If you want to pump your body and expand your mind, there's only one place to go. Mind pump. Mind pump. With your hosts, Sal DeStefano, Adam Schaefer, and Justin Andrews. In this episode of Mind Pump, for the first 38 minutes we do our introductory conversation. Find out if you would be broke if you live in the Bay Area. We talk about what is considered low income for a family of four in the Bay Area. Here's a little hint. It's almost triple what's considered low income. The national norm. Everywhere else in America. I talk about combining cordyceps in caffeine for pre-workouts. Sal, still trying to push it on me. Now that is with Four Sigmatic. We are sponsored by Four Sigmatic. Dude, they have chocolate now with mushrooms. You should try that. That was bomb. If you go to foursigmatic.com forward slash mind pump and the code is mind pump for a discount. We also talk about Adam's BPC 157 update. This is a research chemical he's messing with. BPC. And we'll see if it's working. I thought this was my adult toy. No, that's the other. Why would I have that kind of in the album? That's why I'm in a Namer closet.  A little bit of a workout update. Then we get into the questions. The first question was this individual is pregnant. They want to know how they should train pre, during and post pregnancy. So we go into that. Find out how Justin did, huh? He's got twins in his glutes. The next individual asked us about muscle versus fat. They know that muscle takes up less space than fat. But, you know, they've lost 20 pounds of fat, gained eight pounds of muscle. But they find it hard to be happy about the muscle because they feel bigger. What advice do we have? The next question was about hit training. We talk about how hit training should be not super, super focused on just going to fatigue, how that applies to exercise, how, excuse me, to athletics. Does it improve athletic performance? This individual sounds like they may be competing in Spartan events. What should they do? And the final question, what are our thoughts on post activation, potentiation? This is an advanced technique with resistance training and explosive movements that stimulates more muscle cells, more muscle fibers, and improves performance. We talk a little bit about that. And there's a little bit of a debate as to whether or not the explosive movements should be done pre or post the tension movement. If you have no idea what I'm talking about, listen to the episode. This is nerd, you know, trainer stuff. We explain it to you. Also, there's only 48 hours left. Two days. One, two. Two days left for half off maps anywhere. So on sale all month long, 50% off, biggest promotion of the year. You can find that at mindpumpmedia.com. Remember, maps anywhere is our program that utilizes almost no equipment. All you need are bands and a stick. You can do the workouts almost anywhere. It's great for people who travel, great for people who want to work out at home. Well-programmed, no equipment needed workout. We also have maps bundles. That's where we take multiple maps programs and put them together for specific goals. For example, our Super Bundle is a year of exercise programming. You can find that bundle and all the other ones and the 50% off maps anywhere. All at mindpumpmedia.com. Why are you always last? Jesus Christ. You said directly across from me and the signal should be when you see, put my headphones on. You should just know that means put your... I don't look at you. Obviously not. No. I don't know why.  Yesterday was so blessing you. Bro, he turned, reached here and beat red. When I called him out on that, I got Jackie sitting right next to me. I didn't hit it all, man. I own that 100%. Hold on a second.  Were those shorts big red target? Were those shorts torn like you didn't know or did you put them on and tear them? I put them on and tore them. How did you tear them here? That's not the same one as you tore them. No, I did it in the morning, like before I got here. How? I was stepping out.  That's why.  Dude, why don't you move your way out of mediums, dude? You think maybe it's time for a... I wasn't mediums, dude. They were like XLs, bro. I got them cakes. He's got them pound cakes, dude. I think for Vioree, you're going to have to do the double XL, dude. No, Vioree's good because it gives me some room to flex. Yeah, like these ones, they were like real rigid, like kind of cottony polyester-y. So just like polyester-y. No joke, no joke. Split. I want to pay you money to see you torque. I feel like... I feel like you'd get the clap. What do they call it? The booty clap? Yeah, the booty clap. Can you booty clap? Of course you can. That would take a lot of money. Be honest. Can you booty clap? I'm sure I could learn it. Don't ever try it. Don't... I know you, bro. It sounds like this. You've tried at least once. I actually hear it's really hard to do. A booty clap? Yeah. You have to have big cake. You've got to have some mass. You have to have some heavy... Yeah, you can't just have like a big... Show me the money. Yeah. I'll buy you a coffee. All right. Here we go. Really a lot of money? A lot of... Yeah. I'm not going to put that out there. I want to do that. Yeah, he's right. He's got kids, bro.  You don't want your kids... You know what? You know what? You know what? My dad booty clapped. Look, you don't have kids yet. I'm cool with a lot of things. Justin and I already have to contend with the fact that at some point, at some point, it's 100% guaranteed, our kids are going to listen to our episodes. I just learned to floss.  You know what I'm saying? I'm going to have to do some explanations. Have you thought of that, Justin? We've talked about this. Yeah. I have. Especially once they start listening. You know what's funny? I don't think... When they do, I think you guys won't care because you know why?  I love it. It's too much. Yeah, exactly. Right now, they're too cool, bro. By the time... Man, I'll take forever.  Here's what I think will happen. What I think is going to happen is one of their friends is going to get into working out when they're like 16 and they're going to be like, Dude!  My kids are going to be like, what? My dad did what? Their friend's mom. Yeah, or their friend's mom or dad.  Someone's going to know. That's what I'm worried about. I avoid those. The parent-teacher conference? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Are there any parents at your kid's school that listen to the show? Yeah, I'm sure.  But yeah, but those are the only people I know. Oh, no, I've already got parents, dude. Oh, you do? Yes. Oh, wow. So one dad comes up to me and he looks at me and he gives me this look like... Like he's disappointed? No. So you ever meet somebody and you don't know them yet, right? But then you find out something about them. Like, let's say you meet people. Dude, I already know what you're... You know who was like this for us? I know we all will agree. This is like Ruseo. The first time Ruseo was in the same room as us. We're just kind of looking at each other, just grinning at each other. Like, we haven't even really talked very much, but I can tell we're the same people. I can tell you're my people. I know you, bro. Exactly, because there was this one guy.  Cool guys. If he's listening, great dude, right? And he comes up to him and he's got this look on his face and he's like, I like your show, man. And I can tell he's like, we're friends now because I heard you on the show. That's funny. A lot of jiu-jitsu guys listen to us apparently. I've met so many jiu-jitsu guys. Our whole school listens to you guys. Like, yeah, awesome. That's because you have to be cool to do jiu-jitsu. Yeah, I think we shout out to some of our firefighters and police guys, too.  I know Casey's working on something for them. Really? Yeah, yeah. So we have something in store for them. You know my sister's boyfriend, who I'm sure they'll get married at some point, just became a cop, San Jose police officer. Yeah, that's a tough job. And the family now. Did you hear that stat they were rattling off in the book that we were just listening to this morning? No. They were talking about how that's one of the sought-after jobs for i-geners that they think- Oh yeah, firefighters, police officers. Because of the perceived guarantee. Security. Yeah, security. I wouldn't want to be a cop, dude. No way. Not right now. It's an impossible job. Not right now. Right now it's like, man, it's tough. I got a lot of compassion for them, dude. Me, too. Huge respect. Yeah, yeah. You know why I wouldn't want to be one? I would not want to roll up on some crazy scene of some kid getting whatever that would ruin me. Not only that, but now what scares me is the decision that they have to make being put in these positions. You know, walk on a tightrope. Right, right. You don't go at the same time. I mean, all these things. I feel like they're- Body cameras. They're all going to have body cameras. Yeah. I think so. I mean, they'll be okay. But even then I still think they're reluctant. You know, body cameras are not. I've seen situations where their stuff is videoed and they still like how they present themselves and how they go. Not a tough- Not a fun time to be a police officer. No, I think it's a very difficult job. Extremely difficult. Very challenging. Very, what's the word? It can be traumatizing. You know what I mean? And then also, like, think about it this way. Like, let's say you work in a department and somebody gets shot in your department or something happens where that almost happens and you have a family and now you're pulling people over. You can't help but think about that. You know what I mean? Who's the guy that- Who's the guy that Joe Rogan had on? I wanted to- I meant to ask- Yeah. We never reached out to him. I wanted to have- Did you ever listen to that episode? No, I don't know. He was talking about- Yeah, and he was talking about- Wasn't he from Baltimore? I think he is from Baltimore. I feel like he was from Baltimore, yeah. No, I don't know. He had a really interesting perspective. What was he saying? Yeah, no, you would like him. You would like him, dude. He came- God, I'm gonna- What was he saying, though? What was he saying? No, it's just a really intelligent dude. I don't think he's retired yet. No. Yes, he's just- He's countered the typical message that would come from a police officer. Yeah, I see. Yeah, so I think- And the way he articulates his opinion I think is really cool. Mm-hmm. And he's open to debate. He gets a little political and stuff, but I think that the way he explains his point of view on stuff is pretty cool. Oh, let's get the names. Yeah, no, no. It was some- I think we all are- I know Justin and I- Yeah. saw it and was like, oh, we should get him on the show. Okay. It's about a year ago. It's a real interesting conversation, for sure. Okay. Michael's something. I think it was Michael's something. Okay. I'll look at it. We'll reach out. There's a lot of people that are coming out on what is now considered low income in the Bay Area. Oh, God. They just recalculated it. It's like 60 grand.  That's considered low income. Yeah, $117,000 for a family of four. So it's just a regular family. Wow. $117,000 a year is considered low income. Dude, good luck. Not normal low. Like you're poor in the Bay Area. Dude.  That's that tech money just thrown in our face. Well, it's the tech money and then it's the artificially high prices of everything in the Bay Area. Inflated everything.  You know how hard it is, how almost impossible it is to build new developments because of all the silly regulations that we have? No. Then on top of that, all the extra taxes. Like we pay, I don't know how much more we pay for gas, for example, in California than everyone else. Dude. So it's like. I don't know. Yeah. When I feel my tank up jumps like an extra 20, 30 bucks comes summertime. Does it really? Yeah. But I think the average house in San Jose now is almost a million dollars average. And for people who don't know the Bay Area, San Jose is not the best city in the Bay Area. No. That's not the greatest place to live. It's like, okay. You know what I'm saying? Yeah. If you go to like the nicer places. Like Brown Hills. Well, dude, I was up in Palo Alto over the weekend, which is considered an expensive part of the Bay Area, right? I was up in Palo Alto and there was a house for sale. It was a three bedroom shack. So you probably would have to buy it and tear it down to build another house. But it's a three bedroom shack. I think it was 800 and something square feet. I believe it was 2.5 million dollars. Oh, for a shack? Yeah, dude. At that point you're paying for the land. You know what I'm saying? That you literally are just paying for the land. Yeah. It's kind of crazy. I mean, do you guys think we would move if we weren't, if we didn't have to stay?  I think we've all pondered that idea. I mean, there's certain places, and I think that's why we enjoy traveling, because we're like, oh, wow, what about this place? You know, it presents all these new variables that we can consider, because I am. It's like, wow, how crazy can we go from here? If you guys didn't have kids, there's no doubt in my mind for sure I would have convinced everybody to live. You wouldn't have to convince them. I know. It would be very hard to convince you guys, because it would be a no-brainer. Where the business is at right now, it would make complete sense to have this somewhere where our cost of living is 50% lower, which would be easy. We could drive four hours, and it's already there. I would.  You know what I'm saying? Like if you want the beach life, which that's what we're paying for is to be so goddamn close to the water. I know. So if you want that, if you want that, we could own that and still live somewhere, and still make more money. Yeah, it's not like we're relying on people coming into our facility. No. No, we could do this anywhere. We could do this anywhere. I would have convinced you guys to just move around and be like, all right, let's do six months here. Six months.  Absolutely.  Think about it. No responsibilities. All right, all right, my blood's oh. I would work, though. That's a difference. Yeah, I'm not just trying to travel around and trip on things. I would actually, no, but seriously, like six months here. Think about how fun that would be. No responsibilities, no whatever. You know what I mean? We podcast. It's all electronic anyway. Sounds like an awesome single man's idea. Yeah, that's a great idea. It sounds like, yeah, sorry. Yeah, it's all good. Can't do it. Yeah, it's all good. Can't do it. Adam, you asked me about the cordyceps I've been taking. Have you been taking it consistently? I know your workouts are getting pretty good now. No, if there's anything that I'm inconsistent with, the protocol that you originally gave me for my test of Ostrone and everything, the cordyceps. And I just... Bro, combine that with caffeine pre-workout. I know, I know. I'm really good about everything else. You know, and it's not a lack of me being lazy. I'm just not a fan of the stuff. I'm not a fan of the taste of it. And so that's the only thing that keeps me. It's such a baby. I know it. Well, you know what it is? It's like, I can... We need Tarot to come back. Come on, man. He's like a dog. Like you can't give him, you gotta like put it in a hamburger or something. You know what I mean? Put it some cheese. Feed it to him. That's why I was so interested in those Omega-3s for the dogs, because the fish oil, it's flavored with bacon.  They'll eat the fish oil. Bacon flavored mushrooms. Dude. So smart. That's what they need to do for me. Dude, combine it. You combine it with caffeine, pre-workout, and watch what happens. Okay. So remind me of like all the benefits that I'm getting from the Cordyceps. Well, Cordyceps is an adaptogen. So adaptogen is a broad term that is used for herbs and supplements that help bring equilibrium or help the body deal with stress. So when you look at the body and what happens when you're under a lot of stress, over long periods of time, you know, cortisol starts to rise. Other anabolic hormones may depress a little bit.  What adaptogens do is they help the body deal with stress so that those signals start to lower. So cortisol gets more balanced, less inflammation. And you can basically have a higher capacity for workload, which is why how a lot of people will use them. Like people use adaptogens when they're pushing themselves really hard. But Cordyceps also increase or improve your body's utilization of oxygen and ATP. And so what you notice with Cordyceps is if you're just a heavy lifter, you know, let's say you're training the powerlifting, you know, low rep range type of stuff, you may notice a benefit just from the adaptogenic properties. But really what you get the benefit is in stamina. So if you're like higher reps or shorter, well, not just marathon runners, let's say you want to do, you know, bodybuilding style where it's a little shorter reps. Excuse me, rest, you're trying to get a pump. You're doing lots of sets so the volume is high. That's what you'll notice a difference. So what I notice with Cordyceps is when I do, let's say I'm going to do four sets of squats. I, and I rest 45 seconds in between. Let's say I'm aiming for a good pump. I could do more reps as a result of that. So then they combine it with caffeine. It's a great little combination. You think I'll feel it right away for sure when I work out? Because I haven't used it like before a workout. Well, you know, you might not. I mean, I don't know how your workouts right now intensity-wise. Because I know you're ramping up. They are. They're literally, I could say, I can count on one hand how many like great workouts where I walk away. You know, you have one of those workouts and you're like, that was a good workout. Yeah. You know what I mean? Yeah, that's just now happening to me this last week. So I'm finally getting these great workouts. It feels good. So I'm just now catching my momentum right now. I would say you might notice now or maybe wait until you're really pushing yourself. Yeah, I'm definitely not there. I'm not where I'm like crushing every workout for, you know, a good solid two weeks in a row. I'd like to be there. You've gained a lot of mass, dude. I feel good, man. How much on the scale? So I weighed 217 this morning. So that's a good weight for me right now. What were you weighing before all that? You were like 210, not too long ago. Yeah, no, I got as low as 207. So 207 was the lightest I'd seen on this. And I was a soft 207. 207 and I was mushy. I know the scale says 10 pounds.  Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's how I felt. I don't like that.  Really? Yeah. But I think it's because your flirting is really like a lot today. Yeah. I'm not trying to flirt. Are you jealous? Are we making fun of you lately? Are we going to compliment each other a lot?  You're awesome. No, you're big. You're getting bigger. I may say you're heavy in the seat, but I like that. It's not compliment.  That's all I hear in like the last few episodes. You know why he's mad? Dude, that post you did. Yeah. The Pillsbury Dome. Yeah. It's such a good photo though. It is. No, it's perfect. I love it. Yeah, I know. You know what I'm saying? As much as I say, I love it, dude.  That was good. I got to throw it back. You got to go.  Yeah. We got to do more of that. We got to do more of that. We used to do it a lot when we first started. We had a lot extra time. When we had more time, we were hanging out on Instagram. You know what? That's the difference.   Let's ramp it up. Yeah.  We'll stop when someone cries. I'm ready because I've been getting a lot. Yeah. I'm ready to dish it out. I don't know. I feel like I got a lot for a while there. Bro, I got hit by the. We were sitting.  We were going to kick you when you're down. Yeah, that's true. We had to be nice. We had to be all sensitive. It wasn't a good time.   You know what's funny? Dude. It's not as bad as the shrinking one that she did of me, dude. What did she do? Oh, yeah. As mine pump gets bigger, Adam gets smaller. Oh, yeah. I know. That was a direct hit right there. Yeah. I just sent her a message.  Dude, that's. I swear there was one about me too. Do I forget what it is? Dude, let me say something like this. Okay. One time. One time I had B.O.   Bro, I literally saw you, though. Remember when we were doing that, like, orange theory? That's when it happened. Yeah, yeah. You just put deodorant on. You just had a second time. Just the other day. So gross. Where were we at? We were on our way to Pajaro Dunes. Oh, I called myself out. Yeah, you did call yourself out. Yeah. I didn't even. None of us knows. But then you lifted your arm. I think I might.  Yeah, bro. All right, two times. Okay. That was an impressive odor. Yeah. It's not. It was very powerful. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Do you ever get worried that you will start to get used to your own kind of smell? No, no, no, no. And then it'll be less obvious? No, no, no, no. That's what I always, I think sometimes. It's very rare. Here's what happens. I think, dude. No, no, no. Here's what happens. We talk about adaptation all the time. How do you not think that you will get your senses? Your nostril receptors. First of all, for sure you guys will tell me. Yeah. And so I know that. Yeah. And it's only really been twice. That's why you need friends, I guess. But here's the deal. And this is true now. You can look this up. Let's show this. When you're nervous or stressed out. So let's say you lack sleep or you just, you know, you're stressed out from work or you're nervous or anxious about something. It changes the microbiome on your skin. And so when you sweat, you always got to find a science spin on it for us to get back up. Hold on a second. All right. Nervous Nancy. Hold on a second. Well, I was sort of calling him nervous Nancy. I was, no, no, no. It's true. It excites the bacteria. They run. You got to make the dirty voice. 100% science. Listen, I was anxious at the presentation we did at Orange Theory. You could say nervous Nancy. You could say nervous. Whatever. And then on the way to the horror dunes, I hadn't had any sleep the night before. I was very stressed out. That's what I remember. I fell asleep in the car. Yeah.   It's not hippie paste. The only thing I appreciate is you don't try to mask it up with like patchouli oil. You know, that's when it's like, oh, come on, bro. No, it's the crystal, bro. It's the salt. Yeah. No, you don't, you don't smell. You don't smell. You're not, you're not. Cleared up.  It's a handful of times.  I'm, you know, I don't want to speak too soon on this, but yesterday was my second injection of the BP-157. BP-7. What do I keep saying? Or BPC. BPC-157. I'm missing the C, huh? I keep saying BP-157. Yeah, because BP-157 is a totally different compound. Yeah. Sorry. No, I'm just kidding. I don't even know what it is. BPC-157.  I took it. That's why I took a picture on my story so people could see what it is. But I'm on my second injection into the Achilles and, bro, I don't know. The last two days and you asked me and I said, I hate, you know me. I'm very skeptical about everything. So I don't like to jump to conclusions that I already feel better. But what I can say is I know that since the injury, anytime I do 10,000 or more steps, I definitely feel it. It feels the next day I feel like someone's kind of stuck a knife right in my Achilles. And to the point where sometimes if I've pushed like 14,000, 15,000 steps, which I've done a couple of times, I'll be limping a little bit the next day. So that's how bad I still feel right with this. And I've done back-to-back days, good, hard training days where I've also stepped over 13,000 steps and I feel no pain right now. So yet, you know, we'll see how it goes as I start to progress through and I'm only two injections in. Right now, I'm every other day right now. Well, so I did a YouTube video with Ben Greenfield where I actually asked them about this. Oh, you talked with Ben about this? I did on one of our YouTube videos and he explained how it works. And my concern, because now here's the deal. First off, we need to be clear. Oh, great. Now here comes the concerns after I started. Well, I've been telling you. I've been telling you. Yeah. There was no concerns when I was getting in. Well, that's because I want to see if what happens.  No, no, no, no. Yeah. Here's the deal. And I asked them this when we were, you know, when we did the video. And first off, we need to be clear. This is not a mind pump approved substance. Yeah, yeah, no. I think anytime I do anything, we all agree on that, right? Throw Adam just out there. Well, no, we need to be careful because it is a research chemical. It's not approved by, you know, there's not tons and tons of study on it. But the mechanism by which it works could, in my opinion, potentially drive, you know, tumor growth or maybe increased cancer proliferation. Well, but what doesn't these days? Well, here's the deal. I said that to Ben. In a pro-cancerous place, right? Yeah. And Ben said, well, it depends on context. Like if you're in this pro-cancer environment. Right. And I get that. It's the same thing with mammalian target, rapamyus and mTOR. You know, it's funny.  Anyway, mTOR, which is stimulated through increased protein intake and other stuff, which does drive muscle growth, also will drive cancer cell growth and proliferation. But in the context of actual cancer. If you don't have cancer, it's probably not going to do that. So that's what he said, but there's not a lot of science supporting. Plus, here's the deal. You use it for a short period of time. It's not something you use all the time, right? You do it for like 20 days and then you're done. Yeah. Yeah. So anyway, I just want to put that caveat out there. Thank you. So it could cause cancer, Adam.  You might get Achilles cancer. Yeah. Yeah, we'll see. Someone's got to be the guinea pig around here.  Oh, that's a tumor, bro. That's not a thing. I'm going to have you do it though. I figured that I brought it in the studio. You want me to do it for you? Yeah, I brought it in the studio and I figured we could shoot some footage on there of me actually taking it and what we're doing and how much of it and all that good stuff. I get to give you an injection. Yeah. That's the next level, Justin. I know. I don't trust you like that. That's the next level. I could hook you up too. No. Give you like a B12 right in the cheeks. Have you shot B12 before? Yeah, we did. What was the injections we did at Paleofex in the butt?  Yeah, I don't know if it was worth it.  I felt good. I know you did. I did. I felt really good for my... You love that kind of stuff. Yeah, but you're... I probably placebo, but I felt really good. Yeah, you're definitely the... What's it called? A hypochondriac with it comes with the... I am far more sensitive to my body for sure. I do notice one thing, how things will affect me very quickly. I think because of that, too, you overanalyze a lot of things. That's one or the other, right? Right, right. I feed each other. Sometimes you're right on like, whoa, that's crazy. You picked up on that. But then other times you're like, no, bro, you're crazy. You know it's true. I don't know which one it is, which one feeds the other. I tend to keep you normal. I let you know.  I don't know if I... You always say that. I don't always say that. I just say it when you say certain things and I'm like, no, I don't believe that you can tell that because there's too many other variables that I know that that same feeling that you have could have manipulated that. Maybe.  You love it. What phase are you in split right now? I'm still in phase one. But phase one of split is a little bit different than the way I treat phase one of anabolic. So with anabolic, I tend to go real low reps and push the singles and doubles. And with split, because it's more bodybuilder focused, I'm still keeping it around five, five or six, which is still low reps, but it's not as low. Now, the only exercise that I consistently will typically train three reps or lowers is deadlifts just because I've learned with my body deadlifts. They treat me really well when I do that. When I start to go high reps with deadlifts. Yeah. It's a tough place to be. It fries me a little bit. I don't know. It doesn't seem to work as well for me, but like this morning, I was pulling 525, dude. I haven't pulled in the mid-fives in a long time. Are you up to that with your hook grip, too? Hook grip. Wow. 525. Wow.  I think I'll be able to get in the high fives within a couple months. So long as my gut health maintains, which I think it will, I have my 72-hour fast coming up this weekend. I think I'll be able to do it. I can't believe how good you've got with that hook grip, dude. I'm terrible at that. Broly, you just got to learn the technique. I know. Once you get the technique, it's actually... And you've got to be consistent with it. It just doesn't feel... It feels weird at first, dude. Super awkward. I did it for a little while and I'm like, I just can't. It was just frustrating. I had to do it, dude. I had to learn how to do it. I've been pulling so long, heavy, with supinated right and a pronated left, that I can literally... Does it cause an asymmetry? Bro, I can feel it in my back. If I lean up against the wall, my right erector spinae, right below my thoracic above my lumbar, so kind of in that mid-low area, is thicker than it is on my left.  And so I'm trying to balance it out by going hook grip. You know what I mean? I don't want to be crooked. I just... I stopped pulling that heavy to where I needed to go. I go as far as I can with over, over. And then it's like, okay, well, I'm not worried about it. So when I do the hook grip, they teach to use the index and middle finger on the thumb. It doesn't work for me. I just have to... I can only do index, but it works much better. So maybe practice like that and see what happens. Yeah, I'll try. And I got really... You know what really helped me with that was the snatch grip high pulls when I was practicing those. Because your hands are so wide that... It forces it to that position. Well, all the strength is in these three fingers because you're so wide. You have very little... You have nothing with the pinky and the ring finger. Really contributing. And because you're going such high reps, you know, because I was doing 15 reps like that, my hands would... Your hands are going to fatigue when you're ripping fast for high reps. They're just going to fatigue. And so I got really good with this, with these three fingers, these first three fingers or whatever. That makes sense. Justin, you don't hook grip to you? No. Like I said, I tried for a little bit and it was just so awkward and alien to me that I just kind of like let it go. And like you, I do a lot of more just like double over. And then I go to wherever I can go and then I'm done. What I'm excited about is because I'm healthier, because I'm training this particular way and my body's responding, I'm pushing the calories. And I'm not going crazy like I used to. I'm much better with it. But I'm pushing more calories than I have in a long time, which is why I think my strength went up and all that. And I'm excited for when I start to drop them back down, which I'm going to do within a couple of months to see how my body reacts in terms of getting lean. Because I'm maintaining relatively good leanness right now. And I know my metabolism is amping up because I'm bumping up the calories. When I cut them down, I feel like I'm going to shred real fast. I can't wait just to see you move into the next phase where you're doing like kind of high-purchase feature training. It'll be interesting to see how your body starts to shape up. Well, so Jessica's following the lead with that. And so she's been pushing her calories.  And her body weight is like, she's maintaining it like 120, 121 pounds.  So I'm excited to see what happens with her because even if she just comes down to 1900 or 1800, see what happens. Justin, what's going on with your routine right now? Yeah, I'm adding it's funny because I was just going to contribute and be like, oh, this is kind of like we're all in this like same cycle, menstruation, you know, sort of thing. We're all sharing together. Cause I'm like, you know, I'm adding calories and I'm experiencing a lot more energy and my workouts are finally like ramping up intensity wise again too, which is like really it, of course, you know, you get the, those feelings like the testosterone feelings like come back where you feel charged and energized and like I could fucking, you know, get back to my lifting like sets of ones and, you know, and do that again. So that's what I'm doing. I'm doing more anabolic phase one style like personally. So I'm just getting back in. I haven't like actually tried to just barbell train heavy in a while. I've been doing a lot of like functional movement and stuff that was a little more, a little less intensive. So get back in.  If you eat too much for too long, but it also starts to drop. If you eat too little for too long, or if you train a particular way for too long, it just goes to show that the human body evolved in a constant state of flux. Think about this. There was never, you know, for most of the time that humans have been on earth, there was never really a period of a long, long period of time where everything was the same. It was always either the seasons changed. So diet had to change. We had more food. We had no food. You know, I'm hunting this animal at this time. Now I have to focus on agriculture, you know, or maybe fish or whatever. So it's like our body, the human body thrives off of that, off that flux. It just makes sense to do the, like we advocate many, many cuts and many bulks versus staying in one. Cause I'll tell you right now, cause right now we're feeling good cause we're able to eat more and we're pushing the weight. If we keep doing this, let's say we do this for seven, eight, nine, 10 months.  Here's what will happen.  And we're going to get that same feeling again.  Everything feels amazing. Yeah. This, this sparks the, the debate that I think a lot of people have right now, which is the, is it better for us to eat more and speed up our metabolism or let our bodies get adapted to a lower amount of calories and what's better for overall health and survival. Both. And yeah, I know I'm really, I'm intrigued by, because I look at, I know like a, I know Mark Sisson and Chris Kresser, they come from kind of the camp of like, eat as minimal as possible type of thing. I know those guys don't eat a lot of calories. Yeah. And I, and I felt fine. Like the way I was eating, I was eating one time, sometimes two times a day tops, just in the last like eight months or so. And you know, I felt okay. And I felt my body get used to that and get adapted. And I didn't notice a big difference, but man, I tell you what, like the reintroduction of just a couple of cups of rice every single day is just, same here with like potatoes. And cause like, inevitably when I was going through the process of illuminating gluten and these types of things for my diet, it's like the, the carbs go way down, you know? And so I was like all fat, all protein, like that was like the only thing. And then because I knew like that I wasn't moving as much by sitting here and doing podcasts. And like this is more of a routine thing that, you know, I just started to cut calories quite a bit. And then I would go work out. I would do my workouts. And then it's just, that was affecting, you know, how everything was going.  Well, there's, there's longevity. And then there's performance and quality of life. And yes, eating less calories and leading a life that is, you know, moderate stress and you're not pushing yourself that hard and whatever. Will that improve longevity? Probably. But for a lot of people it also decreases your quality of life. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know if I fully agree that it would improve longevity. I don't know. Statistic, well look, studies and you look, you're right because there isn't excellent great science on this. But the science that we do have suggests that that would be the case. However, And I know, and I get, because I've listened to both Mark and Chris kind of talk about this before and I get where they're coming from on this. But the quality of life is not, it's not the same. No. And hold on a second. You actually may have a point. Do you think, because this is just occurring to me, does quality of life and enjoyment of a quality of life, could that potentially contribute to a longer life as well? I think so. Absolutely. I think it definitely could. How about this? What if you go extreme with that and because of it, your weak inner energies low, would that increase your risk of mobility issues, arthritis and potential injury? And could those be a detriment to longevity? Absolutely. Right. Right? One of the things, one of the big killers of people as they get older is immobility and injury. I mean, what's the old saying, right? Break your hip and dive pneumonia. Yeah. Like when you get older, when you lose strength, that's like one of the, that's the first thing that happens. Everything else follows that. Like you start to lose strength and mobility and then you hurt yourself or twist something. Fast downward hill. Very, very quickly. Have you guys ever had an old client that is, it's crazy, right? Mm-hmm. I had, I've trained, because I used to train a lot of, I used to train a lot of older clients and when they would have an injury or they got sick and I wouldn't see them, I wouldn't see them for, you know, three weeks. Like you don't see a 30-year-old for three weeks and they come back.  But it comes back.  Yeah. Totally different person. The decline is dramatic. So, I mean, you could have a point there. You know, you could definitely have a point. You need to be able to roll a little bit. It's never fully added up to me. And I, and I, and of course, I'm going off of my experience of clients that I've trained and then my personal experience. So, I don't have anything to prove otherwise, but it just doesn't seem to add up. Dude, it just, the way I feel when, you know, I'm very aware of what I felt like when I was only eating X amount of calories, which it was probably, even though I wasn't tracking, it was probably somewhere around the 1,700 to 2,200 calories, right? And I was maintaining that. And what I was really doing was I was adjusting my calories to the lack of movement that I couldn't move anymore because of my injury and stuff. So, you know, I walked to my car. I walked to my room.  It was very sedentary. So, I lowered, so I lowered my calories so I didn't put on a bunch of bad weight and stuff like that. But, and I felt fine and normal. I could do my job.  It wasn't bad. Like my body seemed okay. But, you know, I noticed a significant difference in my energy level, in my strength, in my motivation, in my libido, like these things are all... And that's all quality life. Right. That's all quality life. Right. And I would think that, I would think that, I feel, and that my mental state is better, too, because of it. Like, and I didn't necessarily feel like I had a bad mental state just six months ago. Yeah, but you feel the contrast. Right, exactly. That's what I'm trying to point out. And it makes sense, too, that, you know, your testosterone levels and stuff's gonna drop and your drive to procreate is gonna drop, too, because your body's kind of sensing that there may not be enough resources for that. And you said, Mark Sisson talks about this. Isn't he on testosterone replacement therapy or testosterone? Is he? I don't know. He looks like it. I mean, I don't know. I have no idea. I don't know if he is or not. He has a specular. I don't know if he is or not. So I don't want to speculate. I don't think that's true. At least I've never heard that. That's interesting. Well, that'd be a compliment. I would... If he's not, anyway. Based off of how he looks, I would say he's on hormone. How old is he? How old is he? Only because... He's in his 50s. He doesn't look that great for, I mean, Paul Check looks like he's on some gear compared to him. Yeah. No, he doesn't. I mean, Paul looks incredible. Yeah, no. Paul looks... But knowing what you know about gear and you look at him, do you think he would look like he's on gear?  Oh, man. Let's get some pictures up here so I can make that happen. Yeah. Yeah, this is all... You can't Google Mark Sisson? I can. You just can't see it. I can't get this TV to work. Oh, yeah. There we go. That was technical.  Don't stress. Don't stress. Don't stress. Don't stress about. Doug gets all stressed out about.  Here you go. He's pretty diced. See? Okay. Yeah. And how old is he? Nobody knows how old he is? He's 60, huh? Yeah. I don't know.  Yeah. Yeah. And we'll send it to it. Yeah. Anyway. What was your point, though, if he is? Well, if he's talking about longevity and he's taking hormones, I mean, that doesn't necessarily fit with that narrative. Or does it? If he's low. Right. If he's low, yeah. But if he was healthy, no. Not really. Right. Well, I don't know. Again, too. It would be depending on what levels he's taking. And again, it's quality of life, right? That's always the argument. Yeah. Because I know, who was it that I was talking to? Somebody else talking to said that when she gets older, she's going to look into hormone replacement for herself because of the quality of life. Because she'll feel better having more youthful levels of hormones. Oh, Katrina has said that before. Has she really? Yeah. Dr. Malia, I think, said that. Did she say that? Oh, yeah. Dr. Malia did say that. She might have said that on the episode. She said it, too. Yeah. No, that's a... I mean, that was part of why...  But, you know, meeting someone like Paul makes me feel hopeful. Right. Because you've got a guy who's, you know, how old is Paul now? 55, 56. She's got to keep doing it, man. You know? And what's that video? He just posted a video of himself working out with his shirt off.  Yeah, no, he looks amazing.  The guy looks insane. Yeah, no, he does look... The skin looks all perfect. You know, the two-wife thing could be the formula for that, though. Just saying. Could be. That could be an X-factor. I disagree. I've been married. I feel like two wives would make you age faster. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He doesn't have hair. Yeah, so... I don't know. Yeah. Yeah, so there's that. Maybe he lost all his hair. Maybe. So there's that. I don't know. I don't know. Anyway, bring on the bird. Bird. This clause brought to you by OrganiFi. For those days you fall short on getting your organic veggies or whole food nutrition, OrganiFi fills the gap with laboratory-tested certified organic superfoods to help give your health and performance the added edge. Try OrganiFi, totally risk-free for 60 days by going to OrganiFi.com. That's O-R-G-A-N-I-F-I dot com. And use a coupon code MINEPOMP for 20% off at checkout. Our first question is from A.C. Longyear. The last MAPS program I ran through was hit, which I purposely tried because it was very different from what I'm used to. I'm pregnant now and finally have energy to lift. MAPS Red has been my go-to program for years and what I'm focusing on lately since I have more energy. What program should I set my body up for for the next five months and post-baby? Would MAPS anywhere be a good program now? Intrigued by black or split for post-baby? So this is Angela. She's a good friend of mine. Absolutely love her. I love black than split. That's what I'm biased a little bit. She's been following... I think she was the first female to test out MAPS for me. So when I first created MAPS... Oh, she was one of the girls you gave it to? One of the girls she was the first rendition of to test and so she's been following the programming for a while. She looks phenomenal. Very, very strong muscular. They actually have a gym in their basement that's got all the equipment they need and everything. But here's the thing about pregnancy. Do what you can while you're pregnant. What I mean by that is well, first off the thing you don't want to do and this is not for Angela. This is for anybody else who's listening who gets pregnant and decides to start a fitness program. Is ramp it up while you get pregnant? Yeah, you're not trying to hit goals. What I see is extremes.  Yeah, like sign up for a marathon.   So like both of those are detriment. It's like really just the goal should be to try and maintain the momentum that you had going into pregnancy and hopefully you did a good job of training, heading into it. And just listen to your body. Like at some point your belly's gonna get start to get bigger and it's going to start to change your recruitment patterns and the exercises you can do for example, and I'm gonna give you a crazy example but let's say you're doing hang cleans.  You're gonna hit the belly just not gonna work. In the way. Yeah, you're not gonna do crunches and you're not gonna do lots of direct ab work because you can't.  Inevitably you're gonna lose connection.  And that's just part of the process. And so yeah, you just have to work with what you can work with and whatever you're doing previous to that especially with resistance training as much as possible like maintain that throughout the process and then calm down when your body tells you to calm down. Resistance training is so it's the best form of extra. If you had to pick one form of exercise it's the best for everybody and this is true for pregnancy as well. It helps maintain your insulin sensitivity which when women are pregnant sometimes one of the problems that they have is they get this kind of pre-diabetic state where that's why they do those sugar tests with women when they get pregnant. And muscle improves insulin sensitivity better than anything. It also keeps the metabolism amped up so post pregnancy it's easier to get the weight off. It also helps you through the process too. I mean being strong through labor. You have to be strong. Yeah you got to be strong man.  And then strength through mobility. One of the other things that happens when you get pregnant is the changes in your hormones actually increases the range of motion or the lax that you feel in your joints. And this is just to help the process of childbirth. So you may find as a pregnant woman that your flexibility improves that you have more ranges of motion and that's not a good thing if you don't have strength in that new range of motion. Absolutely. This is the reason why pregnant women many times will have hip pain or back pain or other types of pain because their joints are more lax. They don't have mobile without strength. That's it and they don't have the strength within that range of motion. Resistance training combats that directly. So if I'm doing deep squats and I have a weight that I can control and I'm building strength in these new ranges of motion increased flexibility is much lower. Resistance training does that very well. The other thing about resistance training is this. It's extremely modifiable and you don't have to do a lot of it.  The pregnant women that I used to train on average would lift weights with me two days a week and some of them three days a week.  So now we've taken all the pregnant women through what you can do while you're pregnant and what not to do. So now she's talking post where would we direct her to go? So I know her and I know how fit she is and what I would say is black and split. Yeah I would say keep doing what you're doing and your body heals and you're ready to rock and roll then I would do maybe pre phase of maps anabolic for three to four weeks and then jump into maps aesthetic or map split and the reason being is in maps anabolic I put Oh I definitely do aesthetic before split because the volume because you may as well use that you could do aesthetic you're already going to see good change in your body and then when you go to split anabolic which I designed for people to get them used to you know being able to increase their volume and move into phase one and a lot of stuff and I love using pre phase for people when they're off a layoff or and these are people who have already worked out before so someone like her I would say okay do pre phase maps anabolic for three to four weeks when you start to feel good which she will because she's got such a good training background then like you said jump into aesthetic that's a really good thing I was doing and I wasn't following our exact protocol in the pre phase of maps read but I think this is important to share with people because let's be honest most people fall on and off you know you're consistent for a while then you fall off for a while I think a mistake that a lot of people make is they go right into an intense program you know and then they start train that way there's no need to if you haven't been then jumping right into even like a maps anabolic or maps green or maps red or maps black I think is even too much volume it's not necessary like dude maps anabolic pre phase is perfect that's exactly what I designed it for and that's how I coach clients is I have them do maps anabolic because pre phase is basically it's a basic full body workout three days a week focused on the main lifts just to build you mentioned prime prime pro I would also say sort of in in between you know jumping from the pre phase so but just because it'll help to kind of get you back in connected to your body and that body awareness will come back and you'll feel like how you know everything will fire again and the sequence of that so wherever you know the deficiencies lied you know as you went through the process like you can regain that again it's so great because there's not like there's a great point that you're making right now but I think of like I like to use anywhere after I've ramped up a ton of volume that I've been lifting a ton of weights a lot of barbell movements a lot of this and I've been ramping up yeah it's like a D load program yeah it's a D load program for me is how I use it so you just reminded me of a fucking study I just read that's crazy they need to do more studies on this but so it's not conclusive but what they did is they were studying muscle memory right muscle memory is when you take a long break you lose all that muscle then you go back and work out again and how fast it comes back and we've all experienced this like the second time that you build something or the third time way faster than the first time way faster well example is where I'm at right now it took my whole life to get over 200 pounds and I can go from 207 to 217 in literally a few weeks real quick right same for me same thing for me right so check out what the study did they had a bunch of men working out I don't remember how long but it was a decent then they told them all no lifting weights for seven weeks so for seven weeks they all took and went sedentary and they lost a decent amount of strength and muscle then they went back to working out not only did they gain back the strength and muscle in a very short period of time they gained more than they had actually lost they actually gained more muscle than they lost now this is a trip because it suggests that taking this is what we talked about the other day where we talk about doing like a week or two off where you don't do anything at all and just to lie your body to well dude absolutely and you know sounds even longer how many times I've talked about looking at the wisdom of old time lifters and old time bodybuilders and that is something that they used to talk about they used to talk about taking off you know a month out of the year or two or three weeks out of the year and scheduling it in because they noticed that they would get better results this is something they used to talk about even as early or not that long ago even if you look at someone like Kevin LeVron who was one of the top Olympia competitors he was known for going off completely for like a couple months and then lifting and everybody would always trip out how quickly his body would respond everybody was like oh it's his genetics crazy study right yeah really really I might try something like that I don't know if I can go that long without working out but I might try what's the longest you have gone in the last 10 years if I travel like a week or two I usually don't take wow that's the longest yeah I'm trying right now I don't take time off I just enjoy doing it so it's not like I don't take time off because I enjoy doing it so much I've probably done like three weeks I mean maybe a month once yeah I'm trying to think of that was probably like you know year two go but yeah I remember that specifically because it was like wow this is weird you know just getting away from the gym and it was purposeful too did you get fat or you just like weak no just weak just got weak yeah my body mass didn't really change the body composition yeah well think about it like what a trippy and I would really only apply to people who are super consistent because inconsistent people I don't think it's gonna work because they stop more than they do did I share this on the podcast I don't know where we talked about this off air I don't remember you know I only had one client that I ever scheduled time off like because I really feel like 90% of the people out there have a hard enough time yeah being consistent for longer than a few months that's the real part of that often but I do remember having a client that was extremely dedicated very disciplined I mean and trained religiously and I trained her for years and I remember telling her I remember we hit kind of a plateau and I already manipulated a bunch of things in our program and nutrition I was like you know what we maybe do just for some you time off like I want you to take just two weeks off and she was like what yeah two weeks off of not lifting anything like yeah you know what you know that stress that like like if you're accumulating so much stress and like you just give your body that that power to just recover completely well it fits with everything it's an adaptation machine think about it just like fasting you have to eat food to build muscle you have to eat protein to build muscle but we know now that when you take a break from food that when you reintroduce it resensitizes your body and you get like I've noticed anecdotally an anabolic effect 10 years ago to the fitness community everybody would have been said I was crazy how don't you dare take time off don't ever not eat or whatever it may make sense it was I remember distinctively now it was right after my last season of football and I was just like you know what I'm like I'm not going to the gym I'm not like I'm going to step out and wait it was like literally it was like a month and then I craved it I craved it so much my body was like I need to you know weights and then yeah it was like maybe two weeks and then I just started ramping back right back to where I was interesting I'm going to do a little more research on that but you know back to the pregnancy thing I've trained a lot of women pre pre during and post pregnancy quite a bit in fact and and I've also obviously we've run gyms before and so I've seen women who were members and staff members who got pregnant and there's a major contrast between because I had I've had several aerobics instructors for some of the gyms that I would run that that was their main source of exercise was aerobics right was cardiovascular activity that would get pregnant and then post pregnancy and they continued the aerobics and the cardio and then I've seen some of the trainers that have worked with me that lifted weights and my clients and I can say hands down the women that lifted weights before during and after got in shape way faster post pregnancy than just the faster so for sure resistance training and for this particular individual especially because I know or I think what we're saying like prime-prime-pro then like pre-phase and then maybe aesthetic and then split there you go next question is from J.G. Fit Me you guys always say muscle takes up less room than fat but upon further research muscle takes up about four fifths of the space in the past six months I've lost 20 pounds of fat and gained eight pounds of muscle it's really not hard to be happy about the muscle because I feel I look bigger than I should any help so muscle is about 20% roughly 20% more dense than body fat so it does take up less space but not like half the space of body fat but here's the deal and if you have a body type like this this girl who's asking this could potentially have the type of body type so the ratio for her may not feel fast enough and that's really what this is this is common for me like I've had a lot had a lot of clients that I've dealt with that you do this with them like if I get this kind of ectomorph type of body type and I know some types are dead but if I get like this ectomorph type of body type of female who comes in and she wants to lose fat and we start going and we're building muscle it sits on her body really well and she doesn't build that much muscle that fast and so there's not this like drastic oh my pants are fitting tighter now I've trained the opposite where I have a female who just responds to weight builds muscle really easy but she also is overweight so more of an endomorph type of body type comes in and says hey I want to lose fat now the protocol is still the same like it's still we need to the psychological challenge for this female is always harder because what ends up happening is exactly what's probably going on with this girl is she's probably feeling her pant sizes and things she's building some muscle she's still losing body fat like she's probably her ratios are probably healthier she lost 20 pounds but gained 8 pounds of muscle right right so but on her body it probably is looking like she is you know bulkier looking and not fitting into her clothes like the way she works between fat and muscle yes fat is more volumous you know again muscles about 20 percent 18 to 20 percent more dense but here's the other thing you can choose where you put the muscle on that's not the case with body fat it's not like you can say hey I'm going to gain body fat I want it to go to my boobs and my butt your body will gain body fat wherever it wants you can't really sculpt your body unless you go to a surgeon and have them fat sculpt muscle you can kind of choose where you want to build it so if you don't like muscle my advice to you is don't train those areas as much or as hard a little less frequently and focus on other areas and you can shape I mean of course your bone structure and all that stuff those are large determinants but you can do quite a bit with muscle building and this is it may sound weird for somebody who's you know trying to lose body fat lean down with that but this is also a great way to use maps aesthetics for you in your own custom way is you take like Sal saying right now you can lay off some of the muscle groups that you feel are overdeveloped or plenty muscular you don't want to fill out for example I get girls that they build a lot of muscle in their legs and they're like I don't want so then don't train legs three times a week we tell most people that because they struggle with building that and they need that frequency but if you don't need that frequency we'll lay off that and then let's say you know one of the best ways to that I love training women is teaching them to develop their shoulders really well because it's just your shoulders really really well and that's putting emphasis on like your rear delts and all three parts of the shoulder you can really make their arms come together and that looks great in a tank top and a cut off or in a bikini and so there's ways that you can start to sculpt and shape your body to create this illusion of a more hour glass type of shape because I know like the movement has been shifted quite a bit more into like functional training and like total body lifts the example of that is like producing a certain like look you know and inevitably you know these lifts are great and they're great for building you know overall strength and but as far as like shaping and sculpting and like you're looking at your body from an aesthetic perspective like there's definitely a different way to train that and so that's why we address to that with that specific program here's an example and we market it to like competitors an example oh yeah I mean look I'll give you an example I had a female client who and this is rare by the way but in her particular case she was one of the rare females that I had trained where she just built big fucking traps in mid-back like her mid-back her mid-back and her traps just developed and so she at first she liked it but then they kept building and she would see herself in a dress and she's like right it's a good place to be to look in the mirror and be like I'm good I'm good right there as far as I want to go so what do we do well we avoided exercises that work those areas I still did some stuff to maintain connection to those areas because we don't want to create imbalances and then we started focusing on other things to balance out her body and this is one of the things I like about resistance training is you can literally decide where you're putting shape and size on your body and when it comes for women most women you can always work on building your butt especially if you're lean it's just going to give you more curve like more muscle just gives you more of a curve in your butt you can develop great shoulders for most women you can work the fuck out of your back and have a nice sculpted tone looking back nothing will make you look fit and lean like having some back muscle and nothing will make you look skinny and weak like having no back muscle you see a lot of women like that where they dye it down in the water in the scapula and spine right so they don't have that nice crease in their low back or whatever you can focus on those a lot of women I know probably don't need to work out their calves women for whatever reason tend to develop their calves better than men do not all of them but some of them do so for them I would avoid direct calf work hamstrings I have never I don't think I've ever seen a woman who's told me they've developed too much hamstring so that's another area you can focus on which only adds shape to what they're trying to develop or make their butt look bubbly or having more developed hamstrings only encourage that right that's it so just you just kind of sculpt your body around the way you want to look and then take it from there and if you're overall be patient too like that's another thing I mean that's sculpting the physique and getting that stuff it just it takes time like it's not a it's not a quick thing like you're not going to diet what you don't want is to fall in the trap of dieting down you're sculpting a physique it's like an artist like and the better you want that sculpture to look the longer it's going to take because you're going to take your time with it and learn some things along the way and I think this is a perfect example though where somebody who you would not think would use the maps aesthetic type of protocol that you absolutely could use it is not just for a competitor who's trying to get on stage it also can be just a woman or another or a guy who's trying to sculpt their body and develop they are in one area versus the other and design that way here's something else I want to make sure I cover women's clothes are not designed for athletic females so a lot of women and there's a lot of psychology that goes behind this whole like I feel like I'm too big or I'll give you an example use myself as an example the first time I really allowed myself to get lean which was not that long ago because for all my life I just wanted to get bigger and never really try to get shredded the first time I was getting small that was it I put shirts on and I'm like oh fuck I'm losing I'm getting small and it was a psychological mind fuck and I think this happens with women when they start to develop a little bit of muscle when their hamstrings start to develop their glutes start to develop their quads start to develop like your clothes are a little tighter it makes them nervous they put on jeans that are designed for women with zero anything just legs that look like broomsticks then they put them on and they're gonna fit a little bit tighter you know what I'm saying so there's a little bit of that psychology going on too but you know here's a deal you can always reduce the intensity you can always reduce the or change the exercise you're doing let's say your legs are building too fast you don't have to barbell squat heavy it'd be interesting to I always ask clients back to not that anybody else's opinion matters but I always like to hear what's your spouse or what's your boyfriend or your girlfriend say or your friend say a lot of times you'll be surprised a lot of times they just have a distorted image of themselves you know and a lot of that is rooted in their own insecurities or the fear of building muscle or those things like that it's like if everybody's telling you you look great Susie you probably go ahead and take it you know what I'm saying it's okay dude this happened with Jessica the other day we know because we're eating a little bit more or whatever we came home I don't remember where we were at and she's like oh my god I feel massive like you look the same she's like nah I'm so big so I said let's weigh you go ahead and weigh yourself on the scale you know how much you weight a couple days go weigh yourself a half a pound gain which is water like do you really think you're big you're huge because you gain a half a pound it's very there's a very very strong and I've experienced it I know you said when you got lean people will tell you look bigger right until you felt like you were just small so I think adding some perspective you know what others think is like I don't believe that what others think matters but I think sometimes it helps you get perspective on how you look at and view yourself next question is from Cody Phillips 1791 you guys talk about how hit training should never be used as cardiovascular stamina training or exercise due to people not exploding with enough power and form breaking down I was curious if that changed for someone who played a sport that mimicked that style of training for example I'm a tennis player and I'm required to continually produce explosive movements even when I'm fatigued as long as my form isn't breaking down do you think it's okay to train very intense hit yeah I think we need to correct you know the beginning of that because it is for conditioning you know it is something that's intended for that we put it out there as a caveat that a lot of people do this and it gets really sloppy really quick and so like our intention with that is if we're going to add any kind of plyometrics every single rep has intent and so to kind of pull back a little bit and make sure that's the priority and you have that in mind but yes it's still very much a conditioning program yeah so stamina you can have stamina that gives you lots of endurance you have stamina that allows you to repeat bouts of maximal exertion and increasing total stamina or general stamina will improve all of those things but when we talk about training explosive movements what we're talking about is to improve upon your ability to explode with maximal power and you want to be specific with that and what that means is if I go exercise exercise exercise exercise and get super fatigued I can't I'm not training the ability to explode with maximal exertion all I'm training is general stamina and that's what we're talking about when we're talking about this now our HIIT program first off it's designed to burn a lot of calories we programmed it to make sure that you don't create imbalances and you do get some strength adaptations or at least enough strength adaptations so it's not just cardio right and we address mobility we address mobility and we're very descriptive with our instructions in there where we're saying you're doing this until form breaks down you're not doing this until you can't move anymore which is how a lot of people will treat HIIT it will improve your general stamina which will improve your ability to exert yourself however if you're just looking to improve on the power you can output you don't want to do continual HIIT training for that specifically what you want to do is you want to do your explosive movement and then give yourself enough time to rest regroup okay everything's back to normal and explode again because you're just training yourself your body's ability to explode hard when you call upon it so there's kind of two different things well they're also asking about like if they're mimicking like so I'm picturing like a great plyometric move would be like ice skaters which you would want for somebody who is playing tennis right so you know can he or she I don't remember what was it girl not can they do this to fatigue or push themselves for stamina reasons because they're mimicking a movement and they're an athlete and they understand what they're doing yeah I think there's an exception to all rules here you know what I'm saying I think that somebody who because that's as close to them emulating actually playing the sport like we always recommend obviously what's if you're not at practice you're not on the courts and you're in the weight training room and you're doing exercises then yeah absolutely I think you can do that because your tennis matches that's where you're trying to build other skills that'll bleed in to the sport like so I want to get more explosive I have to just specifically isolate you know the explosive part of that and I'm going to work on specific lifts that are going to really just you know add that component and I'm going to increase that adaptation response and then you know practicing the movements I actually do in the game you know I get all the conditioning I need just from that you know and I build up my skill and improve that but I would make the argument that training control and stability in the the planes and stuff that you need to for the sport and then just practicing that sport may have more carryover than trying to mimic it with exercises you know what I'm saying because there's so much technique involved and that's the thing this is like an argument all the time with like training the debate yeah because there's a lot of trainers out there that will do just like it's very sport specific and these are all like exercises that mimic and mock like the movements but again like you said I'm totally like I subscribe more to that as well where I want them to actually do you know bilateral movement if they're always in unilateral well I want to be able to get them to understand like what like summoning like the ultimate amount of force and how can I use that now in you know a unilateral position and then but it's really building a baseline you know it's building a foundation it's building a baseline and then you know meanwhile you know your skills and all that you can work on you know as you know separate to that well I see like I see value in kind of doing both right so I could see myself going through our hip program and we're just we're just going to use ice skaters to keep using that as an example but let's just say you know this the first round the first time I came through ice skaters I'm each explosive movement I'm really gathering myself stabilizing exploding gathering myself stabilizing exploding and I'm really putting a lot of emphasis on the power of the movement and getting that out of it then I see other times of coming back and then the next time through it maybe I'm going fast and I'm pushing more towards the stamina side of it because both of those are going to carry over beneficial to my game because there's going to be I'm going to have to play I could play a tennis match that ends up taking hours long so I would want to build my gas tank making doing those same cuts and movements so I would want to build stamina there but then I also want there's going to be once that's like a drill though you know that's something you do in practice like an ice skater like but what I'm saying is like in workouts yeah well and that's what I'm saying though why not turn it into just purely a stamina that would be that would be wrong so what I'm saying is I don't think it's wrong for someone to do that as long as you're you're aware that it's important that you're also putting emphasis on the you know the gathering yourself and stabilizing and exploding and the power side of the plyometric as it could be for the movement how you practice something is going to be how you end up doing it in your sport so if you're practicing to ultimate fatigue and your form is breaking down and you're just sloppy as fuck then that's what you're going to look like when you start to break down and fatigue while you play so the goal is to practice perfect so that you know when you do hit those limits your form stays intact a little bit more because here's the bottom line sports although having the most stamina the most strength the most explosive power the most flexibility all of those play a factor into whether or not you're going to do well a factor that may be as big if not bigger than those is how technical you are I mean hitting I can be the most fit athlete on the world but if I've never played tennis a tennis player who's got terrible stamina I'm going to kick my ass they're going to play they're going to know where to place the ball how to hit it I don't even know how to hit the ball right so you want to also make sure that you maintain good technique and good skill while you're doing these training rather than just because what I see with a lot of athletes is that they forget the workout just becomes about how hard I could push myself and how much I can sweat and it doesn't even matter now my technique doesn't even fucking matter you may as well jump rope for an hour that's right doesn't make a sense anymore and that we all agree on 100% I agree that that's the the idea is to not allow those workouts to turn into just a pure fucking cardio that's right I used to see this at this was one of the the biggest things and problems I had with orange theory was because they've motivated these people to chase after these points yeah it doesn't matter what exercise you do the idea of how it was designed was brilliant the problem was the execution of it is where they failed because a lot of coaches couldn't deliver this message where when you're on the treadmills and you're doing cardio you were cardio and then when you went over to the weights you should be weight training the problem was these people got so excited to chase after the points up on the TV screen that they wanted to get more points more of these cardio points while they're over in the weights and so they would just circuit way they would get exactly stay on the treadmill I mean at that point you may as well just stay on the treadmill you're not getting the real good benefits of the strength training by having the weights over there so it doesn't make sense so I think that's the fear of telling anybody yeah it's okay to kind of train that way is that a lot of people already gravitate towards that type of training as basically just cardio cardio with weights yup yup next up I feel like these are all Justin questions too I love this one I did one of them there's one more part of this question is there any carry over to endurance sports such as Spartan triathlon etc okay so the first part so why it wasn't incorporated we actually put it in prime yeah the reason we did it differently though we did it differently and we actually have a video I know on YouTube that we kind of explained it's not post it was actually pre yeah and so that this is I would consider this a more of an advanced technique 100% so that's why it's not like when we're addressing programming we're addressing the general public red green black it was I mean and you're seeing it now as we just really split right those who were the first three were really the foundation right and if anything that you might see us start to do now is we're gonna probably get into more advanced or specialized type of programming which would be silly for us to know what that is you would do a heavy movement first this is how they traditionally would do it so let's say I would do barbell squats so I do my set of barbell squats right after I rack the weight I would do a few reps of explosive jumps okay so like one to three yeah I'm doing explosive movement after I'm doing a heavy movement and studies will show that you actually activate more muscle fibers when you do this which possibly really loud response or something like that now I want to be clear the stuff what you're gonna get from that is small it's a small percentage well I see where I see the best is going towards the athlete that's right is teaching you how to call upon that explosiveness like that right there there's great value in throwing fucking 300 pounds on your back squatting two or three reps real quick re-racking going over to a jump box really what I see is the neurological benefit of teaching you how to call upon all that to fire you summon that force output right it teaches that process like it's it's that's the hardest thing to teach athletes because it's intrinsically you have to be able to produce things on command right then with as much force like as possible because that's what's going to give you that explosive edge and you know I know how to how to explode not because I did explosive exercise because I trained in judo wrestling and Brazilian jiu-jitsu where there's certain positions and stuff you are going to be doing explosive movements I love taking people who've only ever lifted like bodybuilders so controlled squeeze and a lot of stuff and then try and teach them an explosive movement like a shoulder raise they don't know how to like do it because it's there's so much skill involved yeah and they don't know how to relax when they need to relax and like you know like anchor themselves and like be able to anti-rotate and all these things like that's all part of like this this complex process that you have to learn you know as an athlete or you teach a clean and press and it becomes like a reverse curl you know to repress well that's just an hit on it what it is it's that bodybuilders are constantly and never be at rest and athletic performance and explosiveness there's actually more of an art or a skill to that where you relax and then explode the body and certain things are contract yeah there's a lot more you don't want friction in the way of speed right and so tension would not be a great thing to have in all of your muscles like your shoulders while you're trying to do a swing grappling is great because it's both explosiveness and you have to have tension so you got to talk about the the path on its head right and we we turned it into ignite sessions and so if you it's in maps prime and what we recommend is that you explode first and then do the tension movement after which makes personally makes much better sense I know you want to be you want to explode when you're fresh because then you can explode harder you can jump harder and then go to the tension movement and I you feel immediate carryover you feel the carryover we also because I think the programming behind it was more built towards the the training the the form of the exercise and building muscle then it was athletic performance because I could still see a lot of the benefits of pap and athlete if I was training just a pure athlete you know I want to teach them to be able to call upon all the explosiveness after doing something like that so I still see value in pap I just think for the general population for us to teach a technique we saw more value reverse yeah and so that's why we incorporated most programs we've understood like neurologically where the deficiencies lies they're just not communicating in certain parts like certain muscle groups aren't responding the way they should and so this is just another advanced technique to really highlight that fact and get you to respond the way that you never have before from a skill perspective it just doesn't make sense to me let me put it in different terms it would be like doing sprints running for a little bit and then doing sprints afterwards versus and by the way this is all warmed up versus doing sprints and then finishing your work out with some long running it makes more sense to do the sprints first because that's when you're the strongest that's when you have more fresh and that's when you can you can perform it the best you can explode the most you can put out the most force so it never really made sense to me to go heavy tension exploding cold you still got to warm up and all that stuff versus explode and then go to the tension and when I've done it that way better results with myself and my clients well so here's my debate on that okay is that when you when you get under you know a 300 pound squat and you do it you do that first and then you go over the jump box the thing about loading like when you load that much weight on your back and you squat it forces your body to recruit because otherwise you get fucking buried and then you and then you re-rack it and now you go to do a jump box 100 feel free yes you 100% it's easier for you to call upon that so there's no doubt in my mind that I there's depends how intense you're doing the squats are we just doing a few reps no we just like I said 300 pounds on your back for one to three reps okay I get that so I used to do this but I've seen them use it differently I've seen people go 10 15 reps no that is not right that's why I that's not good that's not right one to three reps it should be you know 80% plus intensity and then you go over and you just want one to three reps that's it so all your paps themselves great tools for like if you're doing like any testing like so if I'm doing like a vertical jump test and I want to do you know and increase that that like on demand like access to like as much force production as possible like Adam said with squatting I used to do that I used to do that and it would massively make an improvement oh dude you massively we'll go out right now I'll have you jump up on the highest box right now and see how much you struggle to get up on there then I'll go throw 300 pounds on your back and then you do it again you'll watch yourself clear that box like nothing it's definitely a game changer and I think that's so specific to athletes like that that's all we're talking about exactly and I think that it's a good way to teach somebody to call upon that where now if you go do the jump box first you're fresher and you potentially to actually technically do that but it's actually I think it's harder to tap into your CNS I think it's harder to get everything recruited and firing the way you want than it is when you you put a bunch of weight on your back that forces you do or die that thing's going to bury you in the ground well let's let's use a different example like say you're doing like plyo pushups and then you you carry that over into a heavy bench you're going to feel the difference you will and here's the thing I think we're assuming that the person isn't priming properly before they do the explosive movement or they're going into a cold because look if you were if you're going to 300 pound squat you've probably warmed up before you go to the 300 pound squat you need to warm up before you do the fucking jump too so if you just go into a jump but yeah I get that you're not going to be able to call upon it but if you properly set yourself up and set yourself up and then you go into your set look in my opinion for more people I think if you're qualified the explosive movement before may be better is there benefit to both yeah well I don't think there's no way we looked at it at least in my opinion the reason why we when we first created this was like it's the risk versus reward and I think that you can get as as good of benefit or close to as good of benefits by doing it in the inverse way for somebody and I would much rather I would rather take a client who I'm not even stacking 300 pounds on their back to try and get them to fire everything so I think it's more advanced to ask you know somebody to go hey go 80% plus of your max right and do it one to three reps and then know your audience and so yeah that's why we we tended to lean a little more towards the pre versus the post because I think yeah post really like it narrows it down to a very small population and then and I know we're doing hair as far as the difference of and then the amount of risk short lasting effect anyway right and if you're trying to do something as far as like explosively there's always a higher risk at that so the to incorporate that I wouldn't be a fan of doing it if you are if you have prime like you can use it and play with it a little bit but it's not it's not a tool that I think it should be everybody's regimen for sports like Spartan and triathlon I think explosive maybe not so much triathlon I'll tell you the but maybe Spartan because of I've been training Katrina and her brother and all them with the Spartan I've been around it a lot lately and the biggest things you can do for Spartan train for stamina because you obviously need to have endurance to be able to run so you need to be able to run a few miles really good right so train that increase that build up your work capacity work capacity and the ability like those things right there will carry you through a Spartan race no doubt and so I'd get great at those instead of trying to overcomplicate it with things like PAP yeah yeah it's such a it's such a if you want to if you're just trying to build muscle and you just want to build more muscle I would say risk versus war might not even be worth it explosive stuff I just I love it for testing out yeah it is it's a very cool I remember the first time that I remember watching a video on it and then actually applying it and I was like whoa yeah like that was shit that worked yeah like that really worked like so you can you'll feel it the first time you do it you'll build it but it's like okay well what does that mean for you do my quads develop way more no you know what I'm saying did I also get six inches on my vertical no cool trick yeah it is I have a bunch of free guides that focus on different targets like how to build your chess how to build your calves how to work your core we have a hit training guide we have like 12 guides they're absolutely free go to mindpumpfree.com download one of them or download all of them they cost you nothing thank you for listening to mind pump if your goal is to build and shape your body dramatically improve your health and energy and maximize your overall performance check out our discounted rgb super bundle at mindpumpmedia.com the rgb super bundle includes maps anabolic maps performance and maps aesthetic nine months of phased expert exercise programming designed by Sal Adam and Justin to systematically transform the way your body looks feels and performs with detailed workout blueprints and over 200 videos the rgb super bundle is like having Sal Adam and Justin as your own personal trainers but the price the rgb super bundle has a full 30 day money back guarantee and you can get it now plus other valuable free resources at mindpumpmedia.com if you enjoy this show please share the love by 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