All right, check this out.  Other fitness influencers tell you to stick to a routine so you can get good at it, get strong, build more muscle. Here's the thing. They're both right. Here's the other thing. They're both also wrong. So here's how it works. When you first start training your body, the initial adaptations are from the central nervous system. Once the CNS adapts to the point where you're really stressing the muscle, then you see the adaptations in muscle. So you got to stick to a program long enough to get past that point, start focusing on building the muscle, and then switch programs so you can take advantage of novelty. I feel like when you give tips like that, it's like our strategy is to let you know how confusing it is out there, and we're going to confuse you more. Well, good thing we have a podcast where we're going to talk about confusing. It's right here. You follow us. You know, when they actually have done studies on this and they show that when people exercise the initial adaptations, the strength gains people are all central nervous system. It's all through the CNS organizing itself better, putting out more output, improving form and techniques so someone then gets stronger from that. Then from there, then you start to see the muscular adaptations. So this is why you want to stick to routine long enough to take advantage of that. Then of course, past a certain point, the muscle starts to slow down their adaptation. Well, we felt felt the newbie gains. Yes. That's a real thing. And to venture into a new type of skill or something, an adaptation that's like something you haven't done for a long time in pursuit, you're going to get that initial momentum there. But some people get addicted to that and so want to jump ship right away and not necessarily do what you're saying is get good at it and be able to measure the results. This is why there's some exercises that you want in your routine most of the time and other exercises. It doesn't make that big of a difference to switch all the time. If you're doing a bunch of machine exercises and usually machines fall into this category because they require less coordination and CNS adaptation from that standpoint, when you're doing machine curls, machine preacher curl, machine cable, whatever, it doesn't make a big difference to switch around, right? But if you're doing like a squat or a deadlift or like something really complex, like a clean, you want to stick to it long enough to learn the technique to get to the point where then you can stress the body and the muscles enough to get that those muscular gains that you're looking for. So that's why it's so confusing for people because you have like powerlifting coaches and strength coaches who are like, no, here's your routine. It's like the same exercises all the time and they'll modify reps and rest periods and stuff like that. Then you've got other people like no change will work out all the time because of the novelty effect. They're both right. You just want to understand kind of how they're both right so you can modify your routine the right way. Well, I've heard Adam talk about this a lot too and I haven't noticed the same thing as when there was this movement towards like the muscle confusion and the changing up almost every exercise within the workout. So it was like you're trying to stress the body in different ways like constantly, like all the time. Thinking that that's progressing you forward when in fact it's like that became its own form of adaptation that your body is just like, okay, I'm just going to react to what you're presenting me and you're pretty much in that maintenance phase for a long period of time. Yeah. So I think there's some about like when I think back to that time, that period of my life where I was training this way, I was in really good strength and I would say that like I was doing a really good job of like kind of hitting a little bit of everything. I had athletic training and my hypertrophy training had strength training and I kind of like smashed it all together. And so I would say that, you know, if you're somebody who is already in really good shape and you're not really trying to progress or maybe, you know, change your body composition that much, it's not a bad way to train. But if you're really trying to make progress and I think measure that progress and consistently make progress, I think that's where it got me.  I had felt like I was in somewhat of a plateau for a very long time. And so that's the drawback of constantly, you know, mixing it up. I really think that because that both camps are right and both camps are wrong, it's really created this like you're kind of either one or the other. Which is wrong, right? Right, right. You're either the guy who mixes up every workout like I was or you're the person that like sticks to these main exercises all the time. Or, you know, so you use the example of like the strength community, like power lifters and stuff like that. I would say that's a newbie and especially a lot of my female clients fell into that trap of like they have their little routine that they like. Yeah, because they don't really know much about it. Yeah, maybe they're same weights and it's just like that. So you really seem to be, you tend to be one or the other unless you understand programming. The people that understand programming and do a good job. And then I also think that there's a range, like I know we write most all of our programs tend to phase and change things up every three to four weeks. I would extend that to six, right? I would say anywhere in the three to six week range is probably when it's most necessary to, now obviously the reason why we do it is to keep you ahead of the plateau and every week you continue to stretch that the more likely you are to hit a plateau, the thinking, the logic behind why we do that is to keep it, keep it the same long enough to give the body some time to adapt and progress, but then change it up quick enough that it doesn't get stuck in you plateau. Yeah. So, you know, I want to comment on this too, because you did train like this when you were competing, but you also had so much experience that you could jump into most exercises and right away be able to really target the muscle. And it wasn't a, it was, you could pick up the skill very quickly for most exercises. Yeah. So I think if you're really advanced, you probably can get away with changing it up much more often because you've got the skill, you've got the coordination. Yeah, that's a good point. You know what it should feel like foundation work with. Right. But even with some exercises though, that might not be true. Like, like there was a period where you just deadlifted and you hadn't deadlifted for a long time. So it was this new exercise and there was this period of like CNS adaptation you had to go through and then you saw like these crazy muscle gains. Some exercises lend themselves better to being consistent with them, like deadlift, squats, overhead presses. Well, I imagine that anything that falls in the category of, you know, the skill, right? High skill acquisition, right? If it's something that takes a while to get good at it, you would think that that's going to drag out the, the novelty curve versus something that you could get into it and instantly get in the groove and figure it out. Well, the novelty curve on that's going to be much shorter because the body's already figured it out. It's like, oh, this is familiar. This is easy. That doesn't take a lot of brain power to, to stabilize this and figured it all out versus, which is why I think, you know, you can consistently squat for, you know, weekend, week out, years in, years out and still see great progress in it because of how difficult the movement is and how long it takes just to get good at just the, the movement of the squat. 100%. I think at that point too, when you're really good adding novelty is more about preventing, uh, like stress related injury, you know, like squatting is a great exercise, but it is somewhat limited by itself. It's one plane of moat, moat, you know, movement. It's bilateral. And if you only ever do that at some point, you start to notice aches and pains and joint problems, especially as you get real strong. So right there, novelty is more of a like injury prevention and maintaining build up and reinforce the system in terms of like the stability. I think, yeah, and there's so many variations of the squat to, to that point to where it's like, you can, it's such a fundamental movement. You can keep consistently adding it in and just add one little, uh, variation to it and get a whole different result. Totally. All right. The giveaway for today's episode maps power lift. Here's how you can win. Leave a comment below this video and the first 24 hours that we dropped this video, subscribe to this channel, turn on notifications. If we pick you as the winner, we'll let you know in the comment section that you want nowhere else. It's in the comment section. Also, we've got these three bundles on sale right now, all of them up to nine months of planned workouts, every single one of them, at least $300 off, uh, the normal price. So it's a huge, huge promotion. If you're interested, just click on the link at the top of the description below to get set up. All right, here comes the show. Hey, have you guys ever had, I made something so good over the weekend and I'm not a, you guys know this, I'm not like the greatest cook in the world and very basic, but I made, you ever eat schnitzel? Do you know what that is? Schnitzel hot dog sausage or what? No, so I got the butcher box pork chops, which are so good. Okay. There, I've talked about this before. I'm not a fan of pork until I had their heritage pork chops. It tastes different. They're so good. They're really thick though. They come in like this. Yeah.  Right. And I bread it and then I like shallow fry it and olive oil in the cast iron. Oh my God. With mashed potatoes. That sounds amazing. Yeah. So good. That's what a schnitzel is. I didn't know that. Yeah. Oh, I thought it was. Yeah, I was thinking it had some sauerkraut and you know, you could add that, I suppose. But schnitzel, yeah, it's like a pork cutlet or could be veal or chicken. I've seen chicken schnitzel as well. Yeah. So, so good. That heritage pork is so tasty too. So I imagine that. And it was a fast cook. Like I made it real quick. So egg, would you use like a planko breadcrumb? Or would you use a planko? Just regular, you could go. What is it? It's panko. Panko. Yeah. You could do panko, but isn't panko a game on that? Wait, hold on. Panko. Wasn't that a game on TV when you were sick home from, you were at home from school and it was like, it just, they dropped the thing down. It like falls down those like pegs. What was that? To get to like the bottom. No, it was panko and it wasn't wheel of fortune. It was the price is right. I think was yellow. Anyway, Italian seasoned breadcrumbs. And then I add a little bit more of my seasoning and salt. And you just bread them and I got the cast iron. I put a little bit, you know, just enough olive oil to kind of fry it a little bit. And if you're listening, I want to try that. Oh man. So good.  Oh, shnitzel for shizzle. Yeah. So we used to do that with our chicken to dress that up a little bit. I used it. Would you say panko? Panko. Panko. I was going to say that wrong. Over Doug lived in Japan for years. I say it all wrong. Is it Japanese breadcrumbs? Is that what that is? It is. Yeah. So it means bread. Pond is bread. They're really like, if you just do it lightly too, it's as far as the calories and carbohydrates and stuff like that, it's very minimal. I just, it was one of those things. You know, you look at it and it looks like it's fried.  That's not going to be very healthy. But I used to do that when I was competing because I was eating so much chicken. I was always trying to find creative ways to do that. And oh, I wasn't looking at calories.  No, this was me. That's why I know it's like, by the way, it's not that bad. At least not the, I say, can't say it, whatever it is. Panko, panko, panko. I've been saying it wrong for so long that it's like, panko, panko, panko, panko, panko, panko. So no, the macros on it are relatively friendly. It's not, it's not bad at all. And if you do it lightly, you don't go crazy on it. It's, it keeps the calories still pretty low. So it's a great way to dress up a, you know, chicken dish that's plain. You guys would have loved it. You guys would have totally loved it. Anyway, I read a statistic this weekend.  So have you heard this? Okay, have you heard this before where someone says, would you rather take a million dollars today? Oh God. We had this argument this weekend with about the Lotto, because it was a billion dollars. No, not that. Not that. It was, it was somebody won, by the way. Yeah, 1.3 billion. What? 1.3 billion. Somebody finally won. It was an agent, right? Yeah, that's the way it works for the government. So, I don't know if you've heard this before. It's like, would you rather have a million dollars today or a penny today and every day at the total doubles for 30 days? Have you heard this before? Uh-uh. And if you do the math, It would be double the penny. The penny today, one cent, tomorrow two cents, tomorrow four cents, it doubles. Turns out to be way more money than the million dollars. And basically it's illustrating like how quickly things compound. I read something this weekend that blew my mind. Okay.  So half, half, half, half, 103 times, it'll go the entire width of the universe. What? Yes. What are you talking about? I just learned this this weekend from some businesses. If you fold a piece of paper. In half. In half. So doubles in size, 103 times. It'll be the length of the known universe that we know. No way. I'm telling you, dude, I have the video. There's a physicist explaining the whole thing. And you don't mean fold, you mean double the piece of paper. Yes. So it's fold in half each time. In half, in half, right? So each time it doubles in size. Tell me that's not the craziest thing you ever know. Is this some weird like, riddle?  If you fold some kind of fractional divisible. I don't know how you would fold a piece of paper that many times. You wouldn't be able to. Yeah, exactly. This is like the number pie that just keeps going. Yeah. So here's another one.  How crazy is that? You know what? It's funny you're bringing up stuff like this because I think you've shared this on the show before, but it still blows my mind to do the math on the difference between a million, a billion and a trillion with the seconds. So a million seconds is 11 days, right? And then a billion seconds is 31 years. A trillion seconds is like 31,000 or 32,600 years. Yeah. So put that in dollars, so forget seconds. Wait, how much does government spend every year, by the way? So yeah, that's how it explains. How are we even spending a trillion? My buddy and I, we were talking about it. He was talking about what he would do with the Lotto is what started this conversation. Oh, that's the worst game to play, by the way. A billion dollars or that. I'm like, dude, you can't even fathom a billion. He's like, what are you talking about? I was like, and I gave him that. By a few islands. I gave him that to try and guess. Like you give someone like, hey, a million seconds is 11 days. So what do you think a billion is? Like everybody's like, oh, probably 30 days or what like that? Or maybe one year. 31 years. Yeah, 31 years.  I think that's so fascinating, like how much money that is if you have a billion or a trillion dollars. This is why, so right now, because you know the propaganda machine right now is trying to take down Elon. It's pretty obvious, right? They, he just want, and they're making this big deal about it in the media that Elon just got. Like he lost the most wealth of all of history. I guess he's first place in the world, Guinness Book of World Record. Cause the stock went down. Yeah, but he's still a billionaire. Like he's still so, like he lost more money than anybody's ever lost. He still has more money than anybody else. Dude, speaking of losing money. So there was a game, the Chargers versus the Jags this weekend. The Chargers are up 27 to nothing at halftime. So you can at halftime, you can bet on the way the game's going and stuff like that. Of course, 27-nothing, that there's like a handful of comebacks in the NFL where the other teams- That's pretty rare. Yeah, so the odds that team's going to win is extremely high. And I've done this before, like I've gambled on Mayweather before, where I had to put a ton of money up just to win a little bit, but you're like, dude, the odds of this are extremely high. So this dude bets $1.4 million just to win $11,000. So $1.4 million on the Chargers. Knowing that they're gonna win. It's like a sealed deal, right? Yeah, yeah, cause it's like 90- So it's 11 grand free, basically, is what he's thinking. Yes, exactly. Is it just by transferring over there? I'm gonna get that for sure. It's like a 98% chance. I don't know what the percentage was, exactly breakdown, but it's very, very high, right?  Oh! Dude. You lost $1 million. $1.4 million. Now, okay, so what are the odds of- Let's say you- And the other way around, well, the other way around, you put $11,000 to make $1.4 million. Oh my God. Yeah, yeah.  I'm happy with the Niners, dude. We're taking it this year. Yeah, football's been fun to watch right now. It's some great games. Yeah, so why is everybody talking about so the Niners doing well? The Purdy, he's Mr. Irrelevant, like, you know, came in, third string. Do you know what that is, Sal? What? Mr. Irrelevant? No. Okay, so Mr. Irrelevant is a nickname for the very last person drafted in the draft. So he's like, number 200 in something, right? So last round. Yeah, he's insignificant. He just happened to be there. So, and- Exactly. Well, and so you know this, okay? So when you look in history, I don't know if you know this, Justin, if you look up in history, like, you know, who were the most prominent, like, Mr. Irrelevant, like, what happened? What did they ever get? What are the, like, it's a guy who got to, like, play in a game. Or he got, one Mr. Irrelevant started for one game. Seriously, none of them started? Bro, that is the most prominent- Wow. Mr. Irrelevant before Purdy, or Purdy, however you say his last name, before him was, like, getting to start. They're nobody you've ever heard of. That's why they got the nickname, Mr. Irrelevant, is because nobody's ever done anything from that position. He was a four-year starter in college. So, I mean, him having that kind of experience definitely plays. So this- Rob Purdy's the best Mr. Irrelevant of all time.  What's going on?  Look at this. He's so composed out there. So there's a kicker named Ryan's- That was the one before. The one before, yeah.   Look at it. He's the most decorated, because what did he get to do? He got to play, he was a kicker, and he got to, I think he went to, like, maybe, like, one- Wow, I did not know that. That's even more awesome. That's what's wild.  He, I heard even, yeah, he might have even broken a few records of, like- Highest, most touchdowns by a rookie in a playoff game. Yeah, yeah. No, he's already, yeah, no, he's- Sick. So, yeah, yeah, I'm pumped. I'm like, it's total anti-Niner guy, but I am somewhat rooting for you guys right now. It's just a great story, if that's such a cool story to see him playing. Okay, so I got something for you guys and your sports. So, I used to- You got us started, bro. I used to watch NFL films as a kid. There was a second there where I was into football. One of the greatest kickers of all time. Tom Dempsey, do you guys know who that was? Okay, no. He was the guy, I think he played for- Oh, the foot? The shoeless? No, he had half a foot. A half a foot, that's what he did. He had, like, a clubfoot. You guys ever hear about this guy? I think he played for the Packers and at one point had the farthest kick, the farthest kick of all time. Well, yeah, it's like a nub, dude. He had a weird shoe. Did you see this guy? Wait, is this the one they call shoeless Joe? No, so there's shoeless Joe and then there's- That's who I originally- Somebody kick without a shoe? Yeah. Oh, wow. Yeah, so there's cool stuff like that. Dempsey? Yeah, yeah, he had half a foot and he ended up becoming one of the greatest kickers.  Yeah, but still, that's amazing. Because the kicker kicks with the shoe laces, right? So he hits the top right there, look at his shoe. Yeah, yeah. And he was one of the greatest kickers of all time. It's like a sludge hammer, though. Yeah. It's like somewhat of an advantage. But talk about what it's so, I was just thinking about it. Don't ask me why I think about random shit, but I was just thinking about this. I'm like, what a story. He's born with a club foot.  Yeah, yeah. You know what I mean? And what does he end up doing? He plays for the NFL and becomes one of the most decorated kickers of all time. That's what makes sports so fun. Yeah, sports is this. Well, that's life. That's what makes life so amazing. I absolutely agree. I absolutely agree. I love pointing stuff out to like that to my kids, because I think, especially these days, people are so, there's this weird like, I can't do anything with this or... What was me? Yeah, you know, type of deal. But then it's also combined with this, I could be whatever the hell I want, but I don't have to work for it type of, it's a weird mentality that you're seeing in the youth these days. And it's like, no, you can't be whatever you want, however, you can do a lot.  Speaking of the youth, speaking of the youth, I believe that I, you know, said this, that we would see the generation coming up. We'll start to... You did call this. Naturally start to titrate themselves and stuff like that. So, you know, what's becoming very trendy with Gen Z right now are flip phones. Like 90 style. Yep, 90 style flip phones. And to titrate their social media use and being addicted to the phone. So that, so it's becoming like a cool thing to actually, and sure as shit, you watch a couple cool kids pick up a trend like that and they sort of, it'll change the way these kids use their phones and stuff. And they're cheap phones, you buy them at Walmart. And they're calling them like matrix style phones. Remember the matrix was like, and the bomb comes out or whatever. Yeah, dude. I love the flip phone, by the way. So nice. Do you guys remember texting them on those things? Oh yeah, that part. But I mean, that's okay. Such a cool positive side, right? We've highlighted a lot of the stuff that's like, you know, scary and negative and bad. I mean, it's, this is, this is the neat part about how fast information can travel like this is because here you have this new generation coming up that are becoming more and more aware of all the negative effects of social media and being on your phone all the time. And so it's slowly starting to fall out of favor.  I'm not going to be on my phone all day. I'm going to get a flip phone like so. Totally. I hope that spreads, man. So do I. So along those lines, I was reading some, some very interesting statistics this weekend in regards to divorce. So there's some good news and that's that the divorce rate has been falling slowly falling since the 1980s. So it kind of peaked there for a second and now it's starting to come down. And so this got me down a rabbit hole of like, why is it falling? Like what's going on? Like what's the deal? And I, again, I read some interesting stats. One of them, one of the theories is that the, one of the reasons why divorce rates got so high to begin with is that, that marriage, the idea of marriage shifted from, this is my life partner. We're going to do life together and it's, we're going to raise kids and work and it's going to be hard and, you know, we're just going to stick together too.  And they said that that was a losing strategy because no person is going to fulfill you and no person is going to make you happy all the time. So that switch they think is one of the reasons why divorce rates started going through the, through the roof is that people thought, and I don't know this either, this is true now. 80% of divorces are initiated by women. Vast majority of which are not abused. A lot of people say, oh, it's physical abuse, stuff like that, that's not true. Most of them divorce their husbands because they're like, I'm unhappy. And they believe that being a single mom is going to make them happier. And a lot of these articles I'm reading are like, it's false, they're not happier and the kids are worse off. And then some, along those lines, this is unpopular but true, that children with a present but not so great dad, now I'm going to cut out like abusive, like really abusive shitty, you know, or drug addicts and stuff like that. But present but not so great dads, kids turn out better than not having a father at all. And so there's a lot of these divorces that are happening or that were happening because people, and in this case, like I said, a majority of them were women, believe he's not making me happy. I'm not fulfilled. I'm going to be happier if I leave him and my kids will be better off. And they're like, no, it's not true. Doug just pulled the stat up and it's a 70% but it says that also college. So the 80% I got was from the CDC. So college educated American women too, who initiate the divorce is even higher. Interesting. Because again, that they're- I don't need a man. Say what? I don't need a man. I mean, that's like a- They're told I don't need a man and they're told, but then again, they're also told when you're married that you're going to be fulfilled and happy and in love. And this person doesn't do that for you. It's the person's responsibility to provide all those things. Yes. So my personal experience, like growing up and trying to understand marriage and love, like, and I think my personal belief is that it's less a man-woman thing and it's our thoughts and beliefs around going into a marriage in a partnership and then also love. So for the longest time, I understood love differently than what I understand it today. Like, so I think I, like many people were sold on the, you know, oh, you fall in love. You're gonna meet someone you'll know. You'll know. You'll know when you meet them. And the feeling is everything. Yeah. And it's this overwhelming feeling that nobody can describe. It's the Prince charming kind of- You'll just know. You'll know, you'll know when it happens. And so waiting for this moment of this overwhelming feeling for so long when in reality it's a choice. It's an action. It's something that we choose to do. And really when you think about partnering up with somebody for the rest of your life, probably a good idea to really weigh out all the things we have in common. We don't have in common. Do I, could I see this person as a good teammate in this journey in life? And then when I decide, yes, checks all the boxes. We get along with this. We are morals and values are aligned. Like I just, I see all their growth minded, all these, they check all the boxes. Okay, now I'm going to actively choose to love you for the rest of my life. Which means it's- Through action. Yeah, through work, through effort towards continually to try and nurture this relationship. Versus, I have this crazy feeling that I just wanna be with you every moment and I'm so infatuated with you and I love you so much. This must be love. And you also have a parachute anytime anything goes wrong. Like I'm out of here. There's that thought, right? It's really- Or the belief that it's 50-50. It's not, sometimes it's 70-30. Sometimes it's 80-20. Sometimes you're putting in way more work than the other person. I had a client who was married to her husband. They had celebrated their 60 year anniversary. So she was in her late 80s. And I would ask her questions about this all the time. Like what's this like? And she was so wise and she communicated so honestly.  You go through periods where you're doing all the work and they're not doing any of the work. And then it flips. You go through deaths. You go through the loss of jobs. You go through illnesses. She goes, if you think you're going to be happy that entire time, she goes, you're crazy. It's impossible. She goes, that's not how it works. She goes, but every time you go through these challenges every time you go through these seasons which can last years.  And then you come out of it.  She goes, and boy, she goes, there were times when we were so close to not making it. But she goes, I look back and she goes, it's the greatest thing I ever did. So, and it was very wise. Is it easy? It's not. Growth is never easy. And those challenges can take a long time. But when you sign up for the rest of your life what do you think you get signing up for? So I also think that this is becoming a bigger conversation today. I think it needs to continue to go that way. But again, I have hope that the generation coming up or maybe we'll revere marriage as just hold it to a higher standard than what we currently do right now. I think that that we are- Some traditions work for a reason. Well, yeah, no.  I brought this up fricking- Super low. Bro, it's like 4%. Super low. Like 90 plus percent fricking successful. Yeah, it's not about the whole falling, the falling of love, I don't want to overlook that. It's a great feeling. It's amazing. It's incredible. It's one of the most wonderful feelings. It's not a permanent thing though. After that, you bond, which is much more solid, much stronger and much deeper. But we obsess over the feeling and the media paints it as this thing. And what do you see in the media? Like, oh, husband and wife together. Oh, they're unhappy because why? Because the spark is lost. How many times say that? Oh, people say that. Oh, we got divorced. We lost the spark. That's why you got divorced? Because you lost the spark. What are you looking for? You know? And again, the myth that you'll be happier, especially when you have children, that you'll be happier raising your kids on your own or that it's gonna be easier. I'm divorced and it's more work being divorced, trying to be involved with my kids than it was when I was married. So I got it. So I saw you tweeted that. Did you? I'm getting some heat. I bet you are.  Because there is a point, you know, I grew up in a house where I wish my mother would have divorced my stepfather, you know, a decade sooner than what she did. And I think she did more damage to the relationship with her children than she would have had she got rid of him. There's many decades where I was still holding on to animosity and resentment towards her for making us go through that with her because she selfishly chose to keep this man around and not choose to keep him around because it was better for the family unit but better for herself because she didn't wanna be alone and she didn't wanna go do that. She didn't wanna do life without having a partner. So there are situations where I think a relationship is so unhealthy. 100%. I agree 100%. I need to end. Yeah, there's examples. That it needs to end. And so understand. But if you look at the data, the majority are not that. No, I agree with that. That's what I'm talking about. It's not the, you know, what do they say to divorce now? It's like 40% of all marriages or something like that now and divorce some along those lines. The majority of those are not that. The majority of those are what I said. And they know because the data is there because when you file for divorce, you have to tell the reason and what's going on. And that's what it turns out to be. And then the kids typically lose somewhat of a relationship with both parents if both parents are involved because you do the dual custody. Or what's more common is they lose somewhat of a relationship with the dad because the dad either bounces or does the every other weekend thing. Or here's another thing that's quite common. And I know, and you talk to any divorce attorney, they'll tell you this, sometimes mom makes it really tough for dad to be involved. They add, they make it even more challenging. And the kids don't do better that way. They do, they do worse oftentimes. So that's, you know, that's, that's what's interesting.  Without going into too much detail because just out of respect for, you know, my ex-wife and my kids, it was definitely, we were definitely in a position where it was too far gone. So I'll leave it at that. Because again, out of respect for them, I won't, I'll never go into detail. Well, I mean, that tells you. I mean, I'm not asking you to do that. I think that's why I asked like, obviously, if you're researching, I know how your brain works. If you're researching this, you're diving on this. I know there's a lot of you that's processing, okay, my own situation, right? And going, you know, looking back and knowing the challenges of what it's been like to go through a divorce. Like with the more wiser, older self of yours, go back and advise yourself who went through that process, say seven years. That's such a weird question because, you know, people always ask that, like, if you could go back in time, no, because that wouldn't be where I'm at now. And where I'm at now is very happy. And you know, I have Jessica and we have two children together and I'm very, very happy. So that's a hard one, right? Like, would you go back in time and, you know, I don't know, I mean. I mean, I think it's, I think it's fair. Everything happens, I guess, the way it's supposed to.  It's okay. I could say this, I was young and I was totally naive. I was not, you know, I didn't understand, you know, things the way I do now. That might be the biggest challenge with getting married young. Although I'll say this, culturally, we don't learn this like we used to. Culturally and societally, marriage is painted to us in a unfair way and we tend to be set up for failure because of the way we think it's supposed to be.  This is what you're gonna, these are the challenges that you're gonna meet and this is what to expect. And I think that that would help people quite a bit. Do you think we have the worst culture around marriage out of all the like different cultures? Oh, I mean. Would you, would you say that? Statistically, we've been around. So have you been around in other cultures like that? Would you, do you have an opinion on that? Well, I definitely know our divorce rate is up there. I mean, I look at the Japanese culture, which I have more familiarity with. They're more in it for the long haul, even if they don't have a great relationship, you know? So I can't speak to all other cultures though, with respect to that. Yeah, I would say newer cultures tend to be worse about it than older cultures. Cause older cultures, what follows along is wisdom. Not saying that they shouldn't change a few things cause there's things that need to be changed and you know, that become outdated, but older cultures tend to have better, I guess better attitudes around marriage and what that's supposed to be in the family. Typically, but again, there's along with that sometimes comes a mistreatment of women or really, really rigid, you know, gender roles, which can be not so great, especially for women or children. But I think there's some wisdom there that we can't throw everything away. Can't throw the baby out with the bath water. You gotta look at it and say, okay, well what, what about this is true? Right. And what can we learn from them? Extract, yeah, the benefits and really like, you know, peer into that. I have a bit of a rant. I didn't know how to transition into this. After a marriage conversation, but so I finally figured out basically, you know how we go from crazy amounts of rain and just floods and like the most water we've ever seen here to then dry dams and then all of a sudden we're in a drought again. You know why that is? This is all man, it's our own problem. We have not set ourselves up to store any of this water. No, we have, we can. There's an actual like environmental thing that's blocking us policy over a two inch smelt fish. Yeah. What? Yes. It's to protect a certain fish. They will not allow us to store rain water to its capacity. You know how much of this rain water we just saw? We just had record water here in California. Out to the ocean, gone. So they said 94% right now of all of this water is just made its way into the ocean. So we'll have, this is one of the reasons why California is a perpetual ground. This is Gavin Newsom's policy dude.  This is another one of his. If that just is, it's been policies that we're protecting. It's been before, but he's signed off on it. Okay, so then, okay, so why? I know you say because of the fish, but let's follow the money or follow the reason. There's got to be a reason that. Oh, you want to do this? I do want to do this because it doesn't make sense. Big conspiracy land when you go that direction. Well, I mean. If we solve our drought issue, you now have gotten rid of. How do they have a grasp on the chokehold on us? Yeah, you've lost a very powerful political wedge that you can use as a politician. If you solve an issue like that, you can't keep using the drought. You can't keep talking climate change. You can't keep talking any of this stuff because we've solved it. And it's an easy solution. It's literally. Well, this is a valley politicians have been fighting. Okay, so this is also why I do believe too because I know everybody. I think this is very much so less of a left or a right thing. And it just a pure government thing that they agree that let's keep this as the argument. That's how I feel about a lot of these massive arguments. 100% agree with. They do not necessarily just even though they go out there and they campaign as one side or the other. I think behind closed doors. Trump actually was responsible for this specific policy. I don't know. Like if that's what it said and then Gavin Newsom re-signed on off on this. So anyways, this is a big problem because you see all the reservoirs kind of go down to like nothing and it's just, it's so wasteful. And we like, especially all the water like that gets traveled down to like LA and everything from Northern California gets just stripped. And so all the farmlands are like, you know, begging for us to be able to trap this water to be able to like add the central valley.  Yeah, the irony is that it actually is killing more than it's saving because we put ourselves in the situation. Then we have to react with policies that are quite damaging.  But then what happens is you increase the risk of these huge forest fires which kill all the animals. So you gotta do, yeah, risk reward analysis. See how it affects the actual human beings. I saw a crazy documentary one time on fires and that technically the thing that we're supposed to do is just completely leave it all alone. Just let it go, yeah, natural burns. Yeah, well, I mean, yeah. It happens in nature all the time. Yeah, but what they, some of the most effective strategies they have are to do controlled burns, which they don't like. Go out there and clean things out, which they don't like. So then we end up with these huge forest fires which people live in these places. Where was it?  What was it two years ago where the skies here were red because of the smoke from all the fires? And then what was that town that was completely lost? Paradise? Yeah, paradise. My grandma lived there. My grandma lived there. Oh, so you have a cousin who lived there. Yeah, she burned her whole house burned from there. Completely lost the whole city. So anyway, along those tragic lines, we have actually a longtime fan, Hilary. And I just wanted to kind of give her a shout out. Trust me, it's going harder. Yeah, dude, because she, like, so she lives near me like in Felton. And you guys saw some of those videos of like the flooding and everything. So she's right next to like the river there. And it literally just decimated her entire like bottom floor of her house. We'll show the video, but just wanted to give her some love. And I think she's on the forum. If not, I'll make sure she gets in the forum if you guys want to reach out and do an intro. Oh, I know who you're talking about. Yeah, you know she is. Yeah, she's coming to a couple of lives. Keep it to her live event.  She's a sweetheart, but yeah. Oh, that's too bad. Terrible for her, yeah. That's terrible. Hey, I just read a study on testosterone. I love it when they fund studies that you're like, why are they giving money to this kind of study? It's like the sky's blue type of thing. Yeah, they took a bunch of young men who were healthy. So they were all healthy young men.  They read testosterone cream on them and it made them more sexually impulsive. No kidding.  You never call that.  I know. The way they did the test was weird. They had them do a questionnaire and with each question, there was a picture that was kind of fuzzy. And if you waited, then it would show the full picture. And it was like nudes. So if you waited a second, you saw the full picture. If you waited three seconds, then you saw something else with the picture. The guys on testosterone just waited a second and wanted to get to the next one. The guys not on testosterone waited the full. How do they design these? That's what I think is fascinating is how we decide like, this means this. You do this. This means you're super impulsive, right? Super funny. Anyway, I mean to ask you, Adam, in our new property over there in Park City, did we get all the Juve lights set up? Yes, there are. We've had renters come in. Yeah, no, we're on our third guest, I believe. Doug would correct me if I'm wrong that we've had to there. My niece was just there. So she was just, in fact, she's there right now. She doesn't leave for another day or two. And it felt so bad that she couldn't figure out the wifi situation. And so we finally got online with her and stuff like that. And she did the tech-free package? Yeah. I was like, Dan, that would be hella frustrating if that happened to me. Luckily, she was like outdoorsy. So she was outdoorsy. So she wasn't even tripping about it. But I'm like, no, this is an issue. I cannot have ever a guest here in that, but she was actually doing the wrong thing. So it was kind of more of a user error. But the, yes, the Juve light is in our audience. We brought it up since we got going. It's the only one thing that is not at the house is the sauna. The sauna is still about a month out. Cold plunge is in there. PRX is completely set up. Juve lights in every single room. Movie theater, steam room, heated floor stuff.  Do you have a protocol? You're probably, I'd say you and Doug are probably the most consistent with the red light. Do you, what's your protocol? First thing in the morning? Like when you- No, at night. You do yours at night? Before bed. Before bed. And it doesn't affect your sleep negatively. No, actually helps my sleep. Really? Yeah. Full, like your face? Oh yeah, I sit, I have a little chair.  And you just let it do the thing? And yeah, just let the sun shine where the sun don't shine. So I have a similar- You look young down there, Justin. Yeah. I mind the similar routine. Mine's not as late. So when I get home, probably around, you know, five-ish or so, I probably do my second shower of the day. And- You still do that, huh? Two showers every day. At least two, sometimes three. So depending on when I train, it'll be three. So yeah, I just, I don't do well being dirty. You don't really go outside.  Even like just clothes and sweaty and like I'm so- Do you really call that when you leave some of the seasoning on the pan? You know, that's for me. Just as an iron skillet. I mean, I was like scrubbing. I mean, the truth is that I know it's- It's stainless steel. Healthier from my skin and what left of hair I have, like as far as the oils and the natural body. Like you're supposed to do that, I know that. And I guess you would say, when I do shower three times, I have like a, like scrub myself shower and then I have like a rinse shower.   You soap everything up? The whole head to toe? Head to toe. You're not supposed to do that. How many luffas do you have? I'm not a luffa guy. I'm a bar soap guy. Oh, you just bar up? Yeah, I'm a bar soap guy. So hold on a second. So you're not supposed to, you're not supposed to put soap all over your body. I've read that, that's really bad for your skin. They say use soap on like armpits.  The areas that, you know, whatever generates pheromones and whatever. But everything else is possible. Where you get the most swampy. Yeah, yeah, I like to smoke good. You just, everything. Yeah, yeah. And you get in there. In there, in between the toes. You know what I'm saying? Like I get it, yeah, for sure. And then afterwards I go and I sit. Go to Adam's Oli fans. So I did, I mean, so, okay. Yesterday I got bit by a tick and this is. Oh no. Dude, like, okay. Did you go get treated? No, no, no. So I looked up the protocol and CDC and all that kind of stuff. So it was like, I felt like something like pinching. It was annoying. It all relates to your shower stories where, but it was, so I dropped my pants.  Courtney, I got like a tick and, so she helped me to kind of like pull it out. And thankfully it came right out. It didn't leave its head. It wasn't like struggling. It was like, it just had bit me. And so I was like, is there some hair in my legs and all this? And I'm just like, no, I got to monitor this thing. So I just started shaving it. And then I was like, well, I'm here.   Wait a minute.  Oh my God. Since we're on it, you know what I'm saying? I mean, I fell asleep before that happened. Oh, I'm tortured. You slidin' around in your pants right now? I am slick right now, though. I'll tell you guys. Hold on a second. Aren't you supposed to, if you get bit by a tick, immediately go get, because Lyme treatment works initially. After that, you're fucked. Well, so it says that like, I saved it and it was still alive and we put it in a bag and we froze it. So that way, if I have to test it, I can. And they said, if you have any symptoms within like, I think it was like 72 hours or something, that like, then you go in and you take a look. Did you get the bullseye mark? So I have a bruise there from it, but it didn't like swell like, if it has like that ring and like it has enough time to infect. So it was just the, it's got like some of an anesthesia kind of like venom initially. So that's what I got. See, you saw when you don't shower, a lot of this type of stuff happens. He felt the pinching. Repel it off me. It tried to bite into his massive quad, bro. Get to the oil. It's creepy as hell, though.  Well, bro, okay, but yeah, pay attention because I have a cousin who has Lyme. I know. And Lyme is weird. I don't know if you guys ever read about Lyme. I've had clients that have it. I'm worried about it still. Bro, it is weird. It is weird. Well, so her symptoms were this like suit, like she was so hungry all the time. She said, Sal, it's the most starving I've ever felt. 24 seven, she gained like 80 pounds. She's like, it was so painful, hungry I got. And then of course the painful, like crushing fatigue. There's like one of her, yeah. It's like, I had clients like almost like narcolepsy. She'd be like totally, she'd come in like totally fine. But I knew this, right? So she'd give me, it gave me a heads up. And then all of a sudden like how would you work? She'd be like, I gotta lay down. I'm so tired right now. Like you're like, what? But apparently you can treat it quite effectively if you treat it immediately, but not after. Afterwards, I think the, what do they call them, the bacterias, they call them spirulettes. Dude, what if you lose your leg? No, we're not gonna lose it. I don't need it. It'd be so good for- You don't need your leg? Yeah. I'll go, I'll do something in the Olympics, you know. What? Fuck. Jess is gonna compete it. Turn it into, yeah. Turn it into a win. Yeah, win. It's a kind of win. Back to the red light. My sister started using red light. Yeah. Back to your family. Good old family. I got so much family, bro. You know how, I got commercials for the next 2000. This is like fourth generation now. Talking about her. She, no, my sister- I know people that are listening like, God damn, how big is Sal's family? What's big? It's huge, it's massive. But she's been using the red light and she's like, dude, what is she, two weeks into it? And she, you know, I asked her if I could share the picture, she said no. So sorry, I can't share everybody. But she did it before and after. Dramatic difference in two weeks on her face.  Yeah, I know. I'm pretty good. I'm better right now. I mean, ever since the whole January and the behaviors thing, like I've been better about doing my red light. I was already doing the plunge really well, but the sauna and the red light, I've- Did you, are you still doing the plunge? I did it just the other day again. Did you? Yeah, I tell you what. You wanna know what's funny? I gotta tell the audiences. Adam is hilarious right afterwards. Right afterwards, it's like he took cocaine or something. He came in here after doing the plunge and he's like, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. How long were you there for? I tell you what. So energized. It is, and maybe because I've become so accustomed to having as much caffeine as I do that I don't feel caffeine like that. But it feels like the biggest shot of adrenaline slash caffeine dose. You were hyped. That's great. I love it.  So I can't do it. But it feels amazing afterwards. The thing that's really wild, I was telling Kyle and I because Kyle's been really consistent. So him and I like share notes, like how's it been going? How long are you in there for? It's not. When I pushed to like five minutes, and I'd like to see the research on this. I haven't done any digging on this. Maybe you can do since you're more of the guy to do this. If you stay for like five minutes and beyond, it like gets me cold to the bone. So four hours later, I've like to, I'm still shaking a little bit. Wow. Yeah. So that's the only reason why I don't do it before we podcast is cause I've done that. I've already done it once or twice. And I like, I'm cold. Yeah, we're sitting in here. So I'm cold. I don't, I feel like uncomfortably cold just sitting here, not able to warm myself up. Yeah, you told me, cause I've only done it like a few times. And I said, how long should I go in there? And you said, what did you tell me? Do a two minute at least. He's like, I'll go two minutes at least. This was after I had already done it. And I tried this thing as long as I could and I did like a minute. I'm like, two minutes, what? Well, I believe, so Huberman is, I've heard him talk about where the kind of threshold is to get like the, the, you know, max benefits. The benefits, yeah. And I think it's 12 minutes a week and maybe someone can fact check. No, you're right. It's like 12 minutes or something like that, right? So obviously, if you're going a minute and a half at a time, you're not gonna ever get there. So to get max 12 minutes. But you got to work your way up to it. It's an adaptation. Like, I don't know how you do five minutes. Dude, two is the hardest. Once you get beyond two, two to three, three to four, four to five, nothing, nothing. It hurts. It's, yeah, but you can become so numb by two minutes in. That first minute to two, the zero to two minutes. To do your Wim Hof breathing. And the breathing is everything. Like I 100%, like I have my breathing under control from the minute I'm in there. And then once I get acclimated after about a minute or two, I really want to go do that competition with Justin because I feel like I can give him a run for his money. Really? Yeah, yeah. Because now that I have the breathing down and get it. Justin crushed us. And I get the strategy.  I haven't even gone in it yet. So I got to step it up. My heat tolerance is really good. I could do that for a while. Cold is just, oh, that's my nemesis, man. I can't do it. Speaking of immune system, it's because it's immune boosting. So I got injectable glutathione through our partners at nphormones.com. You've got like a full on pharmacy. Oh, injectable glutathione, right? And now glutathione is great. You could supplement with it, but it takes a while to build up in your system when you take it as a supplement. Injectable will come right away. And they use it for liver detox. They use it for respiratory disease, so all that stuff. All right, so you guys know how Adam had a cold and he was kind of getting over it.  Was it yesterday? Yesterday in the middle of night, so the night before, I wake up in the middle of night and I'm like, God, I think I got, I got as cold for sure. I had it in my throat. I was kind of feeling scratchy. You know that feeling you get when you're starting to get a cold?  Plus I've been getting great crappy sleep.  I was supposed to go to my parents' house. I had to cancel that because I don't want to get my parents sick. So I got the glutathione, which I saved. And I said, let me take, let me do this. So I did a shot of the glutathione. That night gone, gone. I don't have it anymore. Cold gone. Nothing. That has to be the most effective form to use it, right? Of course, because it bypasses everything. Yeah, well, I imagine, because that was one of the biggest factors too. They said whether or not you're gonna do terribly when you got COVID initially. Glutathione. Yeah, glutathione deficiency. So that would be a great answer. No, literally that night. So from the morning for sure I had a cold, that night gone wild. It'd be interesting to test that on somebody who has COVID to give that to them like that right away. Okay, so you're saying like, so we had live on, right? And so I was always using the packets. And of course, as far as from the supplement standpoint, it's the best, right? So as far as if you were gonna supplement it. Yeah, it's liposomal. So you're gonna raise your glutathione levels by taking it. But it takes a second, right? Because it's gotta go through your digestive system. Yeah. So this is like immediate spike in glutathione. Yeah, it'd be interesting to see a comparison of like the best basically glutathione supplement on the market compared to taking an injectable. Like obviously, you know, it's gonna hit your system faster. Does it raise it as much or more? Higher, yeah. But now here's the thing. It's so potent that you can't take it too much. If you take too much through injectable means, then you can cause problems. So you have to be very careful. You have to do as they recommend. So it'd probably be smart to take the injection and then supplement after that. Yeah, just on a semi-regular basis. But now that I have that, I'm like, holy shit, I'll do a couple of those a week. And we should have done that before my trip overseas, you know, that'd be a great, yeah, preventative measure. Yeah, I'm gonna order that, but I'm just gonna say, hey, could you, when I, cause I meet with them this coming week, I get my blood work done and we'll be like, could you just pretty much give me the stuff that Sal has?  Some of the, I mean it's- Sal has got all of this? I'll take the Costco version, please. Yeah, move by a separate refrigerator. You'd have to pay us now, I'll start with you. Oh, jeez. So we usually do the shout-outs. I wanted to just like do kind of a funny random one. I don't know if you guys have ever followed this guys, the low-cost cosplay. I think T-H, I think is the end of that, but like he does the most ridiculous version, like a side-by-side comparison of like an anime character and he does it with like bananas. He uses like random stuff to like cover on himself. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. The bizarro version. Yeah, you'll draw something on his stomach that you think is the person and anyways, he's hilarious dude, check him out. Oh God. Hey, check this out. We work with a company called Organify and their superfood blends make it easy and enjoyable to add more variety and nutrition to your day. One of our favorite products from them is Peak Power. You can use this as a pre-workout. It's got caffeine, but it also has other herbal compounds that improve your clarity, focus and euphoria. That's right, it makes you feel euphoric. Go check it out, go check out some of their other products. Go to organifi.com, that's O-R-G-A-N-I-F-I.com forward slash mind pump. Use the code mind pump for 20% off. All right, here comes the rest of the show. Our first caller is Ali from California. Ali, how are you doing? How can we help you? I'm good, thanks guys, obviously in advance. So I wrote in two questions if it's okay. The first one's on hormonal health. I just recently got my cycle on my own after not having it probably since I was like 18, I got put on the pill. So I just went off the pill, was working with a nutritional coach, just finally got it. I've had two cycles now, which is awesome. My question is going forward, what do I need to be most concerned about? Is it calorie intake, too much working out? I've had low estrogen my entire life, so that was the main problem. So I just, from here, I don't know if it's the workouts, the calories, both of them, stress management, obviously. I mean, you're hitting all the things for sure. Yeah, all those things. So first off, there's a few things that can affect your fertility. I think most strongly, right? Number one is too much stress, but too much stress is a large bucket. So that could be too much exercise, too much intensity, too little sleep, life stresses. By the way, defining too much, that definition can change as the context of your life changes, so what might have been an appropriate amount of working out before might be too much today or vice versa. So you're gonna kinda have to gauge how you feel based off that.   Now, I'm looking at your question here and it says that you played soccer for most of your life. Yeah, I played during college and then I'm a trainer and nutritionist now. I've been out of college for 20 years. So, yeah, I've been in sports my whole life.  What is too much intensity? What is too much volume? You have another gear that you've trained yourself to work with. So it's a lot less than you think, okay? It's a lot less than you think. The appropriate amount of training with intensity, frequency, volume is less than what you think it is. So you're not playing at a high level anymore. So you have to completely change your mindset around it. So the idea is, and you hear Adam say this on the podcast all the time, do the least amount of work to elicit the most amount of change. See how little you can work before you start to see negative effects of not working out enough, okay? So that's the goal. The goal is like, okay, well what if I do three days a week? What if I cut this down? Do I notice any changes? And if you just continue to feel better then keep moving in that direction until you start to notice like, oh, I'm getting more out of shape. Now I think I'm doing too little. So that would be the game that you would wanna play. Now it's hard to tell because you have a hoodie on so that you look pretty lean to me. And I would also add that one of probably the greatest assaults potentially on your hormone level staying balanced is a low calorie type of diet and also being very lean. I remember when we were- That's what I was just gonna ask was, I don't really weigh myself anymore. I kind of know where I'm at. I'm probably like 115.  But I don't know going forward, like can I not be a certain weight? Like do I have to worry about that or can I just worry about making sure my calories are okay? Well, okay.  So a little example of this. So Katrina manages herself relatively lean. And I actually don't even think she, she doesn't look crazy lean at all. Like she doesn't have abs popping and she doesn't try and stay shredded. She just stays pretty lean as a female. And when we were, when we were getting her hormones checked and we were trying to get pregnant, one of the things that she had to do was actually just kind of back off her working out and intentionally eat the game, which in her head she was like, I don't, I don't feel like I'm shredded. You know, I don't feel at all lean. In fact, she's like, I wouldn't, I would much rather be much leaner. I'm not even where I'd like to be.  And she's like, so, and so it was very important that one, she pulled back a little bit on the intensity of her training too. She intentionally increased her body fat percentage and that started to balance out and level out her hormones. And, and again, there's going to be this obvious individual variance. And so with someone who's already down to 115, you're probably, I actually would not, I would be focused probably a lot on calories and keeping your calories up. I'd want you to be more in a bulk mentality right now since we're really trying to keep that balanced. And then to Sal's kind of point about, you know, the least amount possible, it doesn't mean that we can't in the future have a goal where you say, Hey, Adam, you know, I've got Vegas coming up in summer and could we lean out a little bit before I'd like to. And I wouldn't be against that. But right now, since this is so new to you getting your period back and you're really trying to go from a health perspective, you may want to start to carry a little bit higher body fat percentage. And that would support that in my opinion. Yeah.  So you could use calipers or underwater weighing. Yeah. And that'll give you kind of a general idea. If a good balance between lean and fertility and health with body fat for women is in the low 20s. So I would aim for like 20, 20 to 23% body fat. Looking at you now, you're probably in the teens, I would say. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. So do you have an idea what your body fats at? Yeah, I'm probably, I would think like, I don't know, maybe 15 or 16. Yeah. See that Katrina was between 13 and 15. That's what she was hovering. Even though she didn't look yet, that's how that was her measurements. And so she had to put on body fat to get up there.  And, you know, your estrogen question, by the way, being too lean or not having a lot of body fat, we'll lower estrogen for a lot of weight. That was her issue was estrogen. Yeah. Her estrogen was low.  Okay. Okay, thank you. Can I ask a totally aesthetic question? Sure. Okay, go for it. So obviously I've played soccer my whole life. The only way for my freaking quads to get smaller is for me to not do anything. But that's obviously not help. I mean, I don't think that's healthy either, right? Like I've always had a small waist in an upper body, but and my husband's like, you're like a problem, all men want, but I hate it. Like it doesn't matter what I do, they're freaking gigantic. Listen, you can do, you don't actually have to hardcore strength training. I've actually had a girlfriend who was like this, who competed and she did very little leg training. And when she did, it was like body weight walking lunges.  I might do more stability stuff and multi-planar movements for your legs and body weight exercises. So you are staying balanced, stable and strong in those areas, but I'm probably not going to load that area, especially considering that I'm also going to be encouraging you to be increase your calories. So you increasing your calories and strength training legs will probably make them blow up. And so there's nothing wrong with training them just like one time a week and more body weight type of stuff. You can always pre-exhaust too if you are doing legs for that day and like focus more on your posterior chain. So, you know, do something like hip extension and like hamstrings, you know, just do that ahead of time and kind of exhaust them going into a compound lift. Yeah, you know, it's going to be hard to shrink your quads. You've got a lot of muscle fiber hyperplasia probably that through the years and years and years of sprinting and you probably are also genetically gifted with strength in your lower body, which is why you were able to compete at a high level. The hard work plus that, plus the sprinting, plus the training, you've got like very dense muscle fiber, you know, capacity in your quads. And so to shrink them, you're going to have to atrophy them. And so, yeah, I can't give you an answer that's going to give you everything you want. Like you can atrophy your legs, but now you're losing muscle. Right. The only time they were small is after I had my children because I didn't do anything. Yeah, so I mean, you know, I would just do like full range of motion stuff. Like I wouldn't start my workouts with anything quad related. If it's all quads that you're worried about, I would go hamstrings, glutes, adductors, abductors, and then I'd finish with like squats or lunges, you know, something along those lines.   That's the only time that they go down. Okay. Yeah. Cool. Cool, I appreciate it, you guys. Yeah, no problem. Do you have any of our programs, by the way? I do. My brother and I, yeah, we actually, we each got it, but we got the bundles over Christmas. And I tell all my clients about you guys. So we love you. Thank you. Thank you for everything. Do you have mass performance? I don't. Oh, okay. So which phase is it, Justin? That's all like multi-planar lower body. Second phase. Second phase? Yeah. I'm gonna send you mass performance. Look at phase two and look at some of the exercises and lower body movements and mobility movements. And that should give you some good ideas for exercises you could do for your lower body. They're great for athletic performance, really great for mobility and movement, but they're not huge. It's not gonna make your legs massive. Phase one will give you, yeah, the size. Don't do that. Look at phase two. Yeah. Okay. Thank you guys so much. I appreciate it. All right. No problem. Thank you.  It was just trying to tell them to do less was like, like it was impossible. Well, they've been hardwired. It's a mindset. Yeah, exactly.  So because they have that collegiate level athletes learn to push through. And every level you go up, it gets crazier, right? So training like a high school. The longer you're in it. Yeah. Training like a kid or a person who went through high school training consistently. Okay. You have a little bit of athletic mindset and then you get someone who's gone all the way through college and they haven't even crazier athlete. Take someone who's gone to the professional level. And I wouldn't be surprised if she did club after college. Yeah. So unwinding that is, is a challenge. You know, she, her, as far as a hormones thing, this is what was Katrina's thing. And it was really the thing that was probably most challenging for her. Cause we see ourselves so different, right? So I'm sure she probably even sees herself this way. She wants to change her body, although she's probably lean in an incredible shape.  I'm not, I don't even think on that lean. And the doctors telling me that I need to put on body fat. Like you don't want to hear that if you're that person, right? Like she's over here trying to sculpt her body and stuff like that before she gets pregnant.  And she's like, man, I don't want to do that.  Now the difference is men are, can get much leaner before that happens, but you know, men get down below seven, six percent. You see their testosterone crash and they start to get hormone problems.  Well, and the thing that I think is so deceiving about this is how, how we all carry our body fat can look so different on person to person. Like so. It's also, you look at social media and all the women on there are presenting physiques that are in the low teens. Right. So you're like, oh, that's, that's healthy. No, it's not. Yeah, good point. Our next caller is James from Georgia. James, what's happening? How can we help you? Hey guys. First of all, I just want to echo what everybody else has been saying. You guys are phenomenal, providing like spot on actionable advice that I pretty much can take in and use almost daily. I'm a relatively new listener. So I've become a bit of a junkie and I've been listening to you guys for about three or four months now regularly. And I find it the most useful source of information that I have, that I use all the time. Huge compliment. Thanks man. No problem. I also want to preface this by saying that before I get to the big question is that I haven't participated in any of the maps programs yet. I've been relatively new just kind of sorting through that. But I want to make it through this kind of hump that I'm in right now before I start on anything new. So the short version of my, I guess my question or my dilemma is that while I've been going through a pretty consistent and successful cycle of bulks and cuts for about the past five plus years now, I recently went through an extended surplus where I stayed in the book a little bit longer than usual. And when I went into my cut, everything just fell apart. I did my cut the way that I would normally do it. And almost immediately I had a loss of sleep. I had massive headaches, some dizzy spells, which I attribute to the loss of sleep. And so I went back into what I thought at the time or what I think was my pretty close to my maintenance. I did that for a couple of weeks just kind of see how I felt, I felt fine. So I went back into a cut, not quite as deep as the last one had the same symptoms. And then just went back into a, went back into what I thought at the time was my maintenance. And I've stayed there around there pretty accurately. I'm still losing a little bit of weight, but I'm also losing a little bit of strength. And I'm not really sure which way to go, whether I just want to kind of dive into the cut and see if I can make it through it. Or if I should, I can't seem to go any lower than I actually am right now and still maintain some kind of strength. My strength starts to deteriorate pretty quickly after I start the, even a small cut. And this is the first time this has ever happened. So there's a few, I want to dig a little deeper because I have a few ideas as to what might be going on. What is your, let's start with this. What's your workout look like? Strength training, very little, it's mostly the basic movement. Squats, bench press, shoulder press, some dumbbell work with biceps and some leg press to kind of, to square things out. And hiking and walking. How many days a week do you lift and what's the intensity look like and then how often do you walk and hike? So for the workouts, it's generally four days, one week and maybe five days the next week. The four day week, I tend to be doing a little bit heavier and take more rest. The five day week, I tend to just focus on maybe taking it down a little bit and getting it in, getting some, just some exercise in. The intensity, it depends on what I'm doing that day. So some days I'll push really hard, other days I'll pull back a little bit.  Yeah, and these are what, one hour workouts? About, yeah, it can be 45 minutes. And then when you do your cut, what are you cutting? How many calories and is this coming from carbs, fats, proteins? It's all coming from carbs and a little bit of fat. It's about, I take down, the way that I do it is I start, I just drop 500 calories immediately. And I assume based on my experience, that will put me at about 250 calories under my maintenance. And then I evaluate after two weeks and see where I should go from there. So it's 500 calorie cut from where you were.  Well, let's get there because I do wanna go, because I think there's, I think I might know what's going on and then we'll get into the calories.  And I'm gonna assume that your diet is mostly whole natural foods. It is, well, not 100%, 99%. Your sodium, you need to increase your sodium. This is where I would start. So when you drop carbs, you lose a lot of water and you probably don't eat a lot of sodium, especially for someone who works out a lot and eats whole natural food. So if you eat a lot of whole natural foods and you work out a lot, you, number one, don't eat a lot of sodium. Whole natural foods don't contain much sodium. Even if you salt your food, you're not getting much sodium in comparison to heavily processed foods. Then if you work out a lot on top of that, you're sweating quite a bit and then you drop your carbs, which pulls water out. So people, when they go in a low carb diet and they go, oh, I have the keto flu or I feel like really crappy, a lot of it has to do with their electrolyte imbalance and they need to dramatically increase their sodium. So, and this is something you could try very easily. You could go on a cut and then start supplementing with electrolytes like 1,000, 2,000, 3,000 milligrams of sodium a day on top of your normal diet with your carb cut and see if you notice a difference. And you'll notice right away.  Then that's what it was. If that's not what it was, then it might be that your calories are just too low and your workouts are just too hard and the combination of two is too much. Worse, so let's go, let's get the calories. Although that's a, what a great insight. You're probably spot on with that. But let's, where are your calories at right now? Right now they're at 2,300. Oh, okay. So, and that's considered a cut for you? It's a little bit under my maintenance. So it's not a big cut. It's just a little, according to the scale I'm losing about like a quarter of a pound a week, which is not where I want to be because my strength is also going down a little bit. Yeah, that's not an unhealthy place at all though. I just wanted to make sure you weren't doing something extreme with all that exercise with that. Sal's probably right, dude. Especially if you're a healthy eater and you're eating a lot of whole foods. Have you, have you messed with LMNT or Liquid IV or any of those hydration? I don't like that. I, no, I haven't at all. I mean, I'm open to all that kind of stuff, but I haven't, I've never really been in a position where I felt like I needed it or and I've, it seems like maybe over the last three or four months I've kind of entered a different territory now in my workouts and my training. So. It's a game changer for people in low carb diets, people who eat paleo and people who eat a whole food-based diet who also exercise. It's a performance enhancement for sure. Makes a huge difference and it's more than you think. You need more than you think. So when you look at people who are like, oh, I gotta make sure I watch my sodium or whatever. It's cause they ate a lot of heavily processed foods. They're inactive and they're out of shape.  You have to supplement with sodium. You have to actually put sodium in your water and make sure you get enough sodium. So when you cut your carbs, you probably immediately lose water weight, right? When you cut your carbs down low, you probably already dropped like you get that initial kind of weight loss. Then it kind of stabilized, okay. Try just literally try this, try increasing your sodium by a couple thousand milligrams. So LMNT is a company we work with and it's really easy because you just add a packet to water and each packet is a thousand milligrams. So I would do two throughout the day. Not a sugar in there. No sugar, nothing. It's just, it's sodium, magnesium, potassium, but it's high in sodium. And you just add two of them a day on top of your normal food. You'll notice within a day, if that was the problem, like literally within a day, you'll be like, maybe even in that moment, I've had clients where this was an issue. And the tells for me are the sleep, headaches, and the dizziness. Those are all signs of your electrolyte. And energy, right?  So like you could totally be going through that too, which you may not think you are because you drink the same kind of water, but if your body's not hanging on to that because your sodium's so low. So that's the two things that I'd focus on is the water intake and then the sodium intake and see how you feel. I think that was spot on. Cause your calories are, you're not in an unhealthy place. No, and your workout sounds okay.  You know your body a bit. Sounds like you've been working out for a little while.  And it's like you immediately are exhibiting symptoms of somebody who has an electrolyte imbalance, which is very common when somebody goes into a low carb environment. It's very common. And they're a healthy eater. And they're healthy. Right.  They don't notice these symptoms cause they're sodium's high. They're eating burgers, hot dogs and bacon.  And by the way, you might even notice in the moment, I've had clients like this where literally we give them sodium and 30 minutes later. I think you'll notice in the workout for the first time you do it. Yeah. If it's that, you'll, you, I think you'll note it. You'll notice right away. The first day. It's not like you'll have to try it for a few weeks to see if it works. You'll know within days if this is, this is the deal. All right. Great. I have avoided electrolytes. I don't know why. Just pretty much thought, why would anybody pay extra for that stuff? I mean, you could salt it yourself. It's not the other LMT things now. Yeah, but I need, I need something that will actually like portion it out for me. Yeah. That's, I think that's why we like it. Of all the supplements that exist in the market. Okay. Now I know electrolytes are like silly, oh, salt, potassium, magnesium. They've been around forever. Of all the supplements that exist in the market, the most, some of the most valuable supplements for hardworking athletes are electrolytes and sodium. And creatine, like the cheapest, the three most basic cheap ones are like some of the most valuable. I've had endurance athletes where I have them add a pinch of salt to their water while they're running and throughout the day. And they come to me and they're like, I feel like I'm taking steroids. What did you give me? I'm like, you were so deplete. Your sodium was so low. You needed that for performance. So like I said, it's an easy test. You'll know within a day or two if that's the deal. All right. Well, fantastic. I trust you guys completely, so. Awesome. Yep, you got it, man. Worst case scenario, it doesn't work. In which case, I would say adjust your intensity and don't go on such an aggressive cut, although 500 calories is not that aggressive. But I would bet money that it's sodium. That's how positive I am. Circle back and let us know. I'll have, you know, let's set you up with maps and a ball. Let me say starting off on maps and a ball.  I want you to follow up. I'm excited to see how this feels for you when you bump your sodium by a couple thousand milligrams. And if you know, you'll notice, like I said, right away.  We'll do it. Thank you guys very much. You got it, James. All right, man. What a great call, dude. Yeah. You know what, like you're so, and you're so right. All those symptoms is like dehydration. That makes perfect sense. And you know what he said? He said it's from dehydration. 99% whole food guy. Yeah. Like that's when you know for sure. Like if he was like, oh yeah, I'm kind of, I eat pretty healthy, but I eat out a lot. Like, okay, so you're probably okay. Yeah, he looked fit and everything. And what he's talking about his workouts was pretty, you know, spot on. So yeah, I imagined that was it. Sodium is essential.  That's a fact. I actually love conversations like this because it highlights like, and it reminds me of my experience too of like supplementing with magnesium. It's like these things that have been around forever. You take it for granted. Yeah, you take it for granted that it's like no big deal. And then it ends up being like this life changing supplement you take for you. It's so cheap. It's so basic. And we get so hung up on the performance ones, right? Like the latest and greatest of this. I know.  It will only make sense if you're super dialed though. You know, and I think that's why we avoid that. Like, I don't know, recommending it all the time. Cause it's like, you gotta be like, everything's gotta be in place, the whole foods. And also you gotta be working out and like consistently and being, you know, the intensity has to be at a certain level. But when it's there, man, it is life changing. For me, sodium is such a performance because I don't eat a lot of carbs anyway.  I don't eat a lot of carbs because it just doesn't work with my gut health. So for me, a high carb day is like 150, 200 grams, which is not a lot. I work out most days. So I drink, I do at least two to three, sometimes four LMNT packets a day.  But hey, but you know what? I feel, and look, I get blood, my blood pressure is, everything's always healthy and amazing. I feel so much better when I do two to three packets a day versus when I don't. It's a huge difference. Our next caller is Val from Hawaii. Val, how can we help you? Hey guys, it's so good to see you and talk to you. How you doing? I'm good. This morning felt like Christmas morning, like a little kid, super excited to get up. So. All right. Yeah. Sell Santa Claus sometimes. That is a nickname. That is a nickname. Salza Claus, that is a nickname. Yeah, we don't want to ask why. Let's hear it, Val, what you got for us? Okay, let's see. I'm going to stick to the script, like Doug said. So my first question is, I've actually become alcohol-free today as four months exactly. And I felt that once I did this, the weight would easily and naturally drop off, but it hasn't. Mainly in my midsection, and I've noticed my arms are like, waving a lot more and my thighs are widening. So I guess I'm trying to figure out how to adjust my overall routine. Now that I'm 41, I know I need to make some changes. I just, I don't know what I'm missing. I don't, I can't pinpoint what I need to change, but I feel like I'm really tuned in to myself. So I just thought it'd be really cool to get you guys' perspective on that. Val, I have some questions. Well, real quick, what is your skincare protocol? You look amazing. You said you were 41. Yeah, I'm 41. Actually, I am a licensed esthetician. That's what I said. That makes sense.  All right, sorry. Thank you, thank you. You're doing a good job there, you're doing a good job there. Thank you. Well, my protocol is less is more. That's why I teach all my clients. So I do like a freshwater rinse in the morning and then moisturize. And then at night I usually do a good cleanse or a scrub and moisturize. So just moisturize is really like, it's worth that. And you guys are doing it. We did, we figured that out late in life. Moisture. Like a year ago? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Doug was hiding that from us for a while. He was on it earlier. We figured it out just now, so.  You said you were 41. You've been an athlete since you were four. You started training around 13, 14. So you have experience. You were in the Navy for a while and you were the seventh female diver in the US Navy.  Okay, so. Wow, that's cool. So you have a long history of fitness and exercise and all that stuff. So that's important to know. Okay. Yeah. Okay, so would you mind if I get a little deeper into why you stopped drinking alcohol? No, not at all. I actually really enjoy talking about it.  And then it just kind of gradually developed into something different. And my last two years of my drinking career, I noticed a lot of changes. Like my thoughts were getting a little bit darker, the weight gain, the sleep. It just developed into this really bad relationship and I just always was super curious. And last year, I was just like, I'm doing this. I'm gonna do it. I'm gonna commit to it and at least take a year and face. This was the biggest thing for me.  So I was like, let me get rid of this.  And so that's what I've been doing over the last four months with morning routine, prayer, reading. I've just, you know, I've dove into it with therapy and all kinds of things. And I feel like a new person. Good for you. Val, you're okay. That's awesome, yeah. I'm so glad you have the courage to go into that. So you gotta have a little bit of patience because here's what typically happens when somebody gets rid of a coping mechanism for trauma or challenge. And oftentimes it's something that someone's using to self medicate, either to distract themselves or to make them feel better. And alcohol in the short term is a very effective way to distract yourself, make you feel better, whatever. What happens when you take one thing away is that what we tend to do is replace it with something else. And in this case, you're probably replacing it with something that's a lot healthier than the alcohol was. Now that may be food and you may not be realizing that it's food. So what you may be doing is you may be eating more than you might have been eating before because now you've removed the alcohol. So although you've cut the calories from the alcohol, you've either replaced it or started or maybe even eating a little more from food because food also, food is the most abused substance in modern societies, okay?  It doesn't tend to destroy families and that kind of stuff. So I think it's a good trade. The reason why I said to you be patient is because you're four months in and it's gonna take a little bit of time for you to get to the point where you don't need to self-medicate with other things. Now I will give you some other options that you may wanna use when you feel the urge to eat more or maybe use food as a substitute. I would ask you to use things like activity and maybe meditation. Now the problem with activity and meditation is- Doesn't taste good. Well yeah, and activity, that's very true. Activity can be distracting. So that can be distracting like food. Meditation is not distracting at all. It actually puts you in where you're at and you kind of have to look at things. So I would, you said you're working with a therapist. I would tell the therapist this and say, look, I cut alcohol out. I notice I'm gaining a little weight. I think I may be eating more as kind of a substitute and then work with them because that's gonna help you solve the root because I could give you the typical advice we give on the podcast with macros, cutting calories and that kind of stuff. But then you're still gonna be faced with, I gotta deal with the stuff and I don't have a way to cope with it. I have something that I think may be useful for you especially since you seem like a very self-aware person. Like have you experimented with fasting much? Yes, it's funny you say that, Adam, because I have been on the intermittent fasting train before it was even a train and I used to do one 24 hour fast a week and then I would try to roll that in to like one 48 or 72 hour fast a month. And I definitely have gotten away from that over the last few years. So that's a good point. Yeah, I think you're a type of person that I think I could introduce. Obviously I wouldn't be introducing for the first time. You've obviously done this before but especially since we are working on trauma things and stuff like that also trying to pay attention to maybe I was had some habits to go into the refrigerator more times than I used to by just having a pure fast day like that. I just in using it as a day of like looking internally we're not using it to cut calories. We're not trying to use it to like measure the success of it by but really since we're talking about trauma since we're talking about working on ourselves you're already incorporating meditation prayer and stuff like that. Incorporating a fast I think will help you div and that paired with your counseling and everything that you got going on I think you would be somebody that I think could get some value from that. So long as the after fast part doesn't look like a rebound. Okay, so that's cause that can happen. You'll people will fast then the day after it's like you make up or the two days after. Okay, you could try this vowel. Try and this takes a little work but try journaling and it could literally be a sentence before you eat write something in the journal about how you're feeling and about how you want to actively care for yourself. Okay, so right before you take a bite of anything what you literally can be one sentence or paragraph whatever you feel and it's got to be something along the lines of this is how I feel right now. So you got to kind of be in touch with how you feel and I want to love myself through action. Add that sentence. So that means that loving yourself not the feeling but rather the action. Then after you're done eating do another entry into your journal and just do that each time. The reason why this works is not necessarily because you're journaling but rather it's making you pause and making you aware of what's going on. This is harder than it sounds. This is a lot harder than it sounds because if you are indeed using at times food as a distraction you're not going to want to pause and get out of that state of mind.  You want to just keep going.  I don't want to. The power of that though with a self-aware person is incredible though. It's just doing it that's hard. That's right. If you go through and I would even like, I'd have like a fast and then the next day this would be my okay, I'm focused on the journaling that day because it's going to tell you a lot in that day about yourself. And being a self-aware person like you are I think it'll be very enlightening at the least for you as far as the behaviors around your eating and stuff like that. I think those are- Give yourself a year. So you're four months in. Give yourself an additional eight months. It's a full year. Whenever I've ever worked with anybody who's dealt with quitting cigarettes or alcohol or any other kind of a challenge it's taken us a year to come back full circle and almost always they replace it with something else. Yeah. The strategy was always to replace it with something that was healthier. Not anything could be abused including exercise and meditation. Those things could be abused too but it was a better alternative. So when I used to tell people like who quit cigarettes they'd say, okay, every time you want to smoke go for a walk. And then what it would turn into is they were walking all the time. And it's okay to go from there to even healthier was easier. So I would give them that substitute. So those are all the lifestyle hacks. What have you done like workout wise in terms of have you changed up the stimulus at all and like kind of like sought after like an entirely different type of adaptation? No, I haven't. I've been kind of stuck over the last few years. Just I go to the gym. I always have a big focus on legs. So I was squatting two or three days a week. The first thing I do as soon as I go to the gym is I do pull-ups. Cause that's, if I don't do those I lose them but I've noticed that I have been stuck. And so I did start maps 15. I'm on week three right now. And I really like that. I also have maps anabolic that I literally bought in 2018 and didn't fully follow it. So I think programming could definitely help. However, I get so frustrated like trying to follow a program. It's really weird.  I know, I know it's good. I'm like, I know I need to do this but I love to just like cruise the gym be like, all right, today I'm going blah, blah, blah. I like to just like, you know, cruise in there and do stuff but I know it's not beneficial. Along those lines though and I like where Justin's going with this and what you're sharing right now is you might do you well to actually and I don't want to be the one to pick it for you.  Something reciting here. Yeah, new, like, give you an example. Like, so when I go through times in my life like this where I'm trying to re-spark like my drive and the gym or focus I'll do something really like it. It's like, you know what? I've never like made an attempt to get really mobile or really good at the Turkish getup or something that is like out of the normal for you that's not like your normal routine or training. And because you kind of have that athletic background what good advice, you know, get into it, get competitive with yourself about being good at the Turkish getup or the windmill or something that's different and unique that takes some practice and mental focus around it. And it also feeds into a little bit about what Sal was saying is like, it takes away this, the reaction to the trauma and doing some other behaviors and it replaces it with this new kind of obsession of I'm going to be really good at the snatch. You know, I've never done it. It's like a draw. It's something that you're very motivated to get up and attack. Like it's a new stimulus that you're just like, wow. Let's see what I can do with this today. So yeah, I totally agree.  So changing your goal in the gym to something you normally don't do could actually do that. Well, now you're going to. So let me ask you this. Do you normally train with weights for strength for stamina? Do you do short rest period, long rest periods? Like what is your tendency when you work out in the gym? I think I train for strength, mostly maintenance. And then I started noticing after listening to you guys talk about rest periods. I think I used to take really short rest periods. And so I've actively been thinking about Adam, hold me down by my shirt and say, sit down.  What would be more out, like out of the ordinary for you? Training for right now. Okay, talking about right now. Training for lots of endurance and stamina or training for like maximal strength, like a power lifter. Which one would be like more out of the ordinary for you? Endurance and stamina for sure. I'm going to send you maps cardio. Okay. I'm going to send you maps cardio. This is going to be like a stamina endurance-based training program. Plus it involves cardio workouts that you do on your own. So it's going to give you a lot of flexibility to go outside. You're in Hawaii, so you can probably go outside almost any day of the year. And you can use any form of cardio on that particular day, whether it be swimming, which I'm sure you're excellent at, running, biking, whatever. I'm going to send that to you. Take a look at it. If it looks like something that'll take you out of your comfort zone and you think you can mentally focus on trying to train this particular way, I think it would be a great way to kind of give you a different start. I think it's a great suggestion. The last thing I'll add to that is that, and that's why I didn't want to pick something for you, is because somewhere in there, there's something you've thought about doing before or you've never really put effort towards, whatever that is, I would become focused on that. And you could do that in conjunction with the maps cardio or by itself. I just think that you get a lot of value from changing your fitness goal like you never have before and becoming a little obsessed about that, like to where you're thinking about kind of throughout the day, like, oh man, I can't wait to practice this or I'm going to try this and add this. The cardio day will do that, right? Yeah, no, that's why I like the cardio recordation. It could be biking, rowing. Because we built a lot of flexibility in that for you to kind of pick your own stuff. So, and let's put, Val, are you not in the forum? Are you in the forum yet or no? I don't have social media, so I don't know. Wow, good for you. I was just thinking, I couldn't possibly like her anymore. And then you said that.  Well, I know you guys are going to ask this. I was like, do I make a fake Facebook to be on the forum? And I was like, nah, I can't do it. You know what? You know what's funny you say that? I would venture to say that we have the largest forum of people that have actually done that. Meaning like, I think we have a lot of people that are consciously, we have several people that have had to create just so they can be the forum. They don't use it for anything else, but they want the access in there. So, I've never seen that anywhere else, but I think we have enough people that are actively trying to stay off of social media. Well, look, we'll send you maps, Cardio. And then if you change your mind, we'll give you access to the forum. Because I would love to hear from you. I want to hear, I want some follow-up, okay? Yeah, at least follow-up with us. At least email in a couple months and let us know how things are going. Yeah, for sure, I could do that. I kind of had a feeling, you guys, we're going to shoot for Cardio. And I honestly had a feeling that that's what I needed to do because last January, I did a bulk from January to April. And I mean, I got real thick. And so- I love it. Ever since that bulk, I've just been bulking around, you know? Okay. So, I know Cardio is what I needed. Sounds like you know that. Beautiful. Yeah, I can't wait to hear. Thank you, Val. Thank you. So, I have, do you guys want to hear my second question or are we out of time? Oh, no, I think we're good. Go ahead. Doug says no, but we say yes. Okay, well, let's keep it short and sweet. Okay, so it kind of goes with the first question. How can I totally reset gut and brain health after being a heavy drinker for 25 years? So, I kind of have some ideas of where you'll go with this, but I wanted to, I guess, hear it from you guys, what your thoughts were on that. Well, I don't know if you can reset, but slowly, so anytime you change your diet radically, so you go from consuming alcohol to not consuming alcohol, your microbiome changes and your brain starts to adapt and change along with it. So, alcohol consumption can change the hippocampus of the brain, it can change different regions of the brain, and the brain is plastic and it does take time to adapt. You're four months in, you've probably already noticed some changes, but give it a year, give it a year, and then that's where you're gonna see all that stuff. So, now if you have poor gut health and you think there may be an issue, that's why I would recommend working with like a functional medicine practitioner. Our team, we work with a team with Dr. Steven Cabral. What's, maybe we'll get the website, is it? I think it's Steven. Cabral.com, I'll double check it out. Yeah, Steven spelled with a P-H. I also like the advice given about the fasting for this reason too though. So, every time you come out of your fat, one of my favorite parts about doing those 24 hour fast is I feel like I get closer and closer to really finding all the foods that really agree with me and disagree with me. And so, treat those fast like that. Like as you come back out of the fast, really be hyper aware of as you introduce certain foods, like which ones are agreeing with you, which ones are not, and then try and formulate your. So, those moments during the day where you feel a bit triggered, like I would normally go to like cope and I can grab a drink and maybe it's like the end of the day or maybe whatever it is, like how to build new associations to then, you know, start patterning. So, that way now this is something else that you're kind of like creating as a new behavior. Yeah, and then there's another company we work with that has a probiotic that's just phenomenal. It's not a cure-all, but it makes a difference. It's seed, seed.com forward slash mind pump. So, if you're not taking a probiotic, you can even try that. Also be aware, okay, we keep adding stuff to you right here, of your military background and desire to wanna do more and like you, I think you're doing a phenomenal job. I think you're heading on the right path. You're already the fact that you're aware of what's going on. Don't throw too much at yourself at once. Okay, so, you know, focus on one or two things, really drill it home, really assess it, get better at it, implement it, and then, you know, move to the next thing. And you got a lot you're doing and you're moving in the right direction. I know the desire a lot of times, especially people that are very diligent, organized and all about it, like they wanna keep stacking on that. Be patient, be patient, you're doing great already. Thank you, thank you so much. I really appreciate you guys' time. I've been dying to be on here and talk to you guys. So, if you ever really wanna think about having a female guest every now and again on your chip. All right, Val. Thanks, Val. Thank you, Val. Stay in touch with us. Just invite us to Hawaii, that's all. Yeah, actually I gotta tell you, I moved to Colorado three weeks ago. So, I'm sitting here in six inches of snow right now. But I have a condo. Talk about a shift. Well, yeah. That's not that easy. I have a condo in Hawaii, so it'll always be him though. Awesome, awesome. Thank you. All right, Val, thank you. Take it easy. Awesome. All right, guys, take care. Well, I know we're short on time here, but I just wanna say I love that lady. She was great. Yeah, great stuff, great questions. But that's common, you cut one thing out and you'll naturally replace it with something else if it's a coping mechanism. Yeah, and also, she's got a lot, she's doing well and to not overwhelm yourself. She's facing it and more power to her. Just keep it up. Our next caller is Donald from Idaho. Donald, what's happening? Not much, guys, not much. What part of Idaho are you at? Right now I'm in Caldwell. It's like 30 minutes away from Boise. Thank you, that helps. Potatoes. Yeah, lots of potatoes. All right, go ahead and ask your question, my friend.  I'm gonna just kind of read my email. So to start it off, I'm a new trainer. I've been training for almost two years at this point. And one of the most common things that I see is the upper back rounding when doing hip hinge motions. And so I do a lot of power lifting and so I find that's pretty prevalent. However, as I do this for myself, I know how to take care of it. But when I have a client who I guess is new and doesn't really know their own body all that well, I find it hard to help them connect. And so I guess in essence, the question stems from I was having a client do a light kettlebell RDL and then as they were performing it, their upper back was rounding like excessively. And so I took the weight away. We tried a couple of different options. I tried to do the PVC pipe three point connections, no success and ended up taking an entire session trying to focus solely on just the upper back rounding. And so my main question here is, I felt like I did a disservice taking so much time spending on one thing. And I was wondering if there was a more efficient way to do that. Okay, you didn't do a disservice. Yeah, good question. That's a very important part of being able to do important exercises correctly. And with new client, this was one of the biggest differences between me when I was a shitty trainer and me when I was a good trainer. Shitty trainer, Sal, move to the next exercise, do something else, keep them moving. Good trainer, me, noticed something like that. And I would spend the whole session working on that particular issue and eventually getting them to be able to do some of these very effective movements. You paint a completely new vision for what they need and what that protocol's gonna look like and you're gonna build them up and get their body and their posture in a position where now we can load and it's gonna look so much better in the future if we go in this direction. How you communicate this though is the part that Sal is leaving out that made him such a, like his ability to sell the importance of that is as important as your knowledge on what to do. Yeah, because otherwise they're like, what are we doing this whole time? So I actually just had this conversation, it was more around, which is the same thing, corrective exercises that their client need to do and this trainer came to me and she's just like, you know, I just, I feel bad, they're paying me 150 an hour and I'm doing all these tedious on the floor corrective exercise stuff, right? I said, so the way I communicate later on like this to a client is I would take them through, I would explain the importance of us doing this and saying, listen, I don't want you to waste 150 bucks an hour on me holding your hand through this process, everything we're up, but I can't stress to you enough how important it is you do this every day. If you, if I know you want to lose X amount or you want to look a certain way and we're going to do that together, but I can't stress to you how important it is that you do this. Now my goal for you is for me to teach it to you and you do it two, three times a day practicing it, trying to work on these corrective movements to get us in better posture, better alignment. But if you don't, it's so important to me that I will do it with you. And so my goal is for you to do it on your own, but I know that some clients, and then some, and when you present it that way, you'll get one of two things normally, they'll be like, okay, I get it, like I need to do this on my own or some, I've had this too, which is okay. Clients go, Adam, if you don't take me through it, I won't do it. So if you say it's that important then we, but you got to sell how important it is first so you don't feel like I'm giving them a disservice. You know what I'm saying? There's a myth around exercise where, whereas people believe that if they're not sweating and burning and muscles aren't hurting, that they're wasting the workout. So I'm gonna use an analogy right now that I think paints this pretty well. So you have cardio boxing classes, and then you have actual boxing classes. One of them, you learn how to box. The other one, you're just moving through the air and you're simulating boxing to try to get a workout. Okay.  Who's more fit, a boxer or a cardio boxer? Who's more fit? The boxer is, why? They got the skill and they're doing it properly. Now in the beginning, they had to learn the skill. Exercise is a skill. All these exercises you teach your client are all skills. They're not just moving. If it wasn't a skill, they wouldn't need you, Donald. And this is what I would tell my clients. Look, these are skills. I'm gonna teach you how to master these skills because then we can reap the benefits of them. Otherwise, you're just moving, in which case you don't need me. You could just come in here and pick 10 different random movements. You could wave your arms in the air and sweat, and that'll be your workout. And this is why that's not effective. And here's why mastering these skills is so effective. So the beginning of our training together, a lot of it is gonna be teaching you how to utilize these skills, how to master these skills so that then we can reap the maximum benefits of them. So now along those lines, there's two things I like to do to help teach someone to keep their upper back from rounding when doing a hip hinge movement. One of them is a waiter's bow with the hands behind the head. So hands behind the head, shoulder squeeze back. It's almost like a good morning, except there's no weight.  So that's an easy cue. The second thing would be an actual PVC pipe behind the back like a good morning, still maintaining the same position. But the waiter's bow is superior in my opinion at teaching proper positioning when you do a hip hinge in terms for the upper back. So that's what I would do with someone because then they could feel, as they bend over, they could feel their elbows coming forward. They could feel their head going down. So they have to keep this up while they bend over. And it gives them that feedback that they typically need. So you can work on that. You can work on the mobility and the priming and spend some good time with that. And then reinforce that with the strength training, right? So take your time by doing seated rows with really good posture, making sure that they're bracing and they're keeping their shoulders back and down and locked in good position. And so like you can still do the weight training side of it, you're just really reinforcing their posture and their core control and ability to maintain that position. Now, not to overcomplicate this tip, but there is a bit of a nuance here in upper rounding of the back, right? So I think Stephie Cohen actually just did a post a couple of days ago and I got tagged.  Obviously I didn't respond because there was nothing to debunk. She was correct. And that's because there is nuance around this. If you look at the way I deadlift versus Sal, it looks very different. In fact, Sal has a bit of a rounding of his upper back. It's just, but he still has very stable control of his upper back and it's supported. So there is this bit of a misunderstanding around proper deadlifting form that you have to have this rigid kind of like neutral spine where your shoulder blades are peeled back. It's really just when it's excessive, that's what it is. That's right. Or there's movement in it, right? So if I saw a client moving the upper back while we're deadlifting, but some people are in kind of around it, Jordan shallow deadlifts like this too. You seem to actually intentionally round his scapula right before he goes into it. And he kind of stands in this rounded position as he comes up. And again, Sal deadlifts this way too. And it's not cause he has bad form. He's got incredible form, but it's some people have that posture when they actually deadlift and it is safe and okay. So learning to be able to decipher with this is a person who has no control of their upper back. I see movement in it. It can be dangerous versus their posture is a little bit rounded like this. And that's very natural and normal for them. So here's what I would do in a session like this. So let's say I was training a client and this was an issue. I would spend 20 to 30 minutes focusing on maintaining upper back stability while hip hinging. And then I would go and do single leg toe touches. That's our hip hinging exercise because it doesn't require that rigidity in the upper back or the control. So now we're doing the hip hinging exercise, but this is after we worked on the upper back. So, and I would focus on single leg toe touch type exercises until I felt like I had that upper back issue under control. Okay. That's a, that's quite the game plan. So thank you, I appreciate it. You got him.  So I'm assuming you have maps prime and prime pro. I do actually. Adam started bullying everybody. Okay, good.  I would give it to you if you didn't have it. I just want to point out sales are up by 3% since I started bullying. We want to get him up to 10. All right, man. Well, thanks for calling in. Thank you. I also could just kind of say, thank you for like what you guys are doing. Seriously, you guys have helped cultivate me into being a better trainer.  So if it wasn't for you guys, I wouldn't be here doing what I'm doing and then just helping cultivate me to be like just a better man. So thank you. Donal, are you in the forum yet? Are you in the forum? I'm not.  There's a lot of trainers in that forum. So you guys can all, a lot of them network together and help each other. So it's a good place to be. Oh yeah, badass. Thank you guys. All right, Donal. All right, take it easy. You know what's funny about that is that we almost never glorify being a trainer. We're talking about how hard it is, hard to make money. Really, you know, it's gotta have a lot of passion. Otherwise it's like, and yet so many people become trainers and they hear us talking about it. It's passionate people out there. That's what it is. You know? It resonates with people who have a passion for it. I love it. I wanna do that. Did you guys see the post that Stephie Cohen that I was referring to? No, but I've heard that before. So yeah, so I got tagged on it. I should have brought it up on the show the other day when it happened because so many people tagged me and wanted me to like shit on the post. And I'm like, you guys have to listen to what she's talking about. Like there is, I mean, you have a rounded back. I know. Your upper back is definitely rounded. Some of the best deadlifters in the world will tend to pull that way. And I think it's a leverage thing. But there's a difference between form that you're aiming for with a client and then form that top level competitors and athletes tend to use. Ah, for sure. High performance, yes. I think the main thing if you're a coach and you're trying to distinguish the difference of the two, you know, it's the control. You have absolute control of that upper back completely and there's no waiver or movement throughout the movement, right? So as you deadlift, you stay in that very fixed position all the way up. So the thing that I would be coaching to is like be aware of, it's they could have good connection and have good stability in that place. They're just, that's their kind of their posture, right? Yeah. Well, I would say too. Is it creating dysfunction in other movements? Is it a pain? Is it a problem? You know, problematic in that sense. So that's what I would assess. Totally. Look, if you like Mind Pump, head over to mindpumpfree.com and check out some of our guides. We have guides that can help you with almost any health or fitness goal. You can also find all of us on social media. Justin is on Instagram at Mind Pump Justin. Adam is on Instagram at Mind Pump Adam and you can find me on Twitter at Mind Pump Sal. Today we're gonna teach you everything you need to know to build a strong, well-developed chest. When I think of weak points and areas that I struggled with developing for a really long time, chest was up there with the work. Yeah, it was for me for sure. I got more caught up in the weight I could lift versus how I was developing my body. I think it's one of the most challenging muscles to develop for most people because the form and technique.