egg. That's Alabama's fetish. I have no idea what that is. You know what I want to know? Yawnee egg? What leads you to these types of articles? What? I'm looking for content for a while.  You know what I googled? Am I normal? Oh, wow. I made the top 15 with my, that's a yawnee egg right there? So what does it do? Explain it. You put it inside your... Oh, it's one of those. Is that one of the things that you put inside her and then you can control and vibrate? It's a polished stone in the shape of an egg inserted into your vagina and they're believed to be Chinese in origin used by concubines of the emperor for youth, sexual prowess and vitality. What if it doesn't come out? Yeah. You know? You just put it in and it will go to the doctor.  I would think you'd be able to get that out. Maybe, I don't know. It's like people that put bottles up there and stuff like that. Like they get those come out. Wow. Yeah. That's disgusting. All right. So California... Yawnee egg, that's a new one for me. So California's is wax play. What? Wax play. Like you're burning candles and like dripping it on your nipples? Apparently. That's pretty specific. Yeah.  Keep going here. Let's hear it. I just know. So Texas is whipping. So that's for, that's for... Makes sense. Yeah. Yeah, for Texas. Why does that make sense? Yeah, Nevada armpits. That's armpits Kim's from Nevada. Apparently they're big into the armpits. I know what that is. That's freaky. New Hampshire sounding. What is sounding? Look up sounding fetish, Doug. When you're getting the BJ. I'm just guessing. What? Justin knows a lot. Yeah, a lot coming out right now, guy. I want to see what's out. Uh-oh. What is it? Oh, Doug wants to throw up over there. Pull it up. No, are you going to make it? Is this going to shock us?  Fuck, is it images? Sounding. No. What is it?  Oh. That's, where is that? What state is that? Sounding. Oh my god. That's New Hampshire. I'm way off in no thank you. Wow. So I guess you put it in there and then they, do they make it vibrate? So does it does that? I think it's just going in there. No, sounding means I think they make it vibrate.  That's a terrible. In the pee hole. It just shows you how big we are as a society. You know what I'm saying? Like, first of all, the guy, who was the first guy that said, I'm going to try and stick this rod in my penis and vibrate it or put sound to it. And oh wow, this feels good. Now let me share this with as many friends as I can and find. And then it becomes a thing in New Hampshire. Yeah. Everybody started. They all moved there. Have you guys tried this? Yeah. No, dude. That's, it just sounds bad though. I don't understand why somebody would even try that. Yeah. Yeah. Doug's still looking at reading. I can see that. I can't read it. You know, I always love when Doug pulls stuff over the TV because it gives away because all the advertising that gets hit.  Doug, what have you been searching lately? I like that. That's true. The ads do follow. They do. Like, like, see their Organified Greenjuice is on there. You've got the Juve Lite. So that's good, Doug, that you're searching our brands. But then all of a sudden you have lingerie for those plus sizes. What's that all about? Everything in that one column is associated with the page I'm on. Everything on the far right is associated with me. Sure. Valley. Sure. Just so you know. Doug's ordering plus size at lunch, right?  And next thing I know, I have all this weird stuff following me. Oh, Doug. Flipping over, Doug. I don't want to see what the sounding is anymore. I don't want to. It's funny how they use a banana to demonstrate this. Dude, I got a new show I wanted to recommend to you guys. Have you ever watched what we do in the shadows, like the movie? It's with vampires. It's like total satire. It's hilarious. Anyways, they have a TV show like it's on YouTube. It's another original. But oh, my God, it's so funny. There's this vampire on there, too. So they tried to like the roommates or whatever. And it's basically one of them. They have it. They call him an energy vampire. So he's just like this normal kind of bald guy with glasses. And he goes into like offices and stuff. And he just he talks and he's really boring.   The concept is so funny, dude. And he gets more powerful, like the more boring he gets. I know people like that. Oh, my God. You've been going down the hilarious. The YouTube rabbit hole it sounds like. You've been watching a lot of the originals on there. Are you finding good stuff? They're coming out with some good content, man. Like the only thing they had before that was the Cobra Kai series, which I loved that. But yeah, between this and then the AI one I recommended last time, like it's, dude, they're starting to hit some hits out there. Dude, I know somebody like that that we all know. I'm not going to say any names. But that we talked to this person. Let's start. And they, you know, we're supposed to take 60 seconds. Like it's a 60 second. He's got to tell me two sentences. I got it. Let's do this. It's a 45 minute conversation. So anyway, hear me out and then we're going to do this. And then do that. And here's a graph and then, you know, cornflower blue and, you know, like they just keep going and you're like, oh. Yeah. And you know what I do?  You know what I've actually done with people like that when they talk to me like that? I interrupt them and I say, so to make a long story short. I'll actually say that to them. It's like, or I'll paraphrase. That's where you need that music.  Do you guys remember, again, I'm not going to say names because people know who this person is. But do you remember that friend of ours that had that, that like fitness business idea? Adam went to meet with him because he was going to present it to Adam. Yes. And Adam comes back. And I don't know how long you met with him for. And Adam goes three hours, three hours, three hours. And it was, this was when we were all first getting together, right? So we were really kind of like learning each other.  And I need my partners to take a look at this because this is, I don't know what it is. Yeah. It's not registering for me. So you sent Justin and I an hour and a half into the conversation. Maybe they can figure it out. Yeah, I'm sitting there and I still have no idea what your pro product is. You're just talking about it. But I have no, till this day, I still don't, I had to stop them. And I said, listen, you probably have a good idea because you're a good guy. Probably not. And you work hard. You work hard. I said, but I, if you're telling me, and I'm in fitness and an hour later, I have no idea what it is. You're not going to be able to sell it to anybody else. That's one of the biggest mistakes people make is they can't, they have a product or something. They can't explain it. You say, what does your product do? And it's like a 45 minute conversation. You should be able to tell people in like a minute, in less than a minute, exactly what it does. I think that elevator people. It'd be interesting to see the stats on that. You think because you're in the space that you know best, but sometimes you're your own worst enemy because of that. Because you know too much. You know so much that you don't. I did that red dog talk. And I think this is the plus side of what's going on with COVID. And I shared that. I said, I don't want to be all doom and gloom because I started the talk about that, like how I think it's just going to forever change fitness and that a lot of these businesses are going to go under and a lot of bad operators are going to be exposed. But the reality is, I think a lot of fitness people have been speaking to the wrong audience for a long time. We knew this. When we came into this space, I thought, we're all fighting over all the people that already love coming to the gym. And we know that it's less than 20% of the population. So we're all fighting over the smaller piece of the pie and debating over who can help those people out the best.  I'm not going to fight over those people.  They call that Doug pulled it up, the curse of knowledge. When you know so much about something that you assume that the people you're talking to will know the basics of what you're talking about. So you communicate it differently. You're in it every day too long to where all those little details matter and doesn't matter to your average person. No. So this is what I loved about personal training so much and why I find so much value in it because if I didn't train everyday people, it would be very easy for me to talk and assume people knew what I was talking about.  How many times have you heard a fitness professional talk about hypertrophy to everyday people? It's like they have no idea what you're talking about. You have to speak at a much, much different level. Otherwise you can't communicate your ideas effectively at all. I think that's a lot of that ego, right? That's a lot of that is we compare ourselves to all the other professionals in our space and you see this even at the highest levels like with the doctors and stuff. Like they end up getting into these conversations and it's like, wow, the people that you're helping, you're speaking so far over all of them and if the desired outcome is to truly help the people, then maybe you would find a better way to communicate versus... Well, some people get off on that. Like, you know, they're elitist about it. Like, oh, they just want to maintain this upper echelon status over people, everybody else, they'll come around and they'll figure it out. Yeah, well if your goal is to confuse people and make people think you know a lot of big words, then that's good. If your goal is to influence people and communicate your ideas, then that's bad. In order to communicate effectively, they have to understand, it's like the rule number one. How do you communicate effectively? Rule number one, they need to understand you. You know what I'm saying? Dude, I mean, they forget that. There's this show, a new show on... It's not a show, it's like a documentary kind of. Great recommendation from you. Yeah, well, it's about... I can't wait.  Let's hear it. No, no, let's hear it. I'm sorry, I take it back. First, you don't notice the half a quarter inch I gain in my arms. You make fun of my hair. No, so there's a documentary on psychedelics and they interview... Did you see this? I saw the trailer, but did you actually watch it? I watched some of it, right? So they interview celebrities and the celebrities share their psychedelic experiences. Which I think is, first off, very interesting. Second off, as a father, I'm watching this and as a dad, I'm like, this is coming across really pro-taking these things, you know what I mean? Because you hear these celebrities tell these glowing stories and was it sting, was on there and he's like, even my really bad experiences were good. I'm like, that's a terrible way to communicate this. But did you guys know, so trip off this, did you know that blind people, if they take LSD, can experience visual hallucinations? What? Yes. That's wild. Well, obviously it's coming from the brain and it's a different place. It's not coming from processing through the eyes, obviously. So if they take LSD, they'll see visual hallucinations. Do they see like fractal geometric shapes? Yeah, it would be that. They wouldn't see like actual visions. No, they're not like, they're not seeing. Yeah, well, I'm just saying, they've never stopped. In their mind, they see what I mean, guy. Maybe I have no idea, but they do get visual hallucinations when they take those substances. I want to know what they're reporting with that. If they've never saw anything, what is it? How would you explain it if you've never seen before? That's too hard for me to comprehend right now. Isn't that weird? Yeah. Yeah, but then the way they talk about psychedelics and this, it also, this is a subject that I get very interested in, just the way that they affect the brain. And did you know that there's not a living thing that we haven't tested with LSD, for example, that doesn't get affected by it? Give it to a fish, give it to a spider, give it to a dog and whatever. Every single living thing that we've tested. I want to see a spider on LSD.  Have you ever seen this? No, that's a thing. Yes, they're like YouTube. That's an old, I think the first ones they did when the 60s, remember that the government had a lot of- It's a sum pig. No, the government had a lot of- Is that a Charlotte's web reference? Wow, that was good, dad. I know. That was really good right there, Reid. I'm not even there yet. What are some of the other words that he's put? It was spectacular or something like that. But they would have spiders and they'd put them on LSD or they'd put them on other drugs and then they would look at the spider webs. I bet Doug's pulling it up right now. Was Charlotte's web supposed to be high in that book? All those children's stories, they always have some weird underlining issues. Definitely Dumbo.  Yeah, Dumbo, Allison Wonderland. There's a lot of kids. Pinocchio. Yeah, they have drug references in them. I wonder if Charlotte- Doug, look that up. Look at me. Charlotte's- Hold on. Look at the web there, the top one. Normal and then LSD. Do you see the two? The bottom one's marijuana. The bottom one's marijuana. You could tell too. The bottom one got lazy. Yeah, it's totally- I didn't finish the job. He did it at first as a f*****g. That looks like rays of from a sun. That's pretty cool. Doug, look up Charlotte's web. Do they do psychedelics in Charlotte's web? No, just a drug, underlining drug. Story or whatever. See what- Drug references and children's cartoons. Children's stories. How about that? Well, then you're going to get all of them. I just want some Charlotte's web because now I'm curious. I don't think so. I don't think that they referenced- I don't know. Well, I wouldn't be surprised. But you are right about Dumbo. They literally eat something and then trip balls. And then Allison Wonderland, of course. That's a real- There's a lot of that stuff. There was a show in the 70s called H&R Puff and Stuff. Yes. That's a real show. So H.R. Puff and Stuff. H.R. stands for probably hand rolled. And it's this kid. This is a show for kids in this- I think it was in the 70s. Okay. And it's this kid that gets a magic flute. Looks kind of like a pipe. Yep. Definitely a pipe. He plays it and then he goes to a land with big, you know, nuggets of marijuana and mushrooms. With that look hella high as hell. This was a kid's show. So the cartoon's really way cooler back then. Right there, right there. Look at this. H&R Puff and Stuff.  That muppet looking guy looks so high. Yeah. Look at it. They give him dark circles under his throat. Is this okay? No way. Yes. And the way the kid goes to this magic land is by playing this flute. Looks like a pipe. He's like, hey, man, follow me. Yeah. Look at him. He looks like a total stoner. This was an actual kid's show. I feel like in those days the writers and producers were like, they're like, let's see what we can do. Yeah, this will be funny. Yeah. Do you puff the magic dragon? I mean, that whole song. You would do though, right? If you're like, that's what you did for a living for like 20 years of your life, like write children's stories.  Yeah, that's what I mean. The creativity, right? Like, yeah. Yeah, see, I get it. And it literally says they're tripping down psychedelics, 60s, 60s, Saturday morning. So it was all about that. So funny. Well, that was a big part of the culture back then. Yeah. First question is from Chats with Gabby.  I love this question because this is, this should be your goal if you're trying to burn body fat.  Your goal should be lose body fat, preserve muscle, or in really, really perfect situations, gain muscle. Now, why would you want that? If you keep your muscle, you're less likely to have the negative metabolism adaptation. What I mean by that is when you lose weight and lose muscle, metabolism starts to slow down, which makes further weight loss or further fat loss more difficult. It also makes the fat loss that you did get more difficult to maintain. So you want to keep muscle because it keeps, it helps promote a faster metabolism, which means you burn more calories all the time. And it's protective. I mean, you get more strength from it, but they're fine as through those studies too about the immune system and everything else, like how protective it is to acquire more muscle.  They're at 1,800, 1,500 is not dramatic at all. So you cut them down to 1,500 or 1,400 calories. What ends up happening is sure they might lose body fat, but that's not enough calories to support the muscle that they need on their body either. So you end up losing both muscle and body fat at the same time, and then that's where you see someone who loses it. This used to happen a lot. I remember when I used to have the hydrostatic weight come to the gym all the time, and we'd have them do all of our clients that are trainers or training, and you'd get trainers, and this would happen a lot, especially when they're a newer trainer and they haven't learned this lesson yet. They'd have a client that they threw on cardio, cut their calories like crazy, and they lost them 15, 20 pounds, and so the client's celebrating, they're celebrating like they did a great job, then they go do the hydrostatic weight, and then the person comes back with a higher body fat percentage, and they go, and they're like- They're like, I lost weight? Yeah, and then the client's like, this has got to be wrong. The trainer's questioning if the hydrostatic weight is correct or not. No, it is, and that's what happens when you cut too hard and you're not at a good sustainable place calorie-wise. You're not feeding the body enough nutrients to hang on to the muscle mass that you have, and you're telling the body to adapt to a lower calorie. So it pairs down muscle. It says, okay, it's too expensive to keep this muscle mass on my body because they're feeding it so low of calories that yeah, sure, it does use and burn fat as fuel because you're not giving it very much fuel, but then it also pairs down muscle because you're not feeding enough nutrients. 100%, the reason why you lose muscle when you diet is because your body's purposely trying to slow down its metabolism. It's purposely trying to run on less calories because you're feeding it less calories. Now, this happens almost every time. What I mean by that is, almost every time you cut your calories, your metabolism starts to try to slow down a little bit. It's a normal adaptation. Nothing necessarily wrong with it, but again, if it happens too much, you put yourself in a bad situation. Now, how do you prevent this from happening? Well, the number one thing you do is you lift weights and you lift weights in ways that promote muscle growth and strength. So what I mean by that is you don't lift weights in ways to burn tons of calories. So if I'm lifting weights and I'm just going, doing tons of circuits and going from one exercise to the other because I want to burn body fat. I just want to burn tons of calories. You are sending somewhat of a muscle-building signal but not a super loud one. The best thing to do is to build muscle and build strength or try to while cutting your calories. Because what this does is it tells the body, okay, we're not getting enough calories.  Weight, should we pare down muscle? No, we need this muscle because we're getting a strong signal from actions that we need muscle and we need strength. By the way, studies are clear on this. When people diet without exercise, it's about half muscle that they lose. When they lose 10 pounds, it's usually around five pounds of muscle, five pounds of body fat. This is totally, this is exactly what will happen if you don't lift weights properly while you're cutting your calories. You know, this question reminds me of a great conversation that we had with our good buddy, Jason Phillips. In fact, this is when we really hit it off with him is when he did such a good job on that episode that we interviewed him of explaining this and how common is. And honestly, a lot of coaches aren't privy or aren't savvy to coach through this or know what to do. And that's one of the things I love about NCI is that this is one of the most important things that Jason tries to teach to all of his coaches underneath him. And when we had that episode with him, this was, we went deep into this conversation. So if you're listening to this and you have more questions and you want more detail, refer back to that episode that we did with Jason Phillips and check out NCI because this is something that they speak to a lot and they help coaches and trainers figure this piece out, which I think was one of the more challenging things for me because most of my career, that's what I was teaching other trainers. And then this is what would happen. They would cut their clients and then they would see the body fat percentage go up and I'd have to constantly be reminding them that you got to take this a lot slower, more methodical approach because now we have the tools to be able to check and pay attention to that. In the past, before all these tools existed, you would think that you were a successful trainer. Client lost 20 pounds. They came in, that's what they want to do. They want to lose 20 pounds. But if you made them fatter, you weren't that successful. And people that doesn't- You need to constantly be in their ear reassuring them this is the right approach. And that doesn't compute to the average person. We just talked about learning to communicate this, right? Like you say that to an average person that, wait a second, how can I lose 20 pounds on the scale but get fatter? Well, it's because you didn't technically add fat to the body. You have a higher percentage of fat- Because you lost muscle. Because you lost more muscle than you actually lost body fat.  Here's the second thing you need to do if you want to prevent losing muscle. Eat a high protein diet. So even though you're in a calorie deficit, you still want a higher percentage of your calories coming from protein. Studies are consistent on this. A high protein diet reduces the amount of muscle that's lost in diet. And when you lift, when you diet, and when you lift weights along with a high protein, then the odds are higher that you might actually even build muscle. So number one, lift weights to build muscle, build strength while you're on your calorie deficit. Number two, eat a high protein diet. That'll help a lot. And here's number three. I don't think it's a good idea to go too extreme in fat or carb cutting. In my experience, flattening out carbs, going zero carbs, unless it's helping you health-wise and you have food intolerance, stuff like that, going too low of carbs. In my experience with clients, over time starts to reduce the ability of to build muscle, even preserve muscle. Now, studies aren't clear on this. They don't necessarily support this. This is just my own personal experience. I don't have anything wrong with low-carb diets necessarily, but if they're too low for too long, I have seen people start to lose muscle. Well, and the behavior of that too when you go reintroduce them and how excessive it gets after that. Next question is from Cams. I've been looking into a second source of income and nutrition has been a heavy interest to mine the last couple of years. Are there any online programs you guys know of that are credible? Oh, we just mentioned it and Adam mentioned it briefly in the last question we just answered. NCI is one of our favorite online certification courses run by Jason Phillips. The reason why we like them is because of course their information is accurate, but more than that, they actually teach you how to coach clients online. They teach you the process of coaching and how to help them with nutrition. So one of the big, I guess, one of the big problems I would say with online coaching, besides people who are not qualified, let's forget that, that's obvious, is that you have people who understand nutrition. They just don't know how to coach nutrition. They can't speak to the behaviors as much and I think that you can have all the book knowledge and everything from nutrition, like your background could be a degree in nutrition, but it's going to be nil unless you're able to communicate all that and be able to convey that to your clients. They're huge on application. Again, this is one of the things that I really liked about Jason when we first met. There's certifications out there like Persistent Nutrition, which is probably one of the most famous. They deal with a lot of pro teams and probably the most profitable nutrition coaching out there. And that was his kind of direct competitor, ism. And there's no knock on them whatsoever. The information, the science that's behind precision is so, so good. The problem and the knock that he had on it and a lot of coaches do is they get all this overwhelming information and all this great science and all the studies to support all this stuff, but then they don't know how to communicate that and then apply it to a client. That's Jason picked up where I think they left off and he said, listen, this is where he says, I see there's a huge disconnect from these people that go through this great certification and learn all this knowledge, but then don't know how to apply it to real life clients. And that's where he focuses a lot more of that is like, not only does he support and share the science, but then he also says, okay, now that you understand what the studies say and support, a lot of like what we're talking about right now, now let's talk about, okay, you get this type of a client who comes in, how do you handle that? How do you now start to deal with that issue? This was a conversation I had with trainers all the time. It's like, I don't care how much you know. I really don't care how much you know. What I care about is how effective you are at helping your clients change behaviors long-term and the positive. That's really the only thing that matters. Your knowledge is what drives what you do, but if you can't influence your clients, if you can't train them or coach them effectively, all that knowledge doesn't mean anything. Now that being said, I will say this, I do think, I don't think what the current situation that's happening right now that the market for fitness and health is gonna go down. I think the market's still gonna stay strong. I think where people go have fitness, where they look for coaches, where they look for trainers is gonna change. The market's gonna look different, but there still is a market demand for coaches and trainers. And so I think you're going to see a potential surge in online coaching, in particular online nutrition coaching. I just see, I see that start growing. So do I think this is a good potential second source of income? I do, you gotta do a good job, of course, but I definitely do. And again, I think it's gonna grow. I mean, what do you guys think about that? I agree. Yeah, I definitely think that, I mean, you've seen that with Zoom calls and the way people are meeting, it's all virtual now. So I mean, that's a pretty seamless transition. I would think for somebody to even, even personal training coaching, I think is gonna be a lot more visible online going forward. All right, our next question is from Catherine B. Fit. I know the difference between flexibility and mobility, but what are the differences between flexibility and mobility drills? Okay, so flex, they say they know the difference. If you know the difference, then you'll know the difference between the drills. Okay, so flexibility is just range of motion. How far you can take a muscle through it's full range of motion, like how much, how far? Passive versus active. Right, so how far can I touch my toes? How much can I stretch my hamstrings? Mobility is control and stability within a range of motion. Okay, so just because I have the flexibility to do the splits doesn't mean I have the mobility within the splits. Okay, a good example of this is a baby. You take a baby, babies are very flexible.  Another fetish. Man, I'm really revealing myself. They dripped that wax on my nipples when I sucked my toes. So much being revealed about you today, guy. Hey, you know, I just wear it. The yellow toe. No, so it's, so flexibility is just that range of motion. So the drills, of course, are going to be geared towards both of those. So what are flexibility drills? Static stretching. Static stretching would be a flexibility drill. I'm just looking to increase my range of motion. What does a mobility drill look like? Mobility is connecting through, it's tension. It's connecting through those ranges of motion. So like we have our Maps Prime webinar coming up, which is free and Justin actually teaches that class, teaches you how to prime your body, does a self-assessment. In that webinar, in that class, you are going to experience what it means to connect rather than just stretch. Totally different, totally different level of effort, but the results are, look, flexibility is, flexibility can mean you're unstable. Mobility means you're stable. So there's not even a competition between the two. What you want is mobility. Flexibility can lead to improved mobility if you do the right stuff with it, but on its own, it can lead to stability. Yeah, it's a different mentality, and I kind of mentioned like passive versus active. So like if you've been in certain types of yoga classes, where they're trying to get you to really relax and breathe and calm your system and like, you know, find yourself into these positions, by relaxing the central nervous system, it's a totally different technique than, you know, mobility where I'm really trying to gain access to where I'm squeezing my muscles and some of, basically I'm trying to create lift. So if I'm trying to lift my arm, trying to lift my legs, but I'm not, I'm just squeezing my muscles to act as if I'm about to move. And so that I have access to that now. So if I were to get in that situation and be in that position with my body, I have the strength to dig my way out. Well, another example in referring to the webinar that you did that, you know, goes live on Saturday is the windmill, right? So we're all, if you've played sports, and even if you haven't played sport, everyone has seen the member in PE at school to cross your leg, hang over and stretch your hamstring. Right. Like that you, that it would be a static, like Justin's talking about, where you're working on flexibility. You just hang over there for 30 seconds and you stretch the hamstrings. A mobility drill that's going to help with not only flexibility, but also strength and control a mobility drill would be like the windmill. So the windmill is going to gain the same access that you're, you're talking about with like the hanging, hanging over stretch, but then you also get strength and control through the full range of motion. So Justin teaches, you know, the windmill and how to break that down with Doug on Saturday. But then that's the real difference. That that would be an exercise that is a mobility drill versus just crossing your leg over and hanging and stretching. So I think I have an analogy hanging, hanging there with me. I think this will work, but do you guys remember walkie-talkies back in the day? Yeah. Okay. So if you don't know what a walkie-talkie is, and you're listening to what you might actually not know what that is. This is before cell phones and they were things you would talk into. They have an antenna. And if they're certain distance apart, you'd be able to communicate with your friends and they're super fun. So you, and there's expensive ones that the military would use, but they would actually go miles. Yeah.  I think Metro even had that as an option. Yeah. Like got a button on your cell phone. You could do that. Yeah. So walkie-talkies, I talk in one end, my voice comes out in the other, and then we'd have to be a certain distance apart. Okay. So once you move outside that distance, the walkie-talkies can't reach each other and I can't communicate with my friend. When you stretch past a certain point, your central nervous system can't connect to the muscle. It's off. There's no control and stability. So imagine if you have these two walkie-talkies, I move them apart, move them apart. Oh, I can't hear Adam anymore on the other end. So now what I do is I push a button that sends a stronger signal to establish a new connection. Now I can talk to them at this distance. Now we move further apart. Uh-oh, we lost connection again. Send a stronger signal, establish a connection. This is what you're doing with mobility. You're working in new ranges of motion where you don't have control and stability, but the way you gain that control and that stability is by connecting. You have to connect with your central nervous system. Then when you do this enough times, you establish a solid connection. Now you've gained mobility. That's the big difference. Interesting. I like that. Yeah, a little bit. Almost ramp water there, but you dug his way out. Yeah, like you could kind of hear your friend. But then it becomes clear later. And that was next tell, not Metro. It was next tell? Yeah. Damn it. Next question is from Griff378. When taking a protein shake before bed, do you think casing really provides more benefits due to its slower digestion rate than way? This is funny. I felt like we used to talk about marketing. Well, we used to talk a lot about questions. We don't normally pick these questions anymore. So it's good that you brought it back up because I felt like we beat it to death early on. And like four years ago. Yeah. Well, so I used to do this. When I was a kid, I was like, oh, I need to have all the protein in the world and I would have a shake right before bed. I'd actually set an alarm to wake me up so I could wake up in the middle night and drink a shake. And so let's forget the casein versus way debate here for a second for before bed. I'm going to ask a question. Do you think sleep plays a role in muscle building? Okay. The answer to that is yes. Sleep plays a very important role in muscle building. In fact, if you don't have optimal sleep, you will not build muscle in the optimal way. It's just a fact. Sleep is very, very important for overall health, but it's also important for the muscle building process. Okay. We have a circadian rhythm that our body has a circadian rhythm and it uses various signals to tell us when it's time to fall asleep. One of them is light. If you are in bright lights right up until you go to bed, it might take your brain about an hour to register that the lights are out and now we can start to sleep. So studies show that when people turn out the lights an hour before bed, that they get better sleep than if they're in bright lights. And this is because we evolved this way, right? The sun comes down less and less sunlight. Eventually it's dark. The brain is now prepared. We go and get really, really good recuperative sleep. But there are circadian rhythms in other parts or other signals that tell the circadian rhythm if it's time to go to bed or not and other parts of the body. One of them is your digestive system. If I eat food, that digestive process tells my body, believe it or not, it's time to be awake. It's not time to go to sleep.  I need protein to build muscle, so I'm going to interrupt one of the most important things that I could be doing to build muscle, which is get good sleep. So taking a shake or eating right before bed is not a good idea in terms of having good sleep, which then contributes to muscle growth. This is not ideal. I wouldn't say it's not, because here's the thing too, because the argument or devil's advocate with that is, oh, okay, well, if somebody is not hitting their calorie intake or not hitting their protein intake before bed, I would advise to have that, right?  Well, that person is so low on their protein intake, the benefits that you'll get by adding that probably trump. Maybe. Yeah, maybe, you're right. I mean, another 30, 40 grams of protein, that then will interrupt sleep and prevent, you know, the adequate recovery from your breakfast. It may be negligible, it may be negligible, right? But so I don't think it's necessarily fair to say it's like a bad idea to eat at night. It's just this question, it screams like splitting hairs, doesn't matter, waste of time even discussing it and worrying about it. It's just it's purely another marketing ploy that supplement companies have done a great job. It's just what we do, what we tend to do is we tend to eliminate the value of everything else we do and we only value lifting weights and taking in protein. And so if it interrupts sleep, that's okay. It's like, oh, oh my God, if I go to bed right now, I'm only gonna get seven hours of sleep, but I need to lift weights, so I guess I'll get four hours of sleep so I can get a really hard workout.  Yes, you're lifting weights, build muscle. You're raw Peter to pay Paul. That's what I'm saying. So no, the idea is not to have food right before you go to bed.  It makes a big difference. Studies support this, okay? But let's forget all that for a second. The question is, is casing better than way because it digests more slowly when you go to sleep? No.  That's the, yes, it does digest slower, but that's not gonna make a big difference just because you're not eating threat. I mean, when it comes to building muscle, there's already been plenty of studies that support that nothing is better than way, right? Way is the best, brother. Way is the best, right? If you take approach to threat, it is the way.  Right, right. And in terms of like, oh, I'm not gonna have food for eight hours since I'm sleeping. That means I need to have amino acids trickling into my bloodstream to build muscle because if I don't have protein all the time, I'll lose muscle, false. You can fast during the day for six hours and not lose any muscle. You can fast for 24 hours and not lose any muscle. So this is all 100% protein powder marketing where they got you to buy way. They closed you on way. Now they're like, wait a minute, how do we get, how do we, because when you get milk, by the way, milk is way in casing. So they take the way off the milk and now you're buying all that.  How are we gonna spin this? Oh, I know. Casing digest slower. Oh, right before bed. And when it's ritualized, it's before bed. So now you can take it right before bed. We know you're gonna use it all the time. I fell for this. I had whey protein for my workouts. Casing for pre, for before bed. And then collagen. Exactly. They throw that in there. Yeah. And with that, go to mindpumpfree.com and download all of our guides, resources and books. You can also find all of us on Instagram. You can find me at Mind Pump Sal, Justin at Mind Pump, Justin, Adam at Mind Pump, Adam, and Doug, the producer at Mind Pump, Doug. Gawd.