If you want to pump your body and expand your mind, there's only one place to go. Mind pump, mind pump, with your hosts, Sal DeStefano, Adam Schaefer, and Justin Andrews. In this episode of Mind Pump. What, what, the Mind Pump, bro? It's here, we arrived. Can we put the in front of there now? Yeah, the Mind Pump. For the first 17-minute intro, me, Adam, and Justin, talk about a variety of subjects. Mainly how cool and how good we are. And how humble we are. Mind Pump hit number one in fitness podcast in the world. So we talk about that for a second. We give each other hand jobs. Then we talk about cooking and baking with Organifi supplements. They make a plant-based protein powder. They make a green juice that's really good. They make a red juice that's really good. Adam talks about some of the recipes he's been having fun with. If you go to organifishop.com, enter the code Mind Pump, you get 20% off whatever you want. We also talk about Adam's Thanksgiving. We talk about the Jell-O salads. People, it really is a thing. Yeah, sorry mom. Why do they call it Jell-O salads? Weird, it's not even a salad. And we talk about other types of foods that we eat during Thanksgiving. Talk about gender reveal parties. Adam was totally confused. Baby showers. Boy or girl, not, yeah. And I give someone a shout out and then everybody tries to piggyback on that. And then we get into the questions. The first question was, are there any detrimental effects of holding stretches for extended periods of time? Static stretching lately has been getting kind of a bad rap because studies are showing that if you do static stretching before your workouts, you actually increase risk of injury. Did that mean you should throw them out with the baby in the bath water? And this is where we talk, right after this question, we talked about Prime and Prime Pro Bundle right now. This is, if you're not somebody who's signed up for the FRC that we have coming in February that we talked about, and you're interested in what type of movements that you should be doing for correct imbalances, do alleviate any aches or pains that you may be dealing with, or how to just take care of your body before you go into a workout, that's how these programs were designed. So make sure you guys check out the Prime Pro Bundle that we have. Yep, both of those can be found at mindpumpmedia.com. The second question was, what is the best way to lower body fat? Sounds like a very general question. We get that question a lot. We're actually going to some of the hits that are on Google for that question. Yeah, we go into some interesting detail with that. You might be shocked at what we say in this episode for that question, in particular all around cardio.  Then the question, the next question was, if all of us had to leave the fitness industry, what would we do instead? And who would survive? And finally, Apparently not Justin. The last question is, what role do we think personal trauma plays in disordered eating? So when people have a bad relationship to food, how much can we blame things that happen to us growing up in our childhood? And we get a little personal with that. We talk about things that happen to us and why that drove us to work out and eat the way we did. Also, Adam mentioned the Prime and Prime Pro Bundle. Those two programs, extremely correctional again, that can be found at mindpumpmedia.com. It's that old time Rocky and Roe. Dang. So try to take me to a disco. You never even sent me out on the floor. Today's music ain't got the same sound. I like that old time Rocky and Roe. Yeah.   Wow. Tamoli. It's, talk about red line. I got MP. I wanna blow everybody's ears out.  I feel moisture. I feel the energy. That was, I feel the energy. Why are you so excited? I don't know man. It's a good day. We're number one. Is it because we're number one in fitness in the world? Yeah, in the entire world. And podcasts in the world? Yeah. So, let me just paint the picture. Take the earth. And it's flatness. There's all, like take all the fitness podcasts on earth. Yeah. We're the first place. Yeah. Yeah. And we're in that category. And we're humble. Yeah, I was just gonna say lots of humility coming through this. And we're super humble about it. We tagged everyone underneath us. Hey, let's be honest though, man. See, so they knew. Underneath us. Let's be honest. Let's be honest.  It's been a grind. It's been a hot, Is that our first time hitting? Didn't we hit number one a little while ago? Yeah, no. We've hit it a couple of times now. But it's still, it's not, I don't know. I think when we first took off, one, it's surprised, right? We came out the gates. When we turned the podcast on, there was a great response. 2017 has been a different one. 2017, we've been in this for a little while. We had a decent amount of listeners. We're always typically in the top 25 or so. But man, it's been a grind to break through that number one spot since then, man. It's been tough. So it feels good to be there. There's a lot of really good rewarding. There's a lot of good podcasts out there is what's happening. It's getting more competitive. It's getting more competitive. It's getting way more competitive. A lot more podcast, period. A lot of people are starting podcasts now, which I think is exciting. I like that people are tackling this. They're able to get their voice out. They're getting their message out. And so far from, because I've been on quite a few of the podcasts now. I've been interviewed by quite a few podcasts and some of them are small. Some of them are just getting started. And I love seeing that because I love seeing that energy and that enthusiasm. I love seeing, if you have a good message, I'll get on your podcast. I don't care how small you are. I don't mind. I love talking about our message. And I wanna encourage people. I wanna encourage people to, we can't, here's the thing. The bottom line is we can't do, we cannot get this movement to do what we want it to do by ourselves. We need partners. We need other people to do this. And I love seeing other fitness podcasters who are promoting what we consider a good message, which is balance, wellness, strength, fitness, health, feeling good. And this is such a great platform to talk about all this stuff because you can go into great depth and then the truth will kind of emerge as a result. And all these like other forms of media are so fast in like short little clips that people get misled all the time just by these little blurbs. And I feel like people need to sit and listen and work their way through all these different topics and ideas. I don't know if I'm more excited about that or I'm more excited about the adventure we have ahead of us now with Amelia Boone or the Thrive Market, continue on our relationship because those companies both Thrive Market and Organifi have been two of our best partnerships. And so we just locked in the next quarter with both of those companies. So that's a, I don't know, there's a lot to be excited about today. All that today, all that happening today. Yeah, it's cool. It's cool. A lot of energy. It's cool when you work with organizations that have the same, you know, similar message, you know, that, you know, so far everybody we've worked with that we've talked to in these companies. It's a lot easier to talk about. Great integrity, you know, they have the right message. They understand kind of what we're all about. They don't try to control us, which is, this is very difficult. We're tough. Here's the thing, we're not the easiest podcast to sponsor because we don't follow direction very well. We just don't. Our ideas are better at the end of the day. And to share with the audience a little bit of how that comes out. Like I remember that when we first signed with both those companies and like most of these bigger companies that, I mean, they run all the analytics. They've done all kinds of marketing advertising. So they send over like all this, this is how, what we want you to say. Read this commercial. Read this. Yeah. And mine pump goes, no, we're not going to do that. No, that's a, if we like it, then we'll talk about it and it'll happen naturally. Right, right, right. And that's it. And it's, Well, that was the beauty of waiting. Waiting for the companies that we actually all would use and that we actually totally enjoy. Speaking of Organifi, thank you for posting that recipe finally. I got you guys. I know, man, it looks delicious. Still haven't tasted it. That's a new one, man. And I had some made for you guys. I'm going to bring some. Okay, so I won't forget. Okay, good. I'm glad it's on podcast. We have it on record. Because so far you've made like five different things. Yeah, we've been playing around with them. And me and Justin have had none of them. It's a zilch. Zilch. I should share the ones that are disasters. So I love my girl. Organifi pizza. So Katrina has turned into like quite the baker and cook in the last like four years of our relationship. And I absolutely love it. And she loves to experiment now.  And she's completely like 180 to be, you know, we always have a home cooked meal. There's always meals that she's prepared already in the refrigerator. So I eat like a king now. And now she's starting to get into the baking because we've been messing with all these recipes. Organifi is incredible. Like if you haven't been on their website. So their stuff cooks really well. It does. And you're using the green and the, it's usually the green powder in the protein, right? Right. So some recipes are better with just, and what I was just going to share with you is because the green goes so well, she's been like trying it almost everything. Well, she made these red velvet chocolate chip brownies and which was perfect for the way, I mean, the protein powder. Like that was perfect for it. But she thought, oh, I'm gonna try the green juice in there. And it just did red velvet, chocolate, vegetables, vegetable flesh. Yeah, dude, it was a total, it was a total. That's worth trying. Yeah, it was an epic fail for sure. It was not a good one. But certain, like it just depends on what you're making, right? So things that... I wanna see the macros. I think it would be smart if we knew what the macros were because, you know, we have a lot of people that wanna know... I know, I know. That's just one more step I have to do to do that. I actually do that, like when I'm competing and tracking, obviously. But I'll tell you right now, I look at it and add it up to go like, oh, it's a light, healthy snack. This is not a... Because you're making those same brownies for things.  I'm assuming that's what you were gonna bring. This is what we're bringing my mom. My mom tells Katrina to bring a jello salad and she's... Katrina goes...  Well, it's this thing that my mom has made where we make jello and they put marshmallows in it. I don't know why it's called a salad because there's no lettuce in it. It's green jello. Oh my God. It's awful. And I told my mom, like, my girl's not gonna bring jello salad to this. Like, no, it's not okay. Dude, that's not just a thing there. That's a thing in my family too. I can't understand it. I'm like, what is this? It's not even good.  Like, no. Yeah, are there staple dishes you guys have at Thanksgiving that are different than the traditional dishes? Oh, the ordinary. You know what I'm saying? Like, everybody does turkey. Everybody does. Is there something that's... I mean, we have... Pop tarts. What? Just kidding. Oh, I thought you were serious right there. I was like, what? I was like, that's laser. Hey kids, I made pop tarts. Yeah. I don't think there's anything like two or... So Katrina's family, they do this like three layer mac and cheese thing. That's pretty crazy. I've never seen anybody do it before. And it's like... You guys don't do tamales? Justin would literally orgasm. Just eating it. Oh my God. 100%. Make sure not to give Justin some of that. No, no, it is a cheesegasm. It's like three different types of cheeses that compliment each other. And it's like layers. And then there's just some noodles and... I wish I could have dairy. So that's something that her family does. My family, there's nothing too original.  My mom does the sweet potato yams with the marshmallows. But what I... I mean, we have this 100 year old recipe that's a stuffing recipe. And my mom, you know, stuffs that... We actually cooked the stuffing in the turkey, you know? So I don't know. Yeah. So a lot of families don't do that. I thought everybody did that. Like I just assumed, because I grew up on that. And then I'd have all these Thanksgiving... That's the way you're supposed to do it. Yeah. And I'd be like, what? A box? What? The oven? What?  That's the only way to have stuffing.  That's the only way it's real.  But my mom...  It is. But that's it. We don't really have anything else. I think that's really crazy. I mean, do you guys cook your turkey different every year? Or do you cook it the same way? I still want to go to somebody's house that fries it. I did that one year. One year. So tell me when you do it. I didn't do it. My friend did it. So he had the fryer. First of all, did you know that a large percentage of fires that happen around the holiday season are because of fryers? Yeah. I didn't know that. Apparently they're extremely dangerous. That makes sense. Yeah, I always hear how dangerous it is. And when you lower the turkey in the fry, because we had it outside, so my buddy, it was at my buddy's house and we did it. It was a friend's giving. So it's kind of like a Thanksgiving, but not right. That's the new thing. Do you guys know that? Yeah. The week before Thanksgiving is friend's giving. People are always doing things and labeling. Why don't we start a holiday? Yeah. A mind pump giving? Yeah, pump giving. Like the push present? You know what I mean? I had to find that one out. The fuck's a push present? When you give birth and then now you have to give him a present. What? For the process. Why? I'm not making it up. This is something that was expressed to me. I was like, you're making this up. Explain this to me. So the present goes to the... This is the present after your lady gives birth. So the husband gets nothing? No, no. All the work we did. Yeah. Yeah. Which makes sense.  We push too? I mean, I would do that out of like the kindness of my heart. Anyway, but like, you know, put a label on it. I'm not doing it. So who gets it? Just friends are supposed to do that? The girl. The mother does. Okay, wait, let me back this up a little bit. So we've got now, we've got engagement parties. Thank you. We have... Which engagement ring? And when you have baby shower. Okay, so when I grew up, a baby shower, dudes didn't go. Right. There were no... We lucked out. Oh no, I refuse. I will not go to anybody's. I've been to... Don't invite me. I've been to two of them. I've been to two now, baby showers. Wow. That's horrible.  Yeah. That's how they do co-eds. You play... I've been to a few. No, no, no, no. It's always been games. It's just now we are in the games too. This is not for men. Yeah. There was a... One of them was a relay. Dude, they go... So... Yeah. And I'm like, I got to run. I don't even run to work out. You want me to run for... We're already awkward. Around babies. Katrina and I went to... One of her best friends had won a baby shower. And it was like, it was all... It was Tiffany's was the theme. So everything was wrapped in the Tiffany's paper. All the gifts to the cake was all Tiffany's. Alluding to like presents like that. Yeah, yeah. We were all... No, everything was, dude. It was ridiculous. How many was your Tiffany's gift? We were all white, so you were all white. It was crazy.  For a baby shower, dude, out of control. I don't know, dude. I don't get it. But then they have the engagement party, right? Then they have the baby shower. Then they have... There's another one I'm missing. I'm missing another... Yeah, there's another event that guys... Reveal. A reveal. Oh, yeah, yeah. Gender reveal. That's a thing now. Gender reveal, baby shower. Everybody's so creative with that.  So the gender...  Gender reveal parties. Can I tell you what? There's a lot of planning. There's a lot of money that goes into them now. So can I tell you what? Thank you, Bob, dude. I thought a gender reveal party was somebody coming out of the closet. Yeah. All like a trans? Yeah. So Katrina, she tells it. The first one that...  And she tells me who it is. I'm like, what? They do that now? Oh, did not see that coming. She's lesbian. I had no idea sometimes.  She's pregnant. This is the kid, the kid's coming out. And usually... I'm like, oh, I'm so confused. What does this mean? And what they do in these gender reveal parties is there's usually either a balloon or a cake or something that you cut into and then is it blue? Oh, it's a boy. It's a girl. And this didn't exist when I had kids. And my daughter's eight. So this is a recent phenomenon. No, we found out right away. What do you mean? Like a girl or boy, like based off of... Just put it on Facebook, huh? Yeah.  Yeah. Well, hey, you know what though? You didn't get presents. So you could have got more presents. Oh, I see. That's what it is. It's how you milk gifts out of people. Well, I'm a good person. You know what I'm saying? I don't do that to my friends. No, I think that's what it is. It's just how can we get more gifts, man? Let's get out of control these days. Oh, it's getting wet. Everything's a gift. I know. I wonder if this is just... It makes you wonder. I wonder if it's like retail companies. Conspiring. Of course, of course. You know what I'm saying? Of course. What do you guys have on the shelf now? Like, you know, dominating Christmas. I'm like, who is this elf on the shelf now?  Who was I talking to that is into fashion there? Tell me that, how much that's evolved in the last 10 years to where, you know, it used to be clothes, there were seasons, right? So this is fall, winter, summer collection. Oh, no, it's like 30 seasons now. Yeah, now it's every week. So it's 50 something. Well, they know every time they change a season that they're gonna sell more clothes. Right. So they, now it's... Burn and burn. Yeah, stuff moves so fast. That's why we're gonna release a new maps program every month. It's every week. Every month, then every year. Every week. There's a new maps this week. What else can we figure out here with it? I'm all mapped out. What else is left? Oh, man, it's crazy. Oh, bring on. You know what? I wanna give a quick shout out. The reason why I wanna give this shout out is because I always appreciate when people do a good job with business. I was on a podcast, it's a newer podcast. I got interviewed by Alt Radio. Great guy, Elijah is the host of the podcast. It was episode, it was October 4th that was released. So it doesn't have an episode number. And we talked about how to naturally race testosterone. But great guy sends me a freaking thank you card, writes a nice note, and then gives me a gift card to Amazon. Wow. Like all of this is totally, like you don't need to do that, dude.  Paying attention. That's very nice of you and you're doing it right. You're doing it right. Ask, you know, it's a... Dude, you can't be doing those like that. Then I have to give out all the... Yeah, you can't be starting to give people love on the show like that. Well, did you get an Amazon part? No, I get stuff in the mail all the time with that. That's true. Shout out, step your game up. Yeah. What do you mean get stuff all the time? I get stuff in the mail all the time. Like what? Don't share it with you guys. Oh, you have the mail to your personal address?  I see. If it's something that I'm gonna use, you guys are gonna use it. What? Like I just got some hats like from my boy Rantz out there, Taylor. Taylor underscore made. Send me something. Don't piggyback my shout out. Well, you're gonna get an order of man supposed to send me a hat. Don't steal that. Right? You guys are making my shout out. It's Luster now. Well, we live like assholes without a shout out. We have another episode we'll record. No, Luster lost.  We have gestures coming our way too, bro. I thought it was very smart, very smart business, very nice, nice guy. I think that's right. Very, very good.  If you send Sal, if you're gonna do it right, send Amazon card, he'll talk about you in the show. Well, I mean, really, if we analyze the data, you send Adam a gift, it doesn't tell anybody. Sell to, give it to Sal, you get a shout out. Wow. It does buy you some.  Bring on the bird, Doug. Quo-o-o-o-o-o! Engle-a-flambant. Quimera quo-o-o-o-o! Today's Quo-o-o-o-o-o-s being brought to you by Quimera Coffee. It's the only coffee that is infused with all natural new tropics for a cleaner, calmer, and more focused buzz without the crash. Click the Quimera link at mindpumpmedia.com and input the discount code Mindpump a check out for 10% off. It's the motherfucking quaw! The eagle has landed! Quique-quaw. First question is from sec-guy Seth. Are there any detrimental effects of holding stretches for extended periods of time like one minute? There are beneficial, and you always do that. I hate that. It's true though, it is true. Because I know, you know why I had to get it in there because I know you're gonna do it. Throw that one in there. I throw it in depends. And then I'm always like, oh wow. There are detrimental and beneficial effects to holding stretches for long periods of time. So what stretching does is it manipulates, because this was a paradigm shattering moment for me relatively recently. Actually, while we were recording Mindpump, I think, it was a while ago where it really started to dawn on me that, and it was something that I kind of knew, but I didn't really get, that stretching really doesn't change your muscle. You're not lengthening your muscle. The muscle itself doesn't change.  You're trying to change the signal that the central nervous system is sending to the muscle. So knowing that and understanding that, you can start to examine and look at different forms of stretching and start to really break down what they're doing and then when is a good time to use different types of stretching. The type of stretching that this gentleman's asking about, this girl, I don't know if this guy or girl is asking about holding a stretch for long periods of time. Yeah, like static stretching. It does a very good job of depressing or relaxing, if you will, the central nervous system. It lowers the signal so that the muscle then is able to elongate more. It's like you're telling your body that it's okay. Like it's okay, you don't need to protect this muscle that much. It's okay to loosen your grip and the muscle slowly relaxes, which allows you to get into a deeper and deeper range of motion, and this happens with the governing sort of bodies that are in place to keep you from getting too far. This is why if you right now are listening, you can test this out yourself if you haven't done this already. Get into a stretch, hold the stretch for a minute and you'll find that within that minute, within a very short period of time, you'll increase your range of motion. Now it's a temporary effect, because after the effect wears off, the central nervous system goes back to what it was doing before, and then your range of motion goes back. But if you practice it over and over again, you train the CNS to allow muscles to elongate more and more. So that's the benefit. The benefit is it increases range of motion. Now here's the detriment. The detriment comes from the benefit. If you tell the central nervous system to relax and allow this muscle to move into a longer range of motion, you're hyper flexible, huh? Well, you're moving into range of motion, you don't have control over. In fact, you're actually asking yourself to move into positions that you don't have any control. That's why your central nervous system is so tight in the first place. In other words, if I stretch to touch my toes and I go down, I'm gonna just come up with an arbitrary number. Let's say I go down 24, I'm 12 inches from my feet. That's because my body has identified that if I go closer than 12 inches to my feet, I now have no more control. So my central nervous system is saying, nope, this is as far as I'll let you go. Anything beyond that, you have no control. If I keep pushing that without strengthening that new range of motion, I've actually increased my risk of injury, which is why static stretches before training or athletic events has been shown to not reduce injury. In fact, it's been shown to increase risk of injury. Because you don't own that range of motion yet. You don't own it. And that's where mobility, I think that's why we stress mobility so much these days is because that's something we've recently learned over the last few years, is that being able to get in a range of motion is great. And that's ideal. And we look at that from a posture perspective of like, how can we align better? And how can we get into these certain positions and have optimal biomechanics in these positions? But guess what? If you get these ranges of motion, you have to be able to have strength and be able to summon that response from your central nervous system effectively so you don't get hurt. So going through these practices, it makes it all the more important to apply these types of movements constantly. And the more frequently you can get into, maybe not that end range of motion that you could get into passively, but like working your way towards that with applied tension and communication with your central nervous system. Tension is key. This reminds, Doug, when do we have, when is Ken Stretch, Dr. Spina, come through? February. Spina. February what? And have we opened up signups for that? 10th and 11th is what it is. 10th and 11th, February. I don't think we've opened up signs. Yeah, we have, dude, it's already open. It's like a lot of people have already signed up. Oh, wow. We haven't even mentioned it on the show yet. No. So we do have, I mean, at least a lot of my information that I share and teach, a lot of that has come from FRC stuff, right? So I think Andrew Spina is one of the best guys out there that's teaching this method and showing people how to do this correctly. And a lot of the stuff that we have put out there with Prime and Prime Pros, some of that information comes from him. And so we had to book him out over a year in advance to come into the facility. So he comes in February. And if you guys want a class that will rock your world as far as like information and being able to gain real connected range of motion. I mean, his level of knowledge and the way he explains things is incredible. And what he's doing with FRC is awesome. And I think just the concept of it, for the general public, it goes over their head. But when you really get into it and feel your way through these, you start to understand on a deep level like what you can control certain areas of your body that you didn't think you could. And it's pretty enlightening. Yeah, now what we should do is we should talk about where, where would you use, because static, because then I have people, I've had trainers, you know, I've talked to who then will say, oh, don't do any static stretching. It's a waste, there's no benefit at all. Post workout is a great time.  So static stretching is not- It's also can be used quite effectively with a correctional approach. Right, it's not dead. Like I think some people make it out to be, it's not dead, it's just been used incorrectly for a very long time. It was the only form of stretching for a long time. When I was a kid in PE, that was stretching. There was no other form of stretching. When you warmed up, that's what you did. You literally got on the floor and held stretches for long periods of time. But as far as the correctional standpoint is concerned, sometimes I'll use this in a workout. So let's say I'm training a client and their pecs are really, really tight and it's not allowing them to get good shoulder blade retraction. I'm not able to get a good full squeeze when we're doing a row or something. I may have them do a static stretch for their chest to temporarily lengthen or weaken them and increase their range of motion. So now I can go and strengthen the back more effectively. So you can use this for lots of muscles. Let's say when I squat, I've got my calves don't allow my ankle mobility to move into a particular position. Then I might do some static stretching, but then again, I would also combine it with some tension because I'd also want that control. The other thing too is my girlfriend, Jessica, she traveled with the Cirque du Soleil for I think five or six years, maybe four years. And she got really close with some of the world's top acrobats and their coaches. So these are like people, a lot of them were from the former Soviet Union, some of them were from China and these cultures have some of the best stretching protocols or functional flexibility protocols you'll ever find because they have these just long lineages of acrobatics and contortionists in particular. Like that's really big in some of these countries. Like contortionism is not massive in America, but if you go to some of these other countries, it's an art and they've got schools that teach it and stuff. And one of the things that she told me, the way that they would use static stretching is you gain range of motion with static stretching, but then you connect to that new range of motion once you gain that new range of motion. And an easy way to picture that is you get into a stretch, I gained two more inches of range of motion that is through the static long hold stretching. Now I get into that stretch and then my goal is to try to connect to the muscles that both stretch that or that are stretching and connect to the muscles that are opposing it. So again, if I'm doing a hamstring stretch and I gain a new range of motion and now I'm in there, and that way you can pull on it harder. I'll activate both my hamstrings and then I'll activate my quads and hip flexors and go back and forth because I want to connect not just to the muscle that's elongating, but I want to connect to all the muscles surrounding that particular joint because I want total control of that new range of motion. And she told me that this is a lot of what she would do and a lot of stuff that the coaches were taking her through. And she went from being a young lady who could not touch her toes and she swears, because I thought she was lying, like that's not, there's no way. She swears 100%, that was true. She could not touch her toes. To someone now who can get in the splits and have one foot on one silk and another foot on the other silk and do like a Van Damme split in the air. Yeah, I mean, it's a great point because if you think about it, her focus is to get strong and to get strong with that flexibility. So I think that a lot of people, the misconception with it is that we just need to get more flexible, but as you're getting flexible, you need to gain strength, even if it's one to two inches of range that you've increased, you still have to get strong in that. People injure themselves all the time from being too tight and probably as many people or almost as many people injure themselves from being too loose. That's actually quite common. I've had quite a few clients like that where they come to me and they're hypermobile, super flexible, but have no control. No strength. So when they go, yeah, they go into a squat or a deadlift or they go into a lunge or whatever. It's like shits all over the place and that can cause some serious problems. Here's another thing you wanna keep in mind with flexibility. This is true from pretty much any adaptation that I've looked at and observed and studied. You respond much better to frequency with flexibility than you do with intensity. So something that I thought with flexibility was I'm gonna stretch and I'm gonna do it hard and I'm gonna hurt and I'm gonna make the muscle sore and Jessica's like, no, which is the same thing when you exercise. You're not going to failure. Get to the point where you're a little bit beyond your range of motion and comfort and then play with that, but be frequent with it, like every day or twice a day and then you'll watch yourself progress very, very rapidly. You'll actually see a very consistent progression by applying that frequency principle. So it's really no different than how we treat exercise. So if you're somebody who is a personal trainer or looking to be a trainer or just wanna gain a lot of knowledge in this arena, the FRC comes to the Mind Pump Studio February 10th and February 11th. Doug, what website is that for them to sign up? It's functionalanatomyseminars.com Functionalanatomyseminars.com Yeah, you just find the Mind Pump one in San Jose and then you can click register and it's hosted here at our facility. Right, if you wanna come down to Mind Pump Media you do that one, but they have them like every two weeks. And then if you're just a consumer or somebody who's working out and you want the knowledge but maybe you don't have the money to spend that on a certification, highly recommend going through Maps Prime Pro because a lot of the information that we've learned through FRC is applied in that. Dr. Brink has all the certifications that Andrew Espina has put out. And so if you guys want to learn that information or how to apply it and use it to yourself with an at-home test, that's what Maps Prime Pro and Prime are all about. And Dr. Brink, who obviously helped us create Prime and then was extremely instrumental in Prime Pro, he gives a lot of credit to what he knows to FRC. He's done a lot of courses and he always references FRC as one of the ones that really shattered his paradigm. Next question is from Triples1985. What is the best way to lower body fat? That must be the question I get the most all the time since I became a personal trainer. Always. It sounds super general, but you know why I put that up there? Because I keep getting it asked and... That kind of brings it back to what, you know, like people coming in for the first time or even just your average person in general. Like this is like what people always tend to lean on. They always get this question or what exercise is best for this, right? And they're both very similar answers. You know, they're very similar and there isn't this best way for everybody to lose body fat, but there's some general rules that do mean that these... And there are exercises that are superior and then there's a way of losing body fat that is superior than what the majority do. I think the biggest mistake that I see in fitness to lower body fat is cardio. I just did a post on Instagram. No, I know, and you ruffled all kinds of others. And it's going crazy because it's so controversial to say that.  It's like, no, we're not. It's just that we're just trying to get a different message out that's been given to you guys for so long that's wrong, that cardio is the best way. It is not the best way. No, it should not be the cornerstone of your programming. If your goal is to lose body fat. If your goal is to build endurance, then cardio needs to be.  But if you're somebody who's trying to reduce body fat and or build muscle, cardio is not the way to do that.  I'm gonna break it down, very, very simple for you. There's really two general ways you can look at exercise in terms of fat loss. One is manual calorie burning. Okay, manual calorie burning means that I'm having to manually move my body to increase my calorie expenditure. Obviously, it takes a lot of time, a lot of effort. It's, you know, I'm having to move, I'm having to schedule all this movement. So that's the bad side of it. The good side of it is it's quick, it's very quick.  So that's the benefit of it. The other way to do it to approach it is to increase the amount of calories I burn automatically.  This is how many calories my burn, excuse me, my body burns just being alive and just doing my normal everyday activities. The benefit of that is it requires little effort. Like how great would it be if you could increase your metabolism by 200 to 300 to 400 calories a day and you don't have to move anymore for that to happen? That's awesome. The awesome thing about it is it's more permanent. It's more long-term. And in the context of modern life, it's the best way to go. And what I mean by modern life is you are surrounded by all this food, this hyper palatable food. You're not living in times of scarcity. So the struggle is always gonna be I potentially can be eating too much. You know, versus if I go back 1,000 years ago, the struggle was I'm probably not eating too much. So increasing your metabolic rate, increasing that automatic calorie burn is the better strategy. Now when you look at exercise, don't look at it in terms of what's happening while you're doing the exercise. Look at it in terms of the signal that you're sending to your body. And every time you exercise with any type of intensity, you're sending a signal and your body aims to adapt to that signal. So if we examine cardiovascular activity, cardio burns manually, burns more calories per time spent than any other form of exercise. In other words, if I do hard cardio for an hour, I'm gonna burn more calories in that hour than if I lift weights, than if I do yoga, than if I do any other form of exercise, bar, Pilates, whatever. I'm burning more calories during that hour doing cardio. So that's sending a signal to my body saying, you need to become more efficient with your calorie burn. Here's the example I like to give people. Let's imagine tomorrow you go to the gas pump and gas went from, what is it now? Like average in the nation, 250 a gallon to $150 a gallon. That's a signal. The signal of $150 a gallon is telling you you can't afford to use too much gas. So what's the, what's the, what do you think's gonna happen with car sales very, very quickly? Right, decline. Either, well they're gonna decline and people are gonna buy super efficient cars. In a very short period of time, the market will respond to that signal by creating cars with incredible gas mileage.  You don't need to go zero to 60 any faster than 30 seconds. It doesn't matter. You're gonna want a car that's gonna spend the least amount of gas to do the job that that car is there for, which is get me from point A to point B. That's what happens with cardio. Cardio's telling your body, we need to become efficient with these calories because remember your body is the result of thousands and thousands of generations of evolution and most of them evolve during times of scarcity and a body that burned tons of calories is no different than having a V8 truck with $150 a gallon gas. It doesn't make any sense. Your body's gonna try to become super efficient and on top of that, cardiovascular activity requires very little speed and it requires very little strength. All it needs is for you to move in the same whatever for long periods of time. So you just need to turn your body, your body literally turns into a Prius. Well, yeah, to kind of piggyback on that analogy as far as like the inner workings of the engine and everything else as far as like the timing belt, you know distributor, like battery, like all these different things like inside the body. Like I know we talked about this a long time ago about like healing your body and really like working on being as healthy as possible first because and that's something that I've definitely made a focus and noticed just how the body naturally just wants to respond and increase the metabolism that response. Like it'll fire things back up to where everything starts to become more efficient again when I'm working out and I'm eating healthy again. Even when I was doing that and eating healthy and there's these interruptions in that process because there's something in there that is causing inflammation and is causing internal backup. So it's just something to consider like are you as healthy as you think you are? Well, I think part of the reason why we're so passionate about this is because most people that we would get that we're trying to lose body fat had been underfeeding their body nutritionally and over pushing it to get to that point. So when we get a hold of them, most of them just running in, let's figure you run on, I'll give you an analogy, a different one than what Sal gave. You get on a treadmill and run as hard as you possibly can for an hour and maybe you burn about 500 calories, give or take. But if you didn't do any running whatsoever and all you spent time doing was building muscle, by the time you add three to five pounds of muscle, your body's gonna burn an additional three to 500 calories almost every single day without doing any extra cardio. So building a metabolism, you're not gonna, by doing cardio you're not building your metabolism. By doing cardio, all you're doing is just burning, burning, burning, burning, burning. And your body is getting more efficient, more efficient, more efficient. And how does it become more efficient? One of the first things it does is it will reduce your muscle mass. Muscle is expensive, muscle's your engine. Get rid of mass. It's, and you don't need lots of muscle to do lots of cardio. In fact, you're better off having less muscle. Look at a long distance runner. They have very little muscle. There's, you know, stick legs, skinny arms. Especially in the upper body.  This is a term we use to describe people who would come into the gym and do an hour of cardio every single day. And they all look the same. You know how they look? They're skinny fat. They all have, they're all flabby. They have a higher than they should percent body fat.  So that's the worst way to lose body fat. And I wanna rephrase this whole what's the best way to lower body fat?  It's not just to lose body fat.  You lose a lot of weight real quick. Which I think that's very, very important that you said that. Because if we were to take a study, which this is how people get so confused because someone who's trying to promote a fat burner or promote cardio or do that, it can show, if I had two people, one is just strength training. One is doing cardio and it's a two week study.  After two weeks, the person that went after the cardio is gonna show more calories, burning probably more body fat lost in those two weeks. Problem is it only takes about two to four weeks for the body to get very adapted to whatever cardio modality that we're doing and those returns begin to diminish while the opposite happens with building muscle. It might have a slower start. So maybe out the gates, the cardio seems to be winning the race. But over time, the muscle, building more muscle, building more muscle actually in turn burns more fat, burns more fat, and then like Sal was saying, keeps it off forever. And I wish that study, I wish there were studies like that existed, but that existed, but they don't. Like, you know what studies right now show, and there's a lot of them, that exercise alone is terrible, terrible for fat loss. They do study, there's lots of studies like this where they take people who change their eating habits versus people who change their eating habits and exercise versus people who don't change anything and then they just exercise. And they show that when people just exercise, it's a horrible way to lose weight, but here's the problem with those studies. The people that just, and yes, you need to change your diet too, so I want to be clear there, but what the studies always use for exercise is cardio. None of these studies ever use proper resistance training. It's always cardio, cardio, cardio, 30 minutes of vigorous activity is what they say. To the point now where the government will recommend that, you go to your health insurance will tell you 30 minutes of vigorous activity, cardiovascular activity, because nobody studied resistance training and its effect on your hormone levels, on metabolism, on all the things that are being negatively affected by modern lifestyle. Resistance training, by far, if your goal is just to lose body fat, the cornerstone of your workout program, literally should be resistance training. That should be the focus of it. Now that doesn't mean you can't do cardio, cardio's got health benefits.  So one of the best things that has been a game changer for me to help clients out is to first assess their week and see their current movement. So I would make every, and I've been doing this now for about six, seven years before the Fitbit was even around, so we were using the body bug and tools like that. I would make all my clients buy one of these, and then I would make them track for a week. It's not to show that, oh, this is the most accurate tool on the market, it's to give me an idea of their movement and that what I would see is like, wow, most these people are moving less than 4,000 or 5,000 steps in a day, which is not even walking for an hour, okay? If you walk for an hour straight, you'll get to like 7,000 steps. So that being said, I would take that and I'd say, okay, here's what we're going to do. We're gonna take you from 4,000 steps a day on average to 6,000 steps a day, not doing cardio, walking, that's it, increase by 10 to 20% where their current steps are at and then add resistance training three times a week. Those two things, and if you just keep increasing the steps through walking throughout your day, being active, walking your dog, walking with your fiance or whatever after dinner, whatever you need to do to get these extra steps in the middle of the day while you have work for your lunch break, instead of driving your car somewhere, walk somewhere, starting to create habits like this will make a huge difference, more so than scheduling a half hour hour of intense cardio. That's right, so best way to lose body fat in terms of exercise, make resistance training the cornerstone of your routine. Number one, probably. Build muscle, build strength, boost your metabolism.  Next question is from Bitch Can Move. She sure can. Hey, if all of you could never work in fitness again, what would you do instead? Wow. You know what? We should give each other, like predict what the other person would do. You ever want to make fun of each other? Last time we did that, we did the stripper, the bus driver, or something like that. Are we going to answer this real or are we going to answer like kidding around? Because if we're kidding around, then we could do each other. Because then I know that you're everyone's going to give funny ones, right? I don't know. Well, give us your real one. Well, what are some jobs you almost did really do? Was there ever something like a client almost got you to do, or maybe you like thought about it? Bro, I did, I've been fitness, I've been professionally in fitness since I was 18. I know, but you never ever thought about it. So for me, okay, I'll share it then, since it sounds like you don't know, maybe it'll help out. So, I mean, I was real close to becoming a mortgage originator, so selling home loans, right? Bought all the books. I was all set to go to do. Was this before the crash or after? This was in 2000, and yeah, when I was going to go to, oh, you mean crashing homes? Oh yeah, of course it was before, because all my buddies were making crazy money. Oh my God. Crazy money. It was crazy. They were making over a million dollars a year doing this. And to the point where they were telling me, like, listen, I know you love what you do, I know you're making good money, but I'll pay you more money out of my own money just to get you to come over and do it.  Anyways, I almost did that. And so I could see myself doing something like that.  It'd be so boring. Well, yeah, I mean, nothing's gonna compare. So you can't, if you have to do, we have to separate ourselves from we love what we do. We wouldn't change anything to what if. You'd be a pastor. Like, that's what my mom would say.  I can't believe you brought that up. That's what I knew you. My mom to this day thinks that that was my calling, right? You're supposed to be a pastor. Like, yeah, I don't know. Maybe, ma. Maybe, maybe one day. No, I never thought I would do that. She thought I was going to do that as a kid. That's just because I like to talk. When I was really young, I wanted to be a lawyer. I would never want to do that now. I got scared away as soon as I saw the types of books and how many books you had to read on laws. That's, there's no way. I mean, I'm more, I mean, I read a lot, but I have to read something I'm very passionate and excited about. And I'm not passionate about the law. So that wouldn't work for me. I wanted to be an architect. So I was in drafting class and I thought I was gonna be an architect. I could potentially do something like that. I love to draw. I love houses. I love architecture. So, and there's good money in it. I think that's something that I could have seen myself doing. If Mind Pump Crash blew up fitness industry, just went away, didn't even exist. No one cared about getting in shape or we created the magic pill and everybody was super ripped and fit. Then I would probably have to do something the next day that to get my off and running in sales, something. Cause I like to talk to people and I like people. So it's just natural for me. For me, that's a tough one. I think. I used to think you're stripper, but that's for you. I don't think anyone wants to see me naked anymore. Well. I'm getting old now. You can't dance either. You wanna be that old stripper. You have to be able to dance. If stripping was just getting naked, yeah. All you gotta do is a macarena. I feel like I would be a better dancer naked than cloth. You think so? Yeah, I think so. I don't think it changes anything. Oh, the gyrate is. Your clothes get in your way. Yeah.  Justin would be a good stripper. He can move. Oh, I would bring the house down. Yeah, he does a good shake. That'd be a lot of money. Well, tell us big mama's house, what would you do over there? What would I do for my work? Yeah. Well, at first I wanted to be a rock star.  That'd be my job. That's your first job. That's your first pick. So you'd be broke? Yeah, we'd be broke. No, I went through that whole process. I got a van, we got all this equipment, and we toured. You had a van? Yeah. Oh, I didn't know that.  Yeah, we had a van. We had a trailer attached. Oh yeah, you toured. That's why you did tour. But we didn't tour anywhere far. We went to like Indiana and all the surrounding bordered states to Illinois. You guys making any money? No, just enough to get by, just enough to pay the gas. Yeah, pay the gas, that was it. Was it fun?  It was so much fun. It was so much fun.  I was the only one that was really business minded in the group about scheduling and booking these types of events and venues and stuff. And I just got burned out doing that because I was like, man, nobody else is putting any effort into this and we suck.  Really? There's so much talent out there and nobody will ever know about. Wow. And that's a statement I'll stand by because that's why these production companies exist, man. They're just so hard. Like, and why do you see how they're so predatory? You know, that whole business, like you get somebody coming in to produce them or to manage them and they just like, they pray off of that because their mind is all about like, I wanna be like, make the best music ever. My fans love me and it's like, no dude, how are you making money? Yeah. How is that working out for you? And nobody really, like not a lot.  You know, like it's a tough, tough industry to get into and actually make a name for yourself anymore and actually make money off of it. It can be pretty sleazy too. Oh my God. Yeah, I would hate that. It's crazy. So actually I had real thoughts in that direction, pulled out of that almost like immediately. And then, I don't know, I messed around with ideas of like, getting into film and what else was that? I was actually thinking of being like a forest ranger at one time. A forest ranger? That could be a cool job. It could be a cool job, dude. I love the outdoors. Even after the bear attack, you don't think that's scared you away? Well, now that. Yeah, I don't know. He'd be smoking the bear bro.   Oh wow, that would be good. Yeah, let's hear it dude. First of all, I'd have to pay the bills still dude. Okay, good. You're gonna keep it real then. That's what I would do if I had all the money that I needed and then I could pick whatever. I see. Psychiatrists would have been a cool job. Ooh, I wanted to be a counselor when I had one point. That's an interesting job. No, psychiatrist or a surgeon, orthopedic surgeon. I actually thought about that for a quick second. Or a professor. A professor on a subject that I enjoy, like history or science or economics. Just cause I love teaching people. I love having people that I can talk to and teach and discuss ideas and stuff like that. I think it'd be a lot of fun. It's pretty much it. Nothing too exciting. I like the therapist idea because that's something that I could do for sure. What we do right now, I kind of feel like that. Sometimes I feel that way with the people that we get to talk to on a regular basis. Most people are asking us stuff. Well, that's our whole training career as we've been sort of. The only other career I've ever had that wasn't fitness was I had a, I wanna say an eight month stint in banking where I was a premier banker for Bank of America. And this is where you handle the wealthy clients of the bank or whatever and you're supposed to help them with certain types of investments and directing them in the right way and helping them manage their money and getting them loans and stuff like that. And it was torture. It was literal torture. I'd go to work. I would dive. Bro, I would go to this bank and it'd sit at my desk and at least three times a day, one of the staff members would go, shh, to me. Because I'm loud. Did you imagine me in a bank? Imagine my voice in a bank talking on the phone with someone or trying to talk to a customer. Mrs. Johnson! I'm too loud. In my head right away I got this like great Bank of America Kermit commercial, you know what I'm saying? Hi, welcome to Bank of America. Give me your money. You know, someone said the other day, someone DM me and said I sound like, what's that guy's name? Oh, Ray Romano. Ray Romano. You do. And then I listened to him and I'm like, fuck, I can't, I can't deny that. I do kind of sound like him for sure. I would probably hop back.  I absolutely, well, you would kill it in there. Well, you know all the ins and outs. Right, that's the only reason why, right? If it's, that's what I'm trying to think about. Like, are we picking things that we would want to do?  You're doctors. Yeah. They're straight doctors. Animals, that would like tear me up, man.   I don't know how my wife does that. Kills me, it destroys me. Yeah, I'll tell you what though, if I couldn't do mind pump, I'd still want to work with you guys doing something else.  I would sell lemonade with you guys on the corner. We'd make it out.  Kill it. First of all, that's lemonade. Whoa. Whoa, dude. Hey, kids. Justin just got to shut down. What, we're not putting him in production? He's the best. He's the best lemonade ever. He's not in charge of the formula. He's not how Coca-Cola got started? Justin's like, hey guys, I got to lemonade. That's going to totally take off. Every customer's going to be hooked. We'd have a real strong first quarter. I wasn't dropping off. All right, Doug, bring it on. Next question is from Karees Lee. What role do you think personal trauma plays in disordered eating? Oh, wow. Huge role. Huge, yeah. Huge role. That is the role. Yeah. If you're talking about truly, truly disordered eating, that's probably the biggest thing. I would even go further to say that all of our insecurities and even those of us that don't have full blown air quotes, eating disorders, I think that all the things that drive us to eat certain ways or to push ourselves in the gym is driven through insecurities. And those insecurities are normally rooted from sort of, and trauma is a strong word, because not everybody went through like a crazy traumatic experience. But I do believe that in those formative years of five to 15 years old, there's been. Lisa imprint. Right, it's left imprints on us that now have formed us and shaped us into adults that tend to dictate the way we eat, the way we train, the way we look at ourselves. Bro, I remember one specific instance for myself. Literally, and it was throughout my life as a kid, I was called skinny and, what is it, green bean or stick bean or bean pole, whatever. String bean, yeah. I was called all these different. String bean. String bean. Yeah, green beans are skinny too. String, string bean. That's what we used to be called. Delicious. Because I was called at the same thing. I was called all these different things. And that definitely played a role in how I ate, which was then I just stuffed the shit out of myself because I wanted to get away. But I remember one instance in particular. I don't know if you guys remember any particular instances, but I remember one in particular. We were at a family member's house. She had a swimming pool. And so what we used to do in the summertime is we'd all gather there and we'd all go swimming and we'd barbecue and it was a great time. And my cousins were all there. We have a big family. So there'd be like 30 to 50 people there. And it was just something that I always look forward to, especially in the summertime. And I'll never forget, I get there with my parents and we're all hanging out and everybody's like, OK, let's go swimming. So I grab my bathing suit and I go in the bathroom to change. And I'm probably 11 or 12 at this time. So I'm starting to get into that those formidable ages where you start to go through puberty and you're already feeling uncomfortable, right?  And my aunt sees me because she's down the hall and she makes this face like this very concerned face. It wasn't like a teasing face. It was like genuine concern. She was like, you need to eat more food.  I'll never forget it. Literally, I can remember what she looked like, where I was.  Now my aunt, who was young, she was closer to me in age. So it wasn't like she was an adult. I don't think she was an adult. She was definitely a teenager. So it wasn't like she was aware that would be a bad thing to say.  I know her very well. Right, she didn't mean to mean harm much. She wasn't even being to mean to me. Which I think is what happens, right? This happens to so many of us that it doesn't always have to be this traumatic, right?  It's like it doesn't always have to be this crazy over the top thing, but it formed you. In fact, if someone was straight up being mean to me, it would have definitely hurt me, but I don't think it would have affected me the same because when someone's being mean to you, I could always dismiss it as, well, they're just being mean to me and they're being assholes, right? This was like just a normal thing. And she made that face, said that to me, and I'd never forgot it. And I remember that specifically because it really, after that is when I really became super motivated to work out and take supplements. And you know, I totally remember now.  And I just remember, because I was like decently muscular and shredded and whatnot, but I was very like bony and my shoulders like really like pronounced. Because I was like smaller than I was developing, like it was like very, like it stuck out. Like I had these two, like two bones up here, you know, my shoulders that were just like very visible and like these kids were just like roasting me on it.  And so I was just like that carried with me into it. I know that's what motivated me to start lifting weights because I wanted to like build muscle on top of that to sort of shell myself. Well, that's talking about all of our insecurities what drove us to work out. I believe too that when you look at, and this is hard for people to do. So, and I, because I still- Do you remember the phases of processing it? Of course, dude, this is- How weird is it to look back? So I challenge people to try and do this. And this is a process that will never end for you because here I am 15 plus years in fitness and I still have to do this to myself. And I'll give you an example when there's foods or things that I gravitate towards. And then I catch myself saying like, oh, I love this or oh, I wouldn't let go of it or there's no way I'm not having that or I need that in my diet. A lot of people just accept that and they don't actually unpack it and try and figure out where did that come from? Like why do I, why am I so attached to donuts or why am I so attached to diet soda or why am I so attached to pancakes or why do I have to have chips or why do I need wine? Like where did that stem from? Like where did that start that you have now attached it to part of who you are?  It's just fuel that you're consuming. And yeah, sure, it tastes good, but a lot of the why it tastes good is because you've trained yourself to think it tastes so damn good. And what was it that started that and learning to unpack that and find out where? And most of the times it goes all the way back. I remember the memories attached to it. It goes back deep, man. I remember the phases. I remember the phases of awareness with this. I literally, you know, all of a sudden I became very focused on lifting weights and eating more and taking supplements. And I remember, I don't remember who it was that told me this. I wanna say it was my mom.  And I remember thinking like, no, I'm not. Like totally, totally in denial. So in denial that I didn't even, when she said that to me, it was almost offensive. And it took me so long to start to identify or at least acknowledge that that may be an issue. And it took me years after that to, after I acknowledged it to actually, you know, make changes and to see that I was harming myself in certain ways. It took a long time. Cause what happens is, here's what happens. When you have some kind of personal trauma that makes you not like yourself, you start treating yourself like you don't like yourself. Okay, so here you are.    And some people would say, well, well, you were teased so much for being chubby, you would think that you would just be, you know, really skinny. And that's not true because what happened to that individual is they started to hate themselves. Right, and then they revolt.  When you don't like something, how do you treat it?     No, it's the revolting part.  I've had so many clients that were very overweight, right? Over 80 pounds overweight. And they would tell me, they'd actually confide in me and say, I never look in the mirror. I actually had clients that would tell me that. Oh, that was shocking. We talked about this on an episode a long time ago. And I remember that being one of the things that I became a regular thing that I asked people because I didn't realize how common it was until years of training. And then I remember one after another and then I thought, whoa, most these people that once they get to everyone, and everyone I feel like kind of has their point where they get to the point where they put on so much weight that they absolutely do not wanna see themselves in the mirror and they avoid it. And it's very common. It is very, very common for that. And you just, you don't wanna look at it. You don't want to accept it. You don't wanna think about it. You're partially in denial. Like you're saying you hate yourself over it. You're vaulting from it. All that's going on.  You're never gonna wanna take care of something you hate. And what ends up happening through this process of self-hate is you don't take care of yourself. You don't take care of yourself. You don't take yourself.    And at some point you need reprieve. At some point you need to break because nobody, it's exhausting to be in that cycle of self-hatred. And so what you're looking for is a momentary period of reprieve. And what gives that to you?  But at the moment, at that one moment, you get this relief from feeling shitty. And this cycle continues and continues and continues. So you have to identify that in yourself. You have to come to terms with it and be honest. You have to literally look in the mirror and say to yourself like, okay, I hate myself and that's why I'm treating myself this way. I need to change that. Once you can change that, everything else becomes a lot easier. And but it does take time and be okay with that. Be okay with it taking time. It won't happen overnight.  And it doesn't work that way, unfortunately. It's like an ultimatum. Yeah, it doesn't work that way, unfortunately. It just gotta work on it. Check it out. Go to YouTube, Mind Pump TV, subscribe to our channel. Our channel is actually growing pretty quickly right now thanks to our listeners. If you're not subscribed already, then you're not supporting us. What's wrong with you? Go in there and subscribe. One of the best things you can do too is like when we put out videos because we track all the analytics and part of what we do right now is we're always posting different types of videos. And we can see when people share them. 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George Bruna for the 21 Convention Patriarch Edition in Orlando, Florida, and I'm talking with Dr. Sean T. Smith. Welcome. Thanks for having me. Your speech this morning, give us some highlights of it. I was talking about the male instinct, the fatherhood instinct, to allow children to experience a little bit of friction in the world and how we tend to embrace risk on behalf of our children a little more than mothers do, and it's a wonderful balance. And the culture doesn't really understand our side of it. The culture seems to be actively working against our side of parenting. But, you know, guys really need to trust their instinct and hone those instincts because we really do have solid instincts for helping our children develop character. I'll give you an example. I think it's something that you touched on in your speech. One of the things that fathers do that seems to mystify a few women and a woman, a woman came into my office and asked me this question several years ago. She said, why is it that my husband gets her kid all riled up before bed and then expects him to calm down and go to sleep? And I didn't know the answer to that. So I had to go dig around and found out that it's a very common thing, like men all over the world do this. And the reason we do it, even though we don't know why we're doing, is that we're teaching emotional regulation. We're teaching children to go from a high level of activation to a low level. We're teaching them how to switch gears. And that's a really important skill in life. So if men can trust their instincts to to act on behalf of their children, their children are going to develop good character. How do we model that as fathers? How do we model that regulation that shifting gears in our family life? Well, ironically, we model it by doing some of the things that are under attack these days. We do it by being stoic when there's a time to be stoic. And knowing the difference between when there's a time to discuss what's going on and when there's a time to rub some dirt on it and move on. You know, this is a message that doesn't resonate very well, rub some dirt on it, doesn't resonate very well in my profession. But again, this is a very important skill in life. It's not the only skill in life, but it's a vital one. Mmm. I like to say delay your emotions, not deny them. Yeah. Is that something that can be learned? Children watch everything we do.   But yes, they will imitate everything you do. Years ago there used to be a kind of an anti-smoking commercial of a father and a son. I don't know if you remember that and they're driving in a convertible and the dad puts his arm, you know, like on the outside of the the cars he's driving and the son he does that and the father and the son would do everything that the father was doing and the father would grab a pack of cigarettes and then the next shot was the kid grabbing for the cigarettes. I got to find that somewhere. I'm sure it's archived somewhere, but it it did show that they pick up everything that we do. Yeah, and especially sons and fathers and I don't have any data to back this up, but you know, you just see it. You see sons dressing like their fathers and acting like their fathers and saying what their fathers say they really want to identify with that masculine figure. I heard someone say I actually read this yesterday that they compared our view of masculinity is similar to our view of our fathers. Let's talk about that. Yeah, my father was a very masculine man, not a man that he was very stoic, not a man that would discuss emotion very often or very deeply and my natural inclination is in that same direction and I bet you have an inclination that matches your father's inclination. That's all we learned. Yeah. How about when a child starts seeing that there's different ways to act and react in the world? When they play sports, when they do extracurricular activities, when they're in scouting, when they're when they go off to college and they start seeing the way that other people act and then they come home and then we see the difference in their behavior and we can tell they've been around or if our kids are playing at someone else's house where there's a whole different hierarchy happening and then we feel like we have to reprogram them when they come back into our home. Yeah. Yeah, spoken like a father. You've been through this. You've seen your children come home with different behaviors and sometimes it's kind of baffling like who are you hanging out with where you learn how to say that or you learn how to do that? But at our house, it's always an opportunity to just discuss the way other people do things and you know, sometimes the conversations get really interesting. This is why it's so important to have those family dinners because those are the conversations that don't really happen in the car so much. I mean they can, they don't happen here at the store because there's other stuff going on. But you sit down with your kids and your family and you're gonna have these fascinating conversations like where where did you hear that phrase or what do you think about how that's working out for your friend and kids have wonderful insight into these things. They have a lot of thoughts. They're not just imitating. They're thinking about what they're imitating. There's times when I've caught this show on television called Blue Bloods with Tom Selleck and the show always ends with them around the dinner table. And then they're just talking and then there's even his father who is at the table and you see three generations of men at this dinner table at the end of every show. Very fascinating dynamics there. Yeah, did you have that growing up the dinner table conversation? I did. Yeah, I did. What do you think you took away from it? I would say I learned a lot of things. I learned how to be sneaky. Things that I didn't want to eat. You know, I'd put them under the plate or put them in my napkin or something like that. Did you have a dog? We didn't have a dog, but I know a lot of people who did. That's a good way to dispose of this, because you don't want to eat. And the dog knows who's going to give them the treats under the table. I think one of the things that I learned growing up, my father, if I complained about what was for dinner in any way, one of the things that I heard was this isn't a restaurant.  And I know a lot of families where the mom is like, what do you want to eat? The kid says, I don't want hamburgers. Okay, I'll make you chicken wings. Right. That didn't happen in my family. It was, if you don't eat what mom makes, you don't eat. And if you're not there at 5.30 or whatever it was, you're not eating. You don't come home later. This is when dinner time is. Yeah. And that's one of the wonderful ways that the masculine and the feminine blend to raise a child, because you have that nurturing mother who of course wants to make the child comfortable and make sure that they're fed. Then you have the father who typically is willing to let their children sit with a little more discomfort of the world. There's a structure here, kiddo, and this is the structure we live in, and we don't change the structure for you. And I hope you can join in. I really do. I want you to join in. But hey, if it doesn't work out and you can't be here at 5.30 for dinner, okay, there's always tomorrow. And that's something that a father would say that very few mothers would ever venture into. And we have a whole generation of people that are raised by their moms who only see dad on the weekends, every other weekend, and one night or two nights during the week, who don't get that structure. Yes, or they get a little bite of it, and then they have to go back to where there's much looser structure. And kids can learn how to navigate these things, but you know, better to have that consistent structure and know what's solid and what isn't.  And there's all these rules and they don't know where the rules come from or why they exist, like you're supposed to put your socks away, but you're not supposed to bite your friends and none of this stuff really adds up. And so they have to push and they have to test and they need a consistent, a consistent structure that says this is what's solid, this is what's negotiable, this is what's going to hurt, this is what's going to feel good. And when they're raised exclusively by women, women being wonderfully nurturing creatures, they tend to get a lot more of, well, here's what feels good, you should do what feels good. That doesn't always work out well in life. How about the parental reply? Because I said so. Does that work? I think it's one of those Trump cards that can work once a year, maybe, in certain situations. I'm not a fan of it. You know, I want my kid to understand why we do what we do. And that means that someone like me coming from where I came from, I had to go out and learn a lot more words than I grew up with, so that I can explain these things to her. What are your thoughts on, because I said so? I never liked it. I felt like it was, I think it plants seeds of rebellion, because I feel like there's nothing explained. There's no rationale. And children can be reasonable. And I think that because I said so is more for the benefit of the parent who feels like they have no options. Yes. And has no options, maybe is too tired, too lazy to do it, which is why I say maybe once a year, because you're going to have that moment where now is not the time to explain it. But even then, I think you guys will talk about it later. But I think you keyed on a really important issue, that when you create something for them to rebel against, they're going to rebel. That's what people do. They push. Yeah. So why create that? Why not create an environment where you're on their side? You want them to succeed. I like that. You talked about the tachometer. I did talk about the tachometer. I talked about how on my daughter's head, she has this little imaginary tachometer right here. And it's her emotional tachometer. And I can see how emotional she's getting. And one of the things I was talking about was helping your children solve problems, push up against the world a little bit, but managing the amount of the world that they're experiencing so that they can succeed. And one of the times children don't succeed is when that emotional tachometer red lines and they get immobilized and hopeless by the level of emotion.  So you know when to step in because even though fathers are much more willing in general than mothers to let the world rough their children up a little bit, not to the point where they get hurt, but to the point where they learn that some things are out of reach and you have to push for them, that it's important to know when to step in before they start to red line and they get locked up because as much as the motherhood done wrong is like too permissive and too protective and it breeds a sort of helplessness where a person never has to push up against the world. They don't learn how to push up against the world.  That's the fatherhood instinct gone wrong and so we don't want to veer into that neighbor. We always want our children to succeed as much as possible. They need to fail sometimes and that's where team sports is a great activity because they get to fail and they get to learn how to fail. But when it comes to big questions in life, like how do you deal with other people?  We want them succeeding. We don't want them failing. Right. Do you think the modern digital age creates emotional children? How so? In the sense that there's more emotional triggers that we have no control over. In the same way that a child can come back from a friend's house where they're very, where they don't have a lot of rules and you see your child misbehaving or acting in a way where you're thinking, gosh, where'd you learn that? If they spend too much time watching social media, interacting on social media, they're encountering things that they would never encounter in the home. How do you manage that? That is a real, it's real. I see it as a new problem, the social media, but it's also a very old problem because children have always been going out and interacting with other people. One of the toughest parts of our job as the father is to get rid of them. Like from day one, we're trying to help them go out and leave us, which is a heartbreaking thing, but it's also a beautiful thing because we do it right. They never really leave us, come back. That's a little secret that we know, but they've always been faced with challenges of bullying and bad behavior and people behaving poorly. The area where I think fathers have to really step up their game now is that the piece that goes missing is the immediate feedback.  In the digital world, they don't. The digital world rewards aggression and so the father has to be able to step in with nanny apps and with conversations and with safeguards that build in that other piece that goes missing, which is the immediate feedback of your behavior and how you provide immediate feedback to someone else's behavior because so many of those protections are gone when there's a digital wall between two people. Is there any way we can protect our children from outside influences? I suppose you could go to the motherhood gonron extreme and just keep them home. And never let them experience the world. Bubble boy. Yeah, bubble boy. Not a great option. Not a good option. We don't want to see our kids hurt. We don't want to see them go astray. We want to see them make right decisions. How do we apply our experiences to guiding our children and helping them navigate life? One of the things that people love is stories and children love stories and I don't know if you ever told your kids stories about how you handled situations or what happened that day and it was kind of an interesting thing because this person got mad at me or I found this strange situation or I found this dog or whatever it is.  So you can tell the stories that impart the moral and that's something that we do a lot in our home. We just talk about what's going on and how we handle things and kids will lock into that because they want to know what the conclusion to this story is. I like that. We've lost the art of storytelling and I guess they used to call oral tradition. The story of what the roast, where the bone was bigger than the pan, where the young person asks his mother, why do you cut that bone off the roast before you put it in the pan? I don't know, that's the way my mom did it. So he goes over to his grandmother and says, grandma, why do you cut the bone off before you put it in the pan? She goes, I don't know, that's the way my mom did it.  She says, the pan was too small. I love that story and I don't know if you noticed, but I was locked in. I wanted to know where this was going and this is the mindset that little kids can get into. Where is this going? This is kind of cool and you're a very eloquent speaker. You don't have to be as eloquent as you are to tell the story of what you struggled with that day and how you handled it. Do you think kids innately know answers to things? For instance, if you kind of do this questioning with them, like if they did something wrong and you sit them down and say, what do you think you should have done? Do you think they have it within them to know what's right and wrong? I think they do if you've been having that conversation all the way along from day one. What do you think? I think if it's been modeled. I think if options have been modeled. Yeah, and family values, these little conversations that happen here and there about how we do things in our family, kids will walk in on that stuff. These little idioms, what do they say? There's more than one way to skin a cat and I don't know where that came from. Who'd want to skin a cat? But just kind of shows that there's more than one route to a desired location. There's many different ways of doing things and the way granddaddy or grandmom did it, isn't always the way. It might be that they felt that their options were limited as well. Now we're kind of getting beyond. Do you think that the immediate family has more exposure to the extended family than they used to or less? I don't know. That's a really interesting question. A little group of three or four people, parents and children, do they have more or less connection to cousins and aunts and uncles? Yeah, I don't know. What do you think? I guess a lot of it depends on if you're born in a city or a town or whatever. I know a lot of small town people say, I can't wait to get out of this town. I'm from a small little town where everybody knew each other and they despise that. Several years ago I moved from a town in Pennsylvania. Now I'm living right near the city in Philly, but I lived in a town where there were people who were born in that town, went to school in that town, worked in that town. This town was no more than two miles in length. It was a small town. They went to school in that town, they worked in that town, they retired in that town, they died and were buried in that town. The next town over was, it would be like going on a long trip.  There really wasn't a need to go out anywhere. The next town five miles away was like a big thing. Yeah. I grew up with a similar thing in my family. It was little towns in Kansas and a similar type of thing. We're going to the next town was a big thing, but it was always a point in this branch of my family that we keep in touch. We go see our cousins and we spend Christmases together and we fly to another state so that we can connect. It's an interesting thing with Facebook and that sort of thing. In a way, I think it's created more connection. I don't know if it's ultimately created more distance because there's less of a need to go see someone, but I don't know. I'm more of an optimist. I'm not really into the whole despair of the internet. I know the Roman roads delivered good things and Roman roads also delivered bad things. The internet is the same way. I choose not to look at it with despair. For instance, Facebook, like you said, if I would write a letter to my relatives, my cousins in Italy, it would take two weeks for a letter to get there. Now I know what they had for breakfast today. In that sense, I'm celebrating little victories that my extended family are having when the child is born. I can see pictures of that child on the day that it was born, mother and child. In the past, you'd wait for pictures to be sent. There is an immediacy that the internet brings that I like. One of the things that falls to fathers, mothers too, I don't know if this is exclusively fathers, but falls to parents to show children how to filter this stuff because you can pick the good things, unlike the Roman roads where what comes down the road comes down the road. With the internet, you can really pick and choose what comes into your brain and modeling for your children, what's healthy and what's not. What's helping you advance in school and get through life or solve problems versus what's just bringing you down. Let's go to your work. You work with people in Colorado. What is your main area of expertise? Used to be anxiety disorders. That's why I started out as a clinical psychologist and I liked working with anxiety disorders because very high success rate. People are motivated to fix it and there's a clear path and you can solve this problem. I became increasingly interested over the years in this male-female thing. I started pretty early in my career expanding in that direction as well. One of the things I noticed that I'm not really sure how it's escaped my profession, but there are a lot of men out there making the same mistakes that their neighbor made, that their cousin made, that their brother made, and choosing the wrong women and allowing the wrong people into the life and then just ending up in a train wreck. My mission has become helping men make wise choices, manage risk. You can't eliminate risk. If you're going to have women and relationships in your life, if you're going to walk out the door in the morning, you're embracing some level of risk, but I want to help men avoid the mistakes that dog so many men that really cause them to end up in bad places. Give hope to fathers right now and fathers to be. What word of hope would you give them? The word of hope is that there is something in our DNA that gives us instinct, evolved adaptations, if you want to use fancy words, that lead to traits and behaviors that give us an innate understanding of how to care for our children. It sometimes conflicts with the female nature, but more often than not, it goes like peanut butter and jelly. It's just a wonderful combination, the masculine and the feminine. Children need both of these influences. There are some forces out. There's some organized forces that are telling men that their instinct and their character and their innate qualities are toxic and they need to be suppressed. This is not going to help children. The message of hope is that you can refine these qualities and these traits and you can use them to benefit your children and the world around you and you can ignore the people who are telling you that you're toxic. I love that. Thank you very much. Dr. Sean T. Smith. George, thank you.


decided to be the best that you can be and that is the ultimate aim of any athletic competition and of life itself for that matter and I applaud you for that but also because you have opened a door a door of better understanding a door to limitless possibilities a door to dreams which before these last few years were thought impossible and because of this you have indeed brought a new dimension to the word hero you are all heroes and not just to other physically challenged individuals but to all all of us who have ever had a mountain to climb or a hurdle to leap over you truly have taken the cliche yes I can and you have made it come alive and because of that I am personally so proud to be with you today I'm also pleased that because of all your efforts and your hard work it was thought important enough that physically challenged athletes be included in the summer Olympic Games in Los Angeles you have now achieved the ultimate recognition of an athlete you have made your own horizons and you now own your own future so with that in mind I wish you all well good luck in the games and have a wonderful wonderful time you deserve it God bless you all Kathy Lee Crosby our thank you very much mr. Williams is accorded full respect as a fellow human being societies must take action to enable those who are disabled to realize their interview essence they are a great credit ladies and gentlemen the president of the United States ladies and gentlemen at this time we welcome the competing nations to the international games for the disabled being held here on Nassau County Long Island I ask you to rise direct your attention to the blue night's drum and bugle core in the center of the field and as you rise your attention is directed to the northeast gate for the arrival of the nations please rise the first nation to arrive was the host nation in 1980 the Netherlands their flag bearer is bird bottoming bird is 25 years of age competes in the track and field events the reason he was chosen to be their flag bearers that he competed during the 1980 Olympics the national flag of the Netherlands with its horizontal stripes of red white and blue dates from the 1916 hundreds the Dutch tricolor became a symbol of liberty and inspired other revolutionary flags around the world today Dutch citizens are permitted to fly an orange pendant above the tricolor on occasions of national importance bird bottoming and the delegation from the Netherlands and now entering the field of play the country of Argentina from South America the flag bearer for Argentina is Hugo Villaba you'll notice that the flag above and below the white central stripe of Argentina's national flag are two stripes in a shade of blue known as Celeste this color together with white became a national symbol early in the 19th century the May Sun commemorates the appearance of the Sun through the clouds and independence for Argentina Australia the flag bearer for Australia is Gora Gerhardt Gora is 30 competes in track and field events the reason he was chosen to carry the flag of his native land he competed in the 1980 games was the gold medal winner in the long jump at Holland the basis of the design of this flag is the British Blue Enzin with the addition of the five stars of the Southern Cross the constellation in the fly and a larger star known as the Commonwealth star below the canton the seven points of the star represent Australia's six states and one territory Australia from Europe we welcome Austria a tricolor with equal horizontal stripes of red white and red is the national flag of Austria the state flag is the state arms a black eagle wearing broken chains in the center according to the tradition the red and white colors originated in the bloodstained tunic of Leopold Duke of Bebeburg who fought in the Battle of Plutomus in 1191 the only part of his tunic unstained by blood was the waste where his sword belt had been ladies and gentlemen Austria and now the delegation from Belgium the flag bearer is van Doren Noel van is 44 years of age he competes with their tennis team the reason he was chosen is that he is the eldest athlete on their delegation and a great human competitor their flag a vertical tricolor of black gold and red almost square in shape describing the flag of their nation these were the colors of a horizontally striped flag which appeared when the province of Rabat rose up against Austrian rule in 1787 the vertical design was adopted in 1830 when Belgium gained its independence from the Netherlands Belgium Mr. President ladies and gentlemen this is going to be a very long procession we ask that you take your seats and enjoy the rest of the procession as the nations arrive and now Brazil the flag bearer Mario Sergei fontes the spirit of Denmark it may be the oldest national flag to be used continuously since it originated Egypt the flag of Africa's nation of Egypt is a tricolor of equal horizontal stripes of red white and black with the arms of the Federation in the center of the white stripe the arms consist of a gold hot representing the tribe to which Mohammed the founder of Islam belong and below it a scroll bearing the words Federation of Arab Republics in Arabic script the flag flown in Egypt has the name of the country beneath the scroll and was adopted as the official flag in 1972 the Farrell Islands the flag bearer Christopher Rasmussen Christopher is 20 and will be competing in these swimming events the Farrell Islands officially adopted the flag in 1948 the national and identifies it as one of the Scandinavian group a red cross fimbriated in white on a dark blue field with the vertical limb of the cross set towards the hoist the design dates from 1915 it became the official national flag when Iceland gained independence from Denmark in 1944 and now arriving the athletes of India the flag bearer of Pine District Disabled Sports and Rehabilitation Association carrying the flag of India the flag is a horizontal tricolor of orange white and green the orange represents the Hindu majority green the Muslim minority and white a desire for peace between them in the center of the white stripe in dark blue the ancient Buddhist shark a symbol and now Indonesia the flag bearer Katam Santoso Katam is 31 and is a national metal holder Indonesia's national flag is a simple by color of two equal horizontal stripes red and white that is a bridee linka bridee linka is carrying the flag the youngest member of the blind team a bronze medal winner and discus in the European games of 1980 the Irish flag was first inspired by the tricolor of the French Revolution it became the official national flag of Ireland in 1922 the colors of a symbolic purpose green represents the fertile countryside of Ireland and its Catholic people orange the Protestants of Ulster and white the desire for peace and now Israel the flag bearer Zeve Karsh and was made in America in 1891 and was officially adopted by the new state of Israel in 1948