In this episode of Mind Pump we answer fitness questions and in the introductory portion of this episode we have a lot of fun mentioning articles, current events, talking about our lives. We mentioned one of our sponsors. So here's what we talked about in this episode of Mind Pump. We start out by mentioning fake health. These are people who talk about wanting to be healthy but in reality they're lifestyles or anything but. Then we talked about the show Ancient Aliens. Apparently one of the hosts on there was a bodybuilder or a big fan of bodybuilding shows. That's kind of cool. Then we talked about old TV commercials. We went down memory lane for that one. Then we talked about the Kansas versus Kansas State brawl, the basketball game that ended terribly in a big fight. Adam brought up his Viori sweats and how that's probably why so many women signed up for his bootcamp class. By the way, Viori is the maker of amazing athleisure wear and we have a Mind Pump discount for you if you want to go check it out. Here's what you do. Go to Viori clothing. That's V-U-O-R-I clothing.com forward slash mind pump. Use the code that's listed on the page for 25% off. Then I talked about Chris Hemsworth and how he's going to be on a new show where he tests all these different ways to biohack his body. He's so handsome. Adam mentioned F-45, how Mark Wahlberg bought into the company and then we compared it to orange theory, which one's better, bigger, more successful.  I mentioned a study on a brand new immune cell that seems to attack all cancers. That's pretty awesome, which led me to talk about another article I read connecting thyroid cancers from certain individuals to their cell phones. Then we got into the fitness question. The first question was, this person wants to know what our opinion is of biggest loser challenges in the workplace. This is when groups of people tend to get together at work and they say, hey, let's see, you can lose the most weight in 90 days. Are those things good? Hey, Bill, you look fat. Let's do something about it. Are they bad? What should we give our opinion? The next question, this person says, what's the best way to train the abs? Isometrically, concentrically or eccentrically? So they're referring to the three different types of reps that you could do when you work out. So we discussed those three and their value. The next question, this person wants to know what our thoughts are on trap bar deadlifts. So a trap bar deadlift is a deadlift done with what's known as a trap bar. You stand inside of it, hands on the sides or handles on the sides. They're getting really popular nowadays. So we give our opinion. And the final question, this person wants to know what's best for overall muscular health? Stretching, foam rolling or mobility work? Also this month, maps hit is 50% off. So hit is high intensity interval training. You may have heard of it. It's got a lot of press because it's been shown to burn a lot of body fat or a lot of calories in a short period of time. In fact, a 20 minute hit session can be as effective as a 40 or 60 minute traditional workout session in terms of fat burning or calorie burning. So it is very effective. Unfortunately, hit training needs to be done properly. You need to do it right. So there is a specific way to do it. If you do it wrong, you'll either hurt yourself or get no results. So we created maps hit. We put together a high intensity interval training program done the right way. In our program, you get your exercises, your reps, your sets, you get video demos, you get some flow sessions which help work with mobility. It is a complete program. The entire program is half off. Here's how you get that discount. Go to mapshit.com. That's M-A-P-S-H-I-I-T.com and use the code hit 50. That's H-I-I-T-5-0. No space for the discount. Back now, operators are standing by. I just remembered something you posted reminding me of a story, Adam. What's up? Years ago, I went to Vegas with a couple buddies of mine and then they had some other people that they knew that kind of came along or whatever. And we go out, we're all partying or whatever. Some of these guys are doing drugs. And I remember- Allegedly. No, I saw them. Oh, there's no legend. They were doing cocaine. It was a making powder. At one point in the night, I'm like, hey, let me go get you a drink. I saw you drinking, what was that, a Jack and Diet Coke? And the guy goes, no, no, no, no. It was Diet Coke.  He goes, give me regular Coke. I thought he was joking. I started laughing. He looked at me serious. I'm like, bro, I just saw you doing cocaine. You're not drinking Diet Coke. There's levels. You're talking about the tweet that I shared from the kid, Maddie Fasaro. He shared a tweet that said, people are vaping CBD from gas stations and going on Ayahuasca retreats with no worries, but they're scared to drink a diet soda. I died laughing. It's so true though. Or it's that is the trend.  It's the fake health. No, no, no. I don't want to take supplements. Those are dangerous. I'm like, bro, you do drugs off the streets and you're afraid to take creatine. You got to get your priorities. I'm not on a psychotic voyage.  So of course I have to go look. And people have shared this guy before with me and I can't get through a full video that he does. He's got quite a bit of, I think he has a big YouTube following maybe. His name is Tony Huge. Oh gosh. Are you familiar with this guy? Yes, I am. Okay. He's like, he's openly talking.  You know, I do appreciate people that openly share. I'd rather somebody openly share about steroids, talk about it, the pros, the cons, everything versus the person who lies and pretends like they're not on one and they're on gear. So there's my nice thing. But he's bashing vegan and I think we've openly talked about how, for the majority, we're not pro-vegan. And I think the person who shared this with me thought maybe that I was going to jump on board. Being someone who's openly talked about taking steroids and also openly talked about not being pro-vegan for most people that I would agree with this guy because he goes on this rant about how terrible veganism is. But then he goes on to say that taking steroids is healthier than being vegan. This is why, you know what, people- Sounds like a jabroni. Way to, you know what, my bodybuilding community, I'm always defending, you know, I just can't defend this. You're making us look bad, bro. This is why people don't take bodybuilding or bodybuilders, their nutrition advice and training. That's why the mainstream- Or their health advice period. Yeah, they don't take him seriously because here you have a guy, if you know who this guy is, he's obvious, blatant, terrible body image issues. Terrible. Guy uses every drug under the sun. He's very insecure. You could tell by the way he talks about things.  He's a bro scientist. And then he makes a claim like that and it's like, no, that's not true.  You're making people look- You're making the bodybuilding community look terrible because of the stuff you're saying. Well, you're justifying your own bad habits. And again, we've openly talked about veganism, where none of us by any means are pro-vegan. And I think for the majority of people, it is a terrible diet. But I also think for a majority of people, taking steroids is a terrible idea too. There's a small percentage of people that have low hormone levels that should be on HRT. And there's a difference between HRT, TRT, and taking enough steroids to be a 250-pound monster, like this guy walks around. It's not the same. It's not the same at all. There's a big difference between taking a dose that keeps you around the top of the normal levels and even maybe pushing you a little bit over that. And then they're taking enough to be ginormous. And it's like, come on, Guy. Even then, when you're taking vitamin D ball. Yeah, exactly. When you're taking exogenous hormones, because testosterone levels fluctuate, and they fluctuate based on your lifestyle. They fluctuate based off of time of day. When you take exogenous testosterone, it doesn't do that. It just stays high all the time. Right.  Hey, you're not getting enough of this. And there may be a, I mean, I would, this is me speculating, so I have nothing to support this.  But I would imagine that there may be a protective effect to your body, lowering its testosterone when you're, depending on the type of behaviors and lifestyle that you have. So if your natural, if your lifestyle is causing your testosterone levels to drop, let's say you lack sleep, stress, that kind of stuff. I wonder if it's a part of a protective mechanism. And if you're keeping testosterone high, it may not be a good idea. I've thought about this too, in terms of your agitation level. And it's not to say that roid rage is this crazy thing or anything, but in terms of being at a high level of testosterone and then having little irritants, you find louder and louder. Say you're a new parent or something and you're just in the state of constant stress you can't leave from. I could see that being a product. I found it was really interesting that Generation Iron shared it too.  Oh, I know, the dude from Australian dude. Yeah, they made the last video all about him. I guess they lost most credibility for me when they did that. So, but then they go and they repost something.  Well, no, you bring up a good point because there's, you know, Ben Picolsky, good friend of ours, Flex Wheeler has become a good friend of ours. And there's people in the bodybuilding community that I think that are putting out good information and sharing great stories and that are icons. And, you know, I think there's, I think it's a sport. And I think like any sport, you can play it and, you know, do your best to stay as healthy as possible or understand that you're pushing the body's boundaries. And, you know, I really appreciate people that communicate that well. And then there's this, then there's the other side then, you know, that are, that I think give bodybuilding a really bad rap because... I think to the average person who looks at people in that space, they visually, you can clearly see the body image issues. You really can't. If you ask, give you an example, okay? Being fit, muscular, lean, most people of the opposite sex would consider that attractive. Okay. Show the average female picture of pro bodybuilder and see what they say. And the average woman will say, it's disgusting. It doesn't look good. It's not attractive. Now, bodybuilders aren't training to look attractive. But my point is, there's a reason why it looks, it doesn't look good to the average person. It's because it's, it's obviously poor health. It's obvious poor health. So those people, when they give health advice, it's hard to listen to them. And oftentimes their advice is like this guy, Tony Huge.  Well, speaking of weird advice, strange advice, did you know that like one of the main guys on Ancient Aliens, it was a part of the bodybuilding community at one point? Not to do with the hair. Yes. Yes. Giorgio, the crazy one. Yeah. Yeah. I guess like, he was like passionate about bodybuilding and like promoted a lot of like, not, it's the Olympia, right? That's the one with, yeah. So that was the main one that he was like promoting it and like, like producing it and all that. And so he was like, a big fan of bodybuilding. I had no idea. No way. Yeah. Remind me, what's Ancient Aliens? But it makes perfect sense. So it's a show where they look- Is this like a discovery? What is it? Yeah, it's on History Channel. Hilarious. It's on the History Channel, right? Okay. Something you're like, totally not historical, but they throw all kinds of imagery out there from around the world where it's unexplained, like old monuments and things like Stonehenge or something. Yeah, exactly. Stonehenge, the pyramids, you know, whatever, like all these different ruins and they tie it all to like, like aliens in the past giving us knowledge to build these things and help us out. Yeah. So it's like one of my favorite pastimes to go home. Oh, dude. I'll take something to smoke weed. Yes. 100%. It's a stoner show. 100%. Yeah. There's this, like a given example, there was, I don't know where this these people were, but there was a society of people, and we have evidence of this. And what they used to do is as when they were babies, they would strap a board to their forehead, to the baby's forehead in order to elongate there, in order to elongate and shape the head so that it looked like this. And so then they have pictures of that and they're like, they were trying to- Yeah, they're emulating the gods, which were aliens that were telling them how to build these structures, create societies. Yeah. Because, you know, we know aliens have long heads. He's got all these memes out there, like he just can explain everything with just one word, aliens. Yeah. And like another one, like there's just pictures of like these hieroglyphics, and it looks like from our eyes, it looks like a person writing a helicopter or it looks like an astronaut. Yeah. So like, how did they know that the helicopters would exist? Like, they did it.  It's so good. Seriously, like my favorite thing ever to watch. It's so good. You know what else is fun? And it costs $100,000 to produce one of those episodes. What? Yes. Why so much? That's crazy. I guess all the different graphics and like the way they dramatize it and you know, like maybe you have to buy rights to all the images and videos and stuff they use. Is that a lot though? I don't know how much a normal show would cost to produce. I don't know, but I was digging into it. It might not be that much. Because I was like, man, this is some crazy stuff they're putting out there. I love it. So you know what else is fun that I did a few days ago? So when I was a kid, I don't know if you guys did this. When I, when my dad would take me to the, you know, blockbuster video or back there, back then the one around here was called a one hour photo drive-up. That was the name of the place that had rentals or whatever. Oh God, you remember one hour photos? You remember that? Oh, yeah. So my dad would take me and I'd go hang out with him while he'd pick a movie. And every once in a while, I would be able to pick a kid's movie, right? So I must have been, I must have been 10 or 11 maybe, but every once in a while I'd sneak away and it walked down the horror aisle. And I used to look at the boxes of horror movies. I love the imagery of those old movies, those VHS movies, the horror movies. So I went online because I was telling my son about this and I'm like, dude, back then that's how you pick movies. Like the imagery on the box. That's what sold you. Yeah. That's how you picked a movie. You know? And I said, and I used to love going through the horror aisle because it scared the crap out of me, but I loved it and I'd look at all the scary. Dude. So I pulled up old 80s horror, you know, movie imagery. Oh my God, they were terrible. Yeah, they're awful.  Corey.   Yeah. Oh my God. I can't believe we did that back then. Like you're like, ah, I guess they'll see.  That's how it worked. Yeah. And how many, how many employees probably saved the double of that shit? A hundred percent.  Yeah, dude. For sure you did. I knew a guy that did that. I knew a guy that developed. Oh man, of course. He developed photos. And of course you make an extra one, dude. And I asked him, I asked him, I'm like, do you guys like see? And he goes, of course, of course we do. And I'm like, what kind of pictures you see?  Yeah. He's like, we all see it. You know, put it in your envelope. You know, talk about blackmail, 80s movies. So it's so funny you brought this up. So this weekend when we were all hanging out, we were talking about, so the kids, right? You know, his kids are now my two best friends. They're getting to the place where their kids now watch cartoons or whatever. And you guys know this having young kids. And I remember this as a kid myself, that when you like something, you will watch that same movie over and over. And I remember as a kid. It's crazy. I gotta be somewhere. I have to be between the ages of, I want to say five to seven when this was, in the movie Rad. I've talked about it before. Yeah. So it's an all time favorite movie. Send me your name, James. So we were talking about 80s movies and talking about Rad. And so it sent me down the rabbit hole of like looking it all up and like, where are they all now? And, you know, so the movie is Eddie Fiola is the name of the BMX racer who is the stunt double in that movie. And so, and they're actually launching a company this year, 2020. And it's to remake all those, that style of a bike. Oh, sick. No, totally sick. Right. So and then I go look, I go front pigs and everything. Right. Yes. So I go looking up, looking up YouTube videos on him and up pops this 25th anniversary of Rad. He shows up to a high school for the 25th anniversary of Rad. This dude is, and he's older than we are. So he's in his fifties and he re reenacts the sent me by an angel scene spinning on. Oh, bro. He does the whole, it was, it's dope. I'm going to put it up on. I'll have Doug look up.  Eddie Fiola, Rad 25th anniversary. If you put that on YouTube, you'll probably find some of that. But he recreates, he does it over again. That whole scene where, you know, that scene when they're in that, when the high school him and his girlfriend and they're doing the little, the dance and the bike since sent, sent me an angel is the song playing. I haven't watched that movie still. You haven't seen it? Ah, dude, it's such a I never watched it. I never even knew it existed. But I was so I was actually really impressed. I mean, there was, there was about two moves that were like really tough that he did, that he kind of like lost it a little bit. But for the most part, he nailed it. Now, was that the movie that you watched the most over and over again? For sure. 100%. I watched. Did you ever ride a bike? So did I ride? I'm just wondering. Can you ride a bike? I'd never known he was ever asked you. Can you ride a bike? Yes. That's it right there. Yes, I can ride a bike. Can you ride a bike? Yeah, look at that. No, because dude, this spawned like a whole generation of like BMXing. Everybody's bike was like this. I had a bike like this. I had a mongoose. Didn't you guys, didn't you guys have BMXing? Yeah. Yeah. No, mongoose is more high quality. For sure, the sick bike. So yeah, I don't know. I've literally got, went down like hours of going through the stuff, found their website.  What was your movie, Justin? Was there a movie you watched over and over again as a kid? Yeah. Star Wars. Star Wars. It was probably, I think it was, I wanted to say Willow, but I don't think it was even Willow, but it was something like that. It was like, it's like never ending story, I think. I think that was the jam.  That was when I was older though, you know, a little bit older. So I watched that one a lot. And you know, a movie I watched like crazy. And part of the reason was, I liked it because it was fantasy, but also because it was one of the few VHS movies that we owned. And it's because my mom recorded it off the TV. So I even memorized the commercials, by the way, because it recorded everything. So as a kid, I would watch this movie over and over again, and I'd memorized not only the movie, but all the commercials to this day. I've actually tried finding those commercials on YouTube to see if they remember the old McDonald's Chicken Nuggets where they're like little puppets. They would like slide down these things. I remember those commercials stupidly. Do you remember the Domino's Avoid the Noid? Avoid the Noid. Do you remember that? They should bring that back. He was this dude that was weird and it was Avoid the Noid.  Or Max Hedron from the Pepsi guy. Anyway, so Clash of the Titans. You guys remember the original, not the old Clash of the Titans? Yeah, yeah. That was so weird. They remade that in what, like 2000 something, right? Crap. That was with the golden owl, right? The metal owl. It was. So I watched the TV version of it, and then when I got a little bit older, I got the actual VHS, and they didn't realize there's boobs in it. They didn't show it on the TV. Then I got older and I was like, oh dang. Dude, 80s movies were amazing for that, like Porkies and like all of a sudden. Dude, I do remember this commercial now. The Noid, bro. The Noid. I had a t-shirt with him on it, and I thought it was the coolest shirt ever. Did you really?  Of course I am.  Justin, my best friend, is just like you, Justin, that has this weird ability that he could take. Because of the name. A commercial like that and he could still do it. He could do the whole thing. He could do the jingle. He could sing the jingle. Jingles totally got me. You know, I wonder if it's like a musical thing because they always had music that goes to it and that you have, you're musically inclined. So is he. So I pay attention to that more than anything. Music runs in his family. He's talented. He picked the guitar up like just like five, six years ago and could play it right away. And his dad was a big time drummer and in a band. So I wonder if there has something to do with it. There has to be. I mean, you could go all the way back to Ireland where like one of our distant ancestors, whatever, was like part of like one of the orchestras there and like was the main violinist and like there's a lot in my grandma and my mom and like everybody in my family are really like musical. Or because you watch a lot of TV and I watched a lot of TV. I watched a lot of TV though, too. And like I can, he'll do the jingle and I remember the commercial, but not like he does. Like he remember, he could sing it to me with the tune and the beat to it. And what I, I've come to it because I think, okay, if you're like, you're the only other person I've ever met that has the same skill where on the spot, you could say, Hey, Crest commercial 1984. All right. You know what I'm saying? And then like all of a sudden sing the jingle or whatever. It has to be something about with music, right? That has to be why you guys have this ability to do that. I don't know. I mean, music definitely improves memory. That's for sure. I mean, it's one of the, That's how we passed information down with singing through songs. Yeah. Before we were recording it, it was song. And anytime you sing something, you'll remember that's why you learn the ABCs with the song. Till this day, if you say the ABCs, you probably are doing it. You're doing the, by the way, did you guys know the tune for the ABCs? The same tune is for, uh, is it little star? What's that song? Yeah. Twinkle, twinkle, twinkle. It's the same song. Yep. Just different words. So my knowledge is. Anyway, hey, did you guys see television, tell a vision?  I know, right? Paul, check. Yeah. Did you guys know that? That blew my mind. I just figured out today that a cigarette is named a cigarette because it's a small cigar. Wow. That's why. That's Rhett. What do they call it? You see that? What do they call it in Europe? It's got a different name. It's got like a, it sounds like a purple. No, you don't want to say it. Yes. It's a bag. That's what they say in the UK. Oh, it's UK. It says that. Somebody, yeah, somebody like came up behind me and like was like trying to bum a cigarette, right?  And I'm like, excuse me, sir, we're going to have a rumble? Yeah, he was just being, he was just being, Hey, speaking of rumbles, did you guys see the Kansas and Kansas State brawl? You know what? Basketball. I sent it over to the main thread. I did because you sent it to us. Okay. You watched it. So it was ugly, dude. Bro. So here's the thing though. Like, so I, uh, I think the number one comment on there, swaggy P, Nick Young got on there and said something and he says, uh, the guy who's, who swatted him, the swat and the stare down was necessary. Yeah. And then of course it stirred up all kinds of controversy or whose fault is it, who did, who did what, blah, blah, blah. But here's the thing. There's like an unsaid rule in basketball.  There, I think there was less than 15 seconds on the clock. You know, when there's less than, you let the clock burn out. Right. You cross half court so you don't get a penalty for, for not passing half court.  And the, the team who lost normally just lets it happen because even if you were to move on, because even if you stole, right, if you stole the ball shot of two threes in a row in that 15 seconds, it doesn't matter. You still lose by 15 plus points. Right.  But the guy who got it stolen from him actually recovers from the steel, runs down court, jumps and swats.  Get out of my house. And then stands over the top of him and stares him down and then out this brawl happens.  But hey, dude, that's, you get, that's what you get. Plus it's not, plus it's, you're playing a game. You swat him. That's part of the game, staring him down. It was clean too. He didn't even hit him or anything. Big deal, a fight. Like that's so embarrassing. No, you know, you know why though. I mean, they're already salty that they lost the game. Totally. And so now they, they find an opportunity to take it out. And it's rivals, Kansas, Kansas State, it's always been a rival. Yeah. So I mean, it's, again, it's not promoting it. But yeah, like I, I could see like, yeah, doing something like that. I'm totally on the side of like, dude, if you want to, if you want to dribble up and you get swatted, you get swatted. Like you got to deal with that. But still fighting. Come on guys, you're, you're adult males. Many of you are trying to get into the NBA. You're going to fight. Well, no, that's a really not worth it. That's a really good point that my buddy brought up.  Like this is going to tarnish their whole career. 100%. I mean, that's the type of thing that'll drop you five, 10 positions in draft time. Totally.   It's so, one of the, one of the, the, the number one best qualities of a good, strong man is discipline.   Now I got to throw, throw my fists. That's lack of discipline. That's a very important example.    And it's like, okay, now I can go in the penalty box and rest. Bad parenting. That's what I think. Bad parenting is bad, bad parenting. That's because as I was taught as a kid, now minding come from my parents, mine came from good coaches. When you win, you win in class, dude. You don't, when you score, you don't spike the ball. You don't talk sportsmanship. Like, right.     Yeah. It's honorable. Right. And it's, those are the old, those are the actually the old rules of the battlefield when, when they would meet each other and fight. There was a level of respect. Even, even today in certain circles, what's that, that movie I saw documentary, I watched a long time ago, Knuckle. I think it was called with the, the Irish traveler. Yes. Yes. I watched part of that. You mentioned that to me before. And they fist fight to, to, to solve their issues or whatever among their community, but there's a lot of honor around it. Like you're not allowed to kick, bite. There's no illegal holds. You stop. If you beat the guy up, you shake hands or whatever. And, you know, that kind of stuff. I think it shows. He squashed disputes. Like as long as like everybody like agrees to the terms. Yeah. Yeah. Anyway. So, you know, fighting reminds me of Rocky and your, your love for that. And I think you'll appreciate my kids love Rocky, by the way. Do they really? Yeah. Good kids. We've made it all the way through four. So. They watched all four? Yeah. Oh man. I bet that changed a lot. The fifth one. Nah. But yeah.  Right. What are you? I don't know what pants you like. Big chino. I like the chinos also. Yeah. So you two both are, I think that's what you guys are wearing right now. Yeah. So these are the Balboa pants. Oh, I have a pair of those. These are now my, my new favorite pants. Yeah. Those are comfortable. This, this and the Sunday joggers are the two most comfortable pairs that they have in the pairs that I, I rock back and forth. So is that more of like a sweat kind of a feel to them? Like in terms of like, is it like warmer? Yeah. Yeah. It's a little, it's going to be a little bit warmer than like the chino pants and it, but it's a different material than the Sunday joggers. The Sunday joggers are more like your, you know, Lulu type of kind of spandic type sweats. This is a little thicker. Yeah. They're thicker. They're more like traditional sweats, but then they're tapered at the bottom. What's the deal with, I like those by the way. I have a pair of those too. What's the deal with, with, have you guys heard like women make comments about men wearing sweats? Like, oh, when you wear sweats, I can see whatever. Oh, have you heard this? Grace, Grace, what's? Yeah, apparently they're, they're checking out our packages. Is that what it is? I heard somebody say, is that a thing? I know. I was like in a video a long time ago and somebody like circled that. No, how dare you? Katrina used to give me up. So I'm, you know, Katrina and I go back 10 years, right? So we were, she used to go to my boot camp classes that I used to teach and she would razz me all the time about wearing like boxer brief, boxer brief underwear and Grace web bands. Yeah. It was like, Cause you could see that. Yeah. You could see everything. Yeah. She's like, you know why all these ladies re-signed, don't you? And I'd be like, cause I'm a great trainer. Why? She goes, no, it's cause what you wear in the morning, I'm like, where I throw in a pair of sweats and a t-shirt and maybe a hoodie I go in. She's like, why do you tuck your shirt in though? Why don't you leave your shirt hanging out of front? Oh, what's the deal? So did you guys hear about this new show that Chris Hemsworth is going to be in? Oh dear God. So it's now teaching the war. He's now teaching the world fitness. No. Yeah, no. Well, Thor can do no wrong. And I'm extremely one-handsome guy.  But anyway, it's a new show.  So the show is called Limitless.  And basically he's going to undergo a series of challenges that will explore different ways humans can live longer in this scientific or science-based quote docuseries. So it's all about like hacking, like these biohacking stuff. He's going to go through all the experiments on the show. He's trying to take over a Greenfields job. Yeah. You know, you just reminded, Doug, could you look this up? F-45 sells to Mark, Marky Mark. Is that true? Yeah. Did you read that too? He's part of it. Yeah. He's a part owner. Okay. He's part owner. Yeah, I don't think he bought the whole company. I don't know. I might be talking. You heard that also then. Okay. So I heard this, and I've been meaning to look it up. I didn't think about it until you just said that. So Mark, while we're back to the show, he's promoting it because he went through it and all that and he's got back in shape. And that was all just like a promotional stunt. Wow, how did I just now hear about this? This happened in March. Yeah, he's a minority stake in F-45. Roughly 450 million. It's, no, valued. The whole thing is valued at 450 million. So is this the next competitor to Orange Theory? Is that like the new wave? Well, I don't know. Let's look up which one's worth more. I would, F-45 might be worth more. Then Orange Theory? 450 million. You think that Orange Theory has reached a billion already? I think it's more than, didn't we see something that said that? Maybe you could look that up, Doug. Look up, you know, Orange Theory value and F-45 value. So that must be an East Coast thing, because I've never seen it. Oh, no, they're here. They're here in San Jose. Oh, yeah, yeah. No, they're oblivious. They're all over here in San Jose and a lot of the coaches that were teaching Orange Theory of a hop ship and doing F. Oh, it is. Exceeds one billion. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Wow, they exceeded that in 2018. Yeah, they're crushing.  So they're twice as big as that. Okay, so was that, so is F-45 valued at 450? That was what it was. Yeah. Okay, so they're, oh, so they are, yeah. I mean, it's a similar model. They're all intensity based. All of it is an answer to CrossFit, right? Yeah. So I mean, you can, we can thank CrossFit for the, this. Opening the door. Yeah, the small box group class. And it's brilliant. It's, you know, we've talked about it countless times on the show why those things, those models are so successful and it's the community that it creates. When you do a small gym like that, it creates, I mean, I remember being at Orange Theory and seeing, you know, everybody like that would come to class. It's a social thing. You know, it's more than anything else. I mean, 90% of the people ain't getting the results, you know. And if they are, they end up going right back after they fall off for a few months anyways. But it became like a, you know, meet you at class tomorrow. It's an experience.  It's hilarious. Well, I mean, it's a smart strategy. It works. I don't know how good it is for long-term success. It's terrible. And I got into it with somebody on our Facebook page this morning. Why should they get into it? I responded. But you released a blog recently that was the, basically the pros and cons of what CrossFit has done for the community. And, you know, there's people, and I love people that do this, that comment on titles of articles without reading the full articles. I think you did a good job of giving it the credit that it's due. And I think we do a good job of talking about all the positive things. But the truth is this, that a majority of people are getting involved in these classes to lose weight. You know, very few people are getting involved in this stuff because they compete. Yeah, right. Exactly. So most people are joining these types of classes to lose weight. And America does not have a weight loss problem. Every year, millions of people lose weight. Successfully lose weight. Now, over 80% of those people put it all back on in some. So the problem is not a lack of motivation. And that was this person, why throw shade on, you know, any sort of modality if it's what motivates people to get off the couch. And I said, well, that's because that's not the problem. The problem is that we lack the motivation to get to a place. It's the way we're going about it is all wrong. And that is what we're trying to do here is we're not trying to throw shade on anybody's modality. We're just trying to enlighten the masses. Inform the consumer. Exactly. That are that are sucked and bought into the motivational hype that listen, maybe this isn't the best approach for you to lose this weight permanently. It's a hard thing to understand because if you put yourself in the mind of somebody who's ready to start working out, ready to lose weight, they're in this really motivated inspired state of mind. And when we're in that state of mind, we tend to overestimate our abilities. So if you say to somebody, you know, Oh, you want to start working out now? Yeah, I'm finally, I'm finally ready. How many days a week do you want to work out? Five days a week? You know, what do you want? I want to work out hard. What about diet? Oh, I'm not eating sugar anymore.  I'm not going to drink alcohol. And then you ask them, what were you, were you working out before? No, not at all. What did your diet look like before? Lots of sugar, lots of alcohols. Okay. Too way too big of a change. And right now it feels good because you're in this inspired, motivated state of mind. But that state of mind will change at some point. What will that version of you think of what the decisions you're making now? Will it be something you could stick to? Or will it be a quick reversal? That's what ends up happening. It's a quick reversal. And so these types of modalities capitalize on the motivated consumer, which, you know, it's not their fault, by the way. It's almost the entire fitness space does that. They capitalize on that. I mean, watch some of the most popular fitness programs on mainstream TV. Watch The Biggest Loser. It's all that. It's 100% motivation, inspiration. It's 1% good exercise and good diet. It's all about it. Speaking of that, I'm giving you guys homework. That airs a week from today. So that goes live. And we have Steve Cook and Erica, FitLove are both the trainers for that. And we have to watch that for that exact reason. So we can comment on it. I really do want. And I know that, you know, we've each probably expressed our disdain for the show. And I think it's important, because we've talked about that, to discipline ourselves, to watch the episodes, and then we could talk about them. And I think it's fitness, entertainment. That's it, 100%. I mean, there's millions of people watching that, dude. I know. It's entertainment, fitness, that's what it is. So you want me to watch it, huh? I do.  It's hard, dude. I want you to watch it, because I think we should talk about it. I just think that we owe it to the audience to do that. And at least express, not just talk shit about it, but express what we see going on here. And so I think it would be good. It starts in a week. Doug, you can hold us accountable. All right, Doug. So maybe we'll watch it. Maybe we'll watch it in here. Yeah, I'm down for that. Yeah, throw popcorn at the TV. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Speaking of cancer. Oh, God. Wow. Nice transition. You brought that up. This is a huge, huge discovery that just got made. So scientists just found a new type of killer T cell. So this is an immune cell that seems to target all cancers. All cancers. So they found a cell in the immune system that if it's around cancer, it kills it and doesn't harm any healthy cells. And so they're already doing studies with mice where they're boosting just this type of killer T cell and they're curing cancers at the moment. What? In mice, yeah. It's like a Titan T cell. Well, so this could be. Bro, that's huge news. This is huge because one of the big challenges with treating or fighting cancer is that they're all different. So you might have a treatment that works for one, but it doesn't do anything for another one. So it's very, very difficult to finding a cure for cancer. For a long time, scientists are like, it's not going to work that way because there isn't a single thing. But now they found this killer T cell. This is fascinating. This is the first time we found some that seems to kill them all. Do you guys, do you guys believe in our time that we'll find a cure in our lifetime? I do 100%. And where do you stand on the conspiracy theorists that believe that we already have it?    If you discovered the cure for cancer, you'd be one of the richest people on earth.  Nobody's spared. There is no cure. People are hiding. It's not just happening to poor people. No, no. I think that we will, though, find a cure. I think it's going to happen in the next 15 to 20 years. So I'm really curious about this T cell. So everybody produces this naturally, or is this only found? How are they just now finding this? I don't know too much of the details. I just read a single article on it, and I've seen lots of other articles. So I belong to a lot of science groups on Facebook, and they're all posting different articles talking about this. So this is apparently a really big deal right now in the medical community. Again, it potentially could be a path towards a universal cancer treatment. It's early, but holy cow. Do you guys have any idea how groundbreaking, how much it would shift and change society if we finally had a cure for a disease that to this day really doesn't have any? It would be huge. It would be absolutely massive. So it's really exciting stuff. What do you think are some of the unintended consequences that could happen from it? Negatively. Well, obviously, there's tons of positive, and all of us in this room have been affected by directly. Somebody who in our family, I would love to have a cure, but then there's gonna be things that happen because of it. What are some of the things that you think- Well, if they're doing something with the immune system, I don't know, maybe they could trigger some kind of autoimmune response. It could be overactive. Maybe the person would need repeated treatments because whatever's giving them cancer in the first place wasn't solved. So maybe they'd get this treatment, and then five years later, I have to go back and get this treatment. I don't know, things tend to adapt and evolve. Maybe it stops working after a certain period of time. But working with the immune system seems to be the best bet because our immune system is pretty damn smart. And if it's your own cells, then it's probably a good thing. And along those lines on cancer, did you guys know that they finally found a link between thyroid cancer and cell phones?  Yeah, they did. And now here's the link, though. It's not everybody. It's higher. They found that there are higher rates of thyroid cancer among people with certain genetic variations in specific genes. So they're finding that if some people have this gene variant, and if they use a lot of cell phones, their risk of thyroid cancer goes up. And other people probably don't use the word... That seems like such a correlation thing, though. No, they've connected it. They seem to have connected it. Really? Yeah, they have. Yeah, they said they examined over 900 people in Connecticut and found that those with a certain single nucleotide polymorphisms were significantly more likely to develop cancer in their thyroid in terms of... So this is due to the EMF or whatever signal... The radiation is probably coming from that. Yeah. I mean, you've seen that... With such a low amount. It is, but over time. And again, if you have this variation in your gene... I think we're not far from the advanced version of 24andMe where you can get... If you get this whole list of all these genes that you have, you potentially have. Formally known as 23andMe. Right. That's 24. We added one. Is it really 23? Yeah. That was good, bro. Sal didn't catch it, though. I don't think that's a good thing, you know. I know, right? Extra chromosome. We've found an extra one. I don't think so. Sorry. Anyways. That was a good catch, bro. Yeah, I had to get you there. No, I'm glad you did. Sal, you're normally the one who's all over that. It's the 24-hour fitness coming out with new... Gene testing for our gene test. No, but don't you think that the future will be, like, we'll have connected all these different things, right? I think it'll be this list like, oh, you should avoid cell phones, or you should avoid this, or you should stay away from this on those. Yeah, you'll have like a whole blueprint of like what works best for your genetics. And that'll probably be called 24. Yeah, I'm sure. So that one will be advanced version. We'll create that. First question is from Pretty3.  I didn't even know this was what you picked. Have you guys seen... Look at us. You guys know what these challenges are, right? So they get like groups of people at work and we're all gonna, you know, be in a contest for 90 days, see who loses the most weight, you know, type of deal. Thoughts, what are your thoughts on these? Well, I used to run one at 24-hour fitness. What'd you call it?  Oh, wow. The difference though is that we did not go off of weight.  And so it was the greatest percentage of change. And it was over the course of, I believe, we did... Do you remember how long I did it for, Justin? We did it like three months, I believe. Yeah. I think it was three months long is what we did it. That's better, though, because I had a buddy that did a bet with a group. And our clients fought over who actually won. Really? Remember that. Mine and Adam's clients. So I had a buddy who belongs... He's an investment baker and he's got all these buddies that are all investment makers. So they all make a lot of money and they're all real fat and out of shape or whatever and they made a bet. It was a three-month bet, $50,000. Wow. Who could lose the most weight?  When he did the weigh-in, he bulked up for it. He drank soy sauce, was eating salt, got himself... Like a huge pizza. Hella bloated, hella car. Then he cut water, fasted, used the sauna.  No, and that's for that exact... So, you know, we mentioned in the intro about biggest losers starting next week. That's one of the things... I watched the first probably, I want to say four or five seasons of Biggest Loser. And the very first season, for those that have been fans of the show or watched me in it, I really liked. I remember when it came out and I thought, this is really cool.   The good intention part of it was there in the beginning. Agreed. But when there's that much money on the line, it's only a matter of time before enough people catch wind of it and figure out how to game it. How do we dramatize this? How do we make it more interesting? Exactly, and that's exactly what started to happen. Seasons two, three, four and beyond was... The first one was nobody knew what to expect, how you would win, what the competition would really look like. And it was just like, it felt real. And it felt like it was a good authentic show.  You add somebody who is 300 pounds, you load them on a ton of sodium and carbohydrates and gallons of water heading into that. You can manipulate by like 30 pounds. I want to see... Yeah, that's one thing I want to pay attention to if I'm watching it, like how they're handling all that, like how they're handling the testing specifically, if it's just going off of weight, how much of the after effect are they going to show with them now being immersed back in with their family and like how are they going to follow them a couple of months later? They do all that, they do. But here's the thing, they don't discuss the water manipulation. At least they had it in the shows that I'd seen. So they don't discuss that. But what I don't know is how many of the trainers on the back end are coaching that way. I mean, why wouldn't you? Dude, yeah. You win too. You want to win, right? It is weight and unless it's explicitly in the rules, not to do it, which it may be. It may be in the rules that says water manipulation is forbidden or whatever. How could you forbid that? Like I can manipulate your water just by messing with your carbohydrate intake in your water. Sure, but maybe they'll say things like you have to be hydrated or that kind of stuff. So here's the thing with these challenges in the workplace. They're phenomenal ways to set yourself up for failure, unfortunately. I mean, there's nothing inherently wrong about a contest, but your chances of succeeding long term after following one of these is very, very low because it's a perfect storm. Doesn't teach you anything. Typically you're in a situation where you're not working out, not eating right. And so this gives you the spark to do something. But now you're in a contest, so you really go for it. You do everything you can. You use willpower the whole time. Nothing wrong with willpower in the short term, but willpower does not work in the long term. Behaviors work long term. If you have to use willpower long term, you're going to fail every single time. Willpower is just the spark. Now that's it. And so what happens is they go in there, super amped, super motivated, do everything. It's all about willpower. The second the contest is over, it's done. I'm done. I'm over it and people tend to bounce out of it and bounce out of it worse than they were when they first entered. Now here's how I'm going to defend it. Would I do one? Hell, yes, I would.  And if there was a chance for me to win $50,000 amongst my friends or coworkers, I know that I could do that. And regardless of I think it's healthy, ideal, or anything like that, so I think the mindset that you go into it matters everything. So if you know that, if you know that you're going to be manipulating water, manipulating your body composition to win a competition, then it's like a sport and you're treating it that way.  But if you think that this is a good idea to get yourself in shape, that I don't think that's a smoke. I don't think it's because to your point, it's setting you up for failure because the way you're going about it is not ideal. It reminds me of, I'm sure you guys train clients who were like, you know what, one of my goals is to run a marathon. So I'm going to, that's what I'm going to train for when I run a marathon. And so they use that as their motivation. They train, they change everything about their lifestyle. They do the marathon after the marathon is over. It's everything's done. Well, I think younger me would have been all about it. Like this is a great way to get people involved and to get them moving and to get them motivated and fueled towards the right direction. But experience in dealing with people and seeing the trends of how this all plays out, there's a lot more negative to it than positives for me. I just see the rebound effect. I see people being even more, likely to not want to repeat that again. And so therefore it's like they're in a different place about their view of fitness even then from then on out. Now that being said, I mean, are you or are you guys not in the same page that I am, that if your family, who probably doesn't have good relationships with exercise and food like we all do, put up a $10,000 bet that who can manipulate or who can lose the most weight. If it's just the game, sure. Right, would you not? Sure, sure. Because you guys know that you're probably better at that than any of them. It's just a game. At that point, it's just a game. But if you're entering into it and thinking, oh, this is going to get me in shape. This is going to work for me or whatever, you're going to set yourself up to fail. It's actually a terrible strategy. And it might even make it worse than if you never did in the first place. No, no, it will. It will. I mean, I think unless you have that mindset that it's a game, the same way that you approach training modalities that are like sports, E CrossFit, if you go into it with that mentality, then by all means. It's playing basketball because it helps me stay in shape and I love playing basketball. Do I think it's the best way to stay in shape? Absolutely not. So if you go into a competition like this, knowing it's a sport, it's a competition, it's not the healthy way for you to stay in shape, then by all means. But if you enter it like a lot of people do innocently, thinking like, oh, this is a great way to start my new year and get in shape and get all the work people together.  Yeah, for the fun of it. Then cool. But it's not going to change it. Next question is from Alec Cosmo. What is the best way to train abs? Isometric or concentric and eccentric? Okay. All of you, yeah, first break that down for people. Yeah, so there's three types of muscle contractions. Isometric is basically when the muscles just tense and holding a position. Example plank. Yeah, so like if you were holding a dumbbell, you curl it, but now you're just holding it up there. Well, use an example for abs. Or a plank. A plank, right? Concentric would be the muscle shortening. So a crunch coming up in a crunch. Eccentric would be the muscle lengthening, which would be coming out of a crunch. So those are the three types of muscle contractions. All three of them are important to train with your midsection. They're all three important to train with any muscle. This is like any other muscle. It is. And your body, it gets better. The type of adaptations you get with training tend to be more closely related to the way that you're training. And then there's some general adaptations that kind of come off of that. So if I train my abs isometrically only, I'm going to get really good isometric contractions. I'll have a little bit of carry over to concentric and eccentric. And the truth, and it's true the other way around, you will get a little bit of general adaptation. Training all of them will mean you'll get better at all of them. Well, and if you want to see the greatest change, then the one that you do the least amount, you should put emphasis on.  Or if you're somebody who blasts on crunches, and they crunch crunch, and they just let their body fall back, fall back, fall back all the time, but they're really good at crunches, they can do thousands of them. But they never like slow down the negative and resist it on the way down and focus. Do that. So it's like whatever you're doing the most of, or you do, you gravitate towards the most, then focusing on the other ones are probably the best thing that you could possibly do. Yeah. Now, as far as building the muscles of the abs, so that they're more visible, those are going to be your concentric and eccentric wraps. That's going to be the full range of motion exercises where the abs are squeezing and then moving out into more of a stretch position. The isometric stuff though is phenomenal because you want your core to be able to tense up and stabilize your spine for exercises like squats and deadlifts and overhead presses. Yeah, that follows you in basically all movement patterns. It does. Now, generally speaking, when you guys think about abs and the majority of people, what's some of the single best advice that you've given to clients in regards to that? Well, just teaching clients the difference between flexing at the lumbar spine and flexing at the hips. Yeah. I think when people do a sit-up... The mechanics of it. Yeah, I think when people do a sit-up or a leg raise, a leg raise is a real common one. They think if the body folds in half that they'll work in the abs. And the abs, you may feel them even in that position because they may be stabilizing. But really, if you want to work the absolute full range of motion, it doesn't flex the hips at all. It flexes the spine. It takes your pelvis and it rotates it so that your tailbone tucks and you squeeze... It brings a rib cage closer to your pelvis. That's what they do. So like a leg raise, some people will get in a leg raise position and they'll just bring their legs up and their back is still up against the pad and it's still straight back or whatever. You're not working the abs through a full range of motion. You're working the hip flexors. Yeah, and too, like in terms of rotation because that's another component with that they're responsible for stabilizing, like just having the ability to do both, like rotate with your hips with it but then also anti-rotate. So your hips stay locked in place but then just your torso is responsible for that rotation. So that's something else that a lot of people just are going through these things with momentum and they're letting their body sort of dictate where they're going without having full control. This helps to kind of promote more control and center that with your torso. I love that we all were thinking three different things because I think all of them are extremely valuable. I think Sal's is first and foremost, understanding the mechanics of it is the most important. Like if you don't know how to contract your hands properly, all the other tips are kind of worthless. Justin, I love the idea of rotation and anti-rotation because it's probably one of the most neglected things that people focus on. And when you talk about longevity and safety and advanced age, like talk about one of the most important things to help protect your back is focusing on rotation and anti-rotation. The third thing that I would contribute that I remember giving as advice that even myself neglected was loading and heavy ab work. Abs are so, it's so common to see supersets and bicycle abs and 100 crunches and everybody thinks high repetitions similar to calves. People think that that's the way to train them for the best results. And in fact, some of the best results that I ever personally had with training my abs or training clients abs was actually doing five repetitions of slow, controlled, heavy loaded abs. And because most people don't train that way, you tend to see incredible results from that. So man, I tell you what, if you're listening right now and focusing on abs, you take those three, those tips and probably see- Well, we did a YouTube video a while ago on long lever crunches on a physio ball. If you do those right, you're going to do maybe 10. If you're strong, probably less. That's a lot of resistance with your arms like that far back. Yes, you do a good long lever crunch on a physio ball. Slow, full extension so that you're at the end of it, you're actually arching over the ball and rolling the spine like you're saying. Over it, keeping the hips stationary so you're not sitting down with your hips, squeezing the abs, keeping the arms up above your head. That's a lot of resistance. You will develop muscular strong abs with an exercise like that. The real high rep stuff, it's good for endurance, but it's not going to develop the muscles of the core. But I remember there was a period of time there where it was like planks. Planks was the exercise. That's what everybody does. Let's just plank all day long. And they have some value for sure, but you got to do everything. You got to do all of it, just like when you train any other muscle. All right, next question is from K. Craig 12. What are your thoughts on trap bar deadlifts? Mark Ripito recently released a video talking about why the trap bar is a poor and unsafe substitute for the barbell. I love this video. He's so salty. I love him. I know. I'm growing to really love this guy more and more. He starts the video up with this.   Yeah. I think you should not compare the two exercises. You should not say to yourself, which one do I do? Because if I do one, I can't do the other one. I think that's the wrong approach. I think that's the approach a lot of people in fitness take where it's like it's either kettlebells or dumbbells or barbells or machines or high reps or low reps. I think they all have value. Actually, I know they all have value. The trap bar has tremendous value on its own. I don't think it should replace a straight bar deadlift, but I think it has its own value. Well, and I think his argument was really that. He was trying to argue how much more valuable a deadlift was for these very specific reasons, which I couldn't really argue against that fact, but to your point, I totally see a lot of value in the trap bar for completely different reasons. Well, you have to talk about why he made the video in the first place. He made the video in response to what the military is doing currently right now, which is eliminating the barbell deadlift and replacing it with trap bar deadlifts. Now, do you guys know why they did that? Where do you guys want to guess why? I don't know why, but I have probably a lot of people who are getting hurt trying to deadlift technique. Yeah, because a trap bar is easier to teach than a barbell. Of course, it just is. It's an easier thing to teach. The other part of it is, if you look at athletic coaches, some of the best athletic coaches in the world, they do trap bar deadlifts. They say it transfers better to the basketball. Yeah, I mean, for me, okay. So this is where I think we all kind of are in similar camps. I love the video, though. And I agree with him that it's a terrible idea to replace the deadlift, because to your point, Sal, and it is, it's a different exercise. It's a different exercise. It has different applications. Both of them have value, but to his point, and I agree with him that the trap bar deadlift should not replace a conventional barbell deadlift. They're different. I mean, they're completely different. In fact, they have, I think the trap bar deadlift has more similarities to a squat than it has to a deadlift. So it shouldn't even be called a deadlift. It should be more like a trap bar squat. Yeah, at this point with that travel in the sagittal plane, like allowing for a little bit more of that, like you do see that in a squat, and that's where we have the squat. And so it's like, you know, I get where he's coming from from a barbell purist perspective with that, but it does also allow, I mean, it's a different monster. It's something that I'm recruiting, you know, both anterior and posterior, like together. So I've done long periods of trap bar deadlifts. When I was searching for that 600 pound deadlift years ago, I avoided the straight bar for a little while because I was overworking my posterior chain. So I picked up a trap bar and it was similar enough, I thought, to prevent me from losing gains, but allow me to train kind of a similar, it's different, but a similar motion. Here's what I found with it. Well, obviously I could lift more weight with a trap bar. It's just, it's more of a vertical, I guess, lift. My back is a little bit more straight so I can lift more weight with it. And I noticed that it did strain my lower back less, but I did get a lot of mid-upper back activation.  And of course, it works the legs. You get a little bit more quad activation. I noticed what the trap bar, the straight bar. Now when I did that and went back to the straight bar, I didn't lose any strength on the straight bar and then I was able to get my straight bar lifts up to the 600-pound target. I find them extremely valuable and they're easier to teach, by the way. When you get a client as a trainer, teaching a deadlift can sometimes be very difficult. There's a process to teaching it. And sometimes what I used to do is I would go, I wouldn't even go to the straight bar and go to the trap bar, depending on the client, because it was an easier way to train something that was somewhat similar. I also think that, I also think this is part of the problem with our space is we get different camps and experts in exercise and strength training.  They really don't. And it's unfortunate that we get here. And we rarely comment on this. I think Ripto's got enough street cred and we thought the video was entertaining. So the person who asked this question, they got us to talk about this. But we actually pass on a lot of these questions where people want us to debate another expert in the field that maybe said something that is counter to what we said, because we've talked about the value of a trap bar before. So I'm sure that's why this person brings this up. And the truth is it really what it ends up doing is it loses the people that we care about most. I think the goal of Mind Pump when we first started this was to educate the people that are trying to get started with health and fitness and learn the proper way to get in shape and to learn the proper way to strength train and the benefits of lifting weights and the things like that. And so this is a community that we're really trying to, we're trying to reach the people that are not going to the gym. I don't want to get in an argument with the fitness gurus that have been doing it forever and fight over. You know what ends up happening when you do this, when you debate what's better, trap bar or a straight bar deadlift? Then you're drawing a line in the sand and the listeners or viewers or whoever's watching is going to then think, I need to pick one. Right. I have to pick one. Yeah, and the truth is they both have value. That's right. And that's sad because you're going to lose the value of the other exercise. They both have value. That's the real truth. And by the way, this is a strategy that advertisers have used for years. Pepsi and Coke did this in the 80s. It's how they got everybody to drink Pepsi and Coke and throw not drink seven up and chastin' all those drinks. They made people think they had to pick politics works this way. I have to pick. There's only two choices. One or the other. When we make this debate over these two exercises, which one's better, which one sucks, then people are just going to think, oh, I side with the mine pump. They said the trap bar. I side with Ripoto. He says the straight bar. So I'm just going to pick one. And then you miss out on all these amazing benefits of the other exercise. The truth is they both have value. Yeah, I do appreciate some of these old dogs, though, that stay, they dig their heels into those foundational things that have been time-tested over millennia in any different culture, like deadlifts, benchprite. The ones that have worked time in and time out, and they want to make sure they keep the purity of it, the way that it's taught, why the reasoning behind it, everything is untouched. And I get that. But then something new, the trap bar comes along and it's like, ah, they don't want to change his heart. Well, Ripoto is a smart, very smart dude. I'll tell you what, starting strength was the best workout you could get online before MAPS anabolic, 100%. You compared his program to all the other bodybuilding routines and there was a stark difference. I remember first seeing it and going, wow, this looks very simple. This looks very basic. Yeah, very simple. Follow it and you just, you get great results.  It was, he really made a phenomenal impact. It was his programs that got people to finally say, the average person would say, hey, wait a minute, maybe I should train on these core lifts instead of doing all this other fluff. Maybe I should train my full body a few times a week instead of doing body part splits. It was him. Well, and there's, Justin, I'm with you. I can appreciate purists and the digging the heels in, but I think it's important as experts in the field that you're careful about what you dig your heels in about. Sure. You know what I'm saying? Like what you take a hard stance on of what's good or what's bad. Yeah, because isn't he like anti-mobility too? Oh, he is. Yeah, I'd have to dig into that. I'm not sure about that, but I mean, that wouldn't surprise me again. Like I said, I appreciate that they exist because they're on a spectrum. You know, like for me, it's like, I can then like, kind of make my own decision accordingly. Like I know where he stands on like, something else that's going to come out and it'll present an argument that I'm going to think about. Well, and I also think that we're speaking to different communities. Yeah.  Just pure strength. Yes, driven people. Strength training athletes that want to be strong as fuck, and that's why they follow my channel and that's what they're interested in.  And so they're choosing to go that path. I would dig my heels in the same way and say the same thing about the trap bar, but mine pump isn't that. Like we're not speaking to just a strength community. We have a plethora of all different types of people that are trying to get into fitness. We have everything from super advanced experts and strength athletes to the total beginner novice person who is clueless about strength training. And the last thing I want to do is to get into these crazy debates. Maybe when we first started, we would probably, I think, entertain some of these conversations because it was good for us to gain some traction that people could hear us intelligently debate or argue points like this. But I don't know, I'm very careful about it now because I don't think it's... We pre-screen it now because it's like if it doesn't hold any value to your average person, typically we don't even really want to discuss it. Yeah, well, and that all being said, look, here's the deal with the trap bar. I think it's got a lot of value. I think we all think that. I think using it in your routine on a semi-regular basis is a good idea. You'll notice gains in your glutes, your hamstrings. You'll get some good trap activation, some good mid-back activation from it. Great for strengthening your grip. Great for athletes. It's great. It's phenomenal for athletes. In fact, I've seen athletes train explosiveness with weights with the trap bar more effectively than other methods, other barbell and... You look at Max Marzell. You look at Corey Schlesinger. You look at Paul Favre. It's all good great friends of ours who are some of the best athletic coaches in the space. All of them utilize the trap bar. Yeah, they have great points for it. Next question is from Big Daddy Bass. What do you think is overall better for muscular health and longevity? Stretching, foam rolling, or mobility work? Mobility. Okay. Well, see, mobility work encompasses both stretching, foam rolling, and other things. So this is... The reason why I picked this question is I think it's important to explain to people what mobility really encompasses. Mobility refers to your ability to move through a full range of motion and have complete control with strength and stability through that range of motion. That means you have good mobility. Now, I know mobility in other circles may be used to just mean range of motion. Like, oh, how far can you stretch or how far can you move a joint or whatever? That's your mobility. That's not the way we use it. The way we use it is, can you move through that full range of motion but own it, also own it, also have strength and connection to it? Now, what are the methods to improve that kind of mobility? They include stretching. Stretching does a phenomenal job at increasing range of motion. It doesn't give you any strength or connection to that range of motion, but it gives you that range of motion. Foam rolling is another great thing that you can use. How does foam rolling work? Well, there's some debate as to how it works exactly, but it does allow people to move better with certain exercises. That way you can strengthen better movement patterns. So if I foam roll before I squat, I may squat better, so therefore I'm going to strengthen better squats because of it. Here's where I'm going to challenge you. One of these three things can live without the others. If you have the proper range of motion and you do one of these three things, you can eliminate the other two. Yeah, well, mobility work includes all of that. What do you mean foam roll? If you can do mobility drills, like flow sessions, like we have in our HIIT program, if you can do those properly and with good form, you may never have to foam roll or stretch. Sure, totally. Now, if you cannot do some of these mobility drills and you're limited, stretching and foam rolling are tools to help you get there. Totally, yeah. And this is, and I'm very passionate about this because I was, I'm just recently talking to my stepdad's new wife and she's about to do HIIT surgery. And one of the things that I'm stressing to her is that you may get the temporary relief after the surgery. In fact, you probably will. You'll probably feel amazing. But you're going to be back into this same place if you don't do the mobility work. If you don't work on your internal external rotation of the hips because- You're going to keep resting on the joint. Exactly. And so, and I said, but what's great is if you do put the work in to get there and to get these mobile hips, if you just stay up on the mobility drills, you may never have to static stretch or foam roll ever again. And why I'm passionate about this is because I've watched it happen to many clients and I've experienced it myself that once I did put all the work in to get that full range of motion up, as long as I did mobility drills that promoted that the foam rolling and the stretching was- I could totally speak to that in the way I used to train with my clients too. I would have them foam roll before every session. And I would have them do some dynamic movements and things to kind of get warmed up before I realized the true value in getting into these mobility drills, it promotes all those things. The movement of it is what it promotes, the strength, the control over it. And really, it's about having access. So if I'm in a certain range of motion, I just know that I can muscularly command a way to brace and protect my joint. Yeah, look, it depends who you're talking to, right? So if you have good movement patterns, if you can move through full range of motion, you can just lift weights with good form, deep squats and deadlifts and z-presses and rows and do that really well and work through full range of motion. And you'll probably never have to do a lot of the other stuff. Now, those other things are definitely tools. They're tools. If you don't have that kind of mobility, you find you have areas you can work on, you can utilize those tools to help you. You can utilize them. And good mobility work tends to encompass all of it. You're right. A mobility drill encompasses stretching and activation throughout the whole movement. You mentioned the flow drills that we have in MAPS Hit. Those are supposed to improve mobility.  And what I forgot to mention, well, so the knots, right? So that's the biggest thing that people want to attribute is it relieves my knots and these things that form these pressure points on my body if I do the foam rolling. And you come to realize doing these mobility drills, it relieves that stress. That pain alleviates. It prevents them from getting there in the first place. Right. That's what it does. And you can, again, if you're incredible each one of these individually, you still would have to. You could be incredible at stretching. You do yoga all the time. But that doesn't necessarily mean that you have mobility. You're flexible. You're flexible. You can do the splits, but do you have control through that range of motion? And that's where that's different. So stretching alone by itself is not good enough. Foam rolling by itself. Foam rolling addresses the temporary relief. It relieves those knots. Oh, okay. Now I can actually move a little bit better. So yes, it's a tool again. But again, foam rolling by itself without anything else doesn't work. But good mobility done correctly can live alone by itself. If you own the range of motion, you have control of it. So I'm talking to somebody right now who is in their early 20s. They have no joint pain. They have good mode. They can, they can move their joints through full range of motion. They don't want to waste their time stretching and doing foam roll. If you do mobility work, or to your point, Sal, doing full range of motion of all these different exercises that challenges each range of motion on every major joint, you will never have to probably stretch your foam roll. No, no. I mean, again, just having a good range of motion. I mean, reality is having a good range of motion without strength is causes instability. It causes instability. Actually is lack of mobility, at least the way that we're describing. I've worked with clients like this. You know, I trained, I trained a few women who were hyper flexible, hyper, they had long ranges of motion. One of them just did lots and lots of static stretching. The other one was just born that way. And they were constantly hurting themselves because they didn't have enough strength and tension to hold things into place. It was loose. Yeah, like I was going through all the research and everything when I was looking at isometric training and just isometric training in itself has an analgesic effect. So that basically they proven that it alleviates pain. And again, I think this is just, you know, speaks back to the fact that it just creates more stability in your body. Like it reduces that signal that we need to take care of this. Totally. And with that, go to mindpumpfree.com and download all of our guides and resources. They're all totally free. So if you need help burning body fat, you need nutrition help, exercise help, go on mindpumpfree.com, check out all of the stuff that we have that can help you download the one that you like best. It costs you nothing. You can also find all of us on Instagram. You can find Justin at Mind Pump. Justin, Adam can be found at Mind Pump, Adam. And you can find me at Mind Pump Sal.


Our Chinese colleagues have been dwelling on the contents of a 32,000 character Chinese speech. My president only gives me 144 character tweets. So I'm much freer to embroider my own thoughts into what I'm about to say. I start from an assumption that the, I think widely shared, but I'd be glad to deal with disputes on this, that we're going through a major transition in the role of important powers in the world, that the unipolar post-Cold War era has come to an end, and with the growth and power of China and the more independent courses sought by Russia and with Europe sort of left to its own devices, we are seeing re-emergence of a structure that would lend itself to a balance of power concept going forward, as opposed to the unipolar world we've been living with. That's my hypothesis. And that within that balance of power concept, I think the struggles we face in Iraq and Afghanistan and the problems that we have in the Korean Peninsula I think are all dwarfed by the larger challenge of how to manage the transition of China to a great power status through increased actual power and influence in a part of the world which is still regionally centered, where the US had, since the end of the Second World War, essential predominance at sea and very strong position, and is now in a position to try to protect its alliances and interests in the region while China's influence and capabilities grow. I think this is the most fundamental challenge we face. How do we make this transition occur as a plus-sum game and not turn into a wasting conflict between the US and China? In the process of the transition from the Obama Administration to the Trump Administration, Mr. Obama has always been more persuasive than active, and I think he overfulfilled his quota in talking to Trump on the importance of the North Korean problem. The North Korean problem is very serious and it has an urgency that's been accelerated by the young leaders' determination to rapidly develop military capabilities of a strategic nature. But I think this is a problem that's got a year and a half, two years, two and a half years to play out. And yet in the world of the Trump Administration it's assumed an urgency that transcends managing great power rivalries, managing the US-China long-term friction, dealing with the various hotspots around the world. And there's been a singular focus on it. I think this is misplaced, but that's where it is. And then within that focus on North Korea as the most immediate threat to the US, there's been a further concentration on the Chinese role in dealing with that. I have, if you go to think tanks in Washington or offices in the government, I think 95% of the people there would tell you the answer to North Korea is in China. I think that's fundamentally misunderstands North Korea's relationship with China. That's not to say China is not really important. China is a necessary part of dealing with North Korea, but it is not a sufficient element of a policy to deal with North Korea. So at some point if we're going to reach a posture of containment and deterrence over a long period of time, while entertaining the hope that someday we can talk them out of their weapons or talk them into downgrading what they have or limiting what they have, we've got to have a fairly realistic policy for holding the alliance with South Korea and Japan together, providing adequate protection, signaling the extended deterrence still works. And I think we've got to look at steps that have largely not yet been contemplated. For me there's a five-stage process for dealing with the North Korean problem in the short term, extending in the mid, maybe even the long term. The first is of course to say you're interested in talks because you want to keep a coalition of like-minded countries believing that you are a reasonable leader and you want to have talks if possible, but recognizing that the likelihood of talks and the prospects are not good anytime soon. I say that because I believe on the American side the sanctions that have been imposed by the United Nations and some of the unilateral sanctions that have been additionally imposed have just begun to bite and there's no reason to assume that North Korea at any time in the next few months is going to feel the pain to the point where it wants to come to the table and sue for a kind of peace. And I'm turning that around on the North Korean side. They still have yet to demonstrate a successful reentry vehicle. They've got some airframe issues, propellant and other issues to work through. So I don't think they're ready to say, hey, we've got the system. You come to the table and talk to us now. We want to freeze this as our new nuclear power status. So I think we've got months, six months. Who knows a year where neither side really wants to talk about talks until other than for purposes of diplomatic salesmanship. So what do we need to do? The second step I think we need to do is partly being implemented with some complications in the last week. And that is to ramp up what missile defenses we have. We have point mid-course and national defense capabilities. The point defense in Korea has been partially implemented. The Korean government is now getting a little wobbly on that and we need to look more into it. The United States has got a bill that's been through the Senate that will add 28 launchers to our Fort Greeley capabilities in Alaska which is a significant capability. But missile defense is not even 50% reliable. So that's just a necessary first step. The second step I think is we've got to start dealing with the ramp up of intermediate range missile capabilities in the region which threaten American positions in Kadena and other bases as well as our allies and friends in South Korea, Japan, American bases in Guam.  The U.S. is the only country still actively engaged in protecting the INF Treaty. The Russians have been violating it. The Chinese are not a part of it and have been building all sorts of capabilities. And now North Korea is rapidly developing its medium-range capabilities. So I think the U.S. needs to leave the INF Treaty and announce that it's going to be prepared to start putting middle-range missiles into the Northeast Asia. This is based on the model that we experienced in the 1980s when the Soviet Union put SS-20s into East Europe. Reagan, against very strong reactions in the Western European political world, installed Pershing missiles. That worked. It brought to a negotiation the INF Treaty that should be prevailing today but is not. I think it should be the model going forward. In the short term, we probably need capabilities against North Korea that both threaten North Korea in a way that's commensurate with the threat they're posing, sends a signal to China and also reinforces deterrence as an extended deterrence for our allies in Japan and Korea. The fourth area I would look at is reintroduction of tactical nuclear weapons on American vessels in the region. The temptation to go nuclear for Seoul and Tokyo is there. I doubt either government and the full consideration of policy and strategic concerns would go that route. But the ability of the United States to provide that kind of deterrence, I think, would help to tamp down the temptation to go on a nuclear path for those two countries, reassure the deterrence, and help prevent the North Koreans as they develop their long-range capability to threaten the United States from being able to then turn to the South Koreans and say, what have you got? Americans are going to be held at bay because we can put a pistol or a missile to their heads. That's an important part of that. The next component I think that we really need to wrap up is covert action against North Korea. And here we've been spending about $7 million a year on plug-in computer parts and telephones and things. There's been a little bit of additional cyber activity. But again, on the 1980s model, when Ronald Reagan went after Eastern Europe, the resources poured into covert action into Eastern Europe were far more significant as a share of spending. I'm not saying we're going to use the same methods on North Korea. The situations are entirely different. But I think I'm advocating a scale of effort on covert action against North Korea that is commensurate with the challenge that we've faced from them. Now, a lot of this will burn the ears of people who hear it or think the Americans are going to be belligerent. But I think one, the threats we face do require extraordinary measures. And two, if we get to a point, and this is hypothetical, that the North Koreans are willing to talk to us at other parties about capping, downgrading, whatever it is, we need something to bargain with. And certainly the United States is not going to bargain with the North Dakota missile fields against North Korea. So I think we'll be putting chips on the table that may or may not prove useful in a bargaining setting but certainly prove useful in a deterrence and reassurance setting. Now, is this enough? I don't think so. I think these are temporary and short-term kinds of measures dealing with a very contemporary problem. I want to get back to the big challenge, is how do we manage our long-term rivalry with China and keep it from becoming a wasting struggle? Here I think we need to burst out conceptually from where we are. The administration, as far as I can tell, they've been extraordinarily inarticulate, both in describing what they're up to with allies and with people like me who visit with the government in Washington on this new Indo-Pacific strategy, which looks very much like a warmed-over John Howard Koizumi, George W. Bush approach to trying to struggle to have some conceptual counterpart to what China was shaping up to be back in the first decade of the 21st century. I think China's continued to develop influence in the speeches prior to this dealt with some of the ambitions that China has. Some of these ambitions fall into the category that Bob Zelek described 10 years ago as trying to turn China into a responsible stakeholder. I think China is now, for the first time, kind of welcoming that role, but not using those terms. And we want to shape that. We want to try to grab as much of that and diminish as much of the threat side of that as we can. I think conceptually we ought to take a departure from this so-called Indo-Pacific strategy, which is really an effort to put some kind of muscle into Barack Obama's pivot to Asia or rebalance to Asia. For me, that was an example of NATO in the old-fashioned joke term. No action, talk only. The U.S. never really did anything in the pivot. And in fact, the pivot provided pretext for the Chinese to do some things which they thought were countering what the U.S. was doing. And we ended up in a net deficit in our position in the Asia-Pacific region, certainly the South China Sea would be a very good example of that. So just a quick cut to the chase. I think the United States ought to be coming forward with a policy of co-optation of China's new desire to be a more responsible stakeholder in the world. And we ought to be adjusting our positions instead of literally opposing the Belt and Road Initiative as a threat to us or as in the Obama administration opposing the formation of the Asia Infrastructure Investment Bank. Not only would it be cutting our losses since we uniquely opposed the AIIB and I think the count now is 57 countries to one against us on that one. But more importantly, to try to refresh the Bretton Woods instruments and bring them up to date where it was originally based on the victors in World War II and the G7 sort of had a bigger role and the ADB was added over time. I think it's time for another round of re-examination of the Bretton Woods institutions so that they're more representative of the country's shares of GDP around the world. G20 might be the basis for that model of re-examining it. And we want to try to draw China to agree and others to agree that the ADB, the Asia Investment Bank and the Belt and Road Initiative should properly be brought into the values systems that we have under the Bretton Woods system and where we can learn lessons from the mistakes of the past as AIIB has done in breaking away from some of the rigidities of the World Bank loan approval programs and things or board running mechanisms. Take lessons from that, try to update that. We ought to also have concepts of regional security. We've got a place that's ripe for a comprehensive regional security mechanism because of the various characteristics of the states and historical rivalries. But there are constant impulses to try to find regional security mechanisms, regional security values. I think the U.S. really needs to be much more vocal in putting for our values and our allies' values in trying to identify what we want to achieve with regional security proposals and tackle specific problems in North Korea would be one, South China Sea would be another. And then there are subordinate ideas that can be brought in this broad package of initiatives. For example, the South China Sea, the counter claims in the South China Sea have led to excessive fishing there. China has been consuming the fish everywhere that it can because it has a growing middle class with a high appetite for marine proteins. Other countries are pillaging what they can, when they can. We don't even know what the scientific basis for fisheries on the coast of the east of Asia is. And we can put together a multilateral effort to, one, establish a scientific basis and then see where that takes us in terms of how to sustain species and then where that takes us in terms of working out quotas for various countries. And this is a way of taking away the fuel for the disputes on territory that will be almost impossible to resolve in the absence of a conflict. So I think we need ideas at macro level and down to the micro level that are much more positive in addressing the challenge that China presents to the long-term American presence in the region. Thank you.