Welcome back to FNA and today I want to talk about why you need to have creatures on your demoreal. And this lecture is going to be broken up into multiple parts when talking about idea, selection, what to think about when you use creatures, which creatures and animals to select and why, what kind of reference material you could use, what kind of inspiration, just a whole thought process about animating creatures for your demoreal. Now this is a lecture that was based on a lecture that I gave at CTN in 2019 and I thought why not, let's dig this out, let's update a little bit and then present it here so you guys can watch it on the channel. And before I do anything, you just watch this for the first time, like who is this guy? My name is JD and I do animation lectures like these. I do animation analysis clips, I do acting analysis clips, review reviews, product reviews, all kinds of stuff. If you've been watching my channel, you know this is the beginning pitch. Browse around, check it out. If you like it, subscribe. If you don't like it, don't subscribe. What are you going to do? Well, that is that, that is the pitch. It helps my channel grow to subscribe. Let's get to the slides and let me explain to you what I mean with why you need creatures on your real. You need them because creatures are everywhere and this was from 2019. I'm going to update this, but just for now, my example was that these were the movies from 2019 and see this is what we have and you have many, many more movies. And if you look at them at the top, you can see there are creatures everywhere. It's not going to be just humans. Now we can switch over. Let's say if I do a search for animated movies 2020, that's what you get here. You can see here 2020 popular animated movies and you can see you got creatures, there's a creature in here that's 2D. You got a cat in this one. You got wolf. You got scoop.  You can scroll down. There's always going to be a creature somewhere. It's not going to be fully human. And even if we do a future search into 2021, let's see what we have creature here, creature here, and so on. You can continue. You're not going to have that many movies where it's going to be 100% humans. Compared to before, you have more movies with more humans, but there's always going to be a creature somewhere. Sometimes movies are just only creatures. If you go back to the 2019 example here, you got Secret Life of Pets, Ton of Creatures, How to 20 Dragon, Clearly, Clearly Creatures, Angry Birds Creatures, Lightning Creatures, Abominable Frozen has a little of you here and there, Arctic Dogs, All Creatures, and Spies in the Skies, a creature. And even if there's not that many, Soul, which I just took a look at, there's a cat that is a creature prominently in the movie. So there's a good chance there's going to be a creature somewhere. Even if it's tiny, it's look at spider-verse. You still got pigeons, you still got a spider. Someone has to animate those. And let's pretend you got this on your reel. This could be your junior position, an intern position, whatever an apprenticeship or whatever role you have. If you have creatures on your reel, you go, listen, we got to make this shots happen. You got this on your reel.  It might not be the hero shot that you wanted. You might just not do miles in this shot. You're just going to do only the pigeons, but it's still, it's something that maybe many other people don't have on the reel. It's one way to get into potentially a company because they're looking at a very varied skill set on your demo reel. Now, when it comes to animating creatures, there's going to be a different approach. In this example, I have Secret Life of Pets 2, Ratatouille in Lion King. I should also add Zootopia to that. Why? Just because you have, on one end, fully realistic creatures where you look at reference, you study them, and it's a fairly close replication of real life, which would be the Lion King and their other examples out there. Now, you have to stick to the real example just because the renders are very, very real. And if you do make it too cartoony, the face is too cartoony, it's a weird disc, it's not going to quite work. That being said, having worked on some more realistic movies is creatively not always the most satisfying thing because you are replicating something that's already there. It's still a cool challenge in terms of the animation technique, but that's that kind of movie. Now, when you go to the Secret Life of Pets, you have creatures that move like creatures, but they are cartoony, but they still have a lot of the creature behavior, the locomotion. Just the way they behave and move is still fairly close to creatures versus Zootopia, is where all the creatures are on their back legs, and they move and behave more like humans, and they might switch back to a potential animal state in the back and forth, but that is that kind of movie. What I like that's kind of the hybrid is Ratatouille, which I love just generally, it's a great movie. But the creature aspect is so good, just because you go through actual creature behavior where the rats, they move on four legs and they move, and you can see that person, the animator has studied rat behavior, locomotion, everything.   So you don't have to be on all fours and kind of pretend, but that doesn't quite always work. So it's a nice mixture of I can study real footage and behavior and the locomotion, all that good stuff, but then also go back and forth between actual acting that I can shoot and film, and visually it's also really interesting because you go back and forth between those two states. So there's a wide range of how a creature can be portrayed in the movie, super cartoony, super stylized, super real, something in between in terms of behavior and how they move and how they act. And if you as an animator use a lot of choices you can pick from, again, that makes it very exciting to animate creatures. Now, how do you approach animating creatures? So for that, I want to talk about ideas, inspiration and reference as it says here. Because a lot of times in class, when you bring up, you shoot anime creatures, people think of, let's do a cycle of a horse, like a gallop, or just a walk, and it's going to be based on footage, on a rotoscope, and it's going to be super boring to do, which it can be, but that's not what I'm talking about. I would still approach creature as in a character with the personality, the certain behavior, it can be stylized. There's just a different way to think about how you would animate creatures. So it's not the general cycle aspect of there's no personality behind it. And it's also as an animator, maybe not super interesting to animate and to learn into practice. For that, I give you this example here. I love this just because there are many things happening in this. You can see here, you have immediately the contrast of a big creature and a small creature. That's visually already interesting. Then you have the very, very long anticipation of the small creatures. You don't quite know what's going to happen. Is it going to be an attack or what is going on here? Then you have the technical aspect that's very complicated of a backwards walk to a stop to a reverse direction to a somewhat run to a stop and contact. All of that is very complicated. And on top of that, at the very end, you have the connection with the heads. So in a way, you got the static cow part where it's not much to animate. And it's there for the sheep to kind of, you know, interact with to a certain degree. The sheep itself, again, it's just, you look at local motion. You might have studied how they walk. You found something where they walk backwards. But now you combine all of this. It's not just I'm animating a sheep walking or walking backwards or running. Now it's, I'm going to use this for entertainment value where you set up a scene and it's a patient is huge as an audience, you know what's going to happen.  But then look at how long the heads connect runs forward and then and it's cute because you just hold this for just longer than a contact or a hit. It's just and what does that mean? Is the cow tired of fighting? Are they friends? And they just this is like a way of loving each other. It's like, what is going on? And to me, that already, even though it's purely local motion, the way mechanics, you can combine it and you can put elements together into a more entertaining shot. That's not just a cycle that has something where you are looking and you're interested that you want what is going to happen. Same with this, you can look at it's a bit of a longer shot, but you can see the cat. There's movement. Then you have this coming in. Okay, that's interesting. And then you have this. What? So let's look at this. So let's pretend this is what you've chosen. You are looking at a cat. So all right, you have movement of the ear. There's a head turn. It's a little bit of a shift. It's really not that much, but I think this is cool just because it's a small introduction of how a cat would move. It doesn't have to have complex steps or even sitting down.  How do they sit down? What are some of the moves? Again, your little ear ticks here. And then you got a faster move. You can show how fast this creature can actually move. And then after this, what do you see? It's a bouncing ball. Well, this is a classic Simon.  So now you're combining one thing that's potentially simple, then introducing a moment or just a focus point for the creature to look at. And I love that the creature or the cat in this case does not follow the ball. It stays put here. Then you have this. And what is going on here? It's an owl that runs. I love it. If you tell someone, animate a cat sitting, that just turns the head, right? Just do this and some ear flicks. It's like, oh, I can see this. It's kind of boring, kind of simple, whatever. You tell someone who's been doing this for a while, that's now starting with creatures, animate a bouncing ball. Really? Do I have to go back to that? That's a bouncing ball. Then you tell someone, do a run like an owl running. All right, that's already interesting and funny, but it might just be a run cycle and not that interesting potentially. And now take all of these together, combine them. You got the cat looking, there's a bouncing ball coming by, and then the owl running by. It's like, what is this? What's going on here? It's a funny ending, and it's not overwhelming in terms of amount of work, but the entertainment value, at least to me, I find the shot funny. And if this is on a reel, this to me would be more interesting than just a sight. I could be wrong. This is, again, also subjective. But think in terms of there are potentially simple elements that seem simple, but when you combine them, that creates something new and interesting. And again, the entertainment value, the humor, or sinus, whatever you have, could be more interesting and more personality-driven and character-driven. Then next up, you have this, which is definitely a longer clip.  You can see the dog. This is much more complicated because you got the full locomotion of a dog walking in, turning, lots of little steps. Of course, you can simplify this, but it brings in a pillow. It's okay. Why is the dog doing this? Grab the little dog. So now you got the weight assignment. Again, this gets more complicated. Obviously, for a shot, you kind of work on silhouette and clarity, but that is already huge. Okay. And putting this little guy on the pillow. And what is this? Stepping on that little guy? What is going on? Oh, no, I want to be with the human on this. And if you look at the last frame, it's incredibly uncomfortable for the bigger dog. The human in there is just there for context. Basically, you might have to animate some interaction. If a paw pushes on the arm, how that moves, but the human is not moving. There's no lip sync. There's no pantomime. It's just there for context. It's kind of the goal for the bigger dog. I want to get on there. So now you're combining locomotion walk and a turn. It's a combination of a weight assignment. It's a light dog, but it's cute where it's elevation from lifting to the ground. You got two different creatures, a younger and older one, a smaller and a bigger one. There's so many different elements in terms of contrast on top of again, the potentially in, I find this funny, the entertainment value of the dog getting onto what is this? Like a foldable bed or couch to get to the human. Then you have this one, which is one of my favorite ones. You have that happening. You want it, what's going on. That comes out. And then there you go. Now there are many, many elements in this that I want to talk about just because it's just way too awesome.  There's more things to keep track of. You got four legs now, there's a tail, how do they work? What's the gate? What's the locomotion? What's the rhythm? So much to do. Creatures are complicated. Now, if you are new to creatures and if you're like, yeah, I don't want to deal with all of this, then why not have the creature in murky water? Now you don't have to animate the legs. You don't have to animate the tail. It's purely this. Okay. What's a water environment and you can add something like that. Again, you don't have to animate the feet. It's not that much work, but you have this kind of setup. So now you have contrast.  You got a potential attack. And then you got the surprise of whoa, it's gone. And now look at the head turns of the tiger looks, looks around. This could be you. This could be you acting this out. So you can kind of add this. You don't have to really worry about the legs and the tail. It's easier to just animate this. And in terms of entertainment value, you got the weight and see patient what is going on.  That to me again, like I said, has contrasting creatures. So you can show big movement, you know, slower movement and more weight, even though it's in water and a smaller creature. That's a completely different creatures got wings and it's paddling and completely flying and swimming. It's just that already that combination, the contrast of that is interesting. And now you have the conflict or the problem or whatever situation you're choosing, where the tiger wants to eat the duck, the duck disappears. And as an audience, look what's going to happen. And you use the murky water as a point to hide and then bring out the duck somewhere else where the tiger is not looking. So think in terms of what creatures could I use and where can I put them? Maybe because I don't want to animate everything. So if it's a murky water, you don't see the legs, but okay, well, it's water. What else could I choose? That's part of water. And then combine all those elements, like I shown here into a funny shot to me, at least, where it's not your typical creature animation that you would expect. When I go creatures and students go, oh, gotta do cycles. Now that to me, it would be a different approach and a funny approach. Then you have something like this, which always cracks me up. So with this, it's kind of the same idea. So you're going to choose to animate a dolphin. You don't see too much in here. Maybe I should probably change the color given this here. So you don't really see them. You can see the general emotion and then this guy coming out. So again, you combine elements where you have not just one, but you copy paste an existing cycle that you have. You put that in the environment. Now you don't have to do crazy simple water. You can just kind of simplify this. Now you're adding a human, not too much in terms of locomotion and body mechanics. It's not super complicated to animate, but now you're adding this element, the creature that we usually associate with cute and nice and funny or just sweet. It's not so sweet. Look at the fins when this guy comes out. It's just happy.  I love this.  To me, this becomes a funny shot. And also it's the twist of it's a creature you would usually associate with something nice is now the villain or not. Maybe the human is a villain invading the dolphins, you know, home and they're just defending themselves. Whatever you want to read into this, but that you can imagine, I got to do a dolphin cycle. All right, we'll do it. Then copy paste, copy paste, offset a couple of times. So now you have a group of dolphins. And then for contrast, one does something else in all the others. And then you give that one dolphin an action. This may be a problem, a conflict. And now it has that one specific humorous moment. It's still a creature shot, but there's more of a story to it. Got more elements like contact and weight, a little bit of human animation. And I think all that combination again, is something more interesting than just a dolphin cycle. Now, as you grab any type of creature, they've like, that'd be fun to animate. Don't just stick to the scale of the creature. So what do I mean by that? So let's say you grab a spider. Well, what if the spider is huge? You got here the cat for reference, you got a human for reference. So maybe the creature that you want to animate could be really big, could be really small. In this case, you can look at the never ending story. That's a cool shot, cool composition. Now it's kind of like your wise turtle. Maybe by now this has been overused. Who knows. But again, you take a turtle, which is usually not that big unless, you know, there's some other ones that are huge, but it definitely not as big as this image there. So as you select your creature, thinking those terms as well, what if I change the scale? Is that going to make the shot more interesting?  Now it's really big or something really big that's really, really small. It's not just let me just grab the creature studied and animate, like with the dolphin, maybe go against type where they're not the thing, the nice thing you would expect to see. Or when it comes to scale, change the scale. Again, that could change the whole approach and idea of the shot. Same thing goes for reference. So when you grab reference, your animation doesn't have to stick closely to the reference.  That's cool. But maybe you don't want to grab this and just animate the same thing. It could be kind of boring. Well, you could choose something like this. So now you have an interesting entrance with a creature movement that you wouldn't expect.  It could be something that's potentially similar or just the action is similar. So in this case, you got small and big.  That is still happening in this case. You have an entrance, which I always like, but that could be also against type. You animate an entrance of a creature. The more you wouldn't really expect the creature to roll, even if it's a creature that we know doesn't have to be a fantasy creature like this one. Then you can do any kind of interaction between the two, if you have two characters there, right? I mean, imagine you have two because you want one to get onto the other. And then this is the element that we saw in the reference. But now you're changing it where the creature grabs the human. It's not two creatures anymore. And then you have this. It's a sort of a weight assignment. You got interaction. And you kind of show also potentially the personality between the two and how the bigger creature grabs the small one. Is it, you know, is it a delicate move? Is it just a kind of guy, get out of here. It doesn't really care. And at the end, you can go into locomotion where it could be something that you study. So if your creature is not something fantasy based, and it's a real creature, then you can still change elements. And at the very end, you show off as the creature walks away that I have studied this, I have studied this creature. I know how it walks. Let me show you how I do this. But within that overall shot, you still took elements and changed them. And it's still based on the actual reference that I showed you, but with enough tweaks to give whoever's in there more personality, there's something potentially funny, sad, angry, whatever you have in terms of how they behave, but it's different than just this is the reference. Let me copy it, kind of boring. And then that's it. With this example, even if you do a cycle, you can still have some of a change where something happens, the creature notices something.  And it turns around, slows down and looks back. And that's it. Even that's like tweak is a bit more interesting than just a cycle.  So even if you do a cycle, imagine grabbing whatever move you have, a walk or maybe not run, but yeah, something a bit slower and then give your cycle just heads up, eyes closed, snobbish creature, snobbish human, or just the general tilt throughout. Even if you take just whatever you did and you add an overriding element to it, an attitude, or I guess like eyes closed in the head up for the kind of like type of walk. Even with that, and you add a slight change to the end, it breaks up the cycle, gives it personality, gives it a focus or a reaction like in this case. And again, it doesn't have to be just the replication of a reference that you found. I always think in terms of I want to give this personality, certain behavior to it, just something that has character. And it's totally normal for you to look at all this like this is still way too overwhelming. Creatures are complicated too many legs and tails and wings or whatever. I don't want to do all this.  But the main focus is the human. So if you look at this shot here in total, you can see it's a great way to assignment with the human. And the creature is just there. Not that much to do. It's there for interaction. It's kind of there as a comedic element for the human to play off of. You have another way to assignment, basically right there. And then as you throw it, now you can add some creature behavior, waking up, you got the stretch, which again, just serves to scare the human. And then you got that funny ending. So it doesn't have to be all completely focused on the creature where you feel like this is too much as overwhelming. You can still have the main shot be about a human, which by now you're used to animating, and you just add a little creature element to it, maybe a contrast element for weight or some sort of interaction. So thinking those terms as well, you can ease yourself into animating creatures because they are complex and they are complicated to animate. So just pick a smaller element just like with the cat and the bouncing ball and the owl. Maybe it's just a cat bouncing ball and then a human. So it doesn't have to be, I'm gonna animate a creature flying around 10 dragons fighting 50,000 orcs. It doesn't have to be complicated. You can start small and find your way in. And maybe your idea is based on life action reference where it's humans. You're like, well, I couldn't find a reference that is actually the creature that does what I wanted to do. And I don't know how to approach this because all I can do is fill myself or what I like is based on life action with humans. That's okay. You can also do this. So an example from The Dark Knight, you get a foreground element, there's a dialogue, guy masks. This happens and reveals the other character in the background. Now I like this idea and go a bit further. So what if the background character is actually hidden? So what if it's something like this? I don't look super weird for that, for my example for the lecture.    What's going on? Then creature falls over, there's an arrow in the back revealing the human that shot the blow dart. So you can take human elements like this kind of re-jig the whole thing and make it something where I take the essence of a foreground element that falls over to reveal a background element. And you can change this around where the foreground element is a human.  Or it could be the human going, maybe joke, the human going up and then it has a like a snake coiled around the neck and passes out revealing a snake behind it. So the point being that you can still look at human reference, film yourself, just whatever you can find in movies and TV shows and then just look at what is the idea behind this? Maybe it's the staging, maybe it's the reveal and then incorporate human behavior, creature behavior, combine all of that. And again, it can be in a small scale.  You can start small, but think, as I showed in other examples, think of separate elements that can combine and that combination, even though separately might seem simple, a combination together makes it interesting, funny, scary, surprising, or just generally entertaining. Now, there's a lot more that I want to talk about, but it's getting long. I see this is a longer clip. So this is part one, it's going to be a part two, where I want to talk about more what the characters should be in terms of behavior, how you can go against type, how you can use environments, how the environments are going to affect the creatures, their situational awareness, are the creatures in a familiar or non familiar environment, stress reveals all kinds of things. There's so much more to talk about this will be part two and potentially part three, all of them, hopefully cementing the idea that creatures are not scary to animate. I mean, they can be complex, but you can start small, can be interesting, and it can be a really nice addition to your reels to round up your skillsets, just humans and creatures, different size, different scale, different age. I think all of that will make you more versatile animator and also more attractive to potential employers. And if you want to be more attractive, and you want me to help you to make you real more attractive with a weird segment, I have workshops you know my page, right? You can sign up at any time, link in the description or information I can help you, help your shots, schedule is always flexible, you can sign up whenever you want, you can start whenever you want, and that is that. Speaking of start time, it's a long clip, so if you're still watching this, thank you so much, I appreciate your time. And like I said before, if you like what you saw, you don't miss any of my uploads, feel free to subscribe and hit that bell button, that is the YouTube pitch. And that's that helps my channel grow, and you won't miss any of my almost daily uploads. And I'll say thank you, and I'll see you until then.


Summer is approaching fast. That means everybody has a fitness goal. Now, here's the deal. We wanted to do an episode about how to get the best shape by summer shredded but there's a lot of people with different goals, different starting positions. And here's the real challenge. The real challenge is the plan. What is the plan from now till then to get the best possible body because without a plan it's just not going to happen. It can happen, but take a lot longer. You're looking to do this by summer. So in today's episode, that's what we're going to do. We're going to break it down for you and we're going to talk about the three most common types of people who are trying to get fit by summer. Who are those? That's the beginner. Beginner. For the first time. Yeah. Okay, let's be clear here, though, too. A beginner I would put in this category. Not only this is your first time really getting after it, but also this is your first time in a long time. Yeah. So you could be somebody who's been in and out of the gym for 10 years. But you haven't worked out for like a year or two. Yeah, but you haven't worked out for like a year and you're ready to get back into the swing of things. I would still put you in the beginner, even if you're not considered a beginner in terms of, you know, lifting, you know, you're familiar with the lifts. I think that you should still progress as if you're because, and by the way, that's not like a knock or a bad thing. It's actually a good thing. Like there's this thing that happens to a lot of, you know, quote-unquote advanced lifters or people that have been lifting for most of their life that have taken a year, two years off, and then they want to go right back into like training volume compared to what they were doing when they fell off.  Like because it is like being new all over again, even though you may have had experience in the gym and follow that kind of a protocol before you progress to the more advanced type of thing. Yeah, so people kind of just getting started or who haven't been working out for a while or just not familiar with, you know, different exercises and how they work. Then the other two most common goals are I want to build lots of muscle or I want to burn lots of body fat. I want to get rid of lots of body fat. That covers pretty much everybody, right? Of course, within those are things that are much more specific, but that does cover for the most part everybody. And depending on where you fall, that's what will help dictate the plan because here's why people don't get results for the most part. Why people don't get results as satisfactory as they want or as fast as they want. I don't like to say as fast because sometimes people's goals are unrealistic. Like I want to lose 40 pounds and look shredded by next month. Like, okay, that's not going to happen. But even with realistic goals, oftentimes things don't happen fast enough because people don't really have a plan. And not just the plan like I'm going to go to the gym three days a week and I'm going to try and eat better. Like that's kind of part of the plan. But I mean a real plan like here's how I'm going to work out the next few weeks and then the weeks after that and then the weeks after that. Here's what my diet is going to look like now. Here's how it's going to progress. And here's how it's going to change. Here's what I should expect at this stage, at that stage. Here's when I do these exercises and those exercises. So it's methodical and it's not just like it's super impulsive where it's like, oh no, I got to make up for all this time that I haven't been putting in the gym and I can get it all together in a really short amount of time. Yes. You know what's funny about what you're saying though? In a small snapshot of let's say only four weeks, you're right. It's not the fastest way necessarily per se to maybe for someone to see the results that they're looking for. But over the course of three, six and nine months, it is the fastest way. I think that's why people get so hung up is they get this like, oh, I need to lose this much weight or I want to look a certain way and I want to get it as fast as I possibly can. But the fastest way to get there is technically kind of the slower way at first because the results ramp up on the back end when you do things correctly. When you jump out the gates and you throw the whole kitchen sink at your body, you may get the initial first two to three weeks faster results than the person that's slowly building the correct way. You see that with the weight loss for sure, right? But then they're not accounting for like maintaining that muscle mass. They don't get the definition, they don't get all these other attributes they're going for. You know what's reminding me, have you guys ever go to Universal Studio and this great theme park in California and they're these places where they would film movies and they're fake towns? Yeah. So it's like it looks like you're in a western, you know, like you're in the 17 to 1800s in the West. Boomtown. Yeah, like a boomtown, right? But from a distance, it looks like a saloon, it looks like a bar, looks like a... But then you walk up and you tell it's fake. Like, oh, I could like push this over with my hand and these windows aren't real and nobody's inside. Right. So could you build a fake house that looks like it's moving faster than a real house? I mean, from a distance, I guess you could, but it's not really a house. It'll topple over. So to do this the right way, there's only one way to do that and the right way gets you better results and faster results in terms of getting closer to the ultimate goal because you could lose that initial five pounds really quick by simply moving more and eating less. But if your goal is 15, 20 pounds, like in pure body fat, it ain't gonna happen without a plan. You need to have a specific plan and yes, exercise and eating differently are part of it, but what makes up those things and what's right for you are really what dictate just how effective it is and the biggest mistake people have is they don't think that far ahead either because they don't know because they think that, and this is a common thought. A common thought is the value of exercise is just movement. So really, does it matter what I do to a large extent? It's just am I moving? That's great. So there it is. And oh, with food, it doesn't really matter too much. So long as I eat foods that are somewhat you know, quote-unquote healthy, whatever that means and I eat less and then I'll get there. No, that's a tiny piece of the pie but really there's much more that goes into it.  Okay, so what does that look like specifically for the beginner? I mean, obviously the first thing that comes to mind is you know, addressing any posture, correctional stuff so that sets yourself up for one not having any potential injury also to getting the most out of the lifts that you're going to be going into I think of that. I also think of exercises that are either body weight or little movement like I love the stability ball type stuff where I'm working on not only posture with someone like that a little bit of instability some dumbbell work what does some of the programming look like for this person? Yeah, so the two things you wanted to talk about well, there's a few things that you really want to consider when you're a beginner one is understand that exercise really is just the stimulus that tells your body to change and adapt and the stimulus how you know it's appropriate is based off of where you're at now and a beginner doesn't need much stimulus to cause the body to move in the right direction but there's more to that it's not just that it doesn't need much more than what it needs actually becomes too much and overcomes your body ability to change and adapt so this is not a case where if some is good more is better there's if some is right more is not right and it actually gets you there much slower so you gotta have the right dose I would say is one of the strongest things you can say Yeah, I still think this is a major consideration because there seems to be this thought that you have to be able to accomplish a certain amount of exercises or this kind of more intensified workout for it to be any kind of value for you to even step into the gym and for you to even start this embark on this journey at all for your average person I feel like that thought is just still out there when in fact it's really just it's such an individualized experience if you can understand how to really like you know peer into what your body is telling you and you know in terms of like the overall intensity adjusting it accordingly so you kind of lean a little bit more on less so you're planning on coming back as opposed to you know taking it all on once what's up everybody special episode this is to help you get ready for the summer let me tell you what's going on first and I'll tell you what the giveaway is because I am going to give away something pretty awesome here's what we got going on we created specially for this episode three workout program bundles each one has programs that are combined and ebooks combined for specific goals here's what they are we have the summer starter bundle this is for beginners we have the summer shred bundle this is for those of you that want to get cut lean and then we have the summer strong bundle those are for those of you that want to build muscle and strength all of them discounted heavily okay heavily so if you're interested in checking them out go to mapsaprol.com alright so here's the giveaway if you leave a comment in the first 24 hours that we drop this episode subscribe to this channel and turn on notifications choose you as the winner we'll let you know in the comment section and you can pick one of those bundles for free so whichever one of those bundles you want if you win you let us know in the comment section if you are the winner and we'll give it to you alright here comes the show so what comes to mind for me is I think hopefully Andrew can have the team shoot up some clips and videos from some of our different programs to give an example so the listener or viewer can get some visuals but for me it looks like a maps starter maps 15s type of programming with the combination of maps prime as far as the priming and posture stuff like focus on that going in yeah so let's talk again you mentioned posture to be more specific it's more like what would be referred to as correctional exercise make no mistake by the way correctional exercise is still muscle yeah you're still working out the difference is correctional exercise is setting your body up to be able to later do some of the most effective exercises you're able to so if you take a beginner you haven't worked out for a while just putting them under like if you've listened to the show before you know that you know we like barbell squats for example or barbell deadlifts great exercises very effective at building muscle and speeding up the metabolism and setting it up for fat loss and all that stuff very functional but if you haven't done them in a while or never putting you under a bar and expecting you to do a barbell squat you're not going to derive any value number one because you don't have the skill of it and you don't have you probably aren't going to have not just not the technique but the stability to do so and you'll probably hurt yourself so there are prerequisite exercises and things you can do to set yourself up so that you can do that exercise yeah just to reinforce everything really just to make sure everything's operating properly you're able to get into these positions and hold and sustain those positions which a lot of times people don't realize like I'm even just in a split stance it's hard for me to like maintain balance you know right there that's an issue like we have to work on that we have to get you grounded we have to get you to be able to control your body at the level now we can add load and you're going to see a lot more substantial results once you're able to control yourself yeah and I do want to say this again because sometimes people skip this but try to skip this part because they think oh this isn't the fat loss part or this isn't the muscle building part no no you burn body fat and build muscle doing this as well there's just an order an order of operation and you really want to be able to stabilize your body and at least build enough strength in your body to support yourself to do more of the traditional exercises but there's still exercises and you're still working out you mentioned maps 15 Adam what I like so much about a program like that so for people aren't familiar rather than having someone like for example in the past if I trained a beginner I would have them meet me two days a week and we would do about a 45 to 55 minute workout okay so and that's usually where I would start most people more than that would not only not be necessary but would probably be too much again we're talking about strength training here so what we did with maps 15 is we created a program where instead of doing two 45 to 55 minute workouts you're doing 15 minutes every single day the reason why that's so great for a lot of people but especially beginners is because it's hard to develop one of the challenges with getting started with any kind of workout program is just maintaining this new routine and structure like you weren't doing two one hour workouts a week before now you're starting to do them and it's a new thing in your life and you gotta make time for it and then okay now I gotta be consistent through all of life's challenges what we found as trainers when we trained people for a long time was it was easier for people to do a little bit every day versus a lot sometimes so instead of doing two one hour workouts they just did 15 minutes on a daily basis so that is a great approach for new people when somebody's brand new like when I talk to a family member in fact my aunt is about to start strength training she's like never done it before what should I do should I go two days a week and you know do 45 minutes to an hour no no I want you to do 15 minutes every single day she's like what she's like well that's actually easier I can squeeze it in I do it every single day develops habits faster I said absolutely that's the point so that's a very important thing to consider you also Adam mentioned the stability ball the stability ball entered into the fitness space and became quite popular and got abused for a while where everybody was doing a stability ball and so then we moved away from it but the real value of stability ball training that's the big you know looks like a big inflatable ball right the value of it is when you sit on it or use it for exercises because it's not a chair or a bench it requires you to maintain stability with your body and posture and you want that you want to learn how to do that as a beginner because there's lots of exercises that require that if you do overhead exercises or rows or whatever and you don't haven't learned yet how to really stabilize your body this is where lower back injuries can happen or just you know bad technique so stability ball exercises are excellent excellent for beginners one of my favorite uses for yeah I want to add to your point about math 15 to I mean this is how I just started so and I was completely off either it was just I wasn't very consistent I was sporadically working out one day then maybe another week I have two days and I have a week off and then like so my training was really inconsistent just you know three four months ago and the way I started back really being consistent was actually math it for that exact reason was just to help build that consistency I'm only doing two exercises a day and it's getting enough of stimulus because it's still more total volume in a week than what I was currently doing before that and that initial need to build muscle and change my physique was literally just from doing math 15 before I started to scale it up totally now as far as diet is concerned for most beginners this may sound counter right this might sound a little contrary to common knowledge but most people think okay I should just cut my calories right because most people are looking to lose weight not necessarily we like to and we found this to be more successful to add things to someone's diet and do what's called a reverse diet because we're trying to fuel muscle building and muscle growth they're going to gain tons of muscle muscles hard to build but what that does just by by moving in that direction especially if you do it the right way by adding quality protein is you actually start to speed up your metabolism that makes fat loss way easier like think of it this way right now if your metabolism was 50 percent hotter how much easier would it be to get lean right that means you don't have to move as much your body's burning those calories on its own so a reverse diet type of an approach where you slowly add calories especially through high quality protein in conjunction with proper strength training will start to speed that metabolism up so that we get what's called like a snowball effect is what I used to refer to it as like it starts off slow but that snowball as it goes down the hill gets bigger and bigger and bigger well this goes back to the original point that I was trying to make about if you get let's most of these beginners that would choose this beginner pathway are probably trying to reduce body fat or lose weight right and if you just start moving way more than what you were before say following one of these programs right and reducing calories significantly in the first couple weeks you would see more weight loss on the scale than say the person who I tell you on the reverse diet but fast forward this two months three months down the road and the person who did it the right way by reverse dieting first and speeding the metabolism up is going to see fat loss come off significantly faster and then stay off and then also be in a place to maintain where they want to be forever versus the person who just cuts cuts cuts cuts around the gate and then they're a month away or month out and their body's plateauing they're halfway to their goal and they're eating hardly anything and they're like f this this is not sustainable which by the way go any lower happens to most people when they get in this place so 100% I'm on board like this is this person I'm reverse dieting right now and even though their goal may be I want to lose 20 pounds or 30 pounds look great in the beginning for summer it's like okay that is the plan but we're first going to reverse diet and put you in a better position metabolically before we start to cut out by the way if this is like if you want to lose like 10 pounds like you're thinking I just want to lose 10 pounds of body fat just well often times the scale doesn't move much at all but you did lose quite a bit of body fat and just gained muscle and that means you're smaller by the way I want to be very clear muscle takes up less space per pound than body fat it's just more dense so if you lost let's just say 10 pounds of body fat be gained 10 pounds of muscle people would think you lost 20 pounds of on the scale like you're just smaller and that muscle doesn't take up much space but you look tighter and more sculpted in fact I would get clients that would happen with clients all the time they'd come to me like salad I know we've been working out for a couple months the scale hasn't moved people keep asking me how much weight I've lost and say well you did lose body fat you just gain muscle now your metabolism is faster and you're smaller because body fat takes up more space all right the next person the that you know type of person that is trying to get in shape for summers muscle we're trying to gain some mass usually this is a guy typically especially a young man or whatever but I've had female clients yeah I put like even like booty gains right here that's muscle building right right so I put booty gains for the bikini in this position I put hard gainer in this position I put just somebody in general who has a harder time building muscle and wants to build a muscular physique that's I put all those people in this category yeah now a big a big thing to consider here and this is somebody that's already been you know kind of working out obviously we covered the beginner so you're already working out and you're like I just want to build I want to get into the summer and I want to have more muscle and more shape well the for this kind of person usually we see big changes in their performance in terms of the results by simply manipulating and utilizing intensity properly okay intensity is one of the most important factors when it comes to your workouts it also simultaneously happens to be the one that's the most abused yes so you know you have like frequency like how often you work out you know how many days a week are you working out that would be frequency volume would be the total amount of workout exercises and sets and reps that you do so if you worked out you know for an hour that'd be more volume than if you worked out for 20 minutes so it's volume and then there's intensity which is simply how hard the workout is well you know if you've been working out for a little while you're trying to build muscle you probably realized early on that oh the harder I work out the more muscle I build but eventually this stops real fast and then you think oh I must need to work out harder which you know and you work out even harder and then still no results I need to just ramp it up even more and then not only you're not getting results now you're going backwards so intensity needs to be utilized properly and manipulated in a way to where we are working with your body's ability to heal recover and adapt we're not just beating the crap out of yourself if you do this the right way then we can trigger and amplify muscle growth if we do this wrong way then nothing happens at all or worse you actually start to go backwards so some piece of advice for people and this actually is now present in one of our most and our more recent maps program maps anabolic which you know we actually created after already having the podcast for eight years and interviewing experts and experimenting with more people is we realize that you can utilize very high intensity training and it will build muscle very quickly so long as you alternate it with less intense higher volume style workouts and throw in some what are called load weeks and if you do that magic combination right there oh boy the results happen real fast which really I mean it's highlighting the importance of recovering and adapting versus just you know healing and getting into that kind of recovery trap where we're working out so intensively because it's showing us results out of the gates because this intensity is really providing your body that signal that stimulus but if we keep on that path of just over intensity like over and over and over it just gets to the point where now we're just healing now and we're not really moving the needle forward anymore so this is just always something that I think most people are going on their fitness journey don't really consider how vital and important the recovery processes with sleep with nutrition with also just like undulating your intensity of your workouts I also think that this person because we are playing with things like intensity and like failure training and stuff like that the thing that complements this is like a prime pro type of layout where I have all these exercises that are designed to make sure I keep all my joints moving optimally and healthy because when you are flirting with things like intensity you are more likely to see the joint pain or the issues like that and so staying ahead of it knowing like I kind of have this rolled shoulder forward and then also I know that I'm going to be pushing overhead presses and hitting like days where I might be taking it to failure and so knowing that I need to put the work in to make sure that I'm in an advantageous position to make sure that I don't hurt myself and I get the max benefits for it so I think having something like that to complement that type of training I think is necessary for this advanced person or ideal for this person. Yeah, if you've been working out for a while and you're trying to build muscle mass you've probably hopefully already figured out that some exercises just build more muscle than others like the bench press the barbell row the barbell squat, the dead lift the overhead press those exercises just they just build a lot of strength in comparison to other exercises that purport to work the same areas but then you wrench this problem if this is you and you're trying to build muscle and you're getting stronger and you're pushing intensity by lifting to failure something starts to hurt my elbow starts to bother me I can't dead lift anymore because my wrist bothers me or I can't overhead press my shoulder bothers me or my lower back is starting to get tweaked now I can't squat I can't build muscle building exercises because something hurts, something's bothering you gotta switch it out for an inferior exercise and maybe you'll still build some muscle but it ain't happening nearly as fast for this person just to compliment what you guys are saying it's really important to do targeted mobility work targeted for the areas that you know are getting stressed quite a bit so like if you're bench pressing a lot your numbers go up and you start to notice like my left shoulder starts to feel a little bit funny and I'm starting to lift big weights but God I love the bench press it builds my chest and my shoulders and my triceps really well targeted mobility work on that shoulder or targeted mobility work for your particular body type to help with the bench press will keep those numbers moving forward if you don't do that your body will literally stop you from getting stronger because your central nervous system will say we're not letting you lift more, we don't feel stable or worse you push past that you overcome your central nervous system stopping mechanism and you're yourself now you're really screwed, now you can't work out at all so targeted mobility is so important for people really trying to build muscle mass because usually that comes along with heavy weights and lots of intense strength training that will stop you into tracks if you don't address it you know back to the intensity thing for somebody watching right now when I said alternate like literally you could do one week for let's say your back 15 sets where you stop 3 reps short of failure, you get a good pump then next week now you're doing just 4 sets but all to failure you drop the volume, ramp up the intensity alternating like that oh boy that keeps things moving in the right direction do the failure every single week like a lot of people do and after about 3 or 4 weeks that's it you're stuck in the mud well and to add back to your priming and mobility point that you're making at least I don't think you guys do I know for sure me if I am lifting heavy, bench, overhead press squat or deadlift it's mandatory that I do certain mobility drills before I go or it's almost guaranteed that I will hurt or stress something when I do it for sure it won't get the max out of the lift like if I try to go cold into one of those things or just do like a warm up set like some coaches just advocate for and then go into it there's no way I'm getting the most out of that lift or I'm not potentially getting hurt out of that lift and I know it's equal in terms of like beginner to advanced in terms of like that but I can't help but think like the further along I've gone in my career of like lifting weights like how essential that is now that I've understood that like because you do pay attention to that you peer into those little inconsistencies even more when you're lifting heavy weights and it pressures it more and so you I very much have had to you know be humble myself and realize like I have to do this in order to maintain the optimal function of my joints in order to then get any progress going forward because it's hard it gets harder and harder to get progress the longer you're in Yes, the bigger and stronger you get the higher the risk becomes when your form is off just a little bit okay so to paint it plainly if you're deadlifting with a hundred pounds and your form is off a little bit versus you're deadlifting with five hundred pounds and your form is off just a little bit obviously the risk is going to be much higher with the heavier weight because it's heavier and it's going to stress the joints a little bit differently now if you have perfect form good stability good control you're fine but when you're off you're off so targeted mobility work becomes it's important for the beginner it's crucial for the person who's been working out for a long time which is by the way where the whole heavy lifting thing has got a bad rap like it has something to do with heavy weights don't lift heavy because you get hurt or it's bad for your joints the heavier you lift the more perfect why don't you consider that I don't know how you guys treat it but to me let's say it's a day where it's been a while since I've tried to train to failure like singles doubles or triples for me I make this rule where I have to earn that and part of earning that is doing the pre-work going into that and if I'm not willing to do all my work then I won't do it it's just that simple if I'm in a hurry I can do this then I'm not training to failure I'm not pushing the risk it's not and so the only way that I earn the right to lift like that is that I've done all the prerequisites before I go into that and I've just learned that over years and years of making the mistake of not doing that another thing for people trying to build lots of muscle who have experience is at this point you're probably somewhat well versed in some of those pretty awesome exercises which is great because they're great exercises but here's the downside you probably think back to when you were learning how to do a squat and then there was that beautiful period where you just seem to get stronger every week and muscle started to build and then at some point you got real good at it you've done it for a while now adding 15 pounds to the bar is really hard you can actually somewhat tap into that by doing certain unconventional strength building lifts and there's some that are out there that for some reason became unpopular that are amazing muscle building exercises so if you look into some of these lifts that you probably haven't done before and really tap into some of those what they call newbie gains and they're out there like for me for example we created a program called map strong years ago and I was familiar with a Zercher squat or a Zercher deadlift never really programmed it in my workouts but it was part of our program we were selling it we were creating it in my routine and it was great it was like the first time I started to learn how to deadlift at first it took me a while I was uncomfortable and then I started getting better with them and then I was gaining muscle like I just started working out this is my body never done that exercise really for a long period of time so there's exercises out there that I like there's two other exercises in that program that you didn't even name that I got that from snatch grip deadlifts and circus press movements were like forgotten movements in my programming forever like I didn't even do it till post 10 years into my career adding that into my routine oh my god the response from that such great movements that's why it's one of my favorite programs is because of all the unconventional lifts in there that I think most people don't think to program and they're just super beneficial another thing of value with people in this category and I'm going to be careful when I say this because I know the tendency is to abuse what I'm about to talk about but if you do it right they can be pretty awesome there are advanced training techniques that are out there that bodybuilders and power lifters and Olympic lifters and strength athletes have used that can really amplify results and progress now the key is to use them judiciously be very intelligent with how you use them so an example would be like forced reps or negatives or partial reps or using bands for progressive resistance for example like these are all examples of advanced training techniques if you use them let's say you pick one and use it once a week on a specific lift or twice a week and you know maybe on another lift and you do it right you will see faster muscle building results if you mess up and you do it too often you'll go backwards so just word of note there are advanced training techniques out there but you've got to use them right if you use them wrong and you might as well you're better off not doing them at all now the last person which is probably 80% of people going into the summers they want to lose weight they want to get lean they want to get cut shredded whatever they want to burn and they have experience right now and they're consistent right yeah these are people with some experience yeah I'd say this probably this fits 80% maybe the listeners in the podcast probably are lifting in the gym pretty regularly or have been doing it for a while so you have some experience and maybe you have already kind of built a little bit of lean tissue and metabolism is getting up there already and now it's like okay go for the reveal yeah exactly it's the reveal time I've got a perfect amount of time getting ready to head for say 4th of July or whatever like that now I want to get shredded like that's the person I think about when we talk about this yeah because this is you know really falls into that like aesthetic category or looks category I'm going to talk a little bit about training for balance and symmetry in the body which can have profound visual effects okay training the body to be balanced you might not see a huge change on the scale but visually when someone looks at you they'll notice you'll look a lot different a lot better and balance can be upper to lower body that's an obvious one but it can also be more commonly right to left right is your right arm way stronger than your left arm is your right leg way stronger than your left leg are they as fit as each other unilateral training this is where you train one side at a time bodybuilders have done this for a long time to improve how they look training one side at a time and doing it properly can really change how you look even though the scale might not move much in fact we had somebody in our forum we posted this a long time ago where she did a dexa scan and she followed one of our programs that's designed for this called map symmetry I forgot about this and there was a like so much lean body mass on one side versus the other so a little bit more on her dominant side than the other and then she followed the program and it did exactly what it was designed to do is it is it brought up the lagging side and visually substantially you it you know and it's something that you pick up on subconsciously you could pick up on symmetry so just something to focus on if you're getting lean and your goals to really improve your aesthetics like try to balance out both sides rather than just drive your body forward I wish I understood this when I was in my 20s I didn't get this I totally didn't get this I think I was like an in teenager teenage did 20 early 20s you know like you get with many clients who are obsessed with the body part I just want to have big arms I just want that big chest or I just want big legs or a butt like we get obsessed with these body parts that we tend to be insecure about or that we in fact were infatuated with and we want that and if we only like were to focus more symmetrically on the body like you'd be so much happier I think back to like for me it was like arms as a kid like that was like this big deal I just wanted arms and so that's all I ever did and the reality is that even when I laid off doing arms at the volume that I was doing in my teens and early 20s and started to build a more symmetrical I got more compliments about my arms than I ever did but yet circumference wise they were technically an inch plus smaller than what they were when I was training them like crazy but it's crazy what a difference having sculpted shoulders does for the bicep and the tricep and the same thing goes for a good balance quad to hamstring to calf ratio like when you train the body symmetrically like that like it will even if you think that you only want one body part is all you think you care about that one body part will look better when it's balanced with everything else. It's so funny how much of a head turner it is for people that are like super symmetrically balanced and like athletic for sure fit looking versus like I remember seeing somebody I've seen on Instagram in real life and was just like whoa it's just you know because there's angles and there's things that can highlight those featured body parts and what people want and versus like in real life and then you see and it's just like it's so it takes you a second to kind of put it together it's like it doesn't really fit. It's rare I mean posture and symmetry if I see someone I say I always compliment them because it's always going to look good. Yeah it looks when someone stands upright with good posture and they're symmetrically balanced it's I think the most amazing expression of their body or our bodies when done so. Yes it's the difference between oh like muscular versus oh that's a beautiful body. Bodybuilders have understood this for a long time I mean they know they've learned for a long time that they don't just get judged on overdeveloped body parts but rather how it all flows and looks together and training for that makes a very big difference and again if you're trying to get cut you're probably interested and you want to look a particular way. Don't ignore this this makes a very big difference in your appearance. The other thing is to bring up balance is to bring up body parts that may be just specifically lagging for yourself. Now I want everybody has this by the way everybody has a body part that they're not happy with I don't care who you talk to if they've been working out for a while and you say you know how's your workouts going what do you like what do you don't like everybody's like oh I have it's my butt or it's my the back of my shoulders or it's my back or whatever right they have that one body part here's a mistake people make they add volume to that body part more exercises more sets and more reps and they do nothing else with the rest of the body or they train it with more volume with the same intensity and so they just end up beating the crap out of this body part overtraining it and actually cause it to not just not progress but to actually regress or also developing the ones that are already overdeveloped in comparison to that and so even though you keep the ratio the ratio stays the same so you bring up that one body part but then the rest of them came up too. There's a smart way to bring up a lagging body part and usually you reduce volume from other areas or you add volume to that weak body part but you do so in a lower intensity with different exercises so you're not just overcoming your body's ability to adapt and recover you're actually bringing that body part back up. Now another part and here's where I want to get real careful is you know the calorie burn of your workout we've talked about this many times on the show it's not the most important thing what's more important is that you speed up your metabolism it's more important that you eat a particular way we'll get to diet of course because these are people who want to lose weight but in a short period of time let's say an eight week period of time you can make some pretty profound changes by burning more calories in your workout but you got to do it the right way because if you do this the wrong way what will happen is your body will actually reduce muscle to keep you from burning too many calories remember your body's always trying to keep itself in balance so what's real popular for this is usually high intensity interval training right hit training because studies show it burns so many calories oh my god 30 minutes a hit it's like doing two hours of other exercise that's true but it's not just a mishmash of exercise if you really want this to be effective it needs to be strength training hit workouts strength training hit workouts that are well programmed will burn a ton of calories will get you lean faster in a short period of time but you won't lose muscle so if I were to structure this the way it would look for me personally is a more you know symmetry slash aesthetic type of programming and then and and carb cycling while I'm heading into summertime oh for the diet and then the last finish it up with it the last two to four weeks is hit and I would start to reduce calories as I slowly go down and the way I would reduce it is through carb cycling so I would carb cycle let the lower carb days be the natural lower calorie days let the you know maintenance the surplus days be the little bit higher calorie days and then as I start to get closer and closer to the end of the you know or whenever the time I'm trying to peak or look my best if I have vacation or fourth of July or whatever is when I'm gonna ramp up and introduce the hit for those last carb cycling is that was popularized by bodybuilders but now lots of people are catching on when you cut your calories calories are gonna come from proteins fats or carbohydrates those are the three places you'll get calories from proteins and fats are essential so you have to eat a certain amount of them you have to absolutely have to your body cannot create essential fatty acids it cannot create essential amino acids but your body actually technically doesn't need carbohydrates now I'm not advocating you never eat carbs again I don't think that's very well balanced approach that also has its own negatives but you could survive without carbs so when cutting calories and also simultaneously try to give yourself enough energy for your workouts and simultaneously trying to not lose any muscle it makes sense and this is again why bodybuilders did this make sense to cycle your carbs cut your carbs when you cut your calories raise them a little bit when you need the energy for particular types of workouts and the data shows that this actually has some merit people have better workouts and psychologically the diet doesn't feel as difficult they feel more satisfied and they get better results and look I've done it all and personally this for me is the best way to get lean it's the easiest it feels the best and I still have decent workouts I think there's more to that too and you kind of alluded to it with the the essential you know your fats and protein is essential and in my experience almost anytime I set like when you assess the diet when you're not telling people what to do and like what are they doing almost everybody was under consuming healthy fats or definitely under consuming protein so the idea that when you would go into this restrictive part of a diet to lean out to potentially cut the two things that you already are probably low on is not a good strategy so I've always loved utilizing carb cycling or some form of that with clients when it comes to reducing body fat unless they have some sort of special condition or autoimmune issue where I put them on a different type of a diet but for most people I think it's one of the best strategies to lean somebody out for that exact reason that most people don't hit their protein and healthy fats on a regular basis and so why would I put you on a calorie sugar diet where I pull that out when it's just got you consistently eating that now I'm going to pull that away, no I'd rather pull something like carbohydrates that aren't necessary so you can get those fats and proteins, 100% alright so here's what we did for those of you that want it to be very specific, written out you know exactly what to do each day, each week and you have help along the way we took and we put together three bundles for the three types of people we talked about the beginner the person who wants to build muscle and the person who wants to get leaner what we did is we took the programs that are best suited for all of those we put them in bundles and then we discounted them tremendously so you have the summer starter bundle which is for beginners, the summer shred bundle which is for those people who want to burn body fat for summer and the summer strong bundle for people trying to build muscle and build strength for the summer all of them again combination of programs with ebooks to help with every single thing that we talked about and be specific tell you exactly what to do reps, sets, form everything and the discounts are massive, like you're going to save more than half off the regular price so if you're interested in any of those and you want that help, go to mapsapral.com today we're going to teach you everything you need to know to build a strong well developed chest when I think of weak points and areas that I struggled with developing for a really long time, chest was up there it was for me for sure I got more caught up in the weight I could lift versus how I was developing my body I think it's one of the most challenging muscles to develop for most people because the form and technique


Hi, my name is Misha Benjamin, I'm legal counsel at Element AI. For those of you who don't know, Element AI is a Montreal based, we're still a startup but a rapidly growing startup in the AI field. We were started with strong collaboration from certain people at University of Montreal and we still have that strong collaboration. We have researchers that we share with several universities here in Montreal and that relationship is very important to us. It allows us to want to innovate, to have access to the latest innovations that are happening within universities and it allows us to keep that talent somewhat in the university so that they keep evolving, driving research that we can then come in and apply into services. And I think because of that link with the university, we have an interesting take on how open science initiatives can be translated into industry and obviously one of those elements is how we use and then re-contribute open source software to the community at large. So I definitely agree with Richard and I think everyone else here that open science is something that's very important. It drives innovation in a way that little else can. It also allows a certain democratization of innovation where I think we all know that there are certain companies that are either in-house or buying up a lot of the innovation that's happening and this open atmosphere helps us compete on a larger level with them. So speaking of some of those companies, I think we also have to be aware that although many larger companies have a lot of rhetoric around supporting and contributing to open science and open innovation, if we look behind the scenes, what we see can sometimes be a little more concerning. So for example, Facebook had a large PR push around how they were putting tons of things under open source and allowing licenses and allowing people to play with their data. But if you looked at their custom open source license language that they had crafted and deployed, basically what it said was that there was an underlying patent license to all the open source data that they put out. But if you sued Facebook for any reason, that license was pulled. So the effect of the license that they were putting out for PyTorch, which was a pretty fundamental tool that a lot of people were using, made it so that no one could sue Facebook in the future. Luckily, and it was great to see that there was a large outcry against that type of language and that type of control of open science that they were trying or open innovation that they were trying to exercise. And they backtracked on that, but that won't always be the case. And it especially won't be the case if people aren't aware of the different rights and aren't a little more critical of a certain rhetoric that there is around open innovation. So what does that mean for people who actually work and either contribute or use or exist in open innovation areas? So I think, as I said, one of the biggest effects of open innovation is an explosion in open source software. So for those of you who aren't in the AI field, you'll know that a lot of the innovation is actually available for anyone to use and play with. Most people contribute at least something to open source software. A lot of companies who are applying AI to real-world problems are actually pulling their original models from open source repos as well. But the way people think about open source software today doesn't necessarily reflect the reality. So a lot of people see open sources binary where something is either open source and can be used in any way or it's not. The reality is that just because something is accessible and open source doesn't mean that it can be reused in any way you want. And the flip side of that is that it's possible to contribute to open source communities meaningfully and really drive innovation that way, but also retain certain rights or certain advantages that you have as competitive advantages in order to build a business around it. So there's a whole toolbox of rights that exist within the software and any systems that you might develop. Unfortunately, unpacking them takes quite a bit more than 10 minutes. There's everything from patents to trade secrets. You can open source the architecture of a solution you build without open sourcing the actual code. That code remains protected through trade secrets. That's your competitive advantage. But at the same time you allow other people to innovate around that architecture. One example among many. And it also allows the choice of open source license or how you use open source software allows you to keep certain rights to yourself. What that means is you can retain your competitive advantages while contributing to open source software. And what it means to is that as a community if we make certain choices, we can keep certain tools in order to keep everyone honest within the open science community. So there are a lot of people, there's a lot of money involved in the fields that are the most open right now. And unfortunately that gives motivations to certain people to take advantage of the communities. But a good example is let's say if more people contribute under the MIT licenses, they retain the patent rights to their solutions. Most people who contribute under the MIT licenses don't enforce those patent rights but if there are bad actors and if as a community we decide that certain people are taking advantage of the way we're acting now, we retain those rights and have the possibility of keeping people in line. And there's a bunch of different ways to do this and obviously we can't go through all of them today but I think the most important thing is to remain aware of, to think more strategically about what licenses you're using, what you're inbounding and be a little more critical of what some people are saying around open initiatives and whether or not they're being honest about it. The other area that I want to touch on quickly, I know we're short on time, is open databases. So at the moment there are a lot of great databases that are publicly available. When you're using them, you have to be aware that just because they're publicly available doesn't mean you could use them for any purposes. There's a big, the licensing use around databases at the moment is quite unclear. We hope that in the future there will be a lot more clarity about what you can and can't do with a publicly available database. For instance, the rights could go from using it to benchmark a solution so you just run a model on it, see the results and delete that train model. Everything, you know, ranging to being able to embed representations of that data in your model to have it constantly accessible. And those are two very different things and they affect the rights, you know, for talking if there's privacy rights involved with that data, they affect the people whose data it is in very different ways. And it's a conversation that we're not really having at the moment. I think elements in other academic labs are going to be publishing more and more around this soon. And we're going to make sure that there is a sort of common vocabulary at least used to describe these different rights. But one thing that the academic community can push is a standardization around license rights, around bias in data, things like that. There's a lot of papers that have been published recently about the quality of the data, trying to standardize that. But I think that has to extend a little further. And that standardization of both rights and quality will allow more privacy preserving tools that will help us share our data more broadly while being respectful of people's rights because those tools can apply to a bunch of different data sets that have now been standardized and are more easily shareable. So obviously there's a lot to impact on all those things. I would say that the most important things that I've seen from my time sort of at the forefront of open innovation with large companies involved as well as universities is that you have to take a more pragmatic approach to what's actually happening on the ground. We have to make sure to protect our SMEs and startups, make sure that they're aware of the rights they're giving up when they use or contribute to open source, and also push towards standardization and make sure that we're acting as a community towards a more open system. Thanks.


The staff of the Vancouver Police Department Recruiting Unit are awarded a Chief Constable Citation. Sgt. John Gibbons and Al Gosby, Detective Constable's Cal Boyer, Corey Folkstead, Dan Holland, Lisa Kofod, Mark Mann, Christian Oliver, Andrew Peng, Tegender Bate, Parmark, Desiree Sparrow, and Darren Tolanco, Constable's Julie Birch, Andrea Dunn, Joanne Hardman, Shaef Mangy, Michelle Neufeld, and Ryan Perry, and assistants Ms. Emma Laro, Ms. Erin Murray, and Ms. Nicole Tyne.


This is the new wireless microphone system by Mirafak Audio. This is the WE10. I reviewed a lot of microphones in the past, but there's something really unique about this one that I really like, and that's the ability to have a micro SD card in the transmitter, so you can automatically back up your audio when you're filming, or you can use it as a standalone recorder. Now that's really unique, and I'm gonna test that out. Before I do that, let's go ahead and unbox this, run through some of the specs, and let's go ahead and see how this sounds. So let's open the box. You can see inside the package, very well packaged. Let's take these out. Before I go into further details with the microphones, let's quickly take a look at the accessories. So inside the accessories box, you have a pouch for the microphones. You've got yourself the USB-C charging cable. You have a wired lavalier microphone. You have a wind protection sleeve that you can put on top of the mic. This is a cable for your phone, so you have the TRS to TRRS, so you can use this with your Android or your iPhone, and you also have the microphone connecting cable for your camera. So let's take a look at the microphones in more detail. First let's take a look at the transmitter. So you can see it's pretty compact. It fits right there in the palm of my hands. Now on the left-hand side, you can see there's where you put the microphone. You have a light indicator for the charging, the line input, and the recording, and this is where you power it on. It has a belt clip, which you can also put on top of a cold shoe mount. This is where you will add the microSD card. It doesn't come with one, but you can buy one separately and put that in there. And if you wanted to use this as a standalone recorder, you can start and stop recording using the switch here. And there's the USB-C charging port. So very basic. You have the microphone there on the top. In terms of the receiver, you have a colored OLED screen, on this side. You can adjust various levels of gain using the decibel button there. You can mute and unmute. And this is a low-cut filter switch, which actually is great on a wireless microphone kit like this. This allows you to eliminate some of the background noise. Maybe you have an air conditioner or a heater. Maybe you have a busy road outside your office that you want to eliminate those noises from. This is really great to do that. USB-C charging port there. You've got yourself the headphone port if you wanted to monitor it. There's the camera cable that you attached to your camera and the power button, as well as a clip. Let's go ahead and turn both of these on. And they should be automatically paired the first time you turn them on out of the box. So you can see there's a blue light on transmitter. And the receiver has turned on. So let's take a look at this screen in a little bit more detail as well. As you can see, you've got the audio monitoring there at the top. At the bottom there, you've got the decibel level. So if I press the decibel button, it's currently at minus 6. It can go to 0, 3 and 6. And then all the way back down to minus 18 at its lowest level. So five different options there. Low-cut filter is 0 on that side. It can go to 170 and then 230. Obviously, you can adjust this to whatever level of noise you have in the background. You've got the battery indicator there on the top right, as well as the signal strength on the top left. Now, these do operate on the 2.4GHz frequency band, which I think is great. And you can also get a range of up to 50m barrier-free. Now, I'm going to do a few audio tests. I'm going to use the internal mic on the transmitter. I'm going to also use the lavalin mic. And this will be indoors. And then I'm also going to go outdoors, test the range a little bit, and use the lavalin mic in that to see how much of the wind and noise in the background can be eliminated. I'm also going to do an audio test of using an SD card and using this as a standalone recorder put into the transmitter without any connection to the camera. One of the reasons I really like this is in case you maybe didn't put the cable in your camera properly or the battery is low, this will back up your audio so you don't lose it. And this has happened to me a couple of times in the past where I've done about five minutes of filming and the battery on my receiver was actually dead. And I lost everything and I had to reshoot again after charging it. This will automatically back it up in here as long as you have some charge. The second reason why you might need to use this is if you do maybe screen recordings on your laptop and you do tutorials, like I've done Final Cut Pro tutorials before and you don't need to film any video, then you can just use this while getting very high quality audio while doing a screen recording.  So I will be testing it with the SD card as well. So let's go ahead, set this up and I'll give you some audio samples. Okay, so let's take a look at some audio tests. Currently you're hearing the audio from my shotgun microphone just underneath the camera. Now I'm going to be switching to the Merifact WE10 and this is the audio now coming from the internal microphone of this wireless microphone set. What I would like to do next is now switch over to connect this using the lavalier microphone rather than using the internal microphone on the transmitter. Now I have the lavalier microphone attached. Can you guys tell the difference? I think when I'm doing a lot of filming, the lavalier microphone is a lot more flexible for me and it sounds a lot better than just having the actual transmitter clicked to your shirt which can be a little bit bulky at times but this I think is a really great option. So let me know what you guys think of the difference in the audio using this. What I'm going to do next is now put in a micro SD card directly into the transmitter still using the lavalier microphone because that's what I prefer. I'm going to detach the receiver from my camera and just use that as a stand-alone recorder and then sync it up with the video recording from my Sony a7 III. Okay, I've got a micro SD card. I'm just going to put that into the mic here. Now that's in, all I need to do is basically switch this button from stop to record and it will start recording internally onto the SD card and then I can just use this separately. So right now there's no microphone attached to my camera. I'm using my shotgun microphone again but when I turn the recording on I will start using the audio coming directly from the lavalier mic that's attached to this transmitter. I can still use this hand-in-hand to see the audio monitoring and I can adjust the gain and the local filter which is very convenient having this because if you're filming by yourself you might not be able to go and see your camera every time to see if the audio is coming correctly if you can monitor it properly and all that kind of thing. So let's go ahead and turn this on. You'll see there is a blue LED indicator light underneath the recording button so the audio currently is now coming directly from the micro SD card on my transmitter and I'm also using the lavalier microphone for this but at the same time I can just keep this receiver in my hand just to monitor the audio. So like I mentioned there's multiple use cases why you would want to do this. It's a bit of a peace of mind and security to have backup of your audio just in case you lose it for whatever reason but I'm going to do a lot of Final Cut Pro tutorials for my YouTube channel and I'm going to use this to record rather than using the internal microphone of my MacBook Pro. So for me this is a great option. Now the last test that I want to do is I want to head outside give you a bit of a range test in the audio using the lavalier microphone and I will connect this back and let's see how it sounds outdoors. So I'm just outside now in my back garden the birds are chirping there's a busy road just on the other side of my house can you guys still hear me quite clearly?  So I'm going to go walk this way you might hear the audio cuts off but I'm going to continue speaking so I'm walking to the front of my house but at the same time I'm now blocked by the house to the receiver so you guys might not be able to hear me but what I really like about this is there's a backup recording happening directly onto the micro SD card and I am now standing at the front of my house so the original audio going directly into the video might have cut off but because I'm now obstructed and have the recording on my SD card I can still use that and sync it up with my video and for me that's one of the best features about this microphone so what do you guys think of the audio when it's outdoors? I went towards a busy road I've got noises from birds in the trees in the background and it's not too windy but there's a lot of ambient noises coming from my background so it's a huge thumbs up from me Alright so back indoors I have the receiver connected back to my camera using audio from the lavalier microphone now for me I'm very impressed with the audio I'm impressed with the range overall the features on this is great now it does have high fidelity microphones inbuilt into it correcting any type of vocal curve now what that means is it has 360 degree omnidirectional microphones that allows you to get super clear audio from all directions now if you guys wanted to learn more information or purchase it then check out the latest pricing information in the link in my description check out Mirafak Audio they do some really good camera accessories especially around a lot of the shotgun wireless microphone ranges if there's anything else you guys want to know specifically about this model let me know down below otherwise if you did like this video and you do like a lot of tech videos especially around microphone and camera accessory kits make sure you go ahead and hit that subscribe button make sure you like this video and I will catch you guys next time take care