If you want to pump your body and expand your mind, there's only one place to go. Mind pump with your hosts, Sal DeStefano, Adam Schaefer, and Justin Andrews. In this hot and sweaty episode of Mind Pump, Adam, Justin, and myself do our typical 26-minute intro in this episode. We start off with Adam's music goals for 2018. We also talk about Adam's pick-up basketball game and his lack of cardio. Not heart. He's got plenty of heart. It's the cardio. Then we talked about sardines. One of my favorite foods. Me and Doug actually went out in the hallway and snuck a can of Thrive Market. I would not let you in here. Thrive Market sardines. You can actually get a 4.4 ounce can of sardines and olive oil for $2.19 or something like that. Very, very good price. Thrive Market, one of our sponsors. If you go to thrivemarket.com forward slash mind pump, here's what you're going to get. You're going to get one month free membership.  We also mentioned our other sponsor, Organifi. We talk about their cocoa or cacao, excuse me, Bliss, which none of us have tried. We haven't tried cacao bliss yet. We would love for you guys to send us some cacao bliss to eat. But there's some recipes on the Organifi website that Adam's referred to a couple of times. If you go to organifishop.com, go to the blog session. You'll see all those recipes. And if you buy something, enter the code mind pump and get a discount. Then we get to the questions. The first question was, do we believe that sports and physical activities build character and do they also build characters? Yes and yes. Yes. Next question was, is it possible to be a athlete and also be truly healthy? A little controversy here. Mm-hmm. Next question was, what is our take on Stevia? Stevia is a calorie free or low calorie sweetener that a lot of manufacturers are using to replace the artificial sweeteners aspartame and sucralose. I'm on that green coke, yo. Do we think it's a good alternative? What do we think of that particular ingredient? And finally, can your body get adapted to a certain number of steps every single day and then start to burn less calories when you do those steps? Find out in this episode. Also, you are heading into the year 2018. How about getting that year started the right way? How about we get a program where you've got the whole year planned out for you, where you can follow one maps program after another. Now normally if you would enroll in a year's worth of programming with us, it would be like, I don't know, $600 million. $5,000. It's worth a million dollars for sure. But it would be a lot. But we have something called the Super Bundle which includes maps anabolic, maps aesthetic, maps performance, maps anywhere, maps prime and mods. It's a year's worth of exercise. It's what Superman does for history. And it's super, it's discounted because it is a bundle.  By the way, next year and then forever afterwards, if you ever get form access, you're going to have to pay an annual fee every single year. So now is the time to enroll and the place to do it is mindpumpmedia.com. Doug, tell me what time it is. It's t-shirt time. What time is it? It's t-shirt time, boys and girls. It's that t-shirt time. It's that t-shirt time. Let's all do this. Who wants a shirt? You get a shirt. Throw them out. You get a shirt. Everybody. Actually, a lot of people do get a shirt. How many reviews? We have 26 reviews. Whoa! People like us. That's not bad. We just got to bribe them. All right. It's the Christmas season. Everybody's giving. All right. So we're giving out seven shirts. Damn! Seven shirts. First up is Brandon George. Alexa A. Bowen. Danny Fink. Crossfit Court. Crotchfit. I like that better. Lloyder 2020. Darby Lin. And M. Cush 10. All of your winners. That's a pot smoker. Yeah, absolutely. Send the name I just read to itunesmindpumpmedia.com. Send your shirt size, your shipping address, and we'll get that right out to you. Thanks, y'all. Good job! Justin, do the mind pump trap song, or squirrel-ex type song, you know? Mind pump. Mind pump. Win that beat. Drop. No. Yeah. That was so good. There it is. That was so good. We're coming in hot. Justin's on call. You're like a musical genius. I was like, I should be a DJ, but it's all in my mouth. I have no other skills. It is in your mouth. I actually wish that, you know, seeing little Drew do this right now, right? Our little guy get into spin tables and stuff. That didn't get as popular until after I was out of high school. Turn tables? Yeah, turn tables and mixing your own music and DJing. My friend had the techniques. It's like everybody has it now. Really? Oh, yeah. What are they scratching? There's no one effort.  What it is is now it's easy, right? It's super accessible.  So you can have the two tracks playing digitally, and you're doing this with your fingers, which are not really scratching the records. Oh, it's cheating. It is, but it's allowed almost anyone to get in the market. And I wish, because I think that's cool, and I'm into music. Maybe we should buy a pair here. Speaking of this. Speaking of this. It'll be like the tobacco pipes we bought whenever used. Dude. Oh, yeah. Yeah, let's invest in something else. I was telling you guys when we were driving the other day, I'm so fascinated with Spotify right now. Oh, yeah. Dude.  So I feel like an old man saying... Yeah, they're making moves. I feel like an old man saying this, because I remember... So this is my... I'm going to share my 2018 goals with everybody here in 2017. Last year it was the read the book thing, and I'll maintain all the things that were important to me from last year, but to add on to that basketball, snowboarding, and then listening to music. And why that's a goal for me is, these are all things that were a big part of my youth and things that I have found that when I'm in that place, I'm in a really good place. I'm really happy. I'm very present, and it provides a lot of joy and balance in my life. So I'm going to get back to incorporating more of it. So part of that whole process was getting back on my Spotify and getting back to listening to music. Last night I took off all by myself for an hour and a half walk and just listened to music and was reading lyrics. So when I was a kid, and then when I was heavy into music, I would buy the CDs, I would open them up, put them on my head, and I would read all the songs, all the lyrics, and the history. I was way into all that stuff. Do people even do that anymore? Bro. Yeah, you can look up those whole websites devoted to lyrics of songs.  Spotify, when you have the upgraded thing, does that. Oh, really? So while you're listening, I'll show you guys when we get off air, when you're listening, not only does it give you the lyrics, but it even would tell you, it tells you the history behind the song and how it was created. Oh, this was a beef between this person, this person, and he wrote that in retaliation to this. That's another way to sell the song, too. Oh, it's brilliant. It's brilliant marketing. You could just totally make something up, because in reality it's like, I got high and just made up a song. Yeah. This was a broke-up of my girlfriend.  It's just really smart. And I know the demographic that it's catering to, because I was that kid. I was the kid that would eat that up. I mean, it's so nice now. You could just sit there on your phone, go to the song you want to, find out all about it, listen to it. And we're going to be on Spotify soon, right? Yeah. I was always really into the artwork. I just loved album covers and jackets and wood, because it was funny, because you'd see bands like Tool or bands like Primus. They put a lot of that weird art that they attached themselves to, and it was so distinctive to that band. You know, they kind of kept that theme going. It was a cool thing. I love that. I love heavy metal shirts. I love that too. My favorite. My favorite. They're so grotesque and terrible. Yeah. Yeah, I didn't really realize it when I was younger. She had a booze course. Yeah, but exactly. Yeah. Now that I'm a parent, I'm like, oh my god. I know.  What are they drawing on these t-shirts? Totally. But they're so cool, right? Yeah. There's nothing like an old, an old heavy metal concert t-shirt that you've had for 15 years. Dude, you know what? They're worth a lot of money, dude. They're the best. Dude, if you have... I have concert teas. If you have them in good condition, because they're limited edition many times, right? I know. That's what sucks, though, because the best ones are the ones on that tour that are worn and faded are my favorite. It's got a hole in it.  I've never been to a metal concert ever. Oh, what?  Yeah, well, I mean, I don't know if it constitutes that, but anyway. I think it does. Kind of does.  Yeah, I did earlier. I should probably. How are you this... Have you ever been in a mosh pit?  Have you ever been in a mosh pit? No. What is it, bro? You're not a concert guy? Huh? You're not a concert guy? No, I'm not. I'm not a big concert guy. Wow. At least I don't think I am. I don't know. I love that you're open-minded enough to say it, to actually say it. Maybe I don't think I am because... It's just like your traveling thing. Yes, just like your thing of going on your... You're camping and kayaking and getting lost. Well, let's go, dude.  Let's... Okay, I got you. You just said that? I got you. We're taking you. Yeah, okay. But where? Who? I don't know. We'll go see. Okay, I got it. We'll figure it out. Does Rage still... Do they still tour? If they... No, but if they did, absolutely that's a given.  We just missed Tool at town. That would have been amazing. That's cool. That would have been cool. Yeah, no. I'll take you to something like that. We'll go for sure.  I want to listen to some... I used to go to Primus concerts every New Year's Eve. That was like... But why are they so cool? Because it's the experience of it, man. Like, you actually, like, watch people play musical instruments and interact. It's just like when you go to see a movie, you know, at the theater, and, like, everybody... There's this energy behind it that everybody gets... involves this group flow thing. What's the crowd like? It depends. It depends on the vibe that night. It changes, you know? Like, sometimes there's an angry crowd, you know, and, like, some bands get roasted for it, and then, like, the main band comes on, everybody explodes and goes crazy and apeshit.  It's crazy. Well, most people that go to concerts are pretty fanatical or, you know, know the band really, really well. So the whole arena, a lot of times, is, like, singing the song. I mean, I've been to concerts, but not a metal con... I've been to a few concerts, but nothing major. So I like metal better than I like hip-hop. Like, and I love hip-hop music, but I fucking... I saw Lady Gaga. I agree. See, the thing is I like hip-hop, and I, like, you know, it just doesn't translate as well, like, in concerts, because you're, like, on a mic, and, like, there's... Well, a lot of hip-hop today is got the synthesizer. So it's just a bunch of... It's produced, right? It's a really... It's produced up, and heavy metal... There's instruments. Drums. Yeah, instruments. It's... And when you see that live and you watch somebody play that instrument live, it's different than actually hearing it come through. And so I definitely think there's a big difference between watching hip-hop and rock live and versus putting... Because I'd rather have hip-hop in my headphones. Yeah, right. I like it in my headphones because I can hear crystal clear. Studio-wise, like, hip-hop wins on that. Right. So I can pick up the lyrics. Rock is live. But rock, yeah. Man, listen to rock. I would love to see, like, Rush. Are they still... Do they tour still? I think they still do some tours here and there, right? Like, 95? Dude, let's, you know, get a little more updated. All right. What? Okay, my bad. Well, you know what? So part of this... This whole...  Getting back on to listening to music is just so I can stay, naive of us to think that there's not music that's new and up and coming right now that each of us wouldn't love to listen to.  Yeah, right. That's so old-mandus.  Like, music today is terrible. Like, you just sound old when you say that. What is this garbage? Well, you know what's funny? Like, I... So... And I was kind of going along the same road as you as far as getting back into music and, like, I used to go to, like, the warp tour and stuff. Like, I used to like to go to the tours between... festivals and stuff because then you'd actually find out, like, bands that you've never... Let's do that. ...been exposed to otherwise and, like, especially, like, the warp tour is, like, it's now it's more of, like, an eclectic kind of gathering of different... It used to be just punk music but now it's, like, metal, rock, you know, punk music. Let's do that. Well, that's why... That's what I know. So, when you were younger, you would be consuming so much. You consumed a lot of garbage but then you pick up on a lot of things that not a lot of people are picking up on because you're on the cutting edge and so what I do is I keep, you know, I need to 25-year-olds close to me. Yeah. So you're like a vampire? Just like a creepy old man. No! Blood boys.  Because I do... I appreciate music and I love knowing what's new, what's hot, what's up and coming so I have a couple cousins.  Listen to it before it even gets released, you know, so they know, like, oh, this is awesome. This is dropping. Yeah. And so that's part of my secret weapon was if the people that do that, because I was like this, it consumes a good piece of my life. It's a nice piece of the pie. It takes time. Yeah, it takes time.  Right. Other things are taking a priority, right? Too responsible. But there's something to take from that too, right? So, you know, business, making money, reading books, growing, all that stuff, super important has become more of a priority than me listening to music. But, you know, we're going back and revisiting that. I've found that, you know what, there's a part of me that's kind of missing that because I become so I'm no different now. I'm just more consumed with this. And so, There's a value to it. Right. Right.  Katrina and I, so great. We went down there. I can't wait to hear the story, by the way. We'll revisit it. I want to hear about your basketball. Yeah, I'm playing a while. Yeah, I haven't played in a long time. How good were you? You know what? I was in a great position. I know I shot a percentage. So Okay, now that's what I was impressed with. You know, I only played two different days this last week and I, one game that said I'm smarter than you are like to go and do three games. I'm not conditioned for that right now. So. I got bullied into that my shot, my rebounding, my blocking, all that stuff was like, it was like riding a bike for me. It didn't miss. I didn't miss a beat. And that's what actually got me excited and it just, it's like, like riding a bike for me. So that part was cool.   Well, you need it for endurance. If you want endurance, dude, you gotta do it. Right, so, you know, so I actually went for a run the other day too, like I, you know- I went for a run.  All right, all right, so- Someone's gonna see you and be like, I don't- Hypocrite!  No, I'm doing it to play basketball. I want to play ball. Yeah, I want to play ball. I want to snowboard, I want to do these things. So anyways, we played my favorite part about playing- So is this like a pickup game somewhere? Yeah, I think- So just random pickup? Yeah, right, at the random gyms, you go to 24 hour fitness, there's always games that are running, you show up and then you're on the next, you know, if you're next to the line, you get in the court, right? Now what I love to do, and this is actually how Katrina and I met over seven years ago, because those that don't know or haven't heard me say on the show before, she's a division one collegiate level athlete. So she played basketball all four years in college. She was all defense every year, like so.   Pickup games can be a little rough and it's, you know, you don't see a lot of chicks at the 24 hour fitness playing ball with all the guys. But of course she does, you know?  Yeah, we'll play. We'll look at her, you wanna run one game? She's like, yeah, let's run one game.  Like, okay, you take him, you take him, you take her.  When I see, because you could see who the kid on that team who's the most unathletic, you know, he's the extra, he's the fifth guy that like, shouldn't be out there, never played organized ball. Should've looked kinda late. Right, and so what do they do? Automatically pair him against Katrina, right?  Wait until they realize that she's better than most of their whole team, much less you put her on the worst guy and then like halfway through they're having to stop. Holy, cause she's, she got three. Was she just schoolin' on us? Oh, dude, she had three, she stole the ball three times from him, she blocked him.   Okay, okay.  Yeah, yeah, yeah.    So then they end up switching over, putting a better person on herself. So yeah, we wouldn't play Rangame M1, of course.  Were you hurtin' the next day? You know what? The arches of my feet more than anything else.  Dude, I forgot. And that's one of the first things I noticed. And I almost rolled my ankle just because of like the explosiveness of the jumping and all that. And like I landed on it and I could just feel like my foot gripping for dear life. And then later on those muscles were just not like feeling it, you know, any cut I made after that.  No doubt. 100%. And to me, this was the, for sure it confirmed it. You know, I could have speculated that because I haven't been doing anything like that. But because I've played ball for so long and consistently in my life to see how I felt, like this is no exaggeration. You know, we were really like, her and I, when we went down there to shoot were like, you know, we don't wanna play. We know we're not in shape to play. We gotta get in shape to play. But of course, you know, we're all, we're competitors and we're like, ah, fuck, I wanna play. Let's play a game. Let's play a game.  I could not believe it. And never in my life, even when I'm the most deconditioned after a summer of not exercising and eating like shit, then going back to playing ball, I could at least like mentally push through and keep myself running and going. I could not. Dude, it was that. It was for like, I was like, and I knew that going in, trying to like moderate the energy and like the amount of like effort I was putting in somewhat. And then I stole the ball and went for that like full court layup. And I'm like, yeah.  Right from that one play. Right, so team no cardio over here. Oh yeah. We'll be doing some cardio. I was hoppin' and puffin' a bit. You know, the good news is it comes back. Cardio tends to come back back. Oh dude, I did two days in a row, took a couple of days off and then played again. But already the difference on day three. How'd your movement feel though? I felt like my movement was on point. So here's the thing that was really cool. So my buddy, him and I are texting who I used to play ball with all the way into my, until I was 30 with him, like Wreckleys and stuff. I sent him a message. I said, hey bro, I'm back to playing ball.  He's like, he says, my knees hurt just hearing you say that. And I was like, you know what? The irony is I said my knees, my ankles, my joints feel better now than they did five, six years ago when I was playing with you because I've addressed mobility issue so much. I'm like lighter and more organized. My movement patterns, everything, my like going into the hoop was fluid and smooth. It's just, yeah, I was just dog tired. So I'm not fluid yet. And I know I'm missing a step and like I definitely feel that missing, but the normal, like normally right away after I play a game, my IT would probably bother me than my hips would, than my low back, like none of that. Like I felt really, really good. And so that was really exciting for me. This is part of, again, 2018 for me. You know, I definitely am not focused on aesthetics whatsoever right now. I'm 100% focused on these other aspects of my life that involve health and fitness for me. So hopefully that doesn't bum out like all the bodybuilding fans that I have that love to see me change my physique. But I'm sure knowing me, like I'll be on that kick for a while and then I'll miss being the buff guy walking around. It's fun, man. It's fun to take your body through all these different things. Everybody should, man. I really believe that this is ideal for everybody at one point to move in and out of these different modalities and ways of training. They all have their different benefits and carries and they all have their detriments when you stay in one for too long. So- Well, think about it. If you get to the point where you're just enjoying what you're doing, you never stop. You never stop, right? So you're always moving, you're always doing something. You're just changing what that is. And that's, I think, awesome. I think that's great. It gives you good, well-rounded progress with your body and you're smart.  Easing my way in, for sure. Yeah, exactly. I mean, old school me just less than five, six years ago, I could get on a court and run back three to five games, no problem. And right now, I know I'm not even in that condition. So- Yeah, I don't think I'll ever pick up basketball. I've gone 38 years of my life without playing a lot of it. You know- I don't think I will. But I do miss grappling. I do miss grappling. At some point, I will go back to doing that. I could see, you know what? And I would love to see you do that because I feel like the same experience that I'm experiencing right now, you will experience with grappling because you had such a passion for it. You were really good at it. You've moved all the way up to what you purple belt is what you were up to. So you've put some hours in. And I bet you that, and this was before- Those patterns are there. Well, and then we- It's just getting started, man. My knowledge, and yeah, no, that's what I'm going through right now. Well, dude, here's the thing. I'm more frustrated than doing something that I know I'm really good at and not being good. It's just- Yeah, yeah. Bro, it hurts. The thing about training Jiu-Jitsu all the time is it just, everything hurts all the time. No matter what. Like I'll do it for six years and I still was like, oh, this is twisted. That's tweak. It's just one of those constant things. You know, but it'd be interesting to hear now that you've addressed and done more mobility and the fact that we have a different outlook on flow. And so I think that- I just gotta go easier. That's such, yeah. And that's how I'm playing right now. I'm experiencing the benefits of getting into flow state and then what I'm getting from that without having to push, be at an elite level.  I'm like just picking up some ball, playing slower, not trying to get crazy right now, but really, really enjoying some of the benefits that I'm getting from that.  He's got a game actually tonight, so I'm gonna go watch him play. Oh, he did? They won their first game. Yeah, it's great. His team won their first game. And how did he do? You know, he's trying. He's trying really hard. He's definitely not the best kid on the team. He's not the worst, but he goes out there and he tries, which I really appreciate. And I've given him a couple of stretches to do because he's super tight in his hamstrings. And he's been doing them. I mean, it's really cool to watch. Well, coaches at that level love that, man.  I was not the most athletic, talented kid growing up. I was just hungry to get better.  And I mean, then you get better. You know, you get better when you do that.  Oh, it's great when you actually see things pay off too. And like same thing, like my son played Sunday. And it was like, I actually like spent time like a couple of days before that really like just going over like the fundamentals and, you know, dribbling, passing all the stuff and like shooting and in the game. Cause like he's not necessarily like the best player in the team either. And like doesn't really understand the sport yet.  So for him to like get the ball, turn, I'm like, shoot. And he shoots and he makes it. And then like this happened a couple of times. He made like three in the game. And it was like a really short game, but like I was just like blown away. Cause, you know, soccer, I didn't see any effort or anything in that direction. This is one of those that's like, yeah, but it's still, it's like finally for me to see like something kind of like translate and pay off like that was great.  Yeah. Like really trying. For me, I think it was, I mean, I remember in soccer, I think it was like the first time I scored a goal or something like that. Like you felt it. Yeah. When you feel that excitement of what it's like to do that. And like you see that you can do that.  Oh, he got pumped. Like he was like, like confident all of a sudden. That's why he made a couple more. He was just like, yeah, I can do this. That's awesome. No, for me it was, it was weights. Did that for me. Any strength sport, arm wrestling, weights. And then when I did grappling, but otherwise I never, like I said, I never played anything else. But when I started lifting, I got real serious about it real fast. Yeah. Real fast. So what brand were those sardines that we just had? Those are Thrive Market brand. They're the Thrive Market brand.  So yeah. Sorry. So tell me how they are compared to the other ones. They're really good. They were big, full. Honestly, they're as good as the other ones. I swear to God that you were at that all the time. Yes, they're big, full, like plump sardines.  Thank you for doing that. And we shared a can of sardines from Thrive. But they were the Thrive Market brand and they're cheap. How much? Inexpensive. Are they more or less inexpensive? Yeah, they're decent. How much less are they? Like 75 cents or almost a dollar less than the other brand that I get, which is... God, what's that brand that I get? Yeah, you get the same brand. I've seen you eat it at most times. It's called, I can't remember. Anyway, I like that they have their own brand and I feel like that's probably the future of their business. Is it? Yeah. What do you think so? So most, okay, so...  We've been using a lot of their specific brand. Thrive Market, like if I understand their business model the same way, it's very similar to like a vitamin shop business. So they carry all these other products that are most popular that people want, right? For a really, really low price and they don't make very much margins, if any at all, on those items where they make their most margins as on their own stuff. And that's the idea is drive people to the website. So with all these popular, awesome brands for awesome deals where they're not making a lot of money, knowing that eventually you're gonna try some of their products where they make most their money. Well, look at the difference in price. Smart. Oh yeah, Wild Planet, that's the one. Wild Planet is, which I like, they got great products too. $3.25 a can on the Thrive Market site. So it's even cheaper on the Market site because if you go to Whole Foods, it can cost you as much as $5. Their Thrive Market brand Sardines, $219. So it's over a dollar cheaper.  Sardines are good, dude, and they're not anchovies. People confuse Sardines with anchovies and they think they're gonna taste them. Anchovies are hairy, dude. Anchovies, which I like too, but anchovies go with cheese and bread and stuff like that. Sardines are not super fishy, very, very good source of omega-3 fatty acids because they're low on the food chain, they're very low in things like heavy metals and mercury. So the thing about fish is if you eat the big fish like swordfish and tuna. Yeah, they're gonna pick up all those heavy metals. Yeah, but Sardines are pretty clean, they're pretty clean. I didn't know that, it's a healthier way.  There's like 30 grams of protein for a can. You get a good dose of omega-3 fatty acids. Right, you'll never find another meal for under $3 that you can get that much protein. You can get a can of tuna, which is okay, but the problem with tuna, again, you don't get as much fatty acids and you also get sometimes mercury or if you eat too much of it, you'll get the mercury. Well, and I don't think, that'd be interesting for ounce-to-ounce Sardine versus actual tuna. Tuna's cheaper, I mean, I think probably cheaper. Is it for protein? I believe so, I believe so. We need to do the math. They also sell canned chicken. You ever seen canned chicken at the grocery store? I have, and you know what I had to do?  I had a girlfriend that used to eat that all the time and I just couldn't do it. Chicken in a can. Yeah, I can't do it, man. It seems like a bodybuilder's dream, right? No, it's exactly, it was a competitor. My girl, that we used to compete. We get tired of tuna, it's like, yeah, let's just do this with chicken. Did her fart smell a lot? Oh, I wish she was. I know, she probably listens. He's trying not to be mean. Hey, man, bodybuilder chicks, no different than bodybuilder dudes. They have smelly farts. Dropping some balls. Yeah, you know who you are. She blew that hot air all over you. Why we're speaking about walking through the gym, you think it's a big guy. Why we're talking about food and stuff. I've been meaning to address this on the podcast because ever since I started doing like the organifi, like cookies and recipes, like for Christmas time and holidays right now, I've been doing it a lot. I'm getting flooded with DMs. What's the recipe? What's this? What's that, like all the stuff? We should come up with a recipe book.  Now I can't get to other people with other questions in my DMs and all I'm answering is food shit, which I don't like doing. But so let me just tell you guys where I'm getting the recipes is off the organifi website. So when you go to the organifi website. So it's organifyshop.com. Right, go to organifyshop.com and then go to the blog. When you click on the blog. That's at the bottom. So to get to blog, you have to scroll to the bottom. Right, it scrolls all the way down, click on blog. Once you click on blog, then it's a scroll, right?  So you can read. Oh, they have chocolate banana muffins. Right, you can read the blogs if you want or you can just get the recipe from the blog but they have all kinds of different ones that use all their different products. What is this cacao bliss? I haven't, we haven't tried cacao bliss yet. I know too. Cacao bliss balls. Dude, Shauna, Shauna, I know she's a listener. Shauna, I'm talking to you right now.   We haven't even had it yet. The fuck's that work? I love cacao and balls. I'm in. Do you know what I mean?  All of it. So there you go.  Bird. This clause brought to you by OrganiFi. For those days you fall short on getting your organic veggies or whole food nutrition, OrganiFi fills the gap with laboratory tested certified organic superfoods to help give your health and performance the added edge. Try OrganiFi, totally risk free for 60 days by going to OrganiFi.com. That's O-R-G-A-N-I-F-I.com and use a coupon code Mind Pump for 20% off at checkout. Our first question is from Coach Wardle. Do you believe that sport and other physical activities build character or characters? So there's two questions here. One is, does it build character and number two does it promote character? Is yes and yes. Yeah, both. Yes and yes, definitely. I think any organized activity. That's Coach Josh, right? Yeah, Josh Wardle. Good for Josh. So any organized activity that is competitive is gonna build or promote certain attributes. And it doesn't have to be a physical activity. Although physical activities, I think are some of the best because when you're playing something that's physical, you're feeling, you know, fatigue, you're feeling pain, you're feeling like lots of physical sensations which can strengthen your character. I noticed this when I would train certain clients with heavy weights, in particular females, where some of these women had never done anything very difficult when it came to physical pursuits. They didn't play sports. Now I'm having them lift weights. I'm having them push themselves. And because they're going through that physical pain and they feel confident afterwards, they feel like they can handle more regular stuff just because they were able to handle that. Oh, there's no doubt in my mind that I'm not sitting here right now today if it wasn't for sports.  I 100% attribute that to the community that my parents had me in with church and then with sports. Sports to me, and sports even more so because I even think that the dogmatic side of the church and everything like that later on. I asked about the brotherhood. Right, so with the sports, there's so many parallels that I found in sports with life and business. Everything from having to work with others to the amount of effort that you put into it is what you get out of it. Like, so much of what I had to learn to be successful in sports as a kid has translated into the person that I am today. What about adversity, everything? What about learning to, yep, and what about learning to like rely on people or be a role player? Yes. You know, like find how you contribute, how you contribute best. This is all stuff that you learn about yourself going through the process of like where your strengths are, where your weaknesses are. What, you know, part of your weakness, where you can improve. So something that I could do to tangibly, you know, improve my performance out there on the field to contribute more or like things like that. Like, there's just so much I got from sports that that's why I tended to actually gravitate more towards the ones that had the most, I guess, physicality, the most like dangerous sort of environment, yeah. Because for me, like I felt like I just, I wanted more of a challenge. I wanted more things that, you really pressed me to my limits so I can understand like, you know, like how I was gonna respond, how I was gonna overcome what I could do in those more extreme situations to overcome them, get stronger. And I just, I really love the process of getting stronger.   And I remember being hearing in practice like, listen, every position, every player on this team has a specific job. Do your job and collectively together we are successful. Don't do your job and the whole team fails. And learning that, like in applying that in life is so true, man. Like when you get into the business world and you have employees and you have a staff, you have people who love you, you have people below you and you have to work with all these people with this collective goal to be successful, huge. So that and like me understanding that, you know, what it takes to be a leader in a certain situation. Because for me, I would just like to do my own thing forever and like people would trust and rely on me to do my own thing. But then stepping in more of a leadership position where now I have to tell everybody else, here's the game plan, here's what we're doing, here's how we like execute. That was another challenge for me to then understand like here's the best ways to get people to respond to you to get, to go to the workouts. Like a lot of my responsibility was just to get people in the off season to come in to improve on their skill set. And you know, like going from high school into college was a whole nother monster. I need to learn everybody else's positions now. Like I was so good at my own position. Now I have to learn everybody else and how that whole overarching, you know, the game from like the bird's eye view looks and that way I got better as an individual because I started to understand now what the field looked like, you know, from a even broader scale. Now there's also the bonding that you get with people when you suffer together. Now I've experienced this in other ways. I mean, having worked in fitness for as long as I have and being parts of teams and gyms and being in situations where, you know, you need to hit a particular sales goal and it's down to the last minute and everybody's been working bell to bell for days and we're there and then it gets pulled off and we did it together. It's that common like, you know, it's that we did this together that creates some pretty remarkable bonds and it comes from struggle. It doesn't usually come from just ease and success. No, that's a great point. I mean, I can play Devils advocate with this a little bit too as going towards the other part of the question that Whirl said, which is the characters. It does develop characters and there are some people that take what they've learned from sports. So they identify so much with sports that they become very competitive with everything that they do and maybe they were like a star. It doesn't always translate the same in real life. It doesn't. There is like a, there is a other side to this coin, right? Where somebody who, yeah, you've had a lot of success from playing sports, but then you get into the real world and you realize that maybe you don't play well with it. Maybe you were talented and successful in sports and you were successful. But those same tactics are like, you know, crushing people around you that like, you know, maybe need a different type of motivation and encouragement. It reminds me. I remember having a boss of mine for many years who was a Marine and his way of leadership all derived from his experience of being a Marine and that's how he approached leading and he's been successful that way.  And I would, I still would.  Dude, you can't lead everybody that way. It's not this, do it now, ask questions later. Like you want people that are outside the box thinkers and challenge the things that you may be telling them to do, you don't always want everybody to be order takers or else you're only going to be so successful. So I think the same thing applies with people that have done sports their whole life and identify with being an athlete. Anything that has a lot of power, anything that can invoke a lot of emotion or feeling has the ability to provide incredible benefit, but it also has the ability to create and provide some negatives. Let's talk about tribalism.  Yeah. Probably remember what happened just now. Get into fights. Do you remember the Dodger Giants thing that happened just like three years ago? It's crazy.  It's a fucking, it's a sports game. And so that's the characters. That's when people identify so strongly. Right, with a team.  I mean, it's insane to me that that happens, but it's because it has the much power. Remember I said something not that long ago. This was maybe about three or four months ago and I got some heat for it because I took a jab at, I think LeBron James, who by the way, I'm a huge fan of him as an athlete because he was talking outwardly about some political bullshit.   And I don't remember what else I said on the show, but then everybody's giving me flak and it's like the way people were giving me flak though were like defending LeBron James to like a team.  You know the guy kills children at night. You know what I'm saying? You don't know. I don't know. I don't think so. I think he's a good guy too, but I'm not gonna defend them to a tee because somebody else said something about them. I'm like, it's really funny how people attach themselves. It's because they identify so strongly because that tribal mentality which has got some benefits and got some negatives. But then there's another side to it too. There's also the people that play sports that identify so strongly with their sport that they become characters. For example, if you're an artist then you were to draw a picture of a bodybuilder and what he looks like when he's not in the gym.   Maybe you're wearing like work boots, right? You've got your cross fitter, you've got your football guy, your baseball guy, your basketball guy, and you know your cross fitter. And it's like, oh dude, we saw this with Kettlebell Sport. When we hosted the Kettlebell Sport Tournament, one of the reasons that got me excited is because as a marketer, I saw an opportunity when I looked at these people coming to compete and I saw that they wore the same clothes, they all have the same gym bag, the reason same chalk, they had the same kind of verbiage and I'm like, holy shit, this is a tribe. This is all tribalism. And it's in some ways, I understand why we developed it through revolution and how it can be beneficial and it can get people to work together. But on this side, you start to identify with these things and it can become very negative.  And that is a very tough lesson to learn if you're so identified with your body that you can't, you know how hard it is to age if you're so identified with your strength and muscle and leanness and how awesome you perform, you imagine how difficult that would be to age. We see this all the time in Hollywood with these actors and actresses who are on growth hormone and anabolic and plastic surgeon and a lot of stuff. So yeah, it could definitely turn you into a character but anything that's got power, anything at all that has power over people for good has an incredible amount of power. That being said, I mean, and I think you guys would agree in because you both have kids that are in sports, the God, the difference. And I know there's statistics on this, the kids that play sports, they're GPA, they're likelihood of staying out of jail. Yeah, they do. So there's a lot of benefits to having kids involved in sports.  I'm not saying that. I think every kid or most kids will benefit from being on a team. So I don't want to necessarily say sports because I think people specifically think of robotics team like you're saying. Robotics, you could do chess, you could do debate team, you could do in business, you have teams that you learn to work with. Some of the strongest connections you'll ever see are people who go off to war together. That's a big team. They'll come back and they'll be lifelong friends. So there's definitely benefits from learning how to organize together, work together to achieve a common goal. Well, and I think too, just the physicality, so if you just take it for most sports, it's this expression of your physical abilities, which you don't really get that in the rest of school. So for me, sports, that was crucial for me because that was something that me to just be able to improve my body in the way that it functions and it gave me a deeper understanding. That's a great point.  They're just trying to think your way through something. Exactly, right?  Do you know what your body feels like when it bonks? Do you know what it feels like to vomit because you pushed your body so hard to getting ready for getting in condition for sport? When you've done that, you're less averse to adversity. So things that are physically challenging, like I don't know, I just see sometimes like that's a problem with some kids that I notice these days that aren't as physically active. Like it's just, they're just very averse to like tough situations, even if it's just mentally based, like if there's any kind of physical component to it, it's like, ah, right. Next up is 00 Silk Drop. Is it possible to be an athlete and be truly healthy? Oh, we're gonna stay on this athlete kicker. Well, we need to find what she means.  Was it on the, what was it on though? It was on the video. I believe it was the IIFLM video that I did with Jason Phillips.   And really they missed the whole gist of the video, which was that you can eat for performance and you can eat for longevity, but they're not the same thing. And that's what we're talking about here. So now the question is, can they be truly healthy? I'm assuming she's referring to optimal, long-term longevity health, right? That's what I think she's talking about, she says truly healthy. Before you go into this, I think it's, keep in mind what I think Dr. Andy Gaplan said, which I think is so awesome, which is you're either adapting or you're optimizing for the other. So you have to keep that in mind as you go through this that, you know, there's pros and cons to both. There's pros to pushing your body like an athlete. And then there's cons to that. And then there's pros to not pushing your body like an athlete, and there's cons to that also. Well, and true healthy, like you were alluding to her talking about longevity and that pursuit versus like right now, I wanna be strong and I wanna be able to do this, that. I wanna be able to lift something really heavy. I wanna have abilities across the board as far as strengths concern. That may take away from some of the markers of longevity. So it's all about what you're really pursuing as far as what health means to you. Yeah, I mean, I'll give you an example, right? We know through many, many, many studies that the ideal amount of protein intake for most people to build muscle is around 0.6 to 0.8 grams per pound of body weight for lean individuals.  Now for longevity, that's too much protein. For long-term health, you probably want less than that. You probably want more like 0.4 grams per pound of body weight or maybe even a little less than that.  If you were trying to do a drag race, it would not be advantageous for you to drive at 2,500 RPMs. You're gonna lose the race, right? But if you wanted the motor to last you over five years, 10 years, 15 years, you want that motor to last, it would be advantageous to drive it around 2,500 RPMs. They gotta rebuild dragster engines what almost every third race or every race sometimes. So it's one or the other. Now here's my advice. My advice is this, for the average person that's listening. First of all, most of you listening right now are not competing in any extreme way. You're not at a high level in any particular sport or whatever. You just wanna be fit and healthy.  This message is for you also. I always encourage people to know what their true healthiness is or to find what that baseline is of true optimal health and then play from there. So now I know for me to be absolutely at my most healthy that feel the best, that I eat this particular way, my carbohydrates tend to be around here. These are the foods I avoid. These are the foods I focus on. Now from there, I wanna gain five pounds of muscle or I wanna improve my endurance.  Now I can go from that baseline and push my body to be a little bit more extreme. But by nature, extreme is not optimal for long-term health. It just isn't because it's extreme and it's okay.  Well, because people that are current athletes right now don't wanna admit or don't wanna think that... That they're not healthy. They're not healthy. Especially since the... Even when their joints are screaming at us. Well, and even if they're not, right?  I didn't have any problems like that.  And so in my head, I'm healthy and I'm the healthiest version of myself right now.   You know what I'm saying? So that would be my attitude. So I understand where people are coming from when they become very defensive about being an athlete. How could being an athlete not be healthy? Well... And it's like losing abilities, losing skills. Like that always, I mean for the old athlete inside me, it's always one of those things that feels like, oh my God, I'm losing like healthy markers. Or even though I have to realize my body's changing, my chemistry's changing, like all these things, like I could preserve my body more and still acquire a lot of skill and different abilities, but it's gonna look a little bit different, you know, than it did in my 20s. Well, it's also, I mean, also consider this. If we were to compare the average lifespan of athletes. I was just gonna say, use your blue zone analogy, you always love to use, because there's a very example, in all the blue zones, there's none of them are athletes. None of them are extreme. Yeah, none of them are extreme athletes.  So people are gonna look at that and say, oh, well, I'm living longer than the average person, therefore I'm optimizing longevity.  Now, if you look at the world's blue zones, these are places in the world where people, a disproportionate amount of people live to a hundred years old or older. Disproportion in the sense that, you know, two times more people in these areas versus other areas of the world. And there's seven of them that they've identified. You know, one of them is Loma Linda, California, the Seventh Day Adventist, it's a religious group. They have very strict nutritional guidelines. You have Sardinia, you have Okinawa, you have an island off of Greece. And when they look at what these people do and why, to try and figure out why they live so long, first and foremost, they identify that it's not genes. Although genetics play a role, they don't have special genes in these regions because once somebody moves from, for example, the island of Sardinia to, you know, Alabama, within one or two generations at the same lifespan as the people around them in Alabama. Once they follow the same lifestyle. So they've narrowed it down to say, okay, it's not genes. It has to be lifestyle. Let's see what we find in common. And what they find is a lot of moderation. They find daily activity that is an extreme. So nobody's running crazy. Nobody's doing hardcore lifting. Nobody, they're just active.  They don't eat extreme. Nobody's like pushing calories. Nobody's pushing protein. Nobody's super restrictive. It's kind of moderate. They consume whole natural foods. They've got a really tight social network. They get a decent amount of sleep, but it's not extreme in any direction. And that's longevity. Now, are any of these people going to be extreme? Are any of these people at their best performance in a particular sport? No. If you want to push your body to that limit, you are going to be taking away from longevity. But here's the way I look at it. Because then people there's this whole argument like, well, you're not focused on longevity, so forget you and this and that. Look, here's the deal. It's not about living longer necessarily. It's about living better. And if you enjoy bench pressing 300 pounds and squatting 400 pounds, if you enjoy being able to run a marathon and under a particular time, if you enjoy eating more protein because you like more muscle and all those different things, and that's giving you a better quality of life, then that's worth it, in my opinion.  A lot, you know? Sometimes I drink alcohol, sometimes I party, sometimes I don't sleep like I'm supposed to, but I'm enjoying my life. But yeah, the question is, is it possible to be hardcore athlete and be truly healthy in the longevity sense? There's a trade off. Well, it doesn't say hardcore. If it did say hardcore, then we would all say, definitely not, you know what I'm saying? Because hardcore is different than just being an athlete. Being hardcore already in itself is saying that you're out of balance and you're overdoing something because you're hardcore about it. But I mean, I think that you set up perfectly. Being a balanced athlete, yeah, if that's possible. Well, and I think that it's okay to do things that we love, and you've said this before, Sal, that it's not, our health isn't just muscle, calories. It's not just the physical. Right, there's a mental aspect to that. Emotional artist, though. Yeah, there's a lot of other parts that come into play that if it provides, and that to me was a lot of this whole motivation to get back into playing ball was, I could totally tell the shift change in my attitude, like we had a busy work day, we had all this shit going on. I got on the court, I wasn't thinking about none of that. Well, none of that, it makes you present. That's right, you're there and you're experiencing it and you're not thinking about all this other stuff and letting that get in the way. So it provides a great environment for that. You know, it's funny about this, because again, we were talking about that video that I did with Jason and there was a guy on there that's like, well, I played in the NFL and I followed macros, but I ate all this bad foods and stuff and I'm healthy, this and that. And the irony of an ex-pro football player saying that, you know the lifespan, the average lifespan of it?   Yeah, 53 to 59, they have a terrible lifespan. Football is horrible for your life. It's war, you're going to war every time you play and you gotta feed yourself. I went through all that, yeah, you're not gonna convince me. Being in the NFL, you've maintained optimal health. You know what? Because we market, we advertise that way, right? Most of your athletes are the ones that are marketing the things that we're selling to people. You know what I'm saying? Well, think of it this way, when we... They're physical specimens. The pictures that we advertise to people for health are super muscular, super shredded, shaved, tanned, and just amazing cartoonish aesthetics. The reality is optimal health looks a little softer. You're relatively lean.    You're just gonna be, like, optimal health just looks healthy. And for most people, for most of you listening, if you reach that, you'll probably be very happy with the way you look. Right, yep. Next question is from HaveNamey. What is your take on Stevia? Do you think it can be as harmful as other non-calorie sweeteners? I knew you wanted to go here, for sure. I mean, I think that this is smart that we talk about this, man, because one of the things too, for sure that we talk about on the show all the time, I'll never attach myself to something and say, oh, this is better. This is the way. It's like, we don't know, you know? As of right now, we believe that it's a better option. Yeah, because it's like plant-derived. At least we're going in that direction. I use it. I use it probably more than what I should without knowing more information. Do you think people are overusing it? Oh, for sure. So here's the thing. So Stevia is, it is a plant and it does contain Stevia soids. I believe they're called. These are compounds of the Stevia that give it its sweet flavor. It's a relatively calorie-free sweetener so manufacturers have been using Stevia in replacement of things like aspartame and sucralose to sweeten supplements without adding carbohydrates or sugar because people like things to taste a particular way, which is funny in and of itself, but that's the case, right? We want health food or we want to take a concentrated superfood supplement that's got seven different vegetables that are ground and powdered and dried and put into something, but we don't want it to taste like vegetables. We want it to taste like sweet, delicious, something. So we sweeten it with something and we choose Stevia and it's a natural counterpart. I definitely would, I definitely think Stevia is better than the artificial sweeteners for several reasons. One, it's been used for a long time all over the world. It doesn't seem to have the negative effect on the gut microbiome that things like sucralose and aspartame have. It's been around longer. I said that already, but does that mean it's gonna have zero effects on the body? Of course not. Everything you consume, especially if you consume a lot of them, will have effects in the body. Now there was, there were some old studies done to show that Stevia had a contraceptive effect on female rodents. So there was some fears that it may have some effects on the hormones of mammals. Now these were done on animals. Animal studies can only be replicated in humans about 30% of time. So there's that. And there are, there were other studies afterwards that couldn't replicate that same thing. Nonetheless, my take on Stevia is that my take on anything that you supplement in your, to your body, it doesn't replace whole natural foods. But I would definitely recommend it over the- And you'd be, you'd probably be totally fine with it if the only way you consumed it is by chewing it up in the plant form. Yeah, and you know, some Stevia extracts are super concentrated. That's what I mean. Like I mean, it goes back to, and we've talked about this been a long time since we brought up the analogy of the cane sugar.   The amount of calories you'd use to do that and burn, yada, yada, yada, right? I know the Japanese used to have used Stevia for a very, very long time. And they've got great, there's been great track record with it. No, you know, like I said, no major problems. There was a big study done in 2008 where there were no adverse effects on the fertility of female mice. So they've tried to replicate that, but they haven't found, you know, any issues. But again, that doesn't mean there isn't necessarily any issues.  Right, so it's, I mean, to me it's the lesser evil or it's the one that we feel most, you know, safe with in comparison to everything else that's out there right now. But that being said, it does not mean that it's- It could be- We don't know, we don't know. But again, it does have a good track record. Here's the other thing too with sweet, okay? Besides calories- Right, I think it was training your brain. Well yeah, besides calories and besides, you know, the actual molecule or chemical itself, the perception of sweet changes things in the brain and it- I said it'd be like chewing bamboo, Doug. Yeah. Like chewing, yes, it's like- No, it's sugar cane, not bamboo. No, no, I said chewing up sugar cane would be like chewing six feet of bamboo. That can't help you out there. Yeah, I know it was, I had it. You got it right though. But yeah, the sensation, the perception of sweet, even if we were to somehow magically attach electrodes to your brain to give you a perception of sweetness.     I have protein bars in my refrigerator right now. I haven't ate them in quite some time.  They really do.  I remember these things being great. Maybe these ones are old.  Like, oh, these must be old. I need a new box and get a new box. And then I realize, oh, that's not very good. Buy about the third one. It only takes about three in a row, like three days in a row of like consistently having a protein bar.  Like literally, literally. And I notice it every time I go away from them and come back, I can pinpoint the shift that when I first intake them, they don't taste good. I don't like them. Then all, and that to me right away is like flags. We have to think to ourselves, why do we perceive tastes in the first place? Like, why is that even important? Like, if you think about it, why don't we just eat food, get what we need and get our nutrients and we're done? Like it's just fuel. Yeah, it's just fuel. Why do we need to perceive taste? It's like a reward thing. Well, taste tells you a lot about what you're eating. For example, in nature, bitter many times means poison. Really, really strong bitter taste means poison. So if we taste something, we bite into it. Oh, we don't, that bitter taste drives us away. We don't eat it and we've avoided consuming too much poison. Sweet probably signified a very fast source of energy like fructose, fructose is a sugar found in nature. So if I'm walking around in nature, think about it, you're walking around, you're human. You've been walking for days, you're tired, you're gonna figure it out.  We don't have stores around you. Where are you gonna taste sweet?  So you'll taste it and be like, what is this amazing flavor? First of all, sweet tells you it's safe. In nature, sweet means it won't poison you.  Plus it signifies particular types of nutrients like vitamin C, which is found in things that tend to be sweet in nature. So these sensations or perceptions exist for a reason and if you trick your body by giving it something that gives you that perception, but it's not a, yeah, your brain starts to change. So then you do what happened to me, which was for a good portion of my young adulthood, I didn't like fruit. Fruit tasted bland to me. Because you were comparing it to processed sugar.  So fruit tastes blah to me. Take that out.  Then I go bite into an apple. Oh my God, bro. It tastes like I'm eating a candy bar because it was, that sweet taste was so amazing, but it's crazy how much we can change that based off of our food profile. One of the easiest things you can do to reduce your food intake if you eat too much, if you got a problem with over consuming, this is really easy. Eat only super bland food. No joke, no joke. This will, you will naturally get palate fatigue.  Don't season your food. Don't combine foods.   It's a criss-crosser white potato thing. Yeah, and watch what happens. You'll find that your decision making changes quite a bit. I mean, seasoning food to some extent was a form of us processing food, right? Or trying to increase its palatability and kind of hijack those things. So anyway, with this long rant, what I'm basically trying to say is, you know, like we, our advice is with any supplement, use them, but don't use them to replace. Or use it judiciously. Yeah, use them judiciously. Don't use them to replace whole natural foods. And if you have to sweeten something that, and you don't want sugar, Stevia's probably better than artificial sweeteners. Next is from Klubernator. Can your body get adapted to a certain number of steps every day and thus burn less calories? Of course, yeah. Your body adapts to whatever it does, becomes more efficient at whatever it does a lot of. You'll find if you take, I can't remember the study. I read some, an article on this, I think it was, where they took like a high level cyclist and a high level runner, endurance athletes. And they were measuring, and they got similar body weight and, you know, similar BMR and stuff. And they were measuring calorie burn during their respective sports and they switched them. So now the cyclist is running and then the runner is cycling. And their calorie burn went through the roof when they were doing the sport that they weren't used to. I experienced this when I was training, when I was doing a lot of jiu-jitsu and I was training like four days a week. And I had, at one point I had really good endurance with jiu-jitsu.   I got so tired and I remember thinking like, I thought I was in shape, but it's just that specificity that my body adapted to, being so efficient at that particular movement that, or, you know, pattern of movements or whatever that brought. Yes, pattern recognition. Absolutely. So yeah, you could totally adapt, but that doesn't mean you're gonna lose the health benefits from it. Right. Right, there's a lot of other health benefits that go with just you being up and moving. I think it's important to note that because it's like, you know, this is why I've had construction workers or people that have jobs where they're on their feet and they move all day long. And they're obese. And they're obese.  Through backseat instructors. Right, yeah, right. Your body's gotten so adapted to all this that you're not really seeing the major calorie burn benefits, but you still do get the blood flow movement. You get your actual movement for your body and your joints from not sitting sedentary. Like you get all those benefits from that, but this is also why I, when I teach people to focus on their knee and their steps, that you incriminately bring it up, right? Like I don't want to take somebody who is less than 4,000 steps a day and say, okay, the goal, which is I think a generic goal that you always hear is 10,000 steps. Like, oh, let's get you to 10,000 steps right away. Like, well, actually you don't even need to get there.  Right, it's already going to show you a change in indifference.  Yeah, absolutely. As far as health is concerned, it's good for you to move every single day. So forget, you know, the reason why I'm addressing it this way is because I think people ask these questions, not necessarily because they enjoy the walking or because it's good for them, but more so because they're thinking in terms of fat loss. Right. You know what I mean? So, you know, do it because you enjoy it. Like go for your walk and enjoy your walk. And it's good for your health. It's good for your mental health. It's good for your physical health.   It's not going to last very long. And it's a terrible approach to a long, terrible long-term approach to fat loss. What would be a more effective long-term fat loss approach is of course nutrition. Look at your diet. That's number one. And number two, look at getting your metabolism to burn more calories by prioritizing building muscle. Resistance training does that very effectively. Regular daily walking or cardio activity after a short period of time, it stops working. Yeah, I think it's more important to look at the correlation of your eating habits with your steps. Like so what I have found in my experience with people that I have that track and then report back to me, what's most common is we typically make the worst choices when we're not up and moving and we're sedentary. So when you're sitting in the movie theater, when it's late night after a long day of work and you just plop down on the couch, it's also when all of a sudden those cravings or whatever you think is going on start happening and you start making bad food choices. Like so the getting up and the moving piece is important and it has its own benefits, but the correlation between your movement and how you're consuming and what you're consuming to me is even more important is to pay attention to that and your patterns. And for me, a game change, we talk about paradigm shattering moments in our lives. You know, for me when we first, when the very first tracker came out, the body bug way back when, and I realized that holy shit, Monday through Saturday, I was burning 5,000 plus calories a day and then Sunday I was burning 2,500 because I sat around watching football all day. And guess what? That in my mind, I justified that was my day off.  Right, and that was enough to keep me from progressing my physique to the next level. So I think understanding that correlation is more important than even just focusing just on the steps by itself. Excellent. Check it out. Go to YouTube, check out our channel, Mind Pump TV. Go look and see what all the hubbub is all about. It's a new word I'm gonna use that for now. And it's on YouTube, subscribe. Thank you for listening to Mind Pump. If your goal is to build and shape your body, dramatically improve your health and energy and maximize your overall performance, check out our discounted RGB Superbundle at mindpumpmedia.com. The RGB Superbundle includes MAPS Anabolic, MAPS Performance, and MAPS Aesthetic. Nine months of phased expert exercise programming designed by Sal, Adam, and Justin to systematically transform the way your body looks, feels, and performs. With detailed workout blueprints and over 200 videos, the RGB Superbundle is like having Sal, Adam, and Justin as your own personal trainers, but at a fraction of the price. The RGB Superbundle has a full 30-day money-back guarantee and you can get it now plus other valuable free resources at mindpumpmedia.com. If you enjoy this show, please share the love by leaving us a five-star rating and review on iTunes and by introducing Mind Pump to your friends and family. We thank you for your support and until next time, this is Mind Pump.


Hello everybody and welcome to this session from Michael Shaw from the University of Lincoln. Today Michael is going to be talking to us about what does it really take to create accurately captioned video content. So it's my pleasure to hand over to you now Michael. Thank you very much and a very big thank you to everybody that's joining us. I really do appreciate you taking the time to spend with me today. On screen is a QR code and a short link. If you would prefer to have captions on your own device in your preferred language, we'll be using PowerPoint live and so you can access captions via the link or the QR code if you'd like to follow along and choose your language. So I will leave that on screen for another second or so. The link will be in the chat section so that you can find it later. And so I'll begin because we are tight on time and I have a lot to talk about. So I would like to start this afternoon by talking briefly about our journey at the University of Lincoln so far towards an inclusive and accessible education. It's a subject that I have presented on many a time before and I've told the story of how over the last two years we've made progress towards supporting staff to deliver an inclusive learning experience through the use of workshop seminars, support resources, all staff mandatory training and templates on Blackboard and the use of Blackboard Ally as well. And this mandatory training component was really critical to our progress because it allowed us to present scenarios of genuine challenges, accessibility challenges and provide staff with simple and easy to implement solutions to these challenges. And we could see that this was starting to have an impact because we could see culture change when using Ally. We could see the accessibility of files uploaded to Blackboard significantly increase from academic year 1920 to 2021. This central column here that shows a dramatic increase in the accessibility of files. We were starting to make the progress we wanted to see of winning over hearts and minds and providing the tools that staff needed to create an inclusive education. And part of that toolkit was our accessibility toolkit. It's freely available online and I'm going to share the link to this at the end of this presentation. And this toolkit features some elements that I'd like to delve into today, specifically on creating accessible video content and using captions for inclusive teaching. Now, when we did training around this, we could see the impact of our accessible video training by reviewing the percentage of Panotto videos where staff had added automatic captions. And we saw a significant increase in throughout 2020 where staff were adding automatic captions to their videos. And at this time, this was optional for staff. This data suggests that staff were actively choosing to add captions to their videos. And we know that captions benefit many types of learner. It's not just those with auditory impairments. It's really important that we move past this concept of captioning being a contingent feature for deaf students only. It's not. And in response to student feedback and in partnership with the Lincoln Students Union, we took the decision to enable automatic captioning on all of our teaching and learning videos on Panotto this academic year. So now all of our videos on Panotto are prefaced with a disclaimer that reads, automatic captioning has been enabled. These cannot be relied on to be 100% accurate. Please contact your tutor should any automatic captions cause confusion. And this message appears for five seconds at the start of every video on Panotto. And to enable this, we actually used the copyright notice feature within Panotto. So why is this disclaimer and the 100% accuracy value important? Well, the accessibility guidelines from W3C state that automatically generated captions do not meet user needs or accessibility requirements unless they're confirmed to be fully accurate. And they usually need significant editing. There's a failure of the success criteria if captions do not include all of the dialogue, either verbatim or in essence. And this is an incredibly high standard. So how do we go about reaching this level of accuracy? So automatic captioning is one of the tools in our accessibility toolkit, but they do come with challenges. And I want to take a look at some common challenges that I've been told about with auto captions and discuss each of them today. And I'm sure if I was in a room with you right now, I would see some heads nodding that some of these look familiar. So to do this, I've taken eight videos from our Panotto library, all published teaching videos edited five minutes long from a range of speakers and I manually scored the accuracy of various captioning solutions. Now choosing to take a manual scoring approach was a conscious decision because I wanted to allow for differences in the way captions handled punctuation and numbers, digits or words. Because whilst punctuation is important, at this stage, I chose not to use the text comparison tool. However, this did slow down the workflow, obviously. So let's begin with this. Automatic captions are just unusable. I've been told this. And we know that according to web accessibility criteria, the auto captions will need correcting. But are they unusable? Well, we're going to look at this data in more detail throughout today's talk. But as an overview, we're seeing that caption accuracy across the videos we tested, you can see are on average above 80%. There are a couple of outliers that are significantly lower. And we're going to look at those in more detail. So please remember these when we look at averaged data. Most of the data is above the 80% accuracy. And for those of us that were creating video-based learning resources before auto captioning was available, you'll know that 80% is still a lot better than transcribing everything from scratch. So let's take a look then at how different softwares handle automatic captions. First by looking at three video hosting platforms, Microsoft Stream, YouTube and Panotto. And here we have the average caption accuracy of around 85% for Panotto automatic captions, 96% for stream and 98% for YouTube. With YouTube being consistently providing the highest caption accuracy across all the videos and Panotto providing the lowest accuracy. We can see our two outliers here showing significantly lower in the Panotto accuracy. And that's what drags down the average. So YouTube is providing a very high caption accuracy. And with over 500 hours of video content uploaded to YouTube every minute, which is 720,000 hours uploaded per day, it's not all that surprising that the data set YouTube has access to surpasses any other video platform. So let's expand this data out then to include more voice to text services. We're now seeing data from those three video platforms but also CaptionEd, a paid captioning service, PowerPoint live captioning, which I'm using right now, live captioning in Teams and two voice to text services that are within Microsoft Word. Dictate which transcribes your voice in real time and transcribe which works on MP3 files. Now YouTube is still consistently showing the highest level of accuracy across all the tools. We can see that the averages are generally a small variation across the tools. We visualized this data a little bit better so that we can see the average accuracies across all the technologies tested between 84 and 99 percent accuracy. So we know that some technologies might provide on average a few extra percentage accuracy in the automatic captions but none of them reach 100 percent and so still need correcting. So we need to consider the workflows involved if we wanted to use these different technologies. At University of Lincoln we use Pinopto for all of our teaching and learning video content and it provides the sort of management and learning tools that we think are important. If we were to use Stream or YouTube to gain that extra few percentage accuracy we'd also have to factor in the time for multiple video uploads and transferring the VTT or SRT files back and forth and we're still having to correct the captions anyway. So let's move on to take a look at accents. For this work we looked at some videos featuring East Asian accents, Nigerian, Spanish and Polish accents and as well as what is referred to as received pronunciation which is generally a home county's London English accent much like my formal presentation voice and looking at this data we can see that on average across all the technologies there is an 8.7 percentage difference in auto caption accuracy between native English accents and non-native speakers. This is where Pinopto provided very low caption accuracy on one Polish accented speaker that impacts this average scoring.  I wonder if you've heard this from users of captioning technology that automatic captions don't work with my technical terminology and we teach academic subjects at an academic level and so it makes sense we'll be using technical advanced language to teach our subjects but to what extent extent does this impact automatic captioning? I analyse the scripts of our test videos using the common European framework of word complexity which compares the words in a text to the 10,000 most commonly used words in the English language and I was looking at teaching videos in the areas of education medicine microbiology and business and so here's the data we can see what looks like a weak trend here but with a p value of 0.56 this is not a significant correlation between word complexity and caption accuracy and that's because although we might think that we'll be using academic terminology we'll structure our sentences using common language and in fact we're teaching so it's in our best interest to use simple language where we can. Auto captions might not know every single advanced term in your subject area but I would suggest that captioning AI actually has a larger vocabulary than than I do I'm not a walking dictionary you know so do we need to employ manual or paid solutions? Well the question we're asking here then is do these paid services provide a significantly higher accuracy? Let's take a look at our data again and point out to you where the paid services are from captioned and the panopto manual transcription service both are showing higher accuracy than panopto auto captions but neither are reaching 100% and they're not significantly better than any of the other free services let's take a look at the data in a bit more detail we can see that in some instances the paid services actually gave lower accuracy captions the manual and paid services came out worse than the automatic services on some videos and here we can really see the limitation of vocabulary where AI systems do indeed have a larger vocabulary than manual captioners and we could argue then that the only person that reliably knows all of the words and can reliably produce 100% accurate captions is the speaker themselves so is there something else that we're paying for them? Do these paid services provide any additional benefits? Well captioned provides a confidence score against their transcripts to help direct and prioritize corrections however when we compare the confidence scores to the captioned accuracy there's no significant correlation between the two now at Lincoln over the last academic year we've uploaded over 9,500 hours of content to panopto and this is excluding student assignments and any videos under a minute so let's look at the cost of these paid services the cheapest manual captioning from panopto is at a rate of 45 pound per hour which would amount to 427,000 pounds per year to caption everything and captioned comes with a license fee and then a five pound per hour caption fee but then fees on how many times each transcript is reused which is a highly unpredictable value and it makes it very hard to budget for it could be anywhere between 50,000 pounds per year up to hundreds of thousands per year and with each of these large sums of money we still don't reach 100% accurate captions so we looked at software we looked at comparing software we considered some comparisons of accents technical terminology and to an extent we've seen that auto captions are pretty good yes they need correcting but they get us most of the way there and this didn't quite line up with the perceptions of captioning that we have that we've anecdotally seen that that we see the really bad gibberish captions the complete nonsensical inaccuracies so is there something that we've missed I wanted to look at audio quality and consider the impact of noise on captioning and so to do this I added incremental amounts of white noise to a recording and use panopto water captions to generate the transcripts and so here we can see the effect of greater than 50 noise completely preventing auto captions from working now I wouldn't expect constant noise across a teaching video although air conditioning and you know background hums would fly apart but consider audience noise coughing background chatter they may well interfere with the audio at this sort of rate and cause auto captions to fail at certain points one of the things that struck me most about listening to a range of recordings was the amount of natural reverb from a room and from different rooms and started to wonder if this what effect this would have on captions and reverb is influenced by the size the shape the temperature and the materials that the walls floor and ceiling are made out of and reverb in a room is measured by a value called rt 60 which is the amount of time usually in milliseconds it takes for sound to decay by 60 decibels and when we speak to an audience they hear the direct sound of our voice but they also hear the reflected sound of the room which can accumulate and the more reflected sound the higher the reverb the higher the rt 60 now if we replace our audience here with a microphone we can start to see how reverb might be introduced in problems microphones have a critical distance which is the distance at which the amount of reflected sound equals the amount of direct sound so that we need to be speeding into a microphone at a distance lower than the critical distance so that the mic hears more of the direct sound than the reflected and this all affects what's called the intelligibility of an audio quality so I went into some teaching spaces and I measured the rt 60 of some of our teaching rooms and in this relatively small teaching room measured an rt 60 of just below one second which is actually quite high for a small room and it's because this wall on the left here is actually made of glass and it adds to the reverb at the room quite significantly I measured the rt 60 of a larger teaching space and found actually a very similar value just below one second and although this room is larger it has an angled ceiling which is good for audio quality and much softer wall and floor spacing so I did some test recordings using two different microphones a samson ub1 and a blue yeti microphone and it took a look at the caption accuracy here in the small teaching space I produce repeat recordings further and further away from the microphone moving further from the critical distance we can see that the mic is starting to detect more reflected sound than direct and so the intelligibility of the recording is reduced and the caption accuracy is significantly reduced at two three four meters away we're at sort of 70 percent accuracy and below in the larger room with a similar rt 60 we see the same effect again looking at the average data you can see that the distance from the microphone as a factor of reverb causes a significant decrease in the auto catching accuracy more so than we've seen from different software or accents or terminology and if reverb and audio quality is affecting the intelligibility of our recording so much that it's having this impact on captioning then it's also impacting everyone that listens to the recording and these microphones in our teaching spaces are fixed to wooden surfaces that naturally reverberate at low frequencies and they're often boxed into podiums that create little echo chambers for them which means that we are really struggling to create accurately auto captioned teaching content in case you're wondering some systems have already figured this out and smart speakers that you might well have in your home can have up to six microphones so that they can distinguish between the direct sound and the reflected sound to accurately interpret your voice commands and at Lincoln we're starting to and at Lincoln we're starting to invest in these array microphones which have up to eight microphones built into the unit I'm hoping that this will have a significant impact on audio quality now since some of this session discussing challenges with auto captions I want to look at some mitigation options in light of everything that we've seen so scripting will always produce better recordings teaching will be more concise you'll have already produced a transcript so we can kind of sidestep some of these captioning challenges we should also try to record a well-lit view of the speaker's face to allow for lip reading we can start to reduce the risk of captioning errors if we are really concerned with the technical terminology we should be making sure that these words are clearly visible on screen or in a glossary for everyone and audio quality plays a really significant role in caption accuracy we should be trying to record the highest quality audio that we can and finally prioritizing where caption correction needs to take place is a viable approach it's intentionally at the bottom of my list because I would rather see accessible video content for everyone rather than it being a contingent feature for some but it may be the only way forwards so what does it really take to create accurately captioned video content well for educators producing video content audio quality is the most significant factor in relation to auto caption accuracy given a high quality audio input most voice to text services will return reasonably accurate captions thus reducing the amount of time needed for correction and although some services show higher accuracy rates than others the workload of multiple uploads and management of caption files may not warrant the few extra percentage in capture and caption accuracy and so with those final thoughts I will end my presentation and I'll thank you very much for your time and attention today I appreciate you taking the time to spend with me today thank you thank you so much Michael that was really really interesting with so much research that's gone into that the chat has been incredibly active many people saying how much captioning has improved since 2020 the issue of technical terminology did come up which you did address in your talk however there was a discussion around small errors if I could just share with you here's an example of a small error that might occur do you have any comment on that it's a fantastic example and it's what it's almost exactly the same example that I saw the medical video that I was using as a test sample was about liver functions and diabetes and hyper and hypotension was sorry hyper and hypoglycemia was specifically referenced and you're right that's a serious risk of of getting that error incorrect it's why making it incredibly obvious and visible on screen and pointing to it and you know gesturing with your hands gesturing with your mouse is really crucial to making that point really obvious because that's the type of error that is high risk and highly probable with auto captions so yes it's definitely one to be aware of yeah absolutely and following on from that there's a question from Tara any advice for mathematical terms or characters the same thing again really it's that that sort of latin terminology I didn't test any mathematical videos but microbiology species names came up in my testing any latin words anything that that's has discrepancy over the pronunciation of which let's face it most latin does anyway because no one really knows how to pronounce any of it again it's a case of making that very obvious in your teaching style to really try and make it as crystal clear as possible and from what I've seen you know the the data that youtube has it's such a vast data set I would love to have that sort of information to play with but they can't hit 100 accurate through AI through automatic captioning the one thing that does interest me and inspire me is that powerpoint although it wasn't the highest accuracy powerpoint as a captioning service does have the ability to look at the words in your slide content and use those to try to infer what the words you might be saying and so it's the only AI that has the ability to the best opportunity to learn the kind of terminology that you're saying more so than any other technology I've looked at thank you there's a interesting question here from Matt does the data suggest women's voices can be more accurately captioned so I had the same question Matt and I obviously only looked at a limited data set but I did deliberately choose an equal amount of man and female speakers if you look at microphone quality there's a general suggestion that microphones are better at picking up slightly higher frequencies and that they are slightly more intelligible on recordings which would might suggest and yes I'm talking generally that higher pitched voices would caption more accurately in my test I did a comparison there was no significant difference between man and female speakers okay and we have a question from Caroline who asks how important do you think non-spoken captions are such as sound effects or musical descriptions this is really interesting because the w3c criteria states that all sounds need to be included in in the captioning and I don't know how much of that does play a part and how well how well would go about that I coughed throughout throughout that presentation do I need to caption cough is it significant to the to the message I'm trying to communicate or not I would say no one interesting thing I did notice is that YouTube was the only captioning service I looked at that transcribed the word um if you um throughout your speech most captioning services ignore it YouTube does put it in and it's the only one that did um but where I'd like to explore further with captions and audio descriptions is a similar conversation I have with people around the use of alt text and the context of alt text because how much you describe is going to affect the message you're trying to convey if I'm if I'm teaching music I need to very accurately describe that music but even within that if I'm teaching the technicalities of music I need to describe the notation the um the intonation the variation the tempo the pitch if I'm describing the art of music I might describe the emotions the feelings how you would go about that I don't know um it's subjective and it depends on the message you're trying to communicate yeah fantastic thank you so much Michael honestly there are so many more comments that and questions that I could ask you lots of people saying that they hope that you publish these results and also people asking if they can use your research to show other people etc so I would suggest that that these discussions can be had further detail over and discord where you'll share your resources yes I'd like to say a huge thank you to you Claire for chairing the session I was very much in my my presentation head and so I haven't been through all the comments but I will read through them all now and I'll be on discord as well um and please do get in touch with me there or on Twitter as well brilliant thank you so much for your talk Michael and for all your time thank you