Can substances that make you feel good help you with mental health? Well, it depends on how you use them, simply feeling good. Well, that doesn't have tons of value in this particular case, unless you use the better feeling as a way to face some of those demons. It's a way to challenge yourself, to improve yourself and work on the things that are the root causes of why you feel so poor. So using substances to feel good, it depends why you're using those substances and it depends on what you use with those good feelings. Where are you going with this? Where are you going with this? Straight mother. Yeah, where are you going with this? Chemabinoids. Oh, dude. I know. I should check our commercials before we start. Yeah, yeah. Where's this guy going with this? No, you know what it is. You know what I thought it was? Because I know you just did your NDMA thing or what? Wow! You said it wrong. What is it? DMDR. Oh, NDDR. I didn't do MDMA. Oh, these acronyms, dude. You did your thing, probably. You did your laser thing, or what is it? What? Dude, it's a little magnet. Laser? Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's a little magnet. I fixed your lasers. Why? No, I'm finding his inner child.  So yeah, okay.  Hold on, back up for a second. Okay, like get to the commercials. Back up for a second. Sorry, sorry. Stay focused on the picture. Look, here's a deal. Okay. Okay, this is true for lots of different substances, even pharmaceuticals. There are things you can take that will alleviate the symptoms or the physical feelings of anxiety or physical feelings of feeling down or less energized. And that's okay. There's nothing wrong with that. But if there's a deeper problem, you can use that improved sense of well-being as a way to face those types of things. So this is how, for example, they find the most success with pharmaceuticals for things like depression and anxiety. So you could take substances that are very powerful at alleviating the physical symptoms of anxiety. But if you never really work on the root cause, you kind of cover it up and then eventually it starts to pop out in different ways or the medication stops working or you need more type of deal. So why am I saying this? Okay. Cannabinoids, excluding THC. So excluding the cannabinoid that's still illegal and federally that you can find in marijuana. And psychoactive. The other cannabinoids, CBD, CBN, CBC and all the others that you find in the hemp plant have been shown to alleviate symptoms of anxiety. They can produce some mild feelings of euphoria, lowered inflammation. Inflammation, by the way, can cause things like depression. So having a systemically inflamed state just generally can make you feel, you know, depressed and less motivated. So you could use these cannabinoids to feel better, but I caution people and like to explain to people like, okay, now that you feel better, what are you going to do with that? Right. You're going to feel better. Can you go in and deal with some of these issues, some of these challenges? So like, okay, yes. So you're not anchored to the feeling of the substance that the substance provides? Right. Because then it can become even a dysfunctional relationship with that. So like, I'm always anxious. I'm always anxious. And it's hard to work on being anxious when you're anxious. It's a very difficult thing to do. But let's say you take hemp oil. So you use like the company we work with is NED. You use their hemp oil. Like, oh my God, my anxiety feels a lot better. Okay. So if you can go because you feel better, it feels safe. Let me look at why I'm anxious all the time. Like what is going on there? What is causing this anxiety? Maybe you're just overwhelmed. Maybe your plate is too full. Maybe there's things you want to tell your partner or your friends that you're just holding inside.  You just don't want to face it. Whatever. Right. I'm just throwing a bunch of stuff out there. But if you use it in that way, boy, can it be effective? So yes, you do feel better. Especially speaking for a lot of different reasons when you use cannabinoids. But they can become exceptionally powerful when you use them. And then with that good feeling, use that good feeling to help deal with the root issue. Yeah. I would think too. Like if you use that and then you get that better feeling in that relaxed state, like to also enhance that by going through like some meditative practice and like breathing drills and, you know, things like that, maybe walking out in nature or something to kind of get you outside of your normal spinning, sort of like I have to sort of assess my everyday stress and like what I'm doing and what I constantly have to do later on and to just get out of that off that wheel for a bit and just focus on being present and all that. It's way better. Yeah, totally. Now, not to shit on your commercial angle, but didn't we have a study recently come out that for anxiety, it's like 50-50 now, it's like up in the air, because it's been known that cannabis has been a tool that people have used. THC. So it's TH, but not CBD. No. I thought it was CBD. No, generally speaking, of course, this isn't going to be for everybody, so I'm sure there's going to be some people out there that it may make them not feel as good or feel worse. But that makes sense to me now that you say. But THC for sure. Right. It's very radioactive and if you're anxious getting high in paranoid, which I've been in that state before. I mean, I could feel calm and THC can make me anxious. Right. That was my point. And I thought that was, so it was just, it's just THC, it's not CBD, that study that came out. In fact, consistent use of THC increases the, I mean, now they're showing relatively conclusively, there's a few studies now that show this, can increase your risk of mental disorders and even psychosis. So THC, not as benign as we might have thought. I feel like, I mean, I don't think any of us in here ever thought that.  Well, I mean, it's a psychoactive drug. So of course it would mess with psychosis. You would think that that's kind of an obvious potential side effect like anything else. If you abuse. I've seen very addictive behavior around THC for sure. Oh yeah. But now CBD and the other cannabinoids have actually been shown to offset some of that. So they'll find that like cannabis that's high in CBD or high in the other. So what happens with the cannabinoid content of marijuana is if you increase one, then you'll decrease the others. It's not like you can increase one and keep the others a certain level. There's like a total amount of cannabinoids that a plant will have. So but what they found in studies were was that plants, we're talking about cannabis now. We're talking about hemp, hemp oil or hemp, which is legal with cannabis. Cannabis that is has a balanced, a more balanced cannabinoid profile, far less likely to cause that. So it's really the concentration of THC in relation to the cannabinoid. I've shared before on the podcast that this is, this was one of the best tips that you gave me personally being an, you know, open that I've been a cannabis user for quite some time. I've had these times where I get the side effects of insomnia or I get too high and I don't like the way I feel. I don't get good sleep and one of the best, or I get headaches sometimes if I had too much, simply pairing that with high CBD has always done well. And now, I mean, this was even before, you were giving me this advice before we were working with Ned and I used to take gummies or just a pure CBD ones.  It's just, I openly admit that that's how I consume it many times. So what I would do is I would smoke it and then I would go and have that, the CBD edible, this was before Ned, where now I just take some, take a dropper full of that with it and it almost always makes sure I have a much smoother night of sleep. It doesn't, even if I kind of tip, tip over a little too much of having more than I need to, because I have my mouth and I'm like, okay, that's all I need. And then I have, there's times where I like, oh, I have a little bit more and then there's times where I tip over and I have the adverse effect. Yeah, just to give you, like to use another analogy, let's say you have a lot of anxiety. Anxiety can be crippling, by the way, especially if it's kind of chronic, what I mean by crippling is it could make you freeze. So you're too anxious to do a lot, like a lot of things, especially things that will help you with your anxiety. So, and I look, you guys have all had clients like this where they get so anxious that they don't, it's hard for them to exercise, even though movement is one of the best things they could do. They're stuck in their chair. They're stuck on the couch or stuck doing what they're doing, ruminating or thinking about whatever and they just can't get, they can't get the energy or enough of the anxiety to go away to actually get up and do the thing that'll help them. So like with, with Ned, for example, so the reason why this came up is I got a DM from someone and they said that, so do you guys remember I brought up that study that said that people who use CBD or cannabinoids and workout report improved pleasure from the workout or they liked it more, right? Okay, so I got a DM from someone and this person said, that was crazy study brought up, I have crippling anxiety, I get so anxious, it's really tough for me to do things and sometimes I, and I know movement makes me feel better, I know going for a walk or doing yoga or lifting weights makes me feel better, but if I'm in that anxious state, it's so hard for me to just do something, I end up sticking to the couch or frozen, so this person, she said, I got Ned, based off what you said, I use it and what happened is it brought my anxiety down enough to where I could go for a walk and go exercise and then the exercise really made a big difference. So I thought, wow, this is, yeah, this is great, I should communicate this and it's, and this is again, this is, if you look at all the literature with even medications, the substance alleviates some of the physical feelings, but the real, the most effective way to use that is then to take that better space that you're in and then face the things that you need to face to kind of, you know, address the root cause. It's interesting in bringing this up too, because I mean, this is all the legal way to kind of go about it and stuff that's like readily available to see what's on the market now in terms of therapies with like psychoactive type drugs, like even like Ibogaine is, there's a whole treatment for that for like drug addiction and there's obviously psilocybin, you know, there's like ketamine now and there's like all these like different types of therapies in MDMA using some of these like scheduled drugs, but to be able to, the work with it obviously in therapy is like, it's, you can't have one without the other. Yeah, do you know how it's weird because part of the reason you brought up the EMDR thing that I'm doing, it's not MDMA with lasers. That's a rave, Adam. Which by the way, sounds way cooler. That's way more fun than what I did. I was about to sign up until I told me what it really was. I want to try that. Can you, can you, can you describe for us the setting? Is it, you know, is she Skyping? Is she in person with you? Yeah, in person. So she's in person, sitting across at a table. Are you in an isolated room? Yeah, yeah. Is it like a light is on you and it's dark? It's just a normal room. Okay, so normal room, normal lighting. Yeah. There's like, no. What are you picturing? So I'm trying to, you haven't, you haven't painted the picture for me right now. So it's like an interrogation or is it more like, probes all over him. How would that help?  Here's a spotlight on your face. It's an interrogation room. Well, something are you like comfortable or you're like laying out? Like it's more like therapy like that? Yeah, yeah, yeah. You're sitting in a normal office. Okay. I'm talking to, you know. Is it in her office or at your house? Her office. Okay, so it's at her office. Yeah, and there's different ways to do it. So there's, I've seen people do it where they tap their shoulders. There's different ways to do it. Some people use their eyes. What she has is she has these two little handles that you hold and each one will buzz independently. So what it does is it activates the right and left hemisphere of the brain and it grounds you and apparently the theory is it tells the brain that it's safe to go into feelings or thoughts or experiences that you have created blocks that prevent you from going into. So because just like you said with the psychedelic therapies which do the same thing, you feel safe enough to go into them now you can process them. So are you, while you're going through this, and I know it's only the second time right now, are you getting the sense that even when this is all done that you are now gonna have these new tools on how to access that maybe without the actual therapy? Totally. Okay, cool. Yeah, it's profound. Oh, that's cool. It takes, I mean, I've only done two so I'm speaking from personal experience. I'm sure it's different from person to person but the first one was heavy and I did not feel right. You seem much lighter by the way. This was light. Yeah, you seem that way. Yeah, energy on the last one. I really, I was like, concerned for you. I feel like God, he really like pulled out like, is he gonna be here next week? Yeah. Or this one, I feel like you're light.  Hey guys, I quit the podcast. Yeah, I do. I'm gonna live on the beach. It's not your fault. Yeah. I don't know. I feel like that's what you say, right? Yeah, we're not your fault. Just Matt Damon you. Justin's so afraid of crying. If you did something like that, like, it's like, I know. Run. This one was light. It was very light. But it's weird. It's weird how like things will pop up and ideas and thoughts. And then with this one, it was more about making connections. You ever have like a, so I don't know how to explain this without getting, so I'm not gonna get personal, but let's say. Damn, I really want to hear this. No, no, no. I want the audience to know that we don't even get to know. This guy hasn't shared any of this stuff that is going on. I've shared some of stuff with you guys. No, you haven't. Not what it is you're working on. Oh, okay. Well, I'll tell you guys off ever, but there's nothing crazy. People are probably watching like, what happened to Sal? Jesus Christ. Did he get like. We're going to create our own stories. No, I just look, I have a there's a certain respect that I have for myself. And there's certain things that I just don't, I'm not going to talk about on a show to make a part of entertainment or whatever. So that's, you know, whatever. But nonetheless, the best way I can explain it, you guys ever have an experience where you know something. You're like, you know, I do this for that reason or this person is like that for this. So you know it in your head, but you don't know it. Like you don't really like know it. And then something happens. You have an experience, you know, maybe you have this deep conversation. I don't know. Maybe you smoke a joint.  Like, holy cow. Like I really get that now. You haven't really sunk in until. Yes. Yes. That happened. Yeah, that happens. That happens quite a bit when you do something like this. And what's weird is I didn't know, you often don't know, you might have a direction but you don't know where you're going to go. And then just things keep popping up, which is pretty interesting. Do they seem to all be attached to like some deep childhood thing or some things even like adolescent? I mean, I've only done it twice, but so far, yeah, for me. Okay. But so this is based now off of my reading on the internet. Again, I am far from an expert on this. So this is just a dude telling you his experience and what he read on, you know, six pages of, yeah, on the internet. But, you know, in some cases, people will have lapses in memory. This is what people with severe trauma. This is not me. So I don't have severe trauma, but there's a lot of people who do and they'll have complete lapses of memory and they'll say, I don't remember before the age of 10 or I don't remember like between 10 and 13. I have stuff I know. I have like ears that are like black. Okay. The brain does that or the body does that to protect you. It was so for whatever reason, overwhelming, painful, challenging that it just cut it out. You just don't even, it's not even accessible. So EMDR is a way that could get you to go in and access that period of time. And that can be very unnerving for some people, but you're talking about, I was reading a research on it and like one or two sessions of EMDR in one of these studies was more effective than years of talk therapy for PTSD. Now, what is your, what is the evolutionary theory on the why the brain would intentionally prune that? It's got to keep you alive. You're, you're- So the idea is like, okay, something traumatic happened in your life. So let's take it back to like forever ago, right? So, you know, almost attacked by a lion. That's super scary and stuff like that when you're on, like maybe scavenging for food or something. You almost died. If you were to dwell on that, that would keep you from potentially going out and hunting for food again. You wouldn't be able to prune- So you need to like black it out, pretend like as if it didn't happen. So in extreme cases, in very extreme cases, let's say somebody is abused, you know, multiple times as a child, like severely abused. They can, the brain will literally in some cases create an alternative person that that's happening to, that they are separate from. It used to be called multiple personality disorder, but now they call it like extreme disassociated of something disorder where it didn't happen to me. So now I can function in everyday life.  It's designed to make you be able to move and function and procreate. So you're gonna be dysfunctional, but you're not dead. Is basically- I wonder how many people lose their superpower when they uncover some of this stuff. You gain more. You think so? Absolutely. Do you think always? 100%. 100, 100%. I think 100%, you definitely become a healthier, better version of yourself. But don't you think that some like super athletes and super high performers, a part of what is made them so great at what they do is they've been running their whole life from something that is buried deep within. And much of that has resulted in their success and their pursuit of being great at something. Well, let me put it to you this way. I don't know if I would call it a superpower. If let's say for whatever reason, you had this trauma as a kid and now you have to keep trying to earn more money and make more money because somehow that's tied to your sense of value or maybe people will like me. And so you keep doing that. And then let's say you process it all and you're like, I am somebody that is worth being loved. I don't need to keep doing that. So I don't need to keep chasing that money. Is that worse? I feel like it's better. I think it was torture what the person was doing before. They had more money, but is that success? Yeah, and I think that's what I mean by that, right? So that's what I mean by losing their superpowers that their superpower that the rest of us would perceive, right? So like, I think they would 100% be a healthier person internally probably healthier to have let go of that. But from the outside looking in and I use the analogy of like an athlete, right? I think of like a Tiger Woods who was like, dad was like militant and was trying to get his approvals whole life. You know, he goes through something like this and then now he just starts golfing. That's an interesting perception because it's like Marilyn Monroe's a good example, you know, superpower of being so beautiful, right? That's to everybody else, to her, plus including her trauma, it was a terrible curse. Yeah, and she suffered for it. So yeah, we might on the outside be like, yay, I love Tiger Woods. This has been infeeting me so much to watch this guy do this, but he might be fucked because of it. Yeah, well, I think too with the athletes, especially is that as an example, like that might be their fuel that got in there, right? Yeah. Like they wanted to overcome that this chip on their shoulder and all that, but like to then come in actually heal and become I guess like more potential of like who you could be and like operate on a different system. There's gonna be a learning curve to that for them. But if they do kind of operate in a different system, I would think that either it's gonna accelerate your potential or yeah, you might just abandon it. I would think you would abandon it. I mean, and then the guess is completely my opinion and my own experiences of being around, celebrities, athletes, people like that. I think most of them are tortured. Well, I think most of them are, I think most of us have a really different understanding of what's really going on inside many of them, much of them that are especially the level today, sports today compared to sports 50 years ago. You know athletes 50 years ago still had a full-time job and a family and like the sports was like very, but the way they're celebrated, they're paid now, if you wanna be great, you gotta start at such a young age and literally sacrifice most of your childhood and young adulthood to be this super athlete. Most people that do that are either running from something tortured from something like that. There's, they're driven by pain. Yes, most athletes I know are driven by pain. Extend that though, because you said most athletes. I would say most people because look around the world. This is not hard for people to do, people watching, listening right now. Look around at the world and if you sit down and you're calm from an objective point of view, so much of the stuff we do is crazy. It makes no sense, some of the stuff that we do to ourselves, to our bodies, to our kids, to each other, to other countries, you look at it and you go, why can't we just operate differently? Why? Because all of us operate, most of us operate from this particular place. The other side of it is one of the defense mechanisms, which I also learned, and I'm not saying this is you, Adam, but you brought this up, so this is actually really interesting. One of the defense mechanisms for somebody not wanting to face their demons is, am I gonna be, am I gonna still be? Yeah, me, I'm gonna be different. Am I still gonna be able to do the things? Am I still gonna be married to my wife? Well, imagine. I'm still gonna have the same friend. Imagine the fear and their fear. Their fear is gonna be this, because there's the opposite that is, like, I agree with you. Most everybody is operating from this place, right? From these insecurities, traumas, things like that. And there tends to be a very clear split of which one are you. Did you take that trauma, fuel it to become this super athlete, high-performing CEO, great, whatever, or did you go the victim route and go pour me and then you abuse drugs?  PTSD, PTSD.  And so the truth is like, it's somewhere in the middle is where you wanna be. It's like recognizing you have this, you've used it to make yourself a better version yourself, but you haven't drank so much of your Kool-Aid that you continue to double and triple down on it. Okay, it depends how you define success. If it's just money, sure. No, no, no, that's why we use. Or sports or something like that. But let me ask you guys this. I mean, okay, so. Well, let me ask you this question. Honest to God, be honest about this. How many people have you met in your entire life that you can actually say, just from knowing them, we could say, man, that person is, they're pretty special, they're pretty balanced. They're pretty good. Like they're, I've only known a few. Some of them were successful based off of money and their jobs. Some of them were just average, whatever. But I've known very few people where I, and you know these people, you meet them, you hang out with them and you go, like, okay, I'll use one that's well-known. Arthur Brooks is one of these people. Like you meet Arthur Brooks and you talk to him. Now he also happens to be successful in the traditional sense, right? With business and all that stuff.  Oh, you feel the energy. Awesome, just, no, he's ego, he's not egotistical, he's not like this insecure. I feel that way about you guys. Okay. I do. I appreciate that. I do. Yeah, thank you. I do, no, I really do. And that doesn't mean like any, by any means thinking everyone in here is perfect with that stuff. But I think they're self-aware enough to recognize their insecurities or the things that have driven them and have at least a good relationship with it. Which that's where I'm going with this is like, you know, there is... I'm aware of it. I think it would be a... Yeah, there's gotta be some power in having utilized it for some good too. You know what I'm saying? Like knowing that you went through these things, you've overcome them, you've utilized it to... You're coming from that everything happens for a reason standpoint. Yes. And use, yeah, I agree with you. Right, and fuel it that way. Now, but then also becoming aware that that is a major driver and then that could tip over into an unhealthy relationship with it. And that's what I mean by there has to be this kind of interesting dynamic that you have to almost live in two worlds here of like, I don't wanna go to the... Where I let go of it so much and then I do nothing. But then it happened to me for a reason. Can I use it for good to fuel me to be a better version of myself? But then make sure that I don't identify as that that's who I am because that thing happened to me. Well, you could also like, you could also turn into a self-absorbed narcissist like the, what do they call them? The spiritual, what do they call them? Spiritual narcissist or like, I'm so... Self-righteous. Self, yeah, spiritual, you know? And I'm the whatever and I'm so great and I have all this whatever. And you talk to them, you're like, you're just the narcissist in a different way. So I could see it also being something like, I'm always working on me and it's about me and my growth. And I'm, you know, what are you doing? You're not working on your growth. I'm so growth-mined. You know, that kind of stuff. Like I could see it going. It's complex, isn't it? Yeah, it's really interesting. But anyway, I'll recommend to anybody who's like growth-minded. It ain't easy. It reminds me of a challenging workout. You have a challenging workout. You feel sore and stiff and not great the next day or two, but then you start to get these adaptations and you come out a little stronger. So... Sorry, I'm so curious about this stuff. I mean, I hope the audience doesn't mind selfishly prying because we don't, I get a chance to. When this stuff surfaces, you get it. Does she provide you also with like tools on, hey, when this comes up in life? Like, whatever it is, I don't know, I'm guessing here. When you're, you know, with your partner or with your family, your parents or whatever the stuff that triggers it, is there tools or things that she tells you, you know, hey, when that happens, do X, Y, and Z or? It's somewhat, but it's more like this. It happens automatically. It's more like this. The person who's trained knows how to guide you so that you could do that yourself. And then now this EMDR isn't like you just do EMDR, you know, then you meet with the person of the day and you do normal talk therapy or whatever, but it's more like, okay, so you guys remember this at some point as a trainer or coach, you realized how much more powerful it was to direct your client away so they can make the connections themselves versus tell them the connection. Like if you do this, you're gonna feel this way. That is effective as you're finding out yourself. Yeah, well, they're like, oh my God, I could sleep better now. When they make that realization versus you telling them, you're gonna sleep better, it's way more powerful. It's kind of like that. Like a really good, you know, practitioner knows how to guide you, at least that's what it feels like. That way you can kind of make those connections. And is Jessica doing this too or just you? She did it before me. Oh, she did it before you? Yeah, she did it before me. Oh, I didn't, like a long time ago or like recently? No, she did a long time ago. She did some recently too. I guess I could talk about this, you know, I'm sure she'll be okay with me saying this. So we had a really traumatic birth with Aurelius. I talked a little bit on the show, but I don't really go into full details. Really, really traumatic experience, terrible experience at the hospital, really tough for her. After that, whenever he would cry, it would trigger this PTSD response with her. Part of it, and it was a long story, I'm not gonna go into it, but part of it was when she got a C-section that she pulled him out, the doctors were checking him out. He was screaming, she just wanted to hold him, and it, plus everything else that happened, leading up to that, there was a lot more, kind of was part of this. So every time he cry, she'd get this like visceral physical reaction. She did like one or two EMDR sessions, solved. Wow. Yeah, solved. Now, she gets a normal reaction. When babies cry, everybody gets a reaction. Sure. You're human, but what she had before, far better from one or two of these sessions. So she's done it before. So she knew about it even before that though, that's what I'm saying. Oh wow, cool. You know what happened to me was, this is how I explained it, it feels like I've had sunglasses on this whole time, and now I took them off. Everything seems a little bit brighter. I don't mean literally like I see more colors, but rather I feel everything. That's that laser's empty, MDA there. Cause that's what that, that feels like. No, as soon as I just feel more, I just feel more things. So which means I feel more happiness too, which is kind of cool. Yeah.  I don't like feeling sad, I don't like feeling bad, but if you blunt that, you blunt everything. So now I feel a little bit more. Bit brighter, more vibrant. Everything's a little more vibrant, a little bit more bright. That's cool. Today's giveaway maps anabolic advanced. Here's how you can win that program. Leave a comment below this video in the first 24 hours that we drop it. Also subscribe to this channel and turn on notifications. If you do all of those things and if you win, we'll let you know in the comments section. We're also running a sale right now. Our pro mobility, anti-pain, correctional exercise programs are all on sale. Maps Prime, Maps Prime Pro, and the Prime Bundle that's already discounted, which combines both of them, you can take an additional 50% off. So if you're interested in this promotion, click on the link at the top of the description below. All right, back to the show. Anyway, speaking of crazy stuff, I wanna talk about an organization that, I want you guys to do this with me. Let's just examine, let's talk about their goal, and let's talk about how terrible of a job they're doing at achieving their goal. Like whoever's in charge of PETA. Oh, there you say, Bud Light.  Oh, Bud Light, fuck, we can get there. Whoever's in charge of PETA is dumb. They're dumb.  Is that their goal? Cause it seems like, yeah, they've just gone completely in the extreme. What am I missing? I missed something. I'll tell you a post that they did. You know what I mean? More and more throughout the years, they do stuff and you're like, what in the hell? So I feel like they're just talking to each other now. Listen to this post that they did on Facebook. So this is from PETA.   They're pulling kind of similar.      I don't know if I, we have a lot of dumb people. Yeah. There's a lot of dumb people. Way more, you know, every time I think that, like there's way more than I thought. There's just a lot. I'm serious. Like we just, we're so easily manipulated.  Like somebody could do that. And then someone was like, really it's that bad? They'll do like one Google search, find something that confirms that bias.  It says, I may as well give him cigars. Like, that's how crazy like we are. I feel like there's a lot of people that fall for the first thing that they read or see online today. It's just a weird to me. It's dumb. And along those lines, I'm gonna try and pull this up because Max Lugovir posted about it on his, here, let's see, here it is. Okay. This just came out, which I think is amazing. So the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization, obviously they're looking at the whole world. Okay. And they make recommendations on nutrition for the whole world. And to my surprise, they actually came out and said, meat, eggs, and milk are very important for the world, especially for children trying to hit their nutrient needs. So we need to promote the consumption of meat, eggs, and milk to people. I thought that was, and the reason why I'm surprised is it feels like there's been propaganda and politics on the other side pushing kind of baloney. They're only saying that because real soon here you're gonna be able to grow it in a lab. That's why they're setting the table, bro. They're setting the table. By the way. Yeah. Did you hear on the all-in guy saying that that's becoming a thing you can't say anymore? Lab, grow, meat. Why? There's like some, could you look that up for me, Doug? Like negative connotations around lab saying lab, grow, meat, that's become like a... We don't wanna give people that. Didn't you catch that? The way they started the episode? I saw that, but they were saying something else? No, they were referring to like, that's like a don't say that anymore because it's technically not that or it has some sort of like negative connotations to it. So it's like, you're supposed to... Weird. Yeah, yeah. So maybe Doug can find something. Well, with GMOs, a lot of people don't know this. With GMOs, this was brilliant on the side of the GMO companies. When they created genetically modified corn because it was genetically modified, they could patent it, okay? However, patented products need to be labeled typically as such, but they also wanted it to not be labeled GMO. So that way when you bought it, it didn't say GMO corn, it just said corn. It actually went all the way to the Supreme Court and the winning vote was from an ex-Monsanto employee who was a judge. So that allowed GMOs to really permeate the market because when GMOs first came out, I guarantee you consumers would have been more hesitant. If they looked at products and said, wait a minute, what is this? Right, you're comparing them apples, apples. Yeah, like this is genetically modified, no thanks. Well, isn't there... What country is it that actually makes that a big deal? There's a country that like... Italy, I think. Is it Italy? Yeah, I think they make a big deal out of it. Like right out the gates, it was like a big deal. Like you had to have like a big logo on that really draws attention. So not saying that they're bad, good, whatever, they know if it's labeled differently, people are gonna be more hesitant. So maybe that's what it is. Maybe they know that saying lab-grown meat will make people not wanna buy it. And so they're trying to erase that. That's what I think. That was what... Yeah, so I'm not sure exactly the context which All-In was talking about it, but it sounds like, for example, in Missouri, they're actually prohibiting the use of meat as what you can call it if it's not coming from an animal. So I don't know if that's the case. I mean, there's all kinds of names for those. Lab-grown meat, cultured meat, cell-based meat, clean meat, they call it clean meat. Hey, how funny is that? Look at all the different names they come up with so it sounds bad. But they all have meat in the name and Missouri says, no, you can't do that. Yeah, maybe they'll spell meat differently. Yeah, M-E-E-T, meat. Well, the way that Freberg was talking about how they're doing it is really fascinating. Like it's like you basically, you take the cells from real meat and then we can replicate that and then continue to... And then you grow it on bacteria or on... So you like clone it and then, yeah, grow it in petri dishes. And from what it sounds, from the way he describes it to me, where this is different than like GMO foods or things like that, is that it will, if you were to put both of them in a lab and test them, it would be the same. It's the same cells. Yeah. Only difference is one of them had a soul. The other one did not.  Is like, we find out, wow, there's still some... Eating souls. Even though they're exactly the same, we're getting for some reason different responses when it gets digested or in the body or so. Like, cause there's, we know a lot, right? We do know a lot. But we don't know everything. We don't know everything. And so do you think this will uncover something else that we potentially don't know? Or at least uncover that, wow, there's more to this than just the cells and the... I would imagine, yes, but right now, I don't see what it could possibly be because it's still cells. I know, right? It's still cells. So maybe it would be different because it wasn't exposed to sunlight or... Yeah, but even then, you could replicate how that would, you know, modulate the cells or change things. It's never flexed before. Yeah. I don't know. Environmental factors, I'm sure that it goes through that we don't even account for. I mean, again though, if it's a carbon copy cell on a cellular level, all those things, the sunlight, the grazing, the reflection, the moving... I got it for you. The sole one is the best one. It's like, this thing doesn't have something about it, which is a little... That makes it kind of sound terrible. Yeah. I mean, honestly... Zombie meat? Yeah, so I mean, it's like, what if you... Okay, and if you are what you eat, right? At a certain point, if you're eating all of this sort of grown meat that hasn't actually lived, like what kind of person... Well, see, they'll say it is alive, right? Because it sells. I mean, don't say that. So, okay, I got it. I got it. Don't always say that. There are epigenetic changes and things that happen to the body of animals and people through experience and through life. So if the experience in the life of this meat is just an laboratory, I would imagine there has to be differences that we have yet to understand how to measure. I would imagine. Isn't it commercial that our milk comes from happy cows? Yeah. So we don't get that experience anymore? You know, happy cows make more milk, don't they? Yeah, oh, yeah, absolutely. Oh, yeah. You have to go and like... Well, yeah, no, if an animal has been sick, injured, stressed, I mean, it absolutely affects... Did you have to go in and like, when you used to milk and like pet him a little? Oh, yeah, no, yeah. I play certain music for him. You call him by the name. You rub him a certain way. What music was the most effective? Country. No. Country? Do you like country music? I mean, it definitely makes for the farm. For the four o'clock in the morning, you cannot play Pantera.   Yeah, yeah, they don't like that. The milk is rising right up.  They want some of that. Really? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it was their speakers in the whole... Yeah, yeah, yeah. And you would walk in and just turn it up? Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. But blasted, because you also wouldn't want it like obnoxiously loud to where they had the humming of the machines going with some light country music in the background. Wow. Good massaging and... How would you massage them?  The udder? Yeah, yeah. Wow, that's crazy. Well, so the cow, if the cow is stressed, it won't even release the milk. So that I... Can you tell in the udder? Oh yeah, you can see it. So like... It's like a shriveled udder? Yeah, not like so much of the average person can tell. I can tell because I've seen it so much. So you can see it, it's like it's... And then when it drops down. So when you dip their teats in iodine and the iodine, if there's something in it... Well, that's to keep it clean. Well, that's to keep, but it doesn't just do that. Like the process of doing that settles them down and then they, in about a minute later, they release... Is it like a bowl of iodine or do you have like a little... So it's these little cups that are...   They're ready to go. They're ready to go. Wow. It's like coloring Easter eggs. And that's how you always know like something potentially is going on. And so we would, so all the cows have numbers, right? So let's say I did all the normal process and I come back and for some reason this cow was not... I would write that down, 412 today was off. And so then the farmer knows to go and check on 412. And many times you find out, oh, they had some gut issue going on or they weren't eating very much that day or something's wrong with them. Now, when you milk the tea, do you just like... I imagine you just start at the top and squeeze it down? No, it's not that... But there's a technique. I was just gonna say. Like if you took someone who's never done it before... Like I feel like you're just... They'll sit there and do this and they can't get any out. And then you'll walk over and go...  Yeah, it doesn't work. So what do you do? It's like so weird, right?  Boom, it comes out. Yeah, it comes out. That's so crazy. Speaking of how music affects you, which is, thank you for that. I got your justice. Yeah, so there was this concert in LA and it was with like the Philharmonic or whatever. It's like this... I saw this.  People were getting into it, especially this one lady. Okay, so this... They got to the crescendo. It's kind of like building up suspension. And then they hear audibly this lady really enjoying the music. And it got more loud or more audible. She was literally having an orgasm in the audience to music and she's just like going... And everybody at the end is just like clapping. Yeah, that's so awesome. She had an orgasm and it was loud. It was a loud orgasm. You can hear it. Tchaikovsky.  I mean, imagine if he was alive. So what do you think? Do you think there's a bit of that or her playing into that and her wanting that type of attention or that? Because don't you feel like if you know that... So she's like... Or maybe her husband was like... She had one of those things on her and he was playing on his app. Well, you remember when... I remember when we first started looking before I knew who Wim Hof was and we did a deep dive on him well before we interviewed him and stuff like that. I remember people saying that just from the breathing techniques that they would have orgasms. What do you mean? Hold on a second. You guys have a client do a corgasm, right? Have you guys ever had that? Corgasm? Corgasm. No, I didn't teach that. I mean... No, you didn't have to teach it. That's the darkest. I was like, so phase one, phase one we're gonna work on stability. I know your line, bro. Phase two we're gonna move into the corgasm. You never had a female client say... I mean, I've heard a lot of noise in training. Sounded like orgasms, but I'm like... I just thought they're playing into it. Tom Trader. Tom Trader. There's a reason for that. Why don't you buy 10 more sessions? No, no, no. You never had a female client say, whoa, you don't have to be training for a while. They're comfortable with you. Like this one makes me feel kind of like when I do this exercise, that's happened for. Was she looking at your eyes? No, come on, bro.  I mean, no, I don't think so. I don't like that. Anyway, it's a real thing. Look it up. Corgasm. I do know it's a real thing that I've ever had. Because of the pelvic floor muscles, right, and the core, when they're activated doing, yes, certain exercises, it can actually trigger what feels like it's going to happen. You have to get a survey going. How built up do you have to be for that to be like that? Like that's like a huge sign like, oh, you are not getting it enough at home. No, actually, that's false. I think if you're not getting enough, it could be harder. There it is right there. Here it is. Expanded orgasms. Exercise-induced orgasm. Most often reached through core workouts, they spread to your lower belly and legs. They feel very different from a vaginal orgasm and are more similar to a clitoral orgasm. Wow. That girls are so lucky. Man, man. I know our next MAPS program. Yeah, we're going to write the dark arts MAPS program. Every time my wife and I have sex, I think of that as like, you get like 15 of these things. I get one. That is. Hey, Adam's pretend story, but it's actually a brag. You know what I mean? Yeah, yeah. He keeps getting like 1,000 orgasms.  Where's it my turn? You know, meanwhile, it takes me a long time. I'm so tired. Because I can go forever. You know what I mean? Yeah, I know. But anyway, that's a real thing. So yeah, if there's muscles that could cause it, there's a part of the brain that's close to the part of the brain that controls orgasms. Apparently it's similar to sneezing.  Can you sneeze with your eyes open?  That's what I heard. No, I'm just kidding. But you can't. I don't think you can. I don't think you can either. No, I'm going to try it next time. I haven't looked at you for a second. Yeah, I've heard it's impossible to sneeze in your sleep too, so that's another thing. That would be weird. Have you ever seen that happen? Never happened. Sneezing your sleep? Yeah, somebody sneezes in their sleep. It doesn't happen, dude. No, I think I've sneezed in my sleep. I think I've woke myself up from sneezing. I think so, yeah. Ask Katrina, she would know better than I would. Hey, are you? Stay on the music thing. Oh, sorry, I keep going, sorry. Because there was a little fun fact. This is a tiny fact. Real time, because it's a termite. And so I don't know where I'm going with this. So termites, basically their productivity, they did like some weird messed up study where they played rock music when they're like working and everything, and it doubled their work capacity. Wait, termites are working? They work harder. What do they do? Two times harder. They chew up things. They chew things, they build things, and then they, yeah. OK, that's not good. So I'm thinking. Feeding, making tennis shoes? What do you mean? Are you concerned about work? They're like, oh, the termites are at work today. For them? Huh? I was like, they made little computers for that? Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, so that's I'm like making the music works. It works. And I experienced this. So if it works for termites, maybe we should experiment. Chew on wood. Did you ever, you guys ever seen those studies on spiders when they give them different drugs in the spider webs that they make? Yeah. Oh, yeah. Have you seen those? It's hilarious. They'll be like a normal spider, like a normal spider, and it'll make a web. Like math that's all over the place.  Oh, I would love to see that. It's like just barely, like, the laziest rug. No way. Is that true? Yeah, look at that. Oh, you dug. Show me this. Effects of psychedelics on spider webs. Yes. Or there you go. See those pictures right there? Does it have the, does it have the label? Oh yeah, caffeine, normal marijuana. Oh my God. Pull it up. Let me see. Oh my God, that's hilarious. Yeah. Super lazy when they're on marijuana. Look, it can't even complete it. Yeah.  And caffeine's all disjointed. Yeah, caffeine is actually disjointed. Isn't that great? Wow. What's the, what's the, what on what, what is that? Chlorohydrate. What is that? I have no idea. I mean, does anybody have problems experimenting on insects? Right? PETA, where are you at? They don't care. They don't care. They don't care. They don't care about insects. I've never seen that before. That's super critical. Isn't that weird? It is weird. I mean, obviously affects them. You know what I'm saying? This was in 1948. Wow. Oh, wow. Can we do this again?  Speaking of animals that work, you know what? Animals trip me out. Beavers. Isn't that weird?  Like they actually know how to make them with their tails. I don't find that that fascinating. You don't think that's weird? No, not really. Really? You really think that's really that like?  So I've just seen cartoons. Maybe not really. Yeah, I don't think it's accurate. Is it like, is that like that? Hey, are you falling? Sorry to the hard transition here, but I wanted to ask you. Are you falling? What's going on? You know, the Fed just moved up another 25 basis points. Good God.  Is that your family? So all the time about banks going down. That is a concern. That's I don't want to hear you, Doug. Doug over here, like Mr. Silver and Gold. We'll see. Look, these guys, you got to build a house. I'm going to go. But now he's like a leprechaun. I was like, Doug, we should invest in houses.  I'm going to build a house out of Silver and Gold. I'm going to live underground. He's got a pot of gold. He is like a leprechaun. All right. So no, what bank was it that just got hammered? Another bank got hammered. It was SBC? No, no, no. The first federal or something like that? SVC. It was SF, whatever. But another one got hit. I know that. The first republic? There's so many of them. I mean, it's hard to keep track now. I'm going through all my. I can't even help you. So I, you know, I'm talking to my buddy, Chris. I think Chris comes next week will be great. Because I know we have Chris coming in next week. So we'll be able to chat with him.  And you know what he tells me is so stressful is less about like the interest rates of that. But it's the reaction. So here's the bank. And so he's like, when I talk to him, he's more angry about the way they're reporting about it. Sure. Because the articles, like just like you guys are saying right now. You don't want people running in advance. You got everybody all alarmist that these banks are going to collapse. And so the run on the banks is what's scariest like than anything else. Everyone's like the, the books are gone. Oh, PacWest. Oh, it was PacWest. PacWest, yeah. That was different than what I thought. Yeah, PacWest. That must be another one. They're getting hammered. It is another one. Yeah, they're getting hammered. They're going down, dude. Every time they do this, they're making it so that the banks, however they operate it becomes, makes them insolvent. They can't do it anymore. It's mainly all the regional banks, right? These aren't happening to any big major banks. No, not yet. See, sometimes, yeah, but sometimes I feel like that it won't. It's like they're in cahoots, right? Like the big banks just to win. Taking out their competition. Totally. I know. That's crazy. So go back to what is your family saying? I'm always curious about that. So they think that there's going to be this collapse. What are they doing then? Well, where's their money tied up? That's a good, a lot of them are shorting some of these banks. So they're making money on the way down.  What they need to do is cut government spending dramatically rather than doing what they're doing, which is they're trying to hammer growth by creating more unemployment. And by, basically, they're trying to literally, I mean, they admitted it, right? They said that they're trying to crush the economy to control inflation. That's what they said. So, and there's going to be constant, there's going to be casualties. You know what, put that down as our, Doug, you, have you ever, so this is where I get a lot of my information. What? The Nourda? Nourda, Nourda? Is it Nourda or Nourda? There's an A in there. Yeah, reference that for our plug today, because when I talk a lot about real estate stuff like that, I love the articles that they have in here. Dude, I gotta tell you guys a fun story. I was driving the other day and this dude, they still exist, right?  I'm driving, right?   Like you could tell, right? Like it was just, and I kind of pull up behind them and then I go next to him and then he takes off.  So then we hit a stoplight. I look over, Asian dude, really cool guy. He smiles at me and he kind of gives me the head nod. I'm like, all right, let's do this, right? So we take off the light and, you know, I was a little ahead of him, but this dude stood, was like right next to me, which you got to be pretty fast to be able to do that. So then we raced and rolling start. I don't know what he had in this car. It was small, but he must have had it. I heard, this thing must have had 500 plus horsepower in it in this tiny little, and he was, I mean. Did he get you? No, he didn't, but he could stay with me. Which was impressive in itself. Very impressive. Really cool guy too. He was all tatted up, dude.  Yeah, yeah, head nod, wave or whatever. Like, all right. Did he have gloves? What is it? We broke them off. We broke them off. That's, I scare people. They go, they pull up the stop like that.  Put those shades down. This guy's a dork. Do you remember when you were younger and you would race somebody, it was like you couldn't smile at them? Oh yeah, no, it was all serious. Now when you're older, like, this is fun. Why do we gotta hate each other? Yeah. No, it is that.  Now when you're a kid, you're like, we should probably fight later. Do girls ever do that? Do you know any girls that do that? Race? Yeah, never, huh? What is it about us that like, why is it just?  Yeah. Yeah, I was looking for a better answer. I mean, it's pure dominance. I'm sure they exist. There's zero reason for us to do that. You know, circling back to the economy talk a little bit. To the claps. Well, you know the part that is really, so I'm on the other end, right? So you talked to more of the banking and investor side with your family. So with that, I'm constantly talking to all of our real estate agents and brokers and stuff like that on that side. And you know, the fricking housing market is not, it's not tanking like it should be. It got hit a little bit.  A lot of our properties are starting to go back up again, which is crazy. Weird. It's so, so weird to me. And they're real assets. I mean, you're right. I mean, that's, that's, that's, and because there still isn't a oversupply, we're still considered undersupplied. And even though they're through the roof, even though interest rates, I saw an article the other day about somebody with 740 credit, what their mortgage would have been just, you know, two or three years ago. Oh, wait, hold on a second. Did you guys see that? With the new? You have a credit score above 740? Yes.  I heard that. So it makes sense for us to ruin our credit a little bit. What a- Weird. The punish people that are doing the right thing is so- Weird. You know why it's messed up? Here's why it's messed up. It's all in equity play, bro. Yes.  You're right. Remember when we said earlier, people are stupid? Yeah. Okay.  People are like, oh, rich people should pay more. There's a lot of not rich people who did a good job with high, with good credit scores. My parents were immigrants. They had no money. They had great credit because they were responsible. They never defaulted on anything and they didn't buy things they couldn't afford. So you're gonna hammer people with good credit. You're not hammering rich people or whatever. You're literally just everybody that's doing what they're supposed to.  You provide opportunities everywhere you can. If people decide to not take advantage and be shitty about it, that's their problem. Yeah. It's terrible. Yeah, Doug, Google example of 740 credit mortgage right now with something like that. It's another like $1,500 fee or something. Bro, it was a crazy difference and it was really... I think it's just a fee though. I don't think it's the actual rate. It's a fee. You pay an extra fee. No, you get, your rate is worse. The rate too? Yes, your rate is worse. So every month you're paying more? Yes, every month. Are you sure? Oh yeah, I'm sure. So this is compared to somebody with a lesser score or just back? No, do this instead. Say people with 740 credit score more pays more for mortgages. That's a, and then you'll get the right article. I think it's just an extra fee, bro. I'm not positive, but I think that's what it is. I don't think it's like you have to pay... Here it is. Scores between 740 and 740 will pay more under the new rule. For example, someone with a 740 score puts 5% down would see an increase of about $1,500. I think that's the fee though. No dude, this is like $1,500 like for the year. That's how that would be. Oh my God. Yes, bro. It's monthly. That's even worse than I thought. Yes, it's terrible. Unreal. Wow. Who's idea was this? You know what might be a smart idea then? Let's say your credit score is at like 750. Oh no, tank it on purpose. Tank it a little bit. Like buy a... It's so weird though. Like get a subscription to Alhambra Water and then don't pay it for a few months. Yeah, that'll lower your credit score for a second. Don't pay your membership fee or something like that. I don't know. It's wild to me that in the... That's weird. With all this going on with the banks all the fears like that, Doug's point is right, right? It's an asset. So like people are like... What does that say, Doug? Is that it? Yeah. So basically it's saying that people with higher credit scores will start paying higher mortgage fees while those with lower credit scores will pay less. It makes a lot of sense. That makes...  That doesn't make any sense. By the way, the reason why people... Okay, so it does make sense for the banks, by the way. This is so that banks can give more loans out to people with lesser credit and incentivize those people. That's the whole idea of this. By the way, by the way. Okay, real quick. Here's why this is a terrible idea all the way around. First off, you're punishing people who are responsible. Not rich, just responsible people. Number two, you're gonna give loans to people who probably shouldn't be getting them in the first place, okay? The reason why you pay more for fees or the reason why you don't get a loan and your credit score is low is because the risk is too high. So what's gonna happen is we're gonna have more people get loans who shouldn't get them, which means that the odds of default is much higher, which means we could have another 2008 and we've seen this before. So my theory on it is that they're doing that, but I think they've already calculated where their sweet spot is. Like let's move in that direction but let's not go as extreme as we did before. Not these NAGAMs and no DOC type of loans. Yeah, let's just predict it because they're good at that, right? I mean, that's where I think they're moving though is trying to go in that direction so they can get all these subprime loans. Here's the tinfoil hat. So we gotta put those on real quick. I'm hearing more and more people say that the goal, the purpose of all this insanity is to literally destroy the paper dollar because they're going to make it so that the banks collapse so that paper money is worthless, major crisis. Here we go everybody.  That's the conspiracy theory that I'm gonna do. Dude, how mad would you be if they do that and you didn't go rack up a bunch of debt before? It's the case we're going out buying yachts. And punishing those people who are careful. Well, what happens when inflation runs rampant or dollars collapse is something like that where you think that the cost of something is gonna be twice as much tomorrow. And what happens is people go out and buy everything they possibly can today. Because they're like, I better get this TV. I better get this car. I better get everything I can because tomorrow it's gonna be so much more expensive. And then that just makes it happen even faster. Well, I mean, that's the Peter Schiff's theory is that we're gonna be like, he's talking. Like Venezuela? Yeah, great depression, crazy, like worse than great depression and stuff I thought that we're just again, but I mean, that guy's been crying, you know, depression for 30 years now. Yeah. Has it been 30? It's been a long time. Yeah. He's been saying it for at least 20 I think is he's been. At some point he might be right. Yeah, it's just scary. Crazy. Anyway, let's talk about Caldera for a second. Can we, did you ask if we could talk about the new state? Yeah. Yeah, we're good to go. Oh, we can't talk about the new thing? We're good to go. They got soap, bro. Pull it up, what? Yes, I love it too. I've been using it for over a month now. I haven't been able to talk about it because they hadn't released it yet. So is it, what's so good about it? The thing that doesn't matter. What? Smells great. No, it does smell great. But the thing that doesn't matter is what I like most about it, ironically. What does it?  Really? Yes.  He does use a luffa. And it smells great. And it's a big bar for like, like I hate like when you get soap, like I'm not even halfway through my bar, I've had it for over a month. I've been using it. So, you know, you get a bar of soap and it's like, it just dissolves. Like this one, sometimes- Oh, well you leave it and by the time you get taken in a shower. Yeah, so here's it. I mean, there's always like a, there's always a takeaway for things that are natural and stuff like that. It's like you, you get something that's better for your skin and natural.  Cause it's all natural. It doesn't have all these weird preservatives and chemicals in it to sustain it longer. But this thing actually, it's a big bar. It lasts a long time. Does it dry your skin or not? It smells, no, it's great on my skin. What's the, what are the ingredients though, it goes to say? Yeah, so it has coffee oil.  So it's like a thick foam. You know, sometimes lathers- It doesn't even come, I've never had a bar of soap even come close to lathering like this. Really? Yes. Okay. Well that's experience, right? That's a good experience. Oh, I'm so glad we can finally talk about it. All right. I mean, I straight up, when we worked with Dr. Squatch, I really liked their stuff. I know we still have some of their stuff at some of our other properties. I know you guys, I think still use some of their stuff. So I've been waiting for a brand that we've, I've liked as much as that, just straight up, we haven't found someone.  And it's badass. All right. Okay. I'm in. All right. You do smell good. Thank you. Shout out today. Yeah, go ahead. Oh, I thought you were gonna shout out that page. Yeah, yeah. Shout out the, is it considered a blog? What does it consider? That website, I don't know. It's N-O-R-D-R-A? No, N-O-R-A-D-A, realestate.com. Yeah, it's an acronym. What does it stand for? Oh, I don't know. Oh yeah, it's an acronym, I'm pretty sure. But really, so when you're doing homework on the economy and real estate and stuff like that, one of the hardest things is to parse out all the biased opinions that people are saying things. And then you find out like, oh, they represent this mortgage company. Yeah. So their way of presenting the information seems very biased, where that's one of the most unbiased pieces of content. And I actually don't know a lot of why or where it comes from or who produces it, but over my last few years of really diving deep in the real estate side, it's where I ended up pulling a lot of good, I think unbiased content from it. Excellent. Yep. Check this out. There's few things that have been proven to help you sleep and to improve the quality of your sleep, but some things actually work. Not a lot of things, but there are some things. Many of those ingredients are in the new product from Sleep Breakthrough. So Sleep Breakthrough has a pre-bed drink that combines the power of magnesium with other natural ingredients like valerian root to help you fall asleep, stay asleep longer and wake up feeling refreshed. Pretty cool stuff, go check them out. Go to sleepbreakthrough.com forward slash mind pump, then use the promo code mindpump10 for a discount. All right, back to the show. Our first caller is James from Tennessee. James, what's happening? How can we help you? Hey, how's it going, guys? Good, man. Good to hear it. I just want to give you a quick plug for the MAPS Prime Bundle. It is a martial artist training to mix martial arts for most of my teens and 20s in between practices and training camps and sparring and competition. I had a lot of wear and tear and mileage on my body for someone my age and kind of had just accepted that pain in my knees and hits in my shoulders was just going to be a part of my life. But started listening to you guys and heard you guys kind of talking about priming and gave that program in a try. And it took a while. It was about eight or nine months of really consistently integrating that into my daily routine, but really hitting the zone one and zone three movements every single day for about eight or nine months. And I'm enjoying pain-free most nights and most mornings and my mobility is as good as it's ever been. So I could recommend that more. Hell yeah, that's great to hear. As for my question, I'm assuming you guys can see it or maybe you've seen it already. So I'm not going to read it verbatim, but really I was hoping you guys might share some of the factors that you guys consider when you're trying to decide if you should stay focused on your current fitness and health goals or maybe if it's kind of scale back or change directions. I've always kind of benefited from being pretty meticulous and strategic in the way I set goals and set a plan of action for tackling those goals. But I've listened to you guys recently talking a lot about being flexible and trying to adapt your training to your life circumstances. And that's kind of made me reflect a little bit. And I've been kind of thinking that there are times when I think I get tunnel vision on what I'm trying to accomplish and it might be ignoring or not recognizing some of those internal and external cues that maybe what I'm doing isn't optimal or maybe in some cases even harmful. So I was hoping you guys might share some of the factors that you guys kind of weigh in that decision-making process and maybe how often you guys kind of revisit that decision-making process and that's what that looks like for you all in general. Good question. So there's two, I'll answer generally, but then I'll answer something more specific to you. So generally, if somebody were to ask me that, I would say, and this is what I try to do for myself, there's a few things I look at. One is what do I enjoy doing? Because there's value in that, right? How does my body feel? There's value in that. And then are there signs that my body is telling me that I need to change gears because this may not be so good for me. Things like joint pain, inflammation, movement issues, signs of overtrain, something like that. So that's kind of an extension of the second one, right? Like what is my body telling me? But the first one's important too, which is what I like to do because there's value in doing something that you enjoy. Now to be more specific to you, based off of what you said, you trained and competed as a mixed martial artist for a long time. I'm assuming the reason why you're asking this question is because you're having a tough time transitioning from competitor to coach or teacher or not necessarily training like a competitor because training as a competitor in mixed martial arts, sometimes, oftentimes I should say, you ignore your body. You have to, you're gonna fight. I don't know anybody that ever goes into a match that has zero injuries or zero pain. It's almost never happens. So you've trained that way for so long, it's probably hard for you to kind of figure that out now as you're maybe starting to transition into something a little bit different. Am I hitting the nail on the head? Is this kind of what's happening for you? Yeah, so that was tricky at first. I transitioned to coaching pre-pandemic. So I kind of stepped away from competition, went to grad school and kind of realized that repeated brain trauma probably isn't good for a career path from trying to get into the brain. I always kind of enjoyed the coaching side of it more anyhow. It's less physically taxing, probably more emotionally taxing, but I really enjoyed that challenge and it was still competitive and I was still competing with my students. So it was actually a lot of fun to see if what I was teaching was working as they'd start kicking my butt. So that transition was difficult, but I was able to maintain some of that competition just within the practice room, but then also seeing if what I was working as a coach was working in the room for my students. When the pandemic hit, I kind of that forced my hand a little bit to switch gears a little bit. And then I actually just recently relocated with my family for my career. So I'm living in Knoxville, Tennessee now, away from my gym and all that. So that's actually been a pretty hard transition for me not having that kind of outlet. So I'm not coaching anymore and I'm not training in that way anymore. I still am a martial artist, still practice that craft, especially on my, you know, more rest days and recuperative days. But I've had a kind of transition into, okay, now I'm just gonna focus on strength and mobility work. I never really had the luxury of strength training. So I've actually really enjoyed that process. I was competing at 135. So I was walking around at 155, which was a pretty brutal weight cut, I couldn't really ever afford to put on too much more muscle mass. And now, you know, I've put on 30 pounds, mostly the right way. So I've enjoyed that challenge. Really, I think the physical signs of the last thing I noticed, and I think that's kind of, you're hitting that, I don't really know if I'm a good gauge of what is too much stress or a good gauge of what pain actually is because I've got a pretty high threshold for those things. So it's usually like when my body, I think Adam refers to as like your body revolting on you. It's usually when that happens, when I wake up one morning, they're shooting pain up my side. And then I kind of reflect on it and like, oh yeah, and I've kind of been a jerk to my kid and not really communicating well with my wife.  And I just kind of had my blinders on and didn't really pay attention to those signals. Yeah, so that makes a lot of sense. You've developed a relationship with... Good awareness, brother. Exercise and pain, that served you well for a long time, but now it's tough because you're, like you said, and a lot of people might not understand this, but when you train at that level, your relationship to pain has to change, but then later on it's hard for you to gauge what's appropriate because you just, you perceive it differently. It means something different to you than to the average person. So my advice to someone like you would be to follow a structured program until you rewire or change that relationship.  It's like home for you. So I'm gonna tell you, follow a structured program for a while until you kind of change that relationship. I think the perfect program for someone like you is mass performance. I think you'll love it. It's a perfect combination of strength, mobility, athleticism. I think it's gonna give you something that you're looking for and it allows you to be in the gym five days a week. Maintain that functional skill and strength so you can get back into, weave back into martial arts and kind of move your body at that high of a level still, but also get the benefits of all the strength training and go through that. I think that's a great recommendation for you. I really like the, I don't know, what does Jason call his little triangle thing that he uses as an analogy? I use that a lot now. Longevity performance and aesthetics. So you have longevity, performance and aesthetics, right? Those represent a triangle and dead center is the perfect balance. And at most times in our life we're rarely ever dead center. We tend to move in a direction towards one more than the other. But it takes you away from the other. But what I like that as a visual is as you move towards, let's say performances at the top part of the triangle, as you move towards performance in that direction you start to move away from longevity and potentially aesthetics. And as you move towards aesthetics you move from the other two. And so I like that as a visual and to constantly be kind of checking in with yourself where are you at in that triangle in your fitness journey currently. And then being honest with yourself, like, oh wow, I've been really in this performance direction for a long time. Let me choose a program or let me build a routine that's more longevity focused. And I'm gonna really shift my training, my thought process around exercise and taking care of myself in the longevity way.  I've started to lose some of my performance. I love so much or I like to look a little bit better. And so let me move over in that. And so I really like that as a good visual for yourself. And then to just kind of be checking back in, like where are you at in that triangle? Recognizing that dead center is probably the most perfect balanced place you can be for overall health and a little bit of everything. And then being honest with yourself, where have I been lately knowing that I'm pulling away from the other two a little bit? Do you have mass performance, by the way, James? I do not. I just have the prime bundle and then maps anabolic. And I'm really just alternating basically every three months from a strength focus to a performance and mobility focus. But my performance program is kind of just what I used to do as a mixed martial artist, which probably isn't the most healthy name. Bro, you'll love, you'll love mass performance. You will absolutely love it. And that's now a perfect, yeah. Now that's a perfect blend, what you already do. You're on the right track, what you're doing. I like what I hear right now. And then you add into the mix, the maps performance, and you've got a nice little rotation of training right there. Yeah, you'll like it. We'll send that to you. Follow it, follow it. I think you're gonna fall in love with the program. I appreciate that, guys. You got it, man. Thanks for calling in. All right. You know what I like about, I learned this when I did Jiu-Jitsu, but you know what I love about mixed martial art?   You meet him on the street.   That's really easy. No, you know, this really does highlight. I would say of all of us, you probably know this the most, Justin, because you competed at the highest level. You develop this relationship to pain and challenge and physical exertion. What I mean by relationship is like, you perceive it different. Then when you try and back out of that, everything feels like it's too easy. I mean, it just doesn't feel right. I'm supposed to feel pain. I'm supposed to beat myself up. You almost seek it out. I mean, and that's what you kind of learn to focus on because of that mental discipline that you're applying as an athlete in a performance setting. Like you're, I wanna experience what's gonna make me uncomfortable and pain is part of that process. And you know that on the other side of that is like a higher level that I can achieve. But when you step out of that and you look at it and you assess like how well it's been doing for your body, that's really what the conversation that's completely different. And for him to kind of shift more into that conversation with himself, it's always challenging, but it's gonna be so beneficial for him going forward. That's why I really liked that triangle. If it does illustrate it really clearly, right? It does illustrate it really clearly, right? And I feel like even if you're not like someone who programs or can write a program or stuff, you can get an idea of like, okay, if that's the three points of the triangle, it's pretty easy to assess, okay, where have I been mostly? And if you're like, wow, actually when I think about it, I've never really moved in those directions. That means I'm probably at one extreme or the other. And so I really like that as an idea for people to kind of check back with themselves and be honest of where have you been focused on and the ideal place is somewhere in the middle, even though- You don't have to stay in the middle. Because you never really are in the middle, right? Let's be- Yeah, you're never in the middle. There's only one you like more than the other. Yeah, but trying to never be in one direction too long and that's how you kind of create that healthier balance with exercise. Here's another good analogy. The highest performance cars in competitions, Formula One and drag racing, whatever, they have to fix those cars almost after every single race. They blow something out almost every single time. Then you look at cars that last the longest on the road and they're far from the highest performance, they're far from the fastest, right? So it's just like that for your body. You push your body to an extreme level with exercise. You are well beyond longevity. You are now at the point where it's not healthy but you're performing at a high level. That can be a hard switch. I think that's what people like James' experience. Well, staying with that analogy, why that is, is because you are used to racing a car at 170 miles an hour. So driving at 90 feels slow to you. And so that- Let alone driving at 65. Which is where you're supposed to be, right? So that's my point. It's like you're supposed to be cruising around 65 but your 65 feels like 170. And so trying to get somebody, you've trained yourself to perceive it that way for so long. You have to kind of untrain yourself. Our next caller is Susanna from Florida. Susanna, what's happening? How can we help you? Hey y'all. Well, first of all, thank you so much for taking my question. I truly trust and respect all three of you. And so I appreciate you taking the time to kind of help me see what's going on here. I also want to say that I appreciate everything you do. I've struggled with body image issues for my entire life. And y'all have just started my journey on overcoming those. So I really, really appreciate that. It's been one of the biggest blessings. So I appreciate all and everything you do. Thank you. That's great to hear. Okay. So I'll get started with my question. I'm gonna be reading it off from a screen but in the big picture, I'm relatively new in my fitness journey. Thankfully, my husband introduced me to y'all two years ago and I've been an avid listener ever since and truly become a fitness fanatic. I started focusing more on strength training when I found y'all and have been following some of your programs on and off for like the last year and a half. In early February, I decided to hire a personal trainer for a few reasons. One, to help me with my technique. Two, to push me. I don't think I was progressively overloading well. And then also to fine tune my nutrition. So after talking with her, we decided that my goals were probably to cut down and start leaning out, heading into summer. That's what I was hoping for. So in February, that was like the very, very first week of February. We did a body scan and it calculated that my total daily energy expenditure is about 2,300 calories. So because my goals were to cut down, I was advised to eat in a 500 calorie deficit. So I did that and I've been sticking to it religiously. Two weeks ago, we did another scan, which would be almost two and a half months since the first one. And the results were a three pound increase in muscle mass, which I was excited about. A one pound loss of fat, which increased my total weight, two pounds. But there was a 0% change in body fat percentage. So a few questions based off of that, how trustworthy are these scans? Is it a reliable form of evaluation for myself? Can you help me make sense of what is happening versus what should be happening with what I'm doing? And what is your advice moving forward with the goals that I have? Okay, great question. Lots of good stuff here too. Very good. Okay, so how reliable are they? They're reliable to look at when you're trying to determine trends. They're not reliable when you're trying to get an exact number of how much fat or muscle you've gained or lost with one test. Or technically how many calories you should be eating. Definitely not when it comes to calories. Definitely not. They're gonna give you a general estimate, but boy, someone your age and activity level, I've met people whose caloric intake could be 1,000 calories up or down depending on the individual. So the way I would like, and the way I know that my co-hosts here like to determine someone's caloric intake is by having them track for a while and whether if they gained or lost weight or stayed the same, then we'll determine what their baseline is based off of that, okay? So not saying that this isn't a good starting point, but it's a very general estimate and it's not gonna give you any specifics with calories. But yeah, as far as gaining and losing, what you wanna do is you wanna do repeated tests every two to four weeks and then notice a trend. If it's moving upward with body fat or downward after several tests, you know that, okay, the trend is showing that I'm gaining body fat or I'm losing body fat or I'm building muscle or I'm losing muscle, now it can become more reliable. But I also like to combine it with other signals. Like for example, in that period of time, how was your strength in the gym? Did it go up, down or stay the same? It went up a lot. A lot, okay. Then I would probably believe that you gained that muscle that it says. If you saw significant strength gains, then I would agree that it's probably accurate. The other thing is, you know, your body weight went up a little bit because you built more muscle than you lost body fat. But those scans, they have a tougher time measuring water weight and subtracting that from lean body mass. They do to an extent, but it's again, it can be, there can be a little bit off here or there. How did your clothes fit? How did you look in the mirror where people like your husband or people you trust saying things like, oh my God, you look like, yeah, because I used to get this all the time with clients where the weight doesn't change on the scale or maybe it goes up a little bit, but they'd come back to me and be like, you know what, like four people came up to me and said, I look like I lost 10 pounds even though my weight hasn't changed. Were you getting any comments like that or did you notice in the mirror, oh, this looks, I'm actually looking a lot different than the scale. Closer and differently, yeah. I, this may go back to the body image issues that I have, but I wasn't loving how I was, how I'm looking in the mirror. Like I feel like I've got a little bit, a layer of fluff that I like, I guess you call it a little layer of fluff, but my clothes were starting to fit a little bit tighter, but my husband, he loves my body anyhow. So he obviously thinks it was, that looked great, but I wasn't liking how big I was looking. Yeah, okay. So don't trust your opinion with the visual. Are there people in your life that you trust that could tell you you're going in the right or the wrong direction? Like if your husband's trustworthy in the sense that he's like, man, you look healthy, like you're looking like this is working, then I would listen to him rather than, you know, what you may see in the mirror. And then if that connects to or correlates with the scan is showing with a muscle gain plus strength gain plus some fat loss or a little bit of fat loss, then I would believe that you're moving in the right direction. Do you add any circumference measurements? I know sometimes that helps at least for you to see any kind of trends of size or something in your arms or your legs or somewhere else or your stomach, even that, you may be able to assess that a little bit better in terms of like how your body's kind of shifting transitioning composition-wise. But two, was this a dexa scan or was this like a bioelectric impedance because they're not all equal in terms of like what kind of data they're going to provide you? Like there's like three that I would even like consider like are pretty consistent in terms of like the data they provide you with the BOD pod, the hydrostatic way and then dexa scan. But other than that, I mean, I honestly like the bioelectric impedance I tend to like not even use that in conversation. What did you use? It's called a stikoo. I'm not familiar with that. Grab handles, did you stand on it? What did you do? I stood on a rotating platform and it was like a projection kind of thing coming out of a... Oh, okay. I know what you're talking about. Look it up for me, Doug. Yeah. It might be like a dexa. It's new, yeah. Yeah, nonetheless, I mean, I'd still default back to what kind of Sal said. I don't care how accurate something is, I still only use that as like a gauge to give you an idea. I want to actually comment on the strategy that I would have done with you here. So for two and a half months, we put you in a good calorie deficit. Even though your goal is to lean out for summer and fat loss, I actually would have increased your calories and focused on building strength and muscle first because you had two and a half months. And part of the reason why I think you only built a couple of pounds of muscle is because probably half the time you were in a deficit. And so it's really hard for the body to build muscle while you're also in a caloric deficit. Well, she obviously did, she lost body fat too. Well, I know. So you did, which is exceptional. You did a great job. And what you're doing is probably not bad. It's just going to be a slower pace. I think what would have been faster for us, although it would have taken some mental discipline to do this is I would have liked to have tried to increase your calories for those two and a half months. And then right about now, you and I would be talking about, you'd be telling me, Adam, I put on five or six pounds. And I'm like, don't worry. We got way stronger. Most of that was muscle. Now let's cut your calories from this new calorie maintenance and let's watch you really lean out a lot faster. So that's, I would have done, strategically, I would have probably approached this a little bit different than you guys did. It doesn't mean, and I'm not, this isn't like me hating on the trainer. You still did well. Yeah, you did well. But it's hard for clients when it moves this slow. That's it. So you think you're doing something wrong or bad, but when you do a caloric deficit like that, when your metabolism is, you know, your maintenance is only around 2000 or so, you know, cutting 500 calories. Yeah, do the math.  It's just a slow process. And if you got the discipline to stay that course, you'll probably continue to see good results. Personally, I would have rather taken approach where we like aggressively try and bulk and put on muscle and accept that we might add five to seven pounds. I'm not worried about that because we're building the metabolism right now and then get you to a place more like 26, 2800 calorie range and then cut you all the way back down to say 21, 22 and watch your body really start to move as far as body fat loss. Yeah, I mean, you can actually do a reverse diet now. You can do a slight bulk right now and start to do kind of what Adam's talking about. Yeah, I like what Adam said a lot. I think that might be the best, that would be the approach that I would take with you for my client. To what Justin said about circumference measurements, the reason why that's a good idea also is because women's clothes in particular, men's clothes too, but women's clothes in particular are not designed for women with muscle.  So now all your pants feel tighter. Oh my God, I'm getting fatter, right? You may stand up a little taller now because your mid-back is more developed. So now your shirts feel tighter around your shoulders. Oh no, I'm getting bigger.  So I like circumference measurements because you can measure and be more specific rather than based off of like, Adam, Justin or I, we go to a clothing store, we take a suit off the rack. I have to buy a size that's for someone who's obese in order for it to fit my body. But I'm obviously not obese, right? So that would be the other thing that I would say to focus on. But I think a bulk would be great for you right now. Yeah, what I would do too is I would bump your calories up, you know, say we were at 17 right now. So I'd probably go up to like a 22 hundred calorie or so around there, stick with that for about two weeks. It's okay to use the body. If I think the thing that will really skew those is the time and day you do them and if you're fed and water in you. So if you use those things, be very consistent about the time of day that you, and so ideally I always say first thing in the morning if you can with no food, no water in you, because that will give you the most consistency around the average and then don't get hung up if it says I'm 35 or 24% by it, but more or less, okay, we've decided now we're going to increase calories and try and build strength. Where did it go from the starting point? So like wherever you're at now or the last test you've taken, now let's try and increase calories, focus on building strength. And then when you say you measure in two weeks, let's see what it says then and hopefully if we did a good job, you're putting on a lot more muscle than you are body fat and then that means we're right online with the course. If you're not putting any muscle on or really body fat then we probably could increase the calories even more to continue to build.  Okay, I see. All right, yep. I was wondering if what happened because I was a chronic restrictor like for the first 25 years of my life, I was wondering if I had just like shot my metabolism too much and I maybe need to focus more on rebuilding that or really building it from scratch since I kind of had messed myself up. So I was wondering if I bought the reverse diet guide and I've looked at it but I didn't really have a good starting point of what even is my maintenance because I tracked and I felt like I wasn't able to really evaluate where even my starting point was. It sounds like you're pretty close to it right now. So I think we have a good enough. I go three to 500 up from where you're at. We have a good baseline where you're at right now and I think your intuition is right if you were a chronic under eater for a really long time also keep that in mind that it's gonna be it's gonna take us a little bit it's not like a switch, right? Where you were a chronic under eater for most of your life all of a sudden you decide you're gonna start adding calories and then also when the body's gonna respond beautifully be patient, be patient. We'll go slow, 100 calories at a time trying to increase it and then just keep testing every couple of weeks to make sure we're on the right track. Yeah, you're young and usually someone your age there, did you mess up your metabolism? I mean, probably not. I mean, could there be some, something that needs to take a while maybe but at your age probably not a better indicator of that would be like your hormones, your energy do you get your period regularly? If you're on birth control that can mask a lot of that and it'll be hard to tell but typically with a 20 something year old young woman those are the questions I'm asking now if she comes to me and says I haven't got my period in a while my hair is brittle, my skin and nails don't feel I don't have good energy, I've got gut issues then I'd say okay we need to focus on all that stuff first before we even look at like getting your metabolism to boost and all that stuff like so if any of that's resonated but you look pretty, I don't know you look pretty healthy do you have any of those issues or do you feel like I'm otherwise pretty well, pretty good? I did have those issues and then when I started listening to y'all it was particularly the why women should bulk episode when I started listening and applying these things my hair started growing more than it ever has before I feel more energetic I was having those like afternoon slumps where I needed some sort of caffeine and I don't need that at all anymore like I just I feel the healthiest I've ever been so what I want is to be able to look and like reveal those muscles and you know show off in a swimsuit but that's like I know those are surface level goals that's all right so but the fact that I feel healthy like I really do feel like I'm the healthiest I've ever been you're on the right track yeah reverse that you're on the right track I go reverse that your intuition is right you're on the right track you're doing great be patient with yourself that's all I think you're I think you're kicking ass right you know what let's get you in the forum too so we could check up on you all right I'm gonna have Doug I'm gonna have Doug put you in the forum keep us posted on the reverse diet let us know how it's going at one point you'll probably ask us okay I've been doing this for a while now my calories are here is it time for me to start to lean out we'll be able to give you some better advice if you if you keep us posted okay awesome thank you all so much you guys thanks for calling in bye bye how crazy is it how many young women were impacted by that episode oh I know that's so great to hear dude because it's so needed like it's not a message that's out very often no and not just needed it's just it's crazy how many young women go for so long hurting themselves because they're eating too little because that's what they think they're supposed to do and thankfully we did that episode and it reached a certain number of people and you know okay great you got to eat more and you're stronger but what we keep hearing is my hair grew my skin came back my nails started growing my period came back my energy my depression was lifted like I love hearing that stuff oh that's the best yeah she's actually doing really good yeah she is considering that if she was a chronic under eater for that long and she was suffering from all those things and she's now able to say the things out of her mouth I feel the healthiest I've ever been in my life you know at 27 years old that's such a good sign that you're moving in the right direction the aesthetics will come you just need to stick with that continuing down that path that's why I think if I if she hired me in February and I asked all those questions I know nobody in here would have been like hey let's put you on a cut now it's like okay you just started feeling really healthy let's keep actually increasing calories let's get strong yeah let's keep going the direction you're going and then we'll get to a point where we can start to you know cut calories I mean I think that she can continue on the reverse diet and actually lean out while she does it so do I our next caller is Nick from Pennsylvania Nick what's happening how can we help you hey hey what's going on guys thanks for uh taking my question I'll get right into it you got it I recently just finished anabolic I'm really on maybe day four of a little bit of a uh a deload just kind of focusing on mobility and moving through the uh the motions my main goal with anabolic was a little bit of a body recon I started the program at about 216 pounds I'm five foot seven um after finishing anabolic I dropped down to 205 according to like a uh bioelectrical impedance scale that I have I'm at 22% body fat currently I really have no idea what I was to begin with my main question comes into a little bit of stiffness that I've been experiencing the low back probably for maybe like the last five weeks strength gains were awesome throughout the entirety of the program I think finishing up uh phase three you know what I'm doing for 12 reps now is more than what I was doing from five reps at the beginning so I definitely got stronger wow low back stiffness particularly after squat days I seem to get a really big low back pump and then that stiffness would linger around for a handful of days afterwards so I'm really just kind of thinking you know do I move into performance or do I kind of keep you know pushing on these strength gains and maybe run like stronger anabolic advance with prime no I would go I would go performance for symmetry for sure performance yeah you're what you're experiencing is just your bilateral you know same plane about yeah you're just this will happen when you start to kind of push your body's ability your mobility's ability to support the the strength gains so performance will take care of that solo map symmetry Nick have you ever have you ever videoed yourself doing your squat from like the side view be interested to see if when you get down to kind of parallel if you tend to dip forward a little bit a lot of times so this was an issue for me before I started to address my ankle mobility is as I hit that as soon as I break 90 my chest would kind of fall lean forward a lot and then that's where my low back I would get it would get so pumped and tight I would have to between set sometimes lay on the floor in by the squat rack and like do core exercises pressing my like kind of stretching it out because it would get pumped up and that's literally just from the the flexion and extension in the spine with that kind of load on my back have you noticed that or is that ring a bell at all for yourself yeah definitely I've I've done some video taping and I've sent it around to a couple of different buddies who are chiropractors and physical therapists and it really seems like you know maybe there is a little bit of that but wink at the bottom I had an old knee injury that seemed to really affect my right ankle so it is pretty stiff in that like dorsa flexion I've considered that quite a bit and you know throughout the you know the last couple of weeks of anabolic I really kind of geared some extra mobility to kind of hip rotation and you know ankle flexion I really think map symmetry would be your best bet to really kind of dive into that because now you're going to isolate it if it is a one side discrepancy versus the other especially with the ankles I think you know Adam's on point there with the ankle mobility like being a factor with like going up the kinetic chain when you're squatting you know maybe just the stability issue from lateral stability rotational stability and it's really going to emphasize that in that program and highlight exactly kind of where it stems from this is also a case where this is where I like to use these tools that we never we tell people not to use all the time or use as a crutch you're like squat shoes could potentially help while you're working on these things so your idea of working on your hip mobility addressing the ankle stuff doing symmetry adjustment do all that stuff meanwhile I may have you squat in squat shoes until that wink starts to go away and that way we at least eliminate the low back stiffness and pain and you could actually still squat through a good deep range of motion obviously the goal is to get to a place where you comfortably could barefoot squat deep like that but that's also a process and during that process of working on the ankle mobility hip mobility I may also encourage you to do like heels elevated squats so that we can at least get really good deep squats without you feeling the low back pain how long have you been working out total Nick this is my second time through anabolic but the first time really where I was kind of consistent and disciplined with you know everything the workouts nutrition sleep kind of the works lifted on and off for 10 years but nothing you know it was kind of that deal three months on you know four months off two months on five months off yeah yeah you know I would avoid the squat shoes for now I think Adam gave great advice but the problem I still run into this is I'll use the squat shoes I'm like cool I'm gonna keep just squatting see how much weight I can lift so I think symmetry is gonna help the most I really do I think that'll be the best bet and you're probably gonna have to avoid bilateral movement for at least two or three months before you figure this out because if you just keep pushing your strength you might get stronger but this issue is gonna get worse is what's gonna happen yeah this will take you beyond even where you got to your strength yeah which is gonna be good so it may be a bit of a mental challenge for you to kind of now that you got these awesome strength gains to now kind of work on isolating you know specific limbs and you know really like addressing any kind of imbalance but uh overall you're gonna benefit from it tremendously well if we're if we're right and that you do make good progress and you follow symmetry consistently all the way through the end of the program is a five by five you'll know so you're gonna show you so you're gonna you'll get a chance to actually see okay I put all this work in for the last two months that the guys told me following this program the last half of that program is uh is bilateral so you get to go squat deadlift and actually see how that's carried over into that so hopefully if we if we do a good job programming we're on point with what we're telling you you should actually see yourself your strength you're bracing well you know you're not your lower back isn't flaring up like it was before like that's those are the goals yeah and I already know the answer to that anyway Adam we did do a good job program all right Nick we'll send you symmetry okay yeah yeah I really appreciate I think where I was getting hung up was uh you know it never really seemed to be pain but man it was a wicked pump with just stiffness it would kind of nag me for a few days so that that makes a lot of sense man I'm glad you guys yeah I get the same thing yeah erector spinay just over use by the way you're not on any anabolic or anything like that right because those those can cause weird back pumps I've heard no nothing all right that's yeah then we were right you're good cool I appreciate you guys you got a brother right just had to say that where the where the the fuck does that come because you'll hear people talk about going on anabolic or all anabolic steroids and they'll be like oh I got this crazy low back pump Oh that's normal just keep working through it and it would have been weird if he's like actually really hold on a second bro I've never heard of that really sells on all the form I was waiting for like some dumb dad joke to come after that no no no no yeah I'll send him up for a dad joke yeah I did I was like what does what the fuck's that mean never heard anyone say that you never heard never before no yeah dude I don't I mean look this is all like this is all here say you know like yeah So yeah, I mean unilateral work solves this issue for nine to 10 people because you really start to isolate what the hell's going on And whether it's the ankle or the hip or both You're gonna see it when you do those unilateral exercises of map symmetry. Our next caller is Skylar from West Virginia. Hi Skylar How can how can we help you? Hi, how are you good? It's crazy for me to be introducing myself I've listened for a while and heard so much about your guys's lives and your family I feel like we're like best friends. So it's weird for me to like be talking to you for the first time. We are we are friends Yep I'll start off with a little bit of background and then go into my question Overall the last two years I've lost about 50 pounds gone through a lot of different phases and it hasn't always been linear, but Overall, that's where I am About a year ago. I felt like I plateaued a little bit. I Started working with a coach. It started off really well He put me on a meal plan and it was very more clean food focused I was at a point where I was eating a lot of Processed food and trying to fit protein in everywhere. I could so my digestion was terrible So the clean foods helped a lot at first Started with that and then started implementing more cardio Which slowly increased and I'm now up to doing an hour of fasted cardio in the morning in 20 minutes post lift Daily and lifting six times a week I'm eating a good bit of food About 1,500 calories a day 150 grams of protein but less than 100 carbs And my plans very meal plan focused rather than macro focused and I'm a numbers person So I'm kind of tracking my food on my own and he looks at my food journal And I didn't really realize it at first, but I think that it's very thermogenesis focused Right now I'm dropping about 0.25 to a half pound a week Which is okay and probably what I should shoot for but at this point I'm in the gym for three hours a day and working like 65 70 hours a week So it's tough for me Ideally, I'd like to get macro focused again so I can decrease some of the cardio I'm just kind of lost on how to move forward I don't know if I keep the same food and slowly back out of the cardio or if I Decrease I'm just scared to put pounds on but I'm also scared to Increase more cardio or I just don't really know how to back out of it So I guess just looking for some guidance Yeah, so okay. I see why the title of this question was I'm breaking up with my coach though now. Yeah Okay, you said you said something interesting. It's thermogenesis focused. Did your coach tell you that or did you just say that? No, just kind of doing my own research Come to find that out. That's it. That's a buzzword doesn't mean anything. Yeah, there's no thermogenesis Yeah, focus. So if you read anything that says this is a thermogenesis focused diet or whatever, you know, it's garbage So don't don't worry about that. Okay. So here's here's Here are some red flags with certain coaches. Okay, here's one big one They have two buttons and this is the two buttons that they use no matter what Drop calories more activity. Oh, you're not losing enough. Drop, you know drop calories more activity drop calories more activity And then you end up where you're at now where you're like, I'm working out a lot and I can't do any more. Where do I go from here? I'm stuck and that's because you've been coached The wrong way up until now. So the question is what do you do from here? I would I would start by cutting the cardio down and keeping the diet the same I think that would that would be where I would start I would take your cardio I cut it way down an hour and 20 minutes most days is just I mean unless you love it It's really a favorite thing in the world to do Yes, it sucks. So I would do I would cut it down by more than half or all of it I would do traditional strength training full body three days a week maps and a ball of style Keep your calories the same watch and see how you feel After a few weeks, then I would try and do maybe like a reverse diet Your calories are 13 to 1500 a day low. Is that what you're saying? Is that is that correct?  So that might be, you know 23-24-2500 calories and then when you cut you get closer to 2,000 calories But right now you're probably too low. I haven't met very many people who feel great eating 1,300-1,500 calories every single day. Not only that we just saw her pictures right now You have you have good muscle mass on you. That's way too low for like you're you're you're I you said your way Right around 160 175 is that where you're at right now? Is that what you said? I'm at 175 and would like to get to 160 But you're solid though I mean, I'm looking at to like you're you're not like a 170 and really overweight person 170 and solid I can see it in your legs. Yeah, how tall are you? 55 56 boy weight is so Misleading yeah, very misleading. I wouldn't you that you look really good by the way Yeah, I wouldn't even look at the scale so much. I would go by performance.  I wouldn't see most people wouldn't would not have guessed no You wouldn't I didn't guess that she looked like that I saw your way and then I saw your pictures. Oh shit You don't look like what I was assuming you look like I've worked with women like you who have just they've got great muscle mass They look like they're just phenomenal and then they're heavier on the scale because they're like athletes and it's great And by the way what Adam's talking about is we have a huge potential with your metabolism Yeah, I you would be the kind of person that would be able to reverse diet a thousand calories at some point higher than you're at Now for sure and probably still cut Yeah, so I would go I would cut cardio I would focus on traditional strength training and then I would go reverse diet after you settle after that You're you're obviously doing a great job lifting So I don't I don't know if that's from good from the coach or the trainer This is just a coach on the diet part or if you have experience lifting or without I'm assuming you you obviously squat dead lift all the good movements Yeah, I just I worked out a plan of fitness for a long time But just switch gyms. I've like fell in love with it again. I was getting a little bit bored But my coach has just done my nutrition. I tore my ACL in high school So kind of had to lift and then Got really into it after that. Were you an athlete? Yeah, multi-sport athlete, but then when I tore my ACL could not called so called it Yeah, yeah, you got great. You got great genetics. Yeah. Yeah, you know, thanks. I'm shorter. So it helps No, you got great genetics. You know what? You know what? You know what you just did You literally hammered your body to slow its metabolism down. Yeah, you got great genetics You can go you're gonna be able to reverse diet very successfully if you do it, right? Just be okay with a little bit of the weight not maybe being ready Like don't get hung up on the exact number on the scale right now, especially right now Because because I can tell by your body type you're probably gonna put muscle on pretty quick And so the scale could absolutely go up go off of how you feel and know that the goal ultimate goal is Let's get those calories up to the high 1000s like yeah, I mean I'm saying you should be 27 2800 minimum calories and then we can come back down from that But you yeah, you have massive potential. Do you have our reverse dieting guide? Do you know how to do this reverse diet properly? I Don't is that do I like increase a hundred a week? What's the pace? I'll send it to you. It'll tell you what to do. Okay Yeah, and then and then give me a little insight on what your programming looks right now So I can so I can put you on one of ours. That's a little bit different So we have a nice a nice switch at it on adaptation. What are you doing right now? Okay, I ran anabolic and then aesthetic a couple times. I love that one I'm I like being in the gym a lot and since I was spending so much time there the six-day program was helpful for me How about maps and I'll get advanced about the anabolic advanced yeah would be good or even split Let's go maps anabolic advanced like that, but cut the cardio. Okay Immediately yeah, I would cut the keep your calories where they're at. Yeah cut the cut cut the cardio out completely Switch to maps and a ball advanced after a few weeks of settling into that if everything feels good and you're like, okay Like I'm good. I'm getting stronger. I'm not seeing these right these massive swings in weight Then I would start the reverse diet Okay, okay Does that sound all right? Yeah, that makes sense. All right. Keep us updated to you look apprehensive. You scared I am scared. I'm nervous. Yeah. Yeah, it's a total change. It's what I thought I would hear, but it's hard to like Yeah, do I need to put you in the form so we're checking on you some accountability there? I Think I'm think the end goal for me is to cut to a point where I can run a prep and find a new coach and compete eventually But I feel like I need to get it under control. Yeah, okay, so you're in the form before you go that route Okay, so you would be a perfect person who would like reach out to me like yo, Adam I heard you coached clients for this like would you get me ready for a show? I would do an assessment of what you're doing and I'd say I won't let you pick a show yet I'd say first you and I with your muscle mass your where you're at I would want you to be somewhere 2,800 calories plus eating at maintenance Before I put you through some sort of a 12 week cut for a bikini show or something because yeah I know what that takes in order to do that and I the what we're gonna have that you're too low of calories to do anything with that Right now, so we need to focus on building that metabolism right now Yeah, and then you'd be in a healthy place So that should be your goal before you decide you're gonna sign up for bikini test make that promise and commitment to me that You should be able to maintain at 26 2800 calories a day and not see your weight go up or down really That's a good place to be yeah, so I know you're scared you said earlier that you trust us and we're friends So trust your friends. We're telling you what to do. Just do it and you're gonna end up in a great place Okay, so cut the card like no cardio. Yeah Walk walkings fine, you know stay active throughout the day. Okay. I don't want you to just like do nothing Walking's fine throughout the day. You know if you want to track your steps That's fine eight to 12,000 steps a day But just cut the cardio out how cut the cardio out maps and a bulk advance keep your calories the same after three weeks Or so if everything feels stable start the reverse diet How intense was the fasted cardio in the morning? Was it walking or are you actually getting after it? Elliptical at like 150. Okay, so you're kind of getting after it Will you typically do stermaster or incline walk after my Yeah, so you're getting okay So are you are you will you still wake up at the same time if I tell you you don't have to do that? Cuz here's my one concern is if I tell you to eliminate all the cardio and you now sleep in that hour hour and a half Change. Yeah, that's a big shift in calorie difference. So will it are you not going to get up that early anymore? If I could probably sleep in an extra hour. Well, hold on. Do you need the extra sleep? Um, I I wake up at four. We're gonna bed at night. I Get seven hours. Yeah, no, no do the sleep. Yeah, go ahead and sleep in you're fine You go to bed at 9 10 wake up at 4. Yeah, I get some sleep.  You've actually been able to keep like amazing muscle So you actually if I had you like if you came to me and hired me and I talked to you about all this and I saw this I'd be like I'd be rubbing my hands. They're like, oh, this is gonna be amazing She's gonna respond really really well because you shouldn't even be able to have muscle right now with what you're doing Yeah, it started slowly so I didn't really notice and then It just kept going up and up. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. All right. Do what we say check in with check in with us in the form Okay, okay. All right. Thank you. Thank you so much.  So I mean she's in the form So we're gonna get a chance to but that if there if she if she has a hard time It'll or she sees a dramatic shift in her wake Up right that we would have to do I'd counter it with some walking throughout the day Right, so that's what I would do is I'd actually probably ask her to monitor her steps And so I had an idea of like what this how much movement she's getting in the day and then I'd find ways to Incorporate it throughout her day and walking so she doesn't have this dramatic like right, you know 500 to 800 calories shift a day in burn, you know Even though she probably needs to sleep even though your body needs to relax a little bit She doesn't need to be pushing the heart that overnight switch could cause a little bit of weight gain Right, but if she stabilizes reversed eye, but you know, here's the other side of it too that sometimes happens Is that your her body has just become so efficient that when she cuts the cardio out Let's her body recover her metabolism just speeds up because it doesn't feel like it needs to be so thrifty So for the first week or so calorie surplus after that Well now the body fully recovered. Yeah, and she'll see herself get stronger feel more rested and all that stuff So, but yeah, you know after a few yeah, and that's what that's a good call put her in the forum I think that'll be good to watch. Look if you like mine pump head over to mine pump free calm and check out our guides We have guides that can help you with fitness health fat loss and muscle building You can also find all of us on social media Justin is on Instagram at my pump Justin. I'm on my Instagram at mine pump to Stefano and Adam is on Instagram at mine pump Adam Today we're going to teach you everything you need to know to build a strong Well-developed chest when I think of weak points and in areas that I struggled with developing for a really long time Chest was up there with the yeah, it was for me. 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