In this episode of The Mind Pump, in this episode we answer questions that are asked by listeners like you. They go and post them on our Instagram page. We pick our favorite ones and then we answer them. But we also talk about current events and ourselves and studies. We do that part in the first half of this episode. So here's what we talked about for the first 55 minutes of this show. We talked about our trip down to Santa Barbara to see Bishop Barron. We just interviewed him for an upcoming episode. And we always have a great time down there. Shout out to Father Steve.  That's really cool. We talked about how Katrina had her first day back at work. That's a real tough one with the new baby at home. Adam's hoping she makes the transition well or changes her mind to stay at home. We talked about my beard. It's black now. That's right. I'm not a silver fox anymore. I'm just a fox. That's it.  Congratulations, Justin. Oh, yeah, I'm gonna put that one on my wall. Then we talked about masturbation. That's right. We had a whole segment where we talked about the transition and how it reduces your prostate cancer risk. Guys, you don't want to get prostate cancer. I encourage you push pause. Go to Pornhub. There is then I talked about how blue light from electronics is almost always bad for your eyes. When you're watching porn, wear your glasses. I was watching reading studies about blue light and how it damages photoreceptor lenses in the eye and those, excuse me, not lenses, but cells, and when those cells are damaged, they don't come back. So it's kind of crazy. So when you're on your computer, you should be wearing glasses for your computer that block a lot of the blue light. Now our favorite company of blue light blocking glasses is Felix Gray. We like them because they're stylish and they don't change the color of everything you look at. Like you got those cheap ones that are orange or whatever. They're the best in the biz. Felix Gray, they're clear lenses, so they don't change anything, but they do protect your eyes from blue light. And we got a hookup for you. If you go to Felix Gray glasses, that's F-E-L-I-X-G-R-A-Y glasses.com, four slash mine pump, you'll get free shipping and free returns. Also, we have an announcement for everybody. New program maps power lift. So this is a maps program specifically for people who want to improve the strength in their bench press, squat and deadlift. People who want to compete. And if you want to speed up your metabolism, this is good too. It takes you off of body image and turns your focus to performance. We wrote this program with Ben Pollock, champion power lifter. We also have a discount for everybody because it is brand new. So you got to go to mapspowerlift.com, use the code POWER40POWER40NOSPACE. Then we got on the fitness portion of this episode. Now the first question, this person wants to know if we have any advice for people who are trying to put on muscle, but are having a tough time with all the extra food. Next question, this person wants to know what to do when you stop putting on muscle. Like, what do you do? Do you adjust to calories? Do you work with your workouts? The third question was, this person learned in college that the eccentric part of a lift, that's the lowering part of the lift. So if I do a curl, I curl it up and then I lower it. That's eccentric. They learned that that's the most important or the only important part of the lift. So what would happen if they just did eccentric lifting? And the final question, if we could all train ourselves when we were 18 with the knowledge we have today, what would our workouts look like to improve our performance in our respective sports? I would be in the pros. Also, again, I want to make that announcement again. Maps Power Lift out right now on sale. Go to mapspowerlift.com. Use the code power40.  Also, you'll get a free t-shirt for the first people that get this program. So make sure you head over there and get yourself Maps Power Lift. Speaking of rock and roll, I was laughing earlier because we went to go see Bishop Barron. Great time, by the way. Yeah. Love that guy. Love him. Party. Love that guy. Love his crew. His whole crew. His whole crew is fitter than we are. Yeah. So I was a little embarrassed when we came. I got a little insecure. Well, Father Steve, who is an actual priest. He's jacked. Yeah. He looks like he's got... How old do you think he is? 40s? Maybe early 50s, mid 40s? He had the short sleeve priest outfit. Just veins. Yeah, because they can wear the long sleeve or the short. So he's got the collar. He's got the whole get up. And then he's got short sleeves. And he's got these little guns, dude.  He's pumped up with the Holy Spirit. I'm like, that's so rad.  So was Joseph, dude. Well, Joe Glor. Yeah. Well, he's on another level. Yeah, he competes, dude. X cover model. Yeah, dude. He's fricking jacked. Not your typical priest, right? No. Well, Joe, he's not a priest, but Father Steve is. He's a priest. What is Joe? What's Joe's title then? He manages, I think he's like... Word on fire stuff? Yeah, yeah, yeah. He just works for the Word on Fire. Ah, okay. He found Bishop Barron because he, I mean, he told us a story, right? He did all the things that, you know, he thought he would do that, make him happy, right? Got jacked and was on the cover of magazines and was getting girls, obviously a good looking dude. And he just felt empty and started looking for answers and found Bishop Barron's videos and it's super connected with him. And now he works for the Word on Fire team. Yeah.  A great group of guys. Tell me that place doesn't make you feel different. Like when you walk through that, the mission or whatever. Yeah. And you go through there. Anyway, I was laughing because when I asked Bishop Barron if he liked heavy metal. I was like, here it comes. You're not like rock. Yeah, you're like rock. He started even though we were usually... Not so much the death metal. Maybe I devil to darkness a little too much. I like the metal. It's not really, it's not real evil. It's just music. I lift heavy when I listen to it. Is that bad? It's the devil's tone. There's like in metal, there's like three different chord structures that like make it like dark. Is that true? Yes. Really? Yeah, look it up. Yeah. No way. That's funny. I didn't know that. Yeah, they use like it's like this one structure of chords that like is commonly used in like a slayer or like one of those kind of bands where they're just like all about the darkness.  It's made up. Yeah. Let's be honest.  You don't think they're possessed with the devil? No, dude. No, they're just they're wearing costumes. Yeah, you think that's the devil that gave them those skills with the guitar? Maybe. Maybe. The devil's busy doing everything else. The government. He's real busy there. Yeah, that's that's where he hanged on us over, you know, worldwide. Yeah. Do you guys ever watch? Remember the cartoon the power puff girls? Remember that one back in the day when we were kids? What? I mean, Justin knows. I know. And then what was the other one? It was Sailor Moon. No, I don't go that far. Hey, I just outed myself. Jump the shark right there. What is that? What is that? Hold on. There was power puff girls and then there was the one dexter's laboratory. Yeah. Yeah. I remember dexter's laboratory. Yeah. Anyway, it was a cartoon that was popular early 2000s, 90s, maybe early 2000s. And every time this like there was like this bad guy that pop out and it looked like a devil, but it was like he had like high heels on and it was exactly what you think a devil would look like with a kid's cartoon. Yeah, this is the best depiction I've ever seen in my life. Yeah. Can't believe I didn't watch that. No, it's a cartoon. Yeah.  When did it come on? I do you know what I do good with animating power puff girls.  Well, when did it come on? Like what time in the day or what weekend? This is cartoon network. This is like later on. I never really got it. So cartoon network came later for me. Yeah. Right so I was done watching cartoons, but you probably watch cartoons till you're 20 something. I love cartoons.  There's the devil for for the power puff girls. Wait a second. This is like new cartoons, bro. It's not new, bro. It's fairly new. Doug, could you please actually Google where he on here? Oh, 2008. Okay. When did power power puff girls start? Yeah, you're about to get out. You're about to get outed early 2000s. Bro, I'm an adult in early 2000.  I'll watch it right now. Yeah, put it on right now. Let's watch this. Come on, man. Dexter's lab was 1998. Oh, someone else got clowned in here and it wasn't me. You weren't an adult.  You dork. You were trying to say it was way later than that. I said late 90s, early 2000s. I was done watching clown. I was done watching cartoons by high school, bro. Obviously you weren't.  I love cartoons. I said late 90s, early 2000s. We haven't recorded. Yeah. So I was accurate. You never watched. You never watched that? You never watched? No, lab. No, I was done watching. I was done watching cartoons by probably my seventh or eighth grade. So here's the latest. Here's a hack. This is if you haven't tried this yet, text it out test because it works cardio and cartoons. Best way to pass the time. Swear to God. Cardio and when you're doing cardio, put cartoons on. Oh, that's the best one right there. Look at that Dexter's lab. He was absolutely. Again, another cartoon that was started way later than you should be watching cartoons with his sister DD. Yeah. That's how he says her name. Anyway, I liked pinkie in the brain better. That was early. I never watched that one. No, no, pinkie in the brain. No, no, no, no. It doesn't ring any bells. Yeah. Yeah. Whatever. The best cartoons ever though, which are extremely inappropriate today are the original Tom and Jerry cartoons. Yeah. Have you tried watching those with your kids? Oh, they're so violent. I love it. Yeah. Yeah.  Yes. Because they're like smoking cigarettes. No, because my father-in-law, they'd go over there, they'd watch them and then I come in and they're watching Tom and Jerry and they're just like smashing each other's faces and like, like sawing arms off and like, dude, it's crazy.  Yeah. That's usually Bugs Bunny. Yeah. Oh, he does that too. Bugs Bunny was the original cross dresser. Yeah, those were good. Yeah. Anyway, Adam, didn't the Katrina start work today? Is it day one? Today was, bro. How was that work? That's a hard transition. It was a hard transition. Really? Yeah. Well, here's a funny part. So he's going through what they call a sleep progression right now. So- Sounds like a technical term for- I get it. Doesn't want to sleep. Bro, there's- There's sort of sugarcoating. There's all these terms now that I didn't exist when I was helping raise my little brother and sister. She's all in it, right? So she's reading on everything that anything happens. Like a sniffle happens and she's like researching it right away, which I'm not making fun of her. I appreciate that. I love that my partner cares about our child, you know? I think that's- Yeah, it's a good trait. It's a good trait, I think, right? So this is not me- How about this happening? Yeah. So she's informing me that, you know, oh no, I think we're going through a sleep progression. I'm like, what do you mean? She says, well, the last like four nights, he's randomly now waking up at like three o'clock and then he's also wanting to be fed like every hour again. And we had him on a really good routine and he's been on this routine now for almost a month, where we- around 7.30 or so, we bathe him, she feeds him the last time and then we put him down and then he's down all night long, all the way to like 5.36 in the morning. So it's been really nice. I mean, we've been getting sleep and actually having a little bit of time for ourselves at night, but maybe just four days ago at best, maybe four or less, he started doing this where he's waking up now and so she's talking to me about it last night and she's just like, oh man, she goes, I really hope that he sleeps through the night tomorrow night because tomorrow's her first day at work. And he didn't, you know, and this morning. So the- and today like so this was all new for me too, like she's got to be up at work at like 5.30. So the plan was, okay, let's see if I can wake him up, feed him one last time, then give him back to you, should wake me up, give him to me so he can kind of fall back asleep and him and I can stay in bed till probably like 7 in the morning and then get up together. So that was the plan and that didn't go so well. I was- I was- I think I was up at, I think she came in at like 6 or whatever or actually no, I take that back. I woke up at 6 because I heard him and I got up and then she came out of the bathroom. She's like, no, I haven't left yet. I'll get him.  And she's just like, oh, you know, he didn't sleep well and this and that and I can see like her having a really hard time like leaving. The horse.  I don't know how much the podcast I've talked about, you know, there's a part of me now that doesn't really want her to work, you know, but I'm very careful about that because again, it was this- it was the thing that I fell in love with about her that she's independent. She's got incredible work ethic and she's talented and very successful.  I would say that's a top five trait of hers that I fell in love with.  You know what I'm saying? Like now, all of a sudden I could go from saying, which that selfishly for me, that's not fair, right? If that's something that still drives her and she's excited about. So I've been really like kind of hands off with this whole thing of just not hands off, not helping, but hands off or not putting my two cents in on what I think or what I want. Yeah, because I mean, she's, it's obviously at the end of the day, it's up to her, right? Right. Did you guys set this out or plan this out beforehand? Like, okay, was it discussed? Like you are going to work or not going to work or what's going to happen?  So there's not very many people that can live here and not have both husband and wife working. Oh dude, you get, you actually qualify in the Bay Area for assistance, for government assistance if you make, if you have a family of four and you make 150 grand a year. Right. Yeah. It's like super expensive here. Right. People don't know that. A lot of people don't realize just how bad it is. Yeah, it's crazy. Right.  That was really important to me that we would have that option, but we really didn't have that option until the last couple of years. And, you know, when she, or we could have, but it would have been really tight just living off of my income, you know, and we're accustomed to a lifestyle that I think both her and I enjoy and like and in order for us to keep that, we were assumed that she probably would have to work well in the last year. That's no longer a situation. So it wasn't really discussed that much because the reason for her wanting to work wasn't, wasn't ever like, oh, we need the money. It was always because she likes to work. So it wasn't like, hey, you know, you don't need to work or I don't want you to work. It's always been she loved, she loves work. She likes what she's doing. She's very good at it. She's well respected for it. She continues to get raises every single year. They try and promote her up the chain. Like they're grooming her for an executive position for a massive company. So, you know, that's for her and she's competitive.  So these things that she's, she's drawn to these things. So now here she has her son and now we're in this situation. There was very little communication around it. Like I've talked to you guys more probably even on the show more about it than I have with her. Like there's been subtle discussions like me letting her know that, hey, you know, we're a partner and a team and that means that if you want to just take care of our son and you don't want to worry about work, I'll take care of that. Like you don't have to worry about that. But she's, I think for a long time been telling herself that she wanted to work. Well, as these dates got closer and here we are, like I told you last time it was supposed to be two, three weeks ago, she was supposed to go back and she pushed it out.  Yeah.  Imagine being a single parent. Right. On many, on many levels. There's lots of anxiety. Right. You know, she's experienced right now. And I'm sure that, you know, who knows if that's carrying over into him. No, it's, it's, it's, I mean, and look, it's different from for couple to couple, but I think I can say this pretty confidently if you can have one person handle the home base. I don't care if it's the man or woman and one person handle the finances, I feel like divide and conquer is a better strategy. And this is just with, this is with a business too. I mean, imagine if all of us did everything all the time. Well, that was part of our problem when we first started. Yeah. It would never work. It was. So divide and conquer and trust. Trust is important. Like I trust that you're going to handle and organize that end and you're going to trust that I'm going to handle and organize this, you know, this, this end. Now it's not an option for a lot of people, especially if you live in an expensive place. Well, I think it's also really difficult to if you've, you have grown up to identify as someone who is independent and competitive and hardworking and taking care of yourself. They're still good traits. It's still, they still work. Yeah. But it's, I think it's, it's a trend. Look, here's the deal. It's a transition, no matter what, because you, because here's the thing and this is, and I've had this conversation with, with family members of mine. It's not the same, no matter what, no matter what, you went from being two people to now being two parents within it, with another human that you're responsible for that you love more than anything you've ever loved in your life. Everything's different now. So it doesn't matter. It's a whole new identity you're creating. Yeah. It's everything's different. Yeah, but that's really easy for us to just say that. But when somebody has, when somebody has gone 38 years of their life identifying as a, as a person or thinking of themselves as this independent, strong woman, go get her, take care of yourself, not depend on somebody else.  No, it's hard. I never, no, no. I'm not saying it's easy. I'm saying it's a massive change, but the change has happened. You know what I'm saying? Right. And look at, even if you're the person that works, here's the deal. When you're the person, let's say you have a couple and one of them works and one of them stays home. The one that works, everything's changed too. Now you still go to work like you did before, but now it's, the stakes are different. Now if you're an entrepreneur, I remember this, you know, working for myself without having kids, taking risks and making decisions to very different. Now when you have dependents, all your decisions, change, there's a different, it affects the whole chain. Way different weight, dude.  Then you have kids that you gotta take care of and you gotta go, well, you know, if I, if this doesn't work, I can't just take off on a whim. Yeah. Totally, totally. It's totally, so it changes no matter what for everybody and it's hella not easy. No way, man. You gotta, you gotta respect the process no matter what. Justin, you know, Courtney is like Katrina, I feel like. Very much so, yeah.  What was that transition like for you guys? It was pretty similar in that she wanted to get right back to work, especially with, with my oldest, because it was, it was that same thing, like very much prided herself on being the best nurse and like, had all this education and experience and was at the top, you know, at her work. She was like the go to whenever it came to like a problem, like she was like training other ones, developing new nurses coming in. And so that was a huge part of our identity. And so quickly, and so I think that it's the right move in terms of letting them go through that and figure out that like, oh my God, there's so much more pull that she was experiencing while she was at work to be back with my oldest. It was just like, she was just, she felt, she felt like immediately like, oh, I, I don't know if I can, can keep doing this at the same time. But we had to, again, that was back when like, things were like, the dual income thing was like massively necessary. Right. And then actually, when we had, you know, our second kid, we made the financial sacrifice of like, we took a big hit that year. And I spent like, a lot of time, like working, I worked a lot more jobs and side jobs and things to like kind of pull more weight, but like the whole year, she was off and then came back. So she had like two months. Basically, she was off and then had, and then had to go back to work for our first kid and the second one, we extended it to a year. Yeah. And I mean, it hit us pretty hard financially, but it was totally worth it. So again, I think I think it is, it's smart to just let her go back and, and you know, try and get in a rhythm, see if it's like something that she really does want to be there or if she's pulled back to be, you know, so I got a text before we even got on on the mics already. So the plan today is this, like her mom comes over on Monday, like I take care of the baby first thing in the morning. Her mom gets there at about 745, eight o'clock.  So if you have any problems, call me, I'll come, I'll come home and that way we don't have to bother Katrina. I'm trying to give her all, like you're saying, all for her space to kind of go through this and figured out herself.  I go, oh, really? She goes, yeah, she goes, no, she's coming home early. I go, oh, really? She goes, yeah, no, she said that she doesn't have enough to do there right now. So she's coming back. So I already see it's happening. You know what I'm saying? And I saw her this morning. I could just see the emotional pull of like having to leave him. It's a real thing, man. Yeah. And it's funny because like he's going right now. His lungs are still developing even. You know what I'm saying? Like he's not even fully developed. And so he gets like this raspy kind of breathing sometimes. Like if like his, the milk gets like flimmy in him. And I mean, for me, it's no big deal. It's like it's part of this, right?  And I don't know what's going on. I think I should stay. She's going back before that.  I said, listen, I'm right down the street. You guys can all call me. I'll come back. But it's, we'll see. You know, we'll see what happens. I know what's nice about her job is that she only has to come one day a week right now. And so she only has to leave the office or go to the office one day a week. And then she works from home after that? Yeah. Well, that makes a big difference. Right. Yeah. No. And we have Chokey now there too. So she's assisting her and helping her out. So she's got the help and the support to kind of ease her way in. But we'll see. I have a feeling that, you know, after a couple of weeks of her having to go in like that, I think things might change up. So, you know what? Here's the other thing. It's going to be hard no matter what.  It's always a challenge, man. Doesn't matter. So that's why I just shout out to all the parents out there.  It's way hard. It's crazy. It's, I don't sell it like, you know, like a lot of those other parents.  You know what, that's what I want to say to all the new parents.  Like, don't be telling me. Hey, Justin and I were honest to you. We were honest to you. Well, that's why we're all good friends. Because you guys are honest like that. The fucking, you know what I think?  Yeah, they end up having kids at like 25 and then they tell all their friends, like, oh, it's the best thing in the world. Like, no, it's not motherfucker, you're 25 and now your life has completely changed.  Everything. You know what it is? I think it's because saying that it's really hard is, people are afraid to say that because it's almost like they don't feel grateful. Right, right, right. But you can say that. I agree.   I'm so glad I waited late. It's, it's fucking. But you also, it is the most rewarding because it's so hard. Yes, yes, definitely. But that's why though. That is 100% why. It feels easy, like whatever. Yeah, it's no reward.  Get out of here with that. Anyway, I'm going to change the subject, so. Stress and salad. I know, right, right, right. So, kind of like you changed your beard color over there. You like that? No. Hey, guys. You know what? You got a guy who is this guy. Hey, guy. No, no, no. Can we get a close-up? Did you finally listen to me? No, dude. So we had a costume party over the weekend. Oh, convenient. With all my, with my, you'll see. Is it weird? I'm keeping it, guys. It'll be weird. No, I'm not going to do that. I had my cousins come over and we all dressed up. Is that because vampires don't have gray beards? No, man. I wanted to age. No, vampires are like dark. So I had dark eyeliner on. I did the whole like, I had like this gothic, like long jacket on with the ruffles and things. You could double as a magician. Everybody said was saying that. Jessica had this corset on, like this bustier corset thing. And she put on the black lipstick and the whole deal.  Fuck, I'm right there. But I died everything for it. And it's funny, dude. I wake up and I feel like I'm still in my costume. This looks terrible. I love my grays, dude. You look good. I mean, it didn't look bad, but I want. You look good.  I think I think. Sorry. I don't match your fantasy. Yeah. You know, I've put a lot of thought in this. He's brought it up before. He's always trying to close me on. I'm just a dark guy. I'm trying to get you to let me kind of take, you know, take care of you a little bit. Style-wise and stuff like that. Yeah.  You look good the way you're dressed and stuff like that. No, no. But yeah, no. So it's going to be like this until it grows out. So you know what's going to happen? My hair is going to get long. Then I'm going to get a haircut. It's going to be so drastic. Yeah. Like whoa. What happened? That looks like he aged 15 years. Yeah, don't do any videos or anything right now. Dude, I went, I went to a Halloween party too.  It was our house. It was our house. Okay. We went to one and it was like, yeah, it was a, it was a mom and dad that like, I guess their kid knows, you know, my oldest. And so it was one of those like from the school, like they just invited like all the parents, like everybody in the neighborhood. And so we're like, you know what, we're not doing anything. The power is going to be out, you know, whatever. They told us all to bring flashlights and like all the stuff. And they had like a whole setup. And it was kind of fun, but it was like, I didn't know anybody there. Right. So we're just there.  Your same costume. Same costume. Bro, you used like five years in a row. Because I just, like, I don't want to put any effort into it. You know what I mean? And so I'm in there and it's a new group of people. So they haven't seen me in it, right? So I justified it that way. And Courtney's like dresses a witch. And so my other kids are out. They're all Indiana Jones and mob, mobster wear. But so they're running around. Everything's crazy. And I'm sitting there. And so we're supposed to bring alcohol. And so we bring some trulys. And I'm put it in this ice chest. And I'm kind of, I'm putting them in and packing in all the stuff. This little girl comes by and there's also like other drinks. Like they're supposed to be, this is the alcohol section, right? It's a green colored cooler. It's for only alcoholic beverages for adults. It says like adults on it, like real bold. And there's one right next to it. And it has like, mineral waters and everything else in there, right? She comes by, grabs it, truly looks at it. I'm like, oh wait, that's for B lines. It takes off just running. I was like, whoa. Like, no, no, no, there's alcohol in it. And like I'm like trying to track her down.  And like, I was like, did you ever find her? Yeah. She gave it to her parent. And I was like, oh, I thought for sure that was going to be on my watch. That's one of those parents that send their kids to go get alcohol for them. Yeah. I'm like, what are you doing, dude? That gave me a panic attack. I'm like, you can pack a cigarette. That was like grandma, bro. She's like in the back, just down here. Grandma sent me for cigarettes when I was underage. Grandma, I can't go get cigarettes here. Take my ID. Yeah, it's going to work. Yeah, that's not going to work. That's fine. So did you guys end up losing power? We did. So how long? Eight o'clock on Saturday. And then we still don't have it now.   Of course. Of course it does. Of course. It's the worst. That's, dude, okay. There was a blackout in New York City. I don't remember the years, 1970 something. I don't think you guys ever heard about this, but there was a 72 hour or something blackout that happened. But it was a massive part of the city. Crime exploded during that period of time. That's what I was worried about. Yeah. Had those thoughts going through my head. I'm telling you, dude, this is why like, you ever hear of like an EMP bomb? Do you know what those are? So this is what they eat, like electric magnetic pulse. And they can wipe out electronics. Yeah, a nuke will do this, but you can actually make bombs that don't explode, but they'll shoot out this EMP signal. That'll destroy all the circuits within a particular vicinity. Yeah, they can nuke the atmosphere, right? And they would do the same thing. Yeah, so like they could take out like half of a country or all of a country's circuits and to replace it would take months to fix it. Yeah. Do you know what would happen to a modern country if it lost all power for like a week? Just a week? Dude, just seeing everybody at Costco was like hysteria. I was like, dude, what is it? Like somebody had told us there was 50 more generators.  There was like a mob forming around this one man. She's like, ah, he's like here, here, grab this. Like you had to take a ticket to like get from the back. Is that a new shipment coming in? I'm like, what are we even doing here? Let's get out of here. I'll get it when it's not like right then.  I saw an article that says that they may have been the ones to start the Wichita McCulloch fire that's going on right now. Is it, is it called Kincaid? Is that what they're doing?  Yeah. That is not good for us. That PG&E may be partially responsible for it. Believe that, believe that. Oh my God. Yeah, dude. You saw that. This is gonna be an ongoing saga. You guys saw that picture I sent from you from Vallejo, right? We went right through there when we were heading up to Tahoe. Wow.  I mean, we had lots of branches falling in our neighborhood and all over the place and all over the roads. Trees were falling. So it was legit. Like, yeah. You also sent a picture of a, now I don't know if it was the picture angle or what, that looks like a huge rat. Dude, the king of all rats. I got like Splinter, the leader. Like it, okay. How big was it? Show me your hands. It was like this big. Oh yeah. Yeah. It was like a, like a burrito size. Yeah, good size burrito from Chipotle. But yeah, it, okay. So we get back and my in-laws came to watch one of my kids' soccer game. And so they came back to the house to see it like we just painted it and stuff and fixed a bunch of things. And so we're sitting there and then we look outside and there's this dish that the dog eats out of that has remnants of food on it. And so this bold-ass rat just climbs up from under the deck and is just like hovering over near this, this, you know, dog bowl. And I'm like, and everybody sees it. Broad daylight.  Ran into my room, got my BB gun. And I'm just like, oh, I hope it's still there. And of course it like skitters away. And then I just waited there for another like five minutes. I put one piece of dog food on there. It comes right back up. I go, yeah, you're dead motherfucker. Shot him right between the eyes and it was like, thank God I'm dead. Oh, that was a good food. Did we just cheer him? Yeah, I was cheering. And of course, this is the same one that's been eating the pumpkins because now the rest of the pumpkins not even touched because every morning one was like nibbled on. Oh, really? Yeah. Dude, maybe they'll hopefully get the pumpkin mustache. Yeah, it was just pumped up with pumpkin and dog food. And it was eating everything. Did I ever tell you guys about the time we had rats at the 24 that I ran in Santa Teresa? Did I ever tell you about this? No, rats there? Bro. So you know how they had that back supplement room? Yeah. Okay. So in the back, there are, you know, this is where we stored supplements and we'd have big bags of whey protein powder, creatine and other various supplements. So this is kind of like our back stock or whatever. Well, one of my friend, my friend desk staff comes up and is like, I think we got a rat. So I go back there and there's holes in the whey protein and holes in the creatine. So I jokingly, I'm like, this rat's going to be massive. He's going to be jacked. He was.  And I had a broom. So I'm like, whap. Nothing. It was, I hit it hard. Nothing disappeared.  But I'm like, damn, this rat's eating protein and creatine. We're all going to die. Oh, he's trained. You know what I'm saying? He's getting buffed. Yeah, we're screwed. Anyway, I read an interesting article. I thought I would bring up to you guys some, maybe some good news. I know Justin, you've been challenged with the whole power thing or whatever. And I read this and read away. I thought about you and said, oh, Justin's, oh, yeah, this could be good or bad news, depending on how you're handling this. Oh, okay. So a study came out that showed that men who ejaculate 21 times a month or more have lowered their chances of prostate cancer by a third. All right. So this article is recommending that men either have sex at least that often or masturbate in order to reduce because that's a big thank God for that second factor. Otherwise I'd be lower than you. Try to lower my prostate. I'm still struggling with that, bro. Yeah. It lowers your prostate cancer risk. I'm still struggling. I'm trying to find a safe space. You got to take care of yourself. You got to build a shed, dude. Is that what it is? You got to build a shed. Yeah. I don't know. It's what men have sheds. What do you struggle with? It's just weird to me. It's not still not normal for me to masturbate with Katrina in the house. Sender on errands, yeah. Yeah, but then I got Max. You know what I'm saying? Which I definitely can't get in the mood knowing my... It's super early for that. Yeah, you can't be like, hey, here, read a book. Yeah, yeah, dude, I don't have it. So I haven't figured this out yet. This is, I'm still, I'm not hitting that 21 right now. Yeah, I'm falling, my cancer risk is much higher right now. You got build-up, dude. Well, they call it DSB. Yeah. Yeah, you don't need that deadly sperm build-up. I mean, we're finally making time for ourselves, like when we can.  So, you know, at least I'm getting it at least once or twice a week now. Which, I mean, it was... Wait, so you... So hold on a second. Once or twice a week, sex, nothing in between. Nothing in between. I would be... Well, you also... I can't manage myself. You guys act like that's crazy. Yeah, I know. Well, hold on a second. Once or twice a week of sex, but Justin, don't tell me you don't take care of the rest. Well, yeah. Okay. So do nothing. Imagine that. Are you masturbating that often right now? I mean, what is this? I mean, I'm trying to learn here, bro. Is this a daily thing? I feel like you guys are... Give me something to look forward to. I mean... Be real with me.  I know this guy's got problems. This is an individual variance.  I want to hear yours. No, I mean, I make time, you know. Every day?  It's like it's a thing. It's a ritual. Like a daily thing? I mean, sometimes. Yeah, you got to love yourself. You got to get self-love. Yeah, love yourself, bro. You feel like you're being very vague right now. Well, it's embarrassing. I mean, what am I going to say? Like, yeah, do you eat five times a day? Do you eat... Well, if it is, tell me they do. It's not that crazy. Yeah, it's a big event. Like, exercise is an individual variance, Adam. It's what I'm in the mood. The answer is it depends. It depends. You know what I'm saying? Anyway, I'm going to change the subject again. Thank you. Dude, you should be wearing blue light blocking glasses every single time you're on electronics. Every single time. Just always. Always. Now, you don't want to wear blue light blocking glasses that you wear at night that block all the blue light because you want to let some in because it keeps you alert. But you want some that at least protect you like 50% or whatever because I've been reading over the week and I was reading up like crazy.  So, they're showing how it's really starting to speed up because now, like, how long... We've got at least one generation now that spends a lot of time on computers at work, right? Because I would say, what would you say? Would you say it was our parents or maybe younger than our parents' generation where people were... I would say our generation. Maybe our generation for sure. Yeah, I don't think it was our parents. Yeah, yeah, yeah. My mom didn't get a... I mean, I didn't even get my first computer till I was 20. Yeah. Well, so they're showing that... Apple IIe was the first for me. Dude, eye problems resulting from exposure to blue light exploding. I was reading some statistics and it was crazy. And it's because blue light penetrates the eye all the way to the retina. And once again, it damages those cells, they don't come back.  I think that's smart because I think, again, this is another one of those things that we... We don't even know what the long-term damage is because we haven't had a generation that's been... There's no studies of this. Even in computer screens, like I think the phone has to be even worse, right? Why would the phone be worse? Well, because you have to hold it closer, closer, and it's as bright. And I would think the con... To me, I would think the contrast of it being dark outside and laying in bed and stuff like that with an even brighter phone. To me, that's the... I feel more strain from it too. I do, yeah, it's sort of why. So I would think... Don't you feel like that's worse? I think it's got to be worse to be laying in bed or on your couch at nine o'clock at night, staring at a small iPhone screen. Well, because then, yes, it's affecting your sleep as well. Right. But see, what I'm reading in these articles is, we know about the sleep disrupting effect. So using... Being on electronics when it's dark outside or right before bed reduces melatonin production, takes you longer to get to sleep, and it takes you into sleep that you get is worse quality. We know that already. What these articles are saying are daytime, too. Daytime. But again, you don't want to wear blue light blocking glasses that are blocking 90% of the blue light during the day because some blue light's okay. Again, it keeps us alert. But you do want to wear something that reduces the exposure, especially if you're on a computer all day long. If you're... Like a lot of people are for work. No, that's...  I probably wear mine the most out of all of us. I noticed a difference right away when I began wearing it consistently. And then I stopped wearing it for a while. Like it actually... I could tell my body adjusted because I would get headaches then and then go back. So now I just make it a habit. If I'm going to be working on my phone or working in front of the computer, it's just a habit. You know what it reminds me of? You know people who work with loud equipment, like people who work with jackhammers or... Heavy machinery. Heavy machinery. And throughout their 20s, 30s, 40s, maybe 50s, they're okay. By the time they hit their... Maybe late 50s, 60s, hearing loss. And I know I have people like this in my family because I have a lot of family members that work hard labor. And now they wear hearing aids and you ask them why. And they're like, Well, I never wore hearing protection through all those years, but it's a gradual decline. I bet we're going to see that with people's eyes because it's not going to happen to you in your 20s and 30s and maybe even your 40s. Maybe you'll start to notice in your 40s, but you don't want to have macular degeneration when you're in your 60s. And because that's again, it's a loss of independence.  And you can't do a lot of stuff for yourself anymore. It's interesting. I don't know if this is... Doug put his on right away. Hey, wait a minute. I'm looking at a screen. You know what? Yeah. Yeah. I was talking to some of the other parents at the party and our perception is that a lot of these kids are just glued to their phones and glued to their tablets and all these things. But actually, there's quite a big movement going on where most of these kids growing up now do not have phones. And even going into high school now don't even use phones. That's great. Which is amazing. I was like, wow, I love to see the pendulum coming back and being like...  And then that sort of has now created this movement with the kids. That's the alarmist in me that settles down when I go, like, you know what, we're pretty... You just manage it? Yeah, we're pretty smart humans.  Enough people will have issues that word will get out and then you'll start to see kind of come back the other direction. That's why I liked your analogy of it being like processed food.  And now you're seeing the generations now where parents are actually paying attention to... Because like, here's a good example, it's not that common today or at least far less common from my understanding where a kid goes trick-or-treating because we got Halloween around the corner, right? Kids go trick-or-treating when they come home, the parents will say five pieces of candy and then we'll save the rest for later. When I was a kid, nobody said that. No, he ate the whole pillowcase.  Our parents were like, all right, go to your room, enjoy it and then we would eat until we couldn't anymore. Yeah, you know what's interesting? I've heard a lot of kids now it's competitive as to what like houses you can find that have the big king-size bars or like... But that's all they care about. They don't care about quantities, it's like quality is becoming a thing. Yeah, well, the big... I mean, I remember even there was one house that served the big king-size candy bars. That guy was like a hero. Yeah. You know what I mean? Back in the day. The kids over here know that. If you go up to the country club area, that's what they all do. Did they really? Yeah, and it's funny because it's very... Keeping up with the Joneses too. So the neighbors find out. So like all the neighbors do it too. I want to be the cool house.  Well, next door, you guys know that whole service next door where everybody connects to their local community? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So on there, they actually have these little like candy corn and these like... So if they're even participating in giving out candy, you could see the houses that are participating and then the ones that are rated is like, oh, they're giving the best candy. They also have... If you put a blue pumpkin in front... For autism. No, no, I think there's a blue pumpkin shows that they're going to serve you allergen-free candies. No, so the blue pumpkin means if you... I thought there was one that also meant allergies. Look at our boy Larry. He just posted about it. If your kid is carrying a blue pumpkin, then he has autism. And to be mindful of that, because he could be older and he could be still coming and trick-or-treating and look like an older... Oh, that's a good idea. So this one says... This is weird. It says the teal pumpkin... Oh, teal. I'm talking about blue. There's a blue pumpkin that if you see... What's the difference between teal and blue? Well, teal is like... I got more green in it. Yeah, well, teal... Is they almost the same? No, teal is like... I mean, teal is light blue. It's almost like Facebook colors. Shoe is more like... So that's what it was then. Yeah, so teal means allergy awareness.  And then there was, of course, the houses that served or that gave out like pencils and erasers, that house got egged. We're going to egg that house. Yeah, Larry posted on the blue... If a kid has a blue pumpkin, I thought that's your time. Oh, there's... Doug brings up teal. You just got served. Oh, you know what? I wanted to bring up Adam. Oh, first off, we need to announce this brand new maps program. Oh, I started it. Brand new maps, power lift. This is a maps power lifting program that we co-wrote with Ben Pollock, who's a champion power lifter. So this is the first maps program specifically for power lifters and you did a workout already, right? So this is actually being completely transparent with the audience. This is the first program since the original three that after we wrote it, I'm going to like follow it to a tee. 100%. Yeah, out of way. Yeah, I've never... And the truth to that is like, you know, obviously we've created all of these programs and so there's bits and pieces I take of all of them and sometimes I'm in one phase of one and then I move out of the other and I know my body well and I know what it needs. But I have never programmed myself for like the big lifts and to get better at the squat bench and deadlift and I've never done that. So this to me is for sure extremely exciting to try and do that.  That's the most like programming I've ever personally done to chase a PR. Like I've just... I've been the anti-PR guy for most of my career and never even thought about doing a powerlifting meet or anything. And I have no plans to do a powerlifting meet but I am interested and excited to follow a very well-written badass powerlifting program just to see what I can do with my own numbers. Now are you doing it to the letter? So it's got the priming sessions, the post-priming. Everything is written down. I mean I just started it right. So I'm on day two today and... It's four days a week so right? It's four days a week total. So dude that's exciting. Do you have goals for... Because I'm going to do the same thing. Now I'm not going to start probably until next week. I think next week because I wanted to finish out this week and just work on some mobility stuff before I go into it. It was perfect for me to start because I just went through a week off not intentionally. I just busy crazy schedule and a lot going on with us traveling. And I had just... I hadn't gotten to the gym for a week straight which is the longest I've taken a break in quite some time. So I was like oh this is perfect. I haven't done anything. So because that's what's hard about switching programs like if you're in the middle of something or train. So I wasn't. So I started and I do I have... I have like my personal goals. Like I set very low. I know I was sharing some of the numbers with you and you're like oh you're going to... You should blast that out. And I'm like well I sure hope I do. But... So where are you at now? Where would you estimate you are now with the three lifts and then what are your goals? Well I... Yesterday... So it starts off on bench right? So I benched yesterday and it's your 8 to 12 reps. So I was working with 200 pounds. So I'm working with 200 pounds 8 to 12 reps. I didn't try a single PR. But if I had to guess where my bench is at I could probably get out a single of 275 right now. Maybe you know probably around there. Definitely not 315 right now. So I'd like to see my bench be somewhere between 315 and 350. Would be up there with some of the best numbers that I've ever put up on chest. My deadlift right now I'm working out with 405. I could probably squeeze out 450 I would say at least. Right now I like my deadlift to be at least 500 to 550. My squat I'm working out with 315. I could probably squeeze out 370. Well I already did a 375. So I could probably maybe hit 390 to 400 right now in squat. I love to see my squat 420 or above. So I think I set modest numbers considering where I'm at right now. Yeah I feel like you'll get those. I hope so.  That's awesome. Yeah so if I can hit those numbers. That's freaking awesome. Yeah I'll be super super stoked about that. Yeah I'm pumped. I can't wait to start next week. And if I got another 600 pound deadlift that's it. I'd be super excited. Squats I mean anything for me over 370 would be phenomenal. And then bench if I could. You just put like 350 on that bar in squat the other day didn't you? What did I do squat? Oh I did. I did 345 didn't I? So I guess 400 pounds. Yeah I guess 400 pounds would be a good squat. Here's the problem with for me is I got to be careful with like injury mobility. I mean I guess it's the problem for everybody. I got to be careful with. So if I start to do this and I start to hurt I'm going to back out. Well I'm going to be real conscious of because like sitting a lot more and like my hips like talking to me like I know if I'm going to start like putting the pressure on that like it's going to be touchy. Well what I'm excited about and that's why I'm following this to a T is when I was chasing you I wasn't I wasn't even like a diligently tracking and programming for it. I was like kind of going after it. Knowing keeping some key principles there as far as like volume of training and frequency. But by no means was I really truly programming to do it. Just taking my learned knowledge over years of training and applying it to try and catch you. This is well programmed. So I don't think you should. I mean that's one of the things that's so great about really good power lifting programming is that you're not really hitting PR type numbers at all. That no there shouldn't be a lot of risk at hurting yourself. No it's smart. Yeah I mean no and it's got the priming. It's got the priming included. And the post and the constant practice. Yeah it's it is it's more it's more practice and consisting with that and focused around the core lifts which for me and I am doing. I am making a little adjustment to it. Let me guess calves. Yeah I mean I took a week off of calves and they disappeared bro. So I'm like I can't. I mean they're they're already they're already terrible. So I've got to at least touch them up a little bit or else I'm going to be like you know benching and squatting all this way. But then like people would be like how's he doing that on those pencils. That's crazy. So I got stronger than they look.  No I'm excited to try it. I've never done a pure powerlifting program. I've done I focused on strength. I like strength. I like lifting heavy but I've never followed because this is like legit. This is like based off of percentages and it leads you all the way till you peak. So because you know the way we wrote it with Ben was we wanted this to be for people who you know work out who then you know first time want to start in a powerlifting do a powerlifting competition. So it's like from where you're at now and 12 weeks ready to compete.  Here's what I this is what excites me them and I know there's a lot of demand for this because every single time people comment tell us to write a new program it's always a powerlifting one. So we finally did it but what I'm excited for is for the people especially female listeners who are trying to take their try to trying to work on their body obsession or body image issues because one of the best things I ever did as a trainer or one of the most effective things I ever did as a trainer for clients who were had issues with body image focus on yeah is a take a completely off of their body weight how much you weigh what your size is and focus it entirely on performance so it just shifts your focus so you go from you know body obsession to just more about strength and they would all get tremendous results because they never really gave themselves permission to do that. I can't stress how important that is in fact I for our population the people that listen to this podcast yeah I'm sure we have some people interested in powerlifting and want to go that direction but I highly highly recommend it if you're in a place where you know that you struggle with the scale the weight the mere thing and constantly being obsessed with that and you know this this program is going to be incredible for those people because I agree that my and it took me a while as a trainer to piece this together like yeah same here how do I how do I help these move their focus right yeah and it did it always did wonders so I think that's going to be one of the most valuable parts of this program because you don't you don't need to be I'm not doing a powerlifting mean I have no desire to do that but I am interested to focus just on now at the very end are you going to do that and are you going to test your oh yeah I'll test my max that'll be kind of fun right yeah no I mean I I'm never done this so I haven't been I haven't been this excited about any of our programs since the original ones that we wrote when we first got started there was a lot of energy around the three of us getting together and collaborating and so I did love writing the first three programs now I've fallen more in love with the rest of the business and everything else we have to do but I'm definitely excited about this one yeah now are you gonna this was what I was thinking about too was hitting these PRs are you gonna follow like what it would be like at a powerlifting because a lot of people don't realize this but when you're in a competition they have very strict standards for the lifts so like with the bench press you go down hold it down there for a long second yeah you touch your you touch your chest and it stays there for a second yeah before you press it up that that'll take 15 to 20 pounds off your bench press yeah of course with your of course with your squat you have to have a you know it's your break parallel and then with your deadlift you can't drop the bar and a lot of times people hit a PR with their deadlift just a long enough to barely hold the bar and then they drop it type of deal so it's not it ain't it definitely easy I lift like that already so it's not going to be something that I think is too I mean I already am the slow tempo kind of lifter when it comes to squatting and deadlifting and bench pressing and I I definitely go full range of motion on all those lifts so that won't be that big of a oh dude I wanted to give a shout out to so you know how we did that episode where I talked about how in the military people were using tampons to stop bullet and to help people by the way that's a real thing I got messages from people that said yeah that they used to they've done that in the past they don't do it anymore but it was something that people did in the past because it actually issued tampons it actually worked so I got a shout out from or reached out from one of our listeners and he says that they used something called quick clot but in the past that they used tampons but they don't use them any anymore he's coming out of Afghanistan I want to give him a shout out task force 52 these guys are special forces green berets out there in afghanistan a bunch of bad asses yeah so shout out to those boys I guess there's like a bunch of them that listen to the podcast we got to make it out to a base man I would love to do that somebody invite us I would love to go out to a base and do like a live q&a or whatever and meet a bunch of freaking bad ass people yeah yeah yeah first question is from Laura Andrews 1989 do you have any advice for someone trying to put on muscle but is struggling with eating extra calories if I eat much more than what I'm currently eating it makes me feel sick yeah this is a this is a good one I because most of my life I've tried to put on muscle I know exactly what this feels like and it took me a long time to kind of work around it so there are a couple things you can do to to increase the amount of calories that you eat but before I get into that in terms of how you eat your food and whatnot I do want to say this force feeding yourself too often probably not good for you your your body is sending you a signal that saying that you're getting enough food now unless you're ill or overtrained like if you beat yourself up you're overtrained super fatigued sometimes that'll cause you to not want to eat as well but if you're otherwise healthy you want to kind of listen to your body and maybe what you want to do to start with is send a louder muscle building signal that then will amp up your appetite a little bit so sometimes to get your appetite to increase you you got to change your programming your workout maybe you may be doing too much in your workout or you may not be working out in a way that's building muscle effectively one of the first signs of an effective resistance training workout is an increased appetite absolutely so you know if you lift properly and you're starting to get stronger you'll notice that your appetite starts to boost kind of naturally now that being said there are a couple things that you can do i would say increase the amount of hyper palatable right the novelty yes throw some novelty in there so that way you get that contrast that maybe you know that'll help it in terms of like helping you feel like you couldn't eat more just because it is a different flavor it is something that's like a new stimulus stay away from foods that make you feel bloated that's an appetite killer because i didn't learn this until later but i would stuff myself with certain foods and i because i thought they were supposed to be good for most of building and i'd get bloated and then forget it that's like i couldn't eat for the rest of the day so easily digestible food this is a huge one for being able to eat more calories if your digestion starts to go off it's easy to not eat food when your digestion is off it's hard to eat food when your digestion is off so i would say focus on that and then the last one would be drink some calories this is probably the easiest possible thing you could do if you're not dairy intolerant a glass of milk with each meal one glass of milk with each meal boom 300 calories you know right there if you are dairy intolerant you could try full fat coconut milk or protein powders you know that you mix with the with the coconut milk and then drink that with a meal or in between meals that's the old school approach you know old school bodybuilders used to do that they would eat three big meals and then in between they'd have like a big you know shake that you're you know but again you have to digest it well because if you start to get bloated you're you're going to be totally screwed a couple other little tips too this is where i do see value in the six meals a day or whatever where you're breaking it up sometimes it's hard and i don't know where your caloric intake is at currently and where you're trying to get up to but i definitely know that for when i was pushing you know four or five thousand plus calories a day it was extremely hard to do that and even like four or five meals like this it required me to do six plus meals a day and it's just easier it's easier to put down a you know for me a four or five hundred calorie meal maybe for you it's you know two three hundred calorie meal versus you trying to put down seven hundred calories in a single sitting so that's one thing that helped me was breaking the meals up and smaller more frequent meals instead of the the big large meals and the the difference as far as health wise and all that is we're splitting hairs on that so i don't think it's a big deal for you to do that the other thing that helped me was eating a more a more high glycemic carbohydrates early and lower in like saturated fats early on in my day and then allowing that later on the evening so i chose leaner meats early on and and things that were lower in fat and then i piled that on in the evening time and by piled on i just mean you know i i chose to have the steak or the chicken thighs or butter on whatever veggies or something i mean i did that later on in the evening when i when i was like my last meal or my last two meals and earlier in the day i kept things like oatmeal and rice and fruit they this all seemed to stimulate my appetite and keep me wanting the next you know small meal that was coming up in an hour or two that really helped me push the calories and if i had a big heavy you know bacon and egg type of breakfast which i enjoy and i eat that way now because i try i'm trying to stay satiated the problem with that is it would keep me so satiated that i didn't want to eat for another three four plus hours versus when i had like oatmeal blueberries and whey protein i'm hungry an hour later i'm ready to eat again so those those strategies help me yeah and here's something else to consider when you if you are splitting up your meals i think people they think they have to have a balanced when i mean by balanced is carbs proteins fats meal each time they split their meals up doesn't have to be that way something that i would do because i used to be able to do this i could if i was kind of full i could still eat a bowl of carbs so what i would do is i'll breakfast lunch and dinner with my proteins fats and veggies meals in between we're bowl of rice or you know bowl of cereal or my carbs those were really easy and then and then because i'd go through them so quickly in terms of digestion or whatever an hour or two later i was ready for my protein and fat you know main meal so your meals don't all have to look like you know i have my starches i have my proteins i have my fat you can split them up however you want and eat them up eat them throughout the whole day or whatever to get those extra calories in but number one like get your your body needs to uh want to build muscle and once it wants to build muscle your appetite will naturally go up the whole force feeding yourself thing i get it sometimes but if this is you all the time you gotta ask yourself why your body doesn't want to eat these these calories what you know what's going on is it your digestion is your workout because four it's like it's like starving yourself all the time it's the same although it's on the opposite end of the spectrum it's not good for you well i was just gonna bring up how how interesting that is to me too like you ever noticed like it's it's so hard to cut extremely hard it's so hard to like aggressively bulk i mean your body has these this natural yep calorie you know range that it wants to be in and anything left of it and anything right of it is so hard but finding that like that's a big stretch it is it's it's so when you're when you are pushing your limits like this and i think what you said at first sal was so important that that wasn't something that i i probably noticed until later on and really piece that together how important it was to switch my programming up sometimes just that in itself i mean if you haven't trained certain lifts or you've been following the same similar type of routine and just completely throwing a curveball at the body it does tend to stimulate the appetite next question is from doctors vermin when you reach a point you stop gaining weight how do you get over that point is it better to back off of your calorie intake or increase it even more okay so kind of related to the first one but i'll the first question we did but i'll tell you what if you stop gaining weight the first place i would look would be a workout that would be the first place now diet plays a huge role here it certainly does but the first thing i would look at is is my workout as effective as it can be because at the end of the day i remember when i first broke this down gaining a pound of muscle a week which is a ton okay if you gain a pound of muscle a week you're either genetically gifted or on anabolic steroids or a complete beginner and you just start lifting weights you can't expect to gain four pounds of muscle not gonna last now but let's just say you did let's say you were gaining a pound of lean muscle every single week okay let's say this was you that would require an extra i think it was something like 15 grams of protein a day or something silly like that like it's nothing and that's if you gained a tremendous amount of muscle four pounds every single month your your body doesn't need all these extra calories to gain lean body mass it needs a signal to build that muscle first and i i remember you know going through this process myself or i would be doing a workout for a long long long time then i changed my workout my diet wouldn't change i would change my workout that would be more effective and boom you know two pounds of lean body mass would come onto my body so that's the first thing that i would say is is look at your workout and look there first if you're not getting stronger you're not building muscle because here's what happens if the workout's not effective and you just keep bumping your calories you know what's gonna end up happening you're gonna gain body fat and you see this a lot uh guys tend to fall for this where they're doing the bulk and they come in they're like oh man you know i was on this crazy bulk for like three months and i gained 25 pounds you know and then you do your body fat test like actually you gained three pounds of lean body mass the rest was body fat and then we try and shed that body fat you end up losing the fat and all the muscle that you gained in your back sorry we're both misleading because yeah a lot of times you are gaining that way you're feeling good you might be getting stronger you think that like the majority of its muscle but it's like half the time it's like mostly fat at a certain point that you're just gaining sometimes it's a bit of a mind fuck too to be like constantly trying to gain weight gain weight gain weight and something i used to do with uh the competitors that i coached and myself uh when i would get in a situation like this i actually would throw in a single day fast on a day off and uh it sounds like it would be counter counter yeah it totally sounds counterintuitive to do this right uh but when you're constantly trying to chase the calories and you're stuffing and you feel like you're always overfeeding and you're just not getting enough feel like you're not getting enough again i feel like sometimes we're just we're flirting with that line of like oh the body just doesn't want anymore so one of my favorite things and i don't know if half of that is maybe a psychological thing that we're dealing with too uh it just and this just works it works really well for all the competitive athletes that i had it worked well for me when i was competing um and that is what i would do is i would pick saturday or sunday or whatever day you normally have off from the gym and i would run a 24 hour fast and i would just fast for 24 hours and then the next day when i started feeding and training again i felt like my appetite would spike back up again so it does seem very counterintuitive to do that but this is a strategy that's worked really well for myself and people that i've coached and maybe something that you explore now as far as workouts are concerned i'll tell you this right here um and this isn't always a hundred percent true but it's a pretty consistently true um statement try to get stronger um strength oftentimes not always but oftentimes if you get stronger and stronger and stronger consistently it's accompanied by more muscle especially if you're beginner or intermediate now when you get super advanced oftentimes the strength things you get come from better technique better positioning uh you know better cns uh signal but if you're beginner intermediate and you're trying to gain weight you're not getting stronger change your workout out to try to get stronger focus on that and you'll i used to notice this it was like uh if i gained like 15 to 20 pounds on a lift um then i would notice in accompanying you know one pound of lean body mass or something like that i actually have it written down i did when i was a kid i noticed this like when i go up 20 pounds on a lift i gain like a pound of muscle try to get stronger if you're gaining weight and your strength isn't going up but you're gaining weight on the scale i hate to say this but you're getting fat it's likely not always but it's likely you're getting body fat now you can gain muscle without getting stronger but that's uh you know that's much more tricky um and you'll see that more often in advanced lifters so try to get stronger if you get stronger oftentimes you'll you'll gain muscle well they never said lean weight so that's true you know they could be wanted to get big next question is from jay main seven a college professor told us that the eccentric part of the lift is the only important part of the lift because it tears the muscle if someone only repeated the eccentric part of the lift would they see major gains or is it a myth this is one variable yeah what kind of a professor would say that it's the only important one yeah it it is true that the low-lane workout yeah so done everybody's like lifting like grandpa's yeah so if so for those lifting don't know what that that means so there's there's there's two there's three parts of a lift there's the concentric that's the lifting so if you if you imagine me doing a curl the concentric is me curling the weight up then there's isometric was which is where you hold it and then eccentric is when you lower the weight so as you're lowering a weight the muscle is still contracting but it's doing so in a way that allows you're resisting more gravitational forces typically yeah it's it's doing it a way where it's allowing the muscle to to lengthen while contracting that part of the lift is the most responsible for muscle growth and this has been shown in studies but used by itself it quickly leads to plateau and it quickly leads to overtraining because it is a very damaging part of the lift now the concentric part of the lift also tells the body to build muscle and it also is what's definitely the one that contributes most to athletic performance now at olympic lifters okay they do a lot of concentric only lifting with barely any eccentric yeah now squats i would say they do lots of you know they'll do some eccentric although they lower the weight a lot faster than most lifters olympic lifters are buffed as hell too though now they're not as big as body builders or power lifters but there's your evidence right there that the concentric part builds muscle as well now there's some benefits to to the part of the lift that doesn't cause lots of damage you can do a lot of it so i can increase the volume quite a bit if i'm doing concentric only eccentric there's only so much you'll i don't know if you guys have you guys ever experienced experimented with like forced negatives and yeah just doing all night for how long though i mean i did it for a couple weeks and that was plenty yeah you're done your your recovery is done well i'm gonna i'm gonna defend the professor a little bit just because sometimes this is he may have been giving a really good message in my opinion and then they just got misconstrued or misunderstood and that's because i've done mini talks with trainers where i'm stressing the eccentric part of the exercise because nobody else is nobody else is and nobody in the gym is if you were if we were to walk in your average gym right now and look at 90 of the people lifting weights on the floor a majority of those people are not maximizing the benefits that you get from the eccentric movement portion of the exercise and that is slowing the negative down so the negative or the resisting the weight we tend to just let gravity do it and we just let it drop or fall and then we focus on the concentric part so in in defense of him it it is just as important so it's not more important than concentric part of the exercise it's just as important we want to add on to that like in sports terms so to decelerate is a massive part of preventing injuries in like any athletic pursuit so that that second portion of now i have to slow everything down at once rapidly it's usually where people get hurt and so to be able to kind of break that down and focus on that and strengthen that process is valuable but it's one part so you have to consider all the parts and so i just again i caution myself to just like highlight that specifically as like the answer no it's all of it it's definitely not the answer it's probably the most neglected part though sure um of an exercise uh that i think a majority of people could learn from that or take this advice and go apply it to their training i mean i've said this on the show before i mean if you've never done this before i i dare you to have a workout where you just change your tempo a four two two where it's you know four seconds on the negative two in the isometric hold position and then two on the concentric or the positive part of the exercise just try messing with that tempo don't change your workout do the same exercises you were planning on doing today but just do that in itself and note watch how different you feel oh totally you're probably going to be a lot weaker be okay with that but and you're probably going to get really sore because you're not used to that tempo and that just highlights the benefits of really putting some more emphasis on the eccentric part of the lift that most people just aren't doing yeah no you make a good point i think people don't focus on the muscle they're working when they lower a weight they don't focus on the tempo it's like am i if i'm low if when i'm pressing in a bench press i'll tend to focus on the pecs but when you lower do you still focus on the pecs or are you just trying to lower the weight right focus on the muscle you're working as you lower the bar the dumbbell um that's a great that's absolutely build a lot of control too which is important next question is from j rogers fit imagine you're 18 again with the knowledge you have today what does your training look like for your sports or competitions okay so if i'm 18 and i'm competing in judo or jujitsu yeah uh well i just got a message from someone today who said that they were you know doing full body workouts three or four days a week plus jujitsu four days a week and he can't figure out why his strength isn't improving whatever he's doing too much um you know in my opinion this is in my experience training myself but also training other people who've competed in the in the grappling uh martial arts like judo jujitsu and wrestling um if you're training pretty consistently and competitively you're probably doing at least three or four days a week maybe five days a week of your sport so if you're doing three to five days a week of jujitsu training one to two days a week of resistance training is about it um you're going to get the strength benefits any more than that and it becomes uh too much um and you you do here's the thing with sports you want to spend most of your time training by training in that sport nothing's going to give you more carry over to your sport than actually training um in that sport now different sports allow for maybe more greater ability to lift or whatever you know more frequently but for for like jujitsu judo wrestling you're doing one or two days a week is ideal full body full body retain was what i would do yeah if i if i'm to go back and kind of train myself for football uh there's definitely a few things that would have changed especially like the maxing out part of it where we're always trying to test we over did it we over did it constantly trying to test ourselves and see you know our one rep max where that lied like basically almost every two weeks we're we're testing out these these maxing out and that's something i would have definitely spread out like if not even not do it at all and just and just kept going with uh you know a lower or a higher rep count i should say with with lower with lower intensity uh but also we didn't do a very good job of adding in all those movements and and skill and mobility practices in between these you know heavy lifting days and we we stacked them too close together and so that was something that if i would have loved to go back and really like simultaneously worked on my skill and movement as i'm growing as i'm getting stronger uh so that way it wasn't such a stark contrast when then i go to apply it on the field that took a good like month or so for me to just like get used to this body that i've been building in the off season and the problem when you're 18 is this it's a definitely lack of experience but here's a big problem you you tend to progress in spite of your shitty workout programming because you're 18 right you know what i'm saying since like i'm getting struck it's working actually no you're you're because of your age and your testosterone levels are through the roof and you just don't have almost anything works yeah like you you're gonna progress some just because you're doing something but man you know you step back in time and have like good workout programming holy cow i mean progress yeah from hindsight for me uh it would be it would be pretty easy because mine was so horrific anything would have been better yeah i literally anything would have been better i think i believe when basketball season was around and we were training specifically for because when i first started lifting it was around 17 it was more specific to you know getting nice biceps for girls than it had anything to do with sports performance but i still did some things like around basketball season we were doing we had our fifth period was weight training so we could go in there and we could lift weights and when we were lifting weights we were thinking about basketball i guess during that time and the the extent of my basketball training was calf raises and strength shoes that was that was the extent of so as as you can imagine uh if i just squatted i probably would i'll tell you i'll never forget um finally stopping playing basketball which was in my uh you know probably early 20s to mid 20s and i began squatting back then and i'll never forget good going on the court so i didn't dunk a basketball until far after i stopped playing basketball so i stopped playing basketball uh consistently in my mid 20s and then i began weightlifting and caring about building my physique i put on like 20 pounds over the course of like five years and ended up getting on the basketball court just for shits and giggles to see what i could do and i remember dunking the ball and like surprising myself going holy shit like where this come from and where it came from was i'd never really focused on building my leg strength and just from that all said now i was dunking a basketball now i wasn't doing a lot of the agility training and all the other ways that i'd probably be trained now i mean if i was a kid now this is the beauty of all of you young guys right now is i would be following paul fabritz and kory sleschinger right i mean those two guys the content that they're schmarzo those guys yeah and max right yeah max max kory paul all three of which have been on our show all three good friends of ours um and boy when you talk about uh the performance training that they're putting out specifically for basketball but in general too for all athletes but for basketball especially is fucking fire i mean i wish i had access uh just to their stuff when i was at age sometimes i i get in this mood where i think i'm gonna actually follow one of their programming or try and like work on my basketball skills and i may i may do that just for shits and giggles one day but i would follow those guys i mean we have access now uh with the internet that we didn't we didn't have when i was a kid i know joe defranco was my guy and god i found him yeah for football but like there wasn't any like uh any other coaches i can think of that were like putting it together in such a you know profound way where it's like oh this is simple i'm applying it's working uh i didn't have access to that and even and even then you had to buy like video cassettes that were shipped to your house exactly where i mean you just get on to uh cori's max or paul's uh instagram pages and like just spend a day on there and you'll get defranco's got a great instagram for that he's a lot of awesome yeah a lot of good stuff i'll tell you here's something you want to keep in keep in mind as well at 18 um strength general strength training will give you a lot right of carry of carry over as you become more advanced then the resistance training becomes more specific to your sport but initially when you first start lifting yep you know do that's such a good point that's general strength this is how this is how we design mass performance yes was with the the kind of the 18 year old you know person who wants to get uh in athletic shape or even somebody who's in advanced age and wants to get in athletic shape too but the kind of the foundation you should lay before you even get into very specific training yeah because you're not going to benefit much from doing specific resistance training to your sport um until you have general strength so get strong at deadlifting get strong at squatting get strong at strength overhead pressing bench pressing rows like the traditional lifts your best bet no joke better than any other specific program will be get strong at those lifts and do it you know once or twice a week you know with all your other training that you're doing if you're not doing much school training you could do more of that right and then watch what happens as you get advanced then you start to do the more specific like okay this is good for basketball or this is good for baseball or whatever but if you if you're not lifting and you're young um and you want to get lifted don't don't get don't you want to start lifting don't get into the crazy specifics get the general strength first you won't get lifted bro you can be I mean there's some there's some general truths though that that's incorporated in maps performance that's different than like maps in a ball that I would recommend though like I there's a lot more unilateral training oh yeah yeah absolutely and that to me like uh in a multi-planar movements that I think that that is uh it's not like just standard squatting or deadlifting which I agree with Sal in that case but there's some huge benefits for athletes it's the big rocks is you're going in these blocks of like okay I'm maximizing my strength like my overall strength which is what Sal's talking about that's super important that's our first phase it's like everything's devoted to that now let's see how that goes in multiple directions because that's applicable in the field right totally yeah totally and with that go to mindpumpfree.com and download our guides they cost nothing we got a bunch of fitness guides there on exercises and workouts and fat loss and muscle building make sure you go check them out that's mindpumpfree.com you can also find the three of us on instagram you can find Justin at Mind Pump Justin you can find me at Mind Pump Sal and Adam at Mind Pump Adam


Okay, it's James P. Madonna mega life 21. I'm only this year I only have time to do an herbal garden all perennials that I got through eBay real cheap I have no time to do veggies I just have various herbs here are garlic chives that are in bloom now I just want to show you something I thought this plant was dead two years ago there was no plant okay for two years in this pot it was nothing nothing but potting soil okay now I thought this plant was long dead or low and behold it grew it grew back into this this is a Japanese eggplant variety is called Ichiban right Ichiban and there was nothing in the pot nothing and it just came back how about that I've been using the water from the aquarium where I have a large goldfish that's why I have the goldfish so I could fertilize my plants with the aquarium water all right like I say every year it's my little little Japanese sago palm this variety comes from southern Japan you have to keep the soil very dry it needs a well-draining sandy soil all right but anyway I'm going to take a look at some of the egg plants here there's one all right there's a little baby coming out of the blossom there's another one there's another one Ichiban Ichiban more eggplant blossoms there's another baby seems to be loaded let's see on this side there's another baby getting ready to come out there's another one getting ready to come out and I got a big one over here I'm gonna pick this one tomorrow look at that Japanese eggplant this one was big so oh there's a cute little one okay the reason why it survived is because I bring this in the basement right before the frost hits and this is why it survives oh the mosquitoes are out already okay


Hi there, I'm Sandy Almark, artist and paper crafter here on YouTube with what I'm calling a double interactive ninja card.  I saw the ninja stamp set from MFT, and I had to not only color it, but make it an interactive card in two ways, so I'm going to have two different motions going on on the card. But I'm going to do a quick coloring of the little ninjas for you first with a few tips. So for their faces, I'm kind of going outside the lines because I'm going to cover that with dark gray so nobody's going to see that I went out of the lines. Just add a little tiny bit of shading in there, you could even just have plain old flesh tone in there. And I'm going to use a W4 for mine. You could use the C markers, the cool grays or any of the other grays if you'd like, but I want to make them look like they're a dark gray, but not black, not entirely black because things that are too black tend to be too black to me. So I'm going to use a couple of grays to do this. When I color any object that's black, I never start out with a really light color. So I wouldn't start out with a zero or a one or anything like that. W4 is going to be the lightest I would go because sometimes I'll even do it like a sixth for my light tone, but I didn't want to scare everybody. So we're going to do a 4, a 6, and an 8 for the trio for this. And I will color one of these at close to normal speed-ish. I am staying away from the outside line so that I get a little bounce light. It'll give them a little bit more dimension since they are just big gray blobs. And I'm going to reserve a little bit of that outside color to be mid-tone or light color.  So if you were doing what I'm doing, you could just color outside the lines. I could have done that for you, but I decided to be a little tidier since I'm here on YouTube. But if you're going to fussy cut, which these are very simple shapes to fussy cut, then you can just color outside the lines. Save yourself some effort at staying inside, but if you're going to die cut, you will need to stay inside. Look how fun that is. I'm getting that little bounce light on the very outside of the images. But I do need to smooth out some of that stuff in the middle so I'm going to go just a quick stroke or two of my mid-tone and go through one more time on the top and not scrub at it. If you scrub at it, you'll get that mottled, pixelated, weird thing again. And I'm going to use my C markers, my cool grays for the detail on the outfits. I don't know if they were supposed to be a color. I don't know enough about Ninja Warriors to know that. I did look up some pictures and they really just wore all black. So I'm going to hope that having some warm and cool grays is going to work for Ninjas. Because I'm clueless about that stuff. I don't have children. I don't have boys. So I really am not very helpful in deep knowledge of this, but they were so cute and so fun to color. I'm even thinking some of these might be fun to make into a mummy for Halloween. Wouldn't that be hilarious? Like these little guys. So I'm going to speed up to color these other two, but I'm basically doing the very same thing, leaving that bounced light on the outside and using my warm and cool grays. And notice there's one of the little Ninjas who's standing still and the other two are both kicking. The kicking ones are the ones that are going to be interactive. And I had to figure out how I was going to have them be interactive together. And I could have done them both with the same type of interactivity on the card. But I decided I'm going to use two different ones. Two different types. Stay tuned for that in just a moment after I get all of this coloring done. They're really fun to color. They're very simple shapes. And they, I think for a lot of us, we have an easier time when we have large areas to color. Big wide open areas rather than lots of little things. So the swing and slide set from Ellen Hudson has this particular circle die in it. And I'm going to use that as one of my interactivities. I'm going to stamp this little, I guess it's a Pagoda, if it's not someone will tell me. And then I pulled up a scene with some trees and mountains and things because I wanted to try to figure out how to make this look like it's in location. And I'm still going to speed through this because most people aren't going to try this anyway. But I'll give you some tips along the way for how I created this. I wanted basically some sidewalk underneath of them, some sidewalk color because that's what I see in ninja movies. Because they tend to fight in big open areas inside of a building that have like pavement. So now I'm going to use my B6 series to do this background. And having all three colors from the same color family is going to keep all that way off in the distance and very soft and purpley, whereas everything else is black and white in the front. So I've got my mountains up there that I just did my flicking with. And now I'm going to do two different colors here for these trees. There was a lighter color in the picture that I was using as well as a deeper blueish-purpley kind of color for the detail trees. And I'm just doodling. I'm going to make a few of them that are going to have tree trunks. But most of them are just going to have this kind of horizontal banding to them. A lot of this will be covered up on the card and just be hinted at. You'll be able to see a little bit of it through the card. But don't stress out about it too much. I just wanted to do enough to set a scene so that when somebody looks at the card, they immediately get the idea that this is in a faraway place where ninjas live. So just doodling my little trees with my B66. The B6 series is one that I don't see hardly anybody using it, but look how pretty these colors are. They're gorgeous. So now I'm finishing off the scene on the piece of paper that's going to be used as the base underneath of this. Just so I have a little color under there when I get my interactivity going. Finish off my little pagoda. I looked up some of those and they're mostly black with a little red or yellow on the inside. You can make them all kinds of elaborate, but this is also going to be in the background so no one will really see it. To build my little spinner, I'm going to use circles instead of using pennies or dimes, which I've used before. Little circles of paper are going to do the same job without the thickness, and I have a double thickness of dimensional adhesive that fits inside that little round circle thing. It has to be able to spin fully 100% around, and then I glued the ninja on top of that top circle, so that little sandwich there for him, and I'm going to use a mini action wobble. I had used a mini for this. The large ones didn't fit, and the mini action wobbles, or even the others, to figure out which side they go on, I tend to just kind of hold one side and then hold the other and see which one bounces the way that I want my image to bounce, because sometimes you want a lot of bounce. Sometimes you want a little bounce, and so I made my decision, stuck it on the back of my ninja warrior, and then I can just stick him on the card in a place where he can then fight with the other ninja! And so he will bounce around, and then the other ninja can spin and tumble and leap from the air. Isn't that fun?  For the card base, I have to glue this down to. I need to have enough dimension underneath of it that that circle is going to spin. If you glued it straight down to the card, there's no room for it to move. So you also want to make sure that it goes around the circle, around that die, without hitting any adhesive, because the adhesive will stick and it won't move, so finish building up the rest of that, and then adhere it onto that card base that I had colored a little bit so it peeks through. And now we have our ninja fight going on.  Ninja girl card! Yay! Girls can be ninjas too, right? I hope so. I'm not really sure. I know there's an actress who does ninja warrior things, so I'm going to hope that it's okay to do a ninja girl card for my blog today. So pick up this stamp set. It is cute as all get out. The sentiments are really adorable as well. Look at all the dimension and activity and scene, and oh my goodness, goodness, goodness, goodness, fun. So here are some more videos. You can click on my face to subscribe to my channel, and there's also a Cobra class there if you're interested in checking that out, and I will talk to you guys later. Have a really awesome ninja-filled day. We'll see ya. Bye-bye.


Titans fans came to know Nick Westbrook Akina as a special teams player during the 2020 season. The undrafted rookie from Indiana played in 14 games and caught three passes as a reserve. This season, Westbrook Akina remains an important part of special teams, but he's much more of a factor of wide receiver. He's catching passes in clutch situations and throwing blocks on big touchdown runs. Westbrook Akina is on the field more in year two because he can go into the game at all three wide receiver positions, a rarity. And because he has realized that the NFL is still just football, the same game he played as a kid. That's definitely kind of how it feels, you know, it's a childhood game that you feel in love with and how to remind myself that that's how it was. And I feel like it's worked so far and hopefully it'll continue to work. I feel like the biggest thing is just, you know, confidence, knowing that I understand the offense. I understand, you know, what's asked me on special teams and just going out and playing freely and not playing so uptight. I feel like that's kind of what I struggled with last year and just, you know, kind of cutting it loose, not focusing so much on being perfect, but just doing my job to the best of my ability. Taking advantage of opportunities is what the next man up and an NFL team must do. Think about Ola Danie at Seattle where his sack of Russell Wilson in overtime set the stage for a Titans win in week two. How about Joe Jones with three special teams tackles at Jacksonville or Michael Pruitt who has made plays at tight end every time that he's gotten the chance for four years. Kendall Lamb also falls into this group. Lamb signed as a free agent this off season and has had to wait his turn in the offensive line room. But when his number was called, he came through. Kendall Lamb has the perfect next man up mentality both as a player and as a person. I go back to my rookie years and my first few years in Houston. Coach Devlin, Mike Devlin, my offensive line coach, you know, he told me a long time ago. He was like, Lamb, don't ever get caught up in being the glamour guy. He was like, you know, that might not be your role. That might not be your life. That might not be your journey. He was like, just appreciate what you do. And he said, you know, if you can go in there and do that for a long time, you can play in this league for a while. And, you know, for me, it's whether I come here and I want to start whether I come here. I'm the sixth man whether I come here and I'm the last lineman. You know, like I stated earlier, you got to be ready at the drop of a dime.