In this episode of mind pump. So this is our quaw episode Q and A episode. This is where we answer questions from listeners like you. They post them on our Instagram page, mine pump media. We pick the best ones and then we answer them. But we also talk about current events, our lives and just have a lot of fun. That's in the introductory portion of this episode. So here's what we did in this awesome episode. We started out by talking about the movie. Good Boys is now out for rental on Amazon. Absolutely hilarious. Adam gave us an update on his powerlifting routine. He is currently following maps, power lift on his goal to becoming extremely average at the squat, deadlift and bed press Justin had to buy more weight plates because he's a Haas. That's right. He's a hot shot. Everybody. Now he did buy his plates and his home equipment from PRX. PRX makes home equipment with very low profiles, but it's very sturdy equipment. In other words, you can have a squat rack that literally folds into your wall. So if you want to park your car in the garage, use your room for something else you can, but then it easily folds out. Super inconspicuous. Boom. You have a very functional, sturdy piece of a home equipment that rivals the best commercial workout equipment. And we have a hookup for you because they are one of our sponsors.  This is for purchases over $500. Then I talked about hitting the rails before finding the middle. We were mentioning how one social media influencer has decided to go sell a bit for six months. So that's a good luck to him nutting. We talked about NBC and how they're launching a new e-commerce site. That's kind of interesting. I talked about studies on sauna use, which is kind of fascinating. Boosts endurance in one study up to 32%. By the way, regular sauna use growth hormone levels explode. Has a beneficial effect on your hormones and may actually speed up the muscle building process. Now, one of our favorite sauna producers is clear light. They make clear light infrared saunas. These are made by, excuse me, these are jacuzzi infrared saunas made by clear light and we have a promotion for you.  If you mentioned mine pump, make sure you tell them you heard about them through mine pump for that discount. Then we talked about the haunted house that gives people $20,000. We talked about this on a previous episode. Well, we have more details for you. Apparently it's a torture chamber. Yeah. It's like eight hours of torture. It's called McCarney, McCamey manner. I think then we talked about how Airbnb is tightening up the rains. Apparently there's some crazy stuff that happened over the holiday season with Halloween. No people.  Then we got into the question portion of this episode. This is where we answer questions. First question. Is there a difference between training with bands or cables? Like what are the benefits between each of them and how different are they? Next question. What are the best weighted exercise for building abs? You may be wondering why you would want to add weight to exercise for abs. That way they show more. You build them like any other muscle. By the way, we have a guide on training your abs. Go to mindpumpfree.com and check that out. Next question. This person wants to know why bodybuilders seem to have a worse relationship to food than other athletes. We had a great discussion there. And the final question. Have we ever dealt with being super disciplined, but also maintaining a healthy social life and personal relationships? Like what's the balance there? Also this month, brand new promotion maps performance 50% off. Now maps performance is our workout program based entirely around physical, functional, athletic performance. So in this workout, you're going to train different ranges of motion and different planes of motion, meaning you can go side to side, front to back, twisting. You'll get more explosive, faster, stronger. This is a huge calorie burning workout because it's an athletic component. So great for fat loss and it's excellent for mobility. This is the only program we have with structured mobility sessions. These are sessions to improve your ability to move, improve your ranges of motion, all of which contribute to better muscle gain and more fat loss. And of course, better movement patterns. So again, it's 50% off. Here's how you get the discount. Go to mapsgreen.com and use the code green 50, G-R-E-N-5-0, no space for the discount. So last night, Katrina and I sat down.  And then we actually watched a full movie. Like I can't remember the last time that we strung, you know, three hours uninterrupted, like he's, we've got him now going down to bed like with the time change, right? So we pushed the clock back. Well, we didn't, you know, change his time. We just said, okay, yeah, to get advantage of the setting back, like he's going now, now we're getting him ready at six o'clock for bed. And he's in bed by like 6 30. So, and, you know, he tossed a little bit, did his thing, but by about 7 30, dude, this is, this is why I've gone on trips with friends of mine who have little kids and we'll go to like Cabba or whatever. And I'm like, you know, I'm there to relax. Man, they go wild.  They have the energy of like 21 year old doing like, man, you guys are, you're not going to bed.  Like, we don't have the kids. It's first time in a year. It's kind of neat because, and going back to all the things that I think why people say having kids is so amazing is I also see how it makes us grateful for things that we probably would just take for granted. Right. Like time. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. I can think right now.  Totally. Would you guys watch? So I mean, good boys. Oh, we finally watched. I was so pumped.  This is the movie that Sal was talking about in the theater that was just so hilarious. Tell me it wasn't hilarious. It was great. It was really fun. It was so well made. Serious FOMO. Oh man.    Like you'll say things to your buddies and you know, so there's a couple scenes in the movie where they'll say something like, yeah, I don't remember what they were talking about, but they're talking about sex.  Yeah, yeah.  And he goes, no, I'm pretty sure it's coom. Yeah, you know, because they have no idea. No, they did a really good, in fact, they did such a good job that as you're watching that, you probably can't help but take a trip down memory lane. Exactly what happened, right?  I can't wait to see because that actually, I mean, it's really like relevant right now.  And so he actually brought that up, like he brought sex up and like in the middle of like a movie. He's like, what, are they going to have sex? You know, no, he didn't. And I was like, and Courtney and I were kind of laughing it off and we're like, what, like, what do you know about that? You know, and he's like, I don't know, that's something to do with love. Yeah, okay. Let's, let's keep that. That's all you need to know. I remember that man, 12, you know, right around 12, 13, you're just cussing way more than you normally would just like I can now.   I'm still a little kid throwing it out there, you know. Yeah, that's the funniest thing to do.  Yeah, no, I'm on week two right now.  And I'm not tracking right now. I'm not tracking. I'm not really paying attention. I'm kind of intuitively eating. But here's an example. And I think I've talked about this on the show many times on why there's so much value in tracking and kind of figuring out where you're at. And what led me to this conclusion is that I went to do bench again and I definitely didn't progress. In fact, I struggled to get the same reps out that I got the previous week and program falling to a T sleep is pretty damn good right now gave myself adequate recovery. But if I if I'm probably short on anything, I'm probably like I usually am when I'm not tracking and probably short on my protein intake. And I'm not eating really high calorie right now, especially considering that I'm training like this now. And so that's just an indicator for me that I need to dive into my nutrition a little bit and address that. And so this week, you know, setting a goal for myself to get my calories up, make sure I hit my protein intake so I can see where I'm at. I didn't regress like so because the way the program is written, it's scaling up every week. So, you know, I had an additional set. But, you know, I was looking forward to to benching yesterday, hoping that I would feel like strength gains. And I didn't feel that it felt like that I, you know, struggled. In fact, one of the sets I came a rep short of what the previous week. And I'm sure this happens to a lot of people in their program.  What has my stress levels been? And then also nutritionally, what's been going on? Calories play a huge role in strength gains, a huge role. And now you can go on a cut and train for strength, but here's what'll happen. You'll maybe not gain strength, depending on where you're at. If you're advanced, you're probably not going to gain strength.  But what it'll do is prevent the muscle loss or at least mitigate the metabolic slowdown that happens with a cut. So it's like, I'm cutting. One of the drawbacks of cutting is my metabolism will slow down to try to adapt. And one of the ways your body, your metabolism adapts is by paring muscle down. So it's, this is not shocking. Most people have experienced this, but when you cut your calories, you tend to get weaker in your workouts. So training for strength tends to mitigate that. So if you're relatively advanced or intermediate in your strength, you're training for strength, but your calories aren't up to par, if you maintain your strength, you're doing a good job. But if you want to gain strength, you gotta bump calories, you absolutely have to. And this is where power lifters in the past have gotten a bad rap because- They overdo it.   And so this is where the stereotype of the fat, you know, power lifter or whatever comes from. All mass is good mass. Yeah, so, but no, calories play out massive. I noticed this for myself very clearly.  I pieced this together a long time ago, working out. I was like, oh, if I just eat more, I'll get stronger. Totally. And if I don't eat enough, I'm not gonna get weaker. It's my favorite mentality though, I'm gonna be honest. Just eating more and then like lifting heavier, oh, it just makes me happy inside. Like later on the reveal, not so great. You know, you gotta kind of figure that one out. But yeah, I was going through, I just started myself. So I- Oh, did you start it? And I was going through, you know, bench days and then just got into squatting again and trying to grease the groove. And I was stacking my plates and downstairs in my room. And I got up, I have like 300 pounds. So I was like kind of trying to test myself again. I haven't really tried to test myself squat-wise. And so it's like, it's there, it's there. Like I had a good day, I felt like strong and I felt energetic. And now I'm like, dude, I need some more weights, man. I need to get more plates down there and need to start loading it up again. You're getting that strong, huh? No, it's not that it's getting that strong. I didn't have that much. I was kind of coasting. You know what I mean? It was that mentality of like, let's manage it. Let's keep the maintenance up. Let's keep what I got. But I really haven't pressed in a long time. And I know I'm capable of a lot more. It's just I haven't had the passion in that direction. Now, when you originally ordered your PRX, did you order a kit or did you build everything individually? Yeah, I know they have, okay, they have kits. I ordered a kit and I actually did, like I bought a couple like from like a local like play-again sports. I bought a few like weight plates in addition to what they offered. But yeah, I just went back on there and ordered more of their specific bumper plates that they offer for that. So I got like some more 45s and then Courtney wanted more 10s and 25s, actually a 35. So I did a whole host of new weights to kind of throw down. How many, how much could you max out your bar on with the plates that you have now? Not the ones you're ordering. Are you able to go up to 500 pounds? I almost, like I think like I probably need to get a longer, bigger bar. I don't know if that's like a Texas bar or like. That's all right. You can't deadlift that anyways. Exactly, well, we'll see about that. Yeah, it's a thing like, we all have our lifts, right? Yeah, that's what I need work, dude. I'm not going to.  I'm just like average at all of them. We thought about it, I don't have a lift. My bench is coming back, man. I'm excited about that though. And like even like that, what's Mark Bell's slingshot? Like I just in terms of like the days where my joints are really speaking to me quite a bit and like just having that is like getting more reps in. I'm like, thanks, man. What are they saying to you? Hey, I'm old, look at that. Ooh, huh, ah! Stuff like that. Adam, if you were a superhero, would you be like Hawkeye? Like just kind of good at it, little bit good at everything. You don't have anything cool? That's kind of where I'm at, man. I'm like, I am, I'm pretty, I'm decent at everything. I'm not great at anything. Ideally, that's where you want to be anyway. Yeah, I guess, you know, I think that, I think for me, I'd never had a body type that probably was great. Maybe deadlifting is probably my strength. Come on dude, you tried to get a high deadlift for a year of your whole life. And you got up to 550. Fairly new. Yeah, I think you're tall, you got long arms and you're built to deadlift. I can guarantee you this, if you focused on deadlift for a while, you'd probably pull 600 pounds. Yeah, we'll see. I mean, I'm excited to get after this. On my Instagram too, I posted it, which will be great because I can go back and kind of reference towards the end of this program. I did a couple heavy single days right before I started the program to kind of see where I was at, before I went into this. So it'll be interesting to see where I come up. But for sure, I know I need to address nutrition, which of course, right, it's not like a, I thought maybe I could get into it without dialing in my nutrition right away. And then I would start to do that later on. But after the first week of feeling that way, I'm like, okay, I gotta put some more effort into it. It's important, it's not as important as getting shredded. Like nutrition for getting shredded is like, you have to like every minor detail, but it's still important to get stronger. Yeah, for me, and what I'll do, just so the audience knows how I would do that. Because I don't feel like, I just don't feel like tracking like crazy, but I will, I'll track my protein and pretty much calories. Like I'll make sure I'm getting adequate protein and getting enough calories. Like 200 grams of protein or more? Yeah, right around 200. That's normally good for me. Even 180 is okay. I'm just, I definitely can fall way less. You know, it's really, especially when we're like, you know, right now when I'm not, again, I'm not trying to track or focus. I'm intuitively eating.  I won't eat till noon or one, noon or one I get a good meal, maybe a lunar or something, which what's that got, 40 grams, maybe 50 grams of protein in it. And then I train and then I come home later in the evening and I eat one or two more times. And imagine even if it's like 100 to 130 grams of protein. Yeah, so I can easily fall on. Which is adequate to keep you where you're at. Yeah, healthy. But not to push you. Yeah, not if I'm trying to gain. Yeah. Not especially this program too. I mean, it's definitely a good amount of volume per muscle group. Yeah. I've been sore, you know, way sore on after all my workouts. So I definitely.  And like really get like to the little detail of it. Well, when he gets, because at this, this far into the program, there's no percentages, right? Right now you're just lifting. Yeah. Not yet, not yet. But yeah, once I get to the percent, because I've never done that, right? I've always just, oh, I feel like this today and I lift that. And I also, if I put a weight on the bar, and even if I say I'm gonna lift eight, but I put too much weight, I might do five. Like that's how, where this I'm gonna be very calculated about it. You wanna follow it exactly? Exactly, yeah, that was my plan. And so I was like trying to get, I don't even have two and a half's, you know, like I never like had that mentality towards it, but I wanna try it out. No, me too.  Because that was supposed to be, I wanted 10, but I was supposed to do at least eight reps right there. And it was my grip that gave. I couldn't get eight because I was losing the bar. Did you have your alternate grip? No, I had to double over.  No, I'm trying to do it double over and build that that way without any straps or anything. At least why I'm working in the high rep range. Maybe when I get down to, you know, down to like fives and singles and stuff like that, maybe I'll do. So what'd you pull with your double overhand grip? 360 something for seven. Yeah, well, that's pretty damn good for your grip. Yeah, it's already getting. No hook grip? No. Yeah, that's pretty damn good, dude. Yeah, I mean, it's getting there. I mean, I wanna be pulling over 400 like that. I would double over for sure without having to go to a. I'm jealous because I can't start yet. My QL, I tweaked it, you know, like last week. Remember I told you guys? Yeah. I was working out and I tweaked it a little bit and it's still not feeling great.  So this morning I woke up like 35 minutes later than I normally would and I had to work out this morning. So, and I remember this happening when I was a trainer.  But years ago as a trainer, I remember this happening to me once and then I realized the value of it. I don't know, I'm sure this happened to you before where you're like, you think you have an hour to work out after you're finished with your client? Yeah.  I gotta be here. I have 30 minutes. Damn it. I don't have an hour. What I did is I would just take my hour of workout and do it all in 30 minutes and I would rest for 25 to 30 seconds in between sets and you have to cut the weight way down. But you get the most amazing pump ever. And every once in a while, that kind of a change in a workout actually gets your body to respond. So that's what I did this morning. That's how I actually love to do hit or 25 minute type of work. I don't like to actually program it. They're just, they're always tends to be a day like that. Yes. It tends to be a day where I thought I'd have more time or what, or I've got to go out of town and it's like, shit, I don't have time to get a long hour, hour and a half type of workout and shower on this. I got 25, 30 minutes. Like what a perfect time for, and because you don't do that consistently, it always, it always throws your body. So this morning's workout, I did an hour workout in just under 35 minutes. It had supersets. I went a lot lighter. My rest periods were shorter. Amazing pump. Amazing workout. And it always reminds me of the value of novelty. You know what I mean? Just changing the idea to post over the weekend on what's the best rep range. And you know, and this just goes to show the value of experience. Because if you're just knowledgeable about the studies that are out there on rep ranges, the clear answer would be eight to 12 reps. Clear answer. Eight to 12 reps is the best rep range. That's what studies show. But experience tells me. It's what you're not doing. It's, yeah. That all the rep ranges build muscle, especially if it's the rep range you're not training in. So what's the best rest period for building muscle and strength? Probably around one to two minutes, maybe even three minutes. But I know that because typically I rest about one, one and a half to two minutes, the fact that this morning I was able to only rest 25 or 30 minutes, that sent- 30 seconds. Yeah, or 30, excuse me, 30 seconds. It sent a phenomenal muscle building signal because of the novelty. And you're not gonna find studies on that unfortunately because the studies are never, you know, never long. Anyway, speaking of Instagram, this morning I had probably 10 people share with me a, I'm not gonna call this person out, but a fitness or health influencers post recently. And I think it's because this person's post was kind of counter to their message, what they've always said before. So what the post was, and I'm not gonna call this person out because I actually think they're doing something good for themselves or at least the direction they're moving is good for them. But it was that they are going to not have sex anymore for like six months. I saw that. So they're gonna be abstinent for six months.  And, you know, a lot of stuff revolves around that. Open relationship. Yeah, and people were sharing it with me like, I think they anticipated I'd go on there and make fun of this person, but you know what it reminds me of? It reminds me of the journey that people have with nutrition or with exercise. How many times have you worked with a client who comes to you and is like, that's it. I can't handle it anymore. This weekend I eat like crazy. I drink like crazy. That's it. No sugar, no alcohol. And I'm gonna stay away from those things at least for the next six months. Or I'm avoiding them for a year or whatever. How many times have you heard that happen? And then as we all know, that's just another form of dysfunction. It's another way of, you're just going one extreme to the other, but it's kind of like bouncing off the rails before we start to find the middle. Or it turns into more pathology, which is restrict binge, restrict binge, restrict binge. I'm not, I am, I'm not, I am. But you know, I was thinking about fasting and what fasting did for me, for food. When I chose to try fasting, it wasn't because I was sick and tired of eating terrible food or being fat or anything like that. It was because I read studies that showed that there may be benefits. There may be health benefits. I wanted to experiment with it. Up until this point, I'd eaten six to eight meals a day. And when I fasted, I actually learned a lot from it. Abstinence in that case taught me quite a bit. Like I realized how I wasn't controlled and chained to food, like, or at least it didn't have the control and power over me like it did before. So this person maybe might experience that. They may go, you know, six months without sex and realize- So this timing-wise is all the no nut November, sort of a movement that we're seeing everywhere. Yeah, what's that? What is that all about? I don't know. So it's- No nut November. Who came up with this? So a bunch of guys like not looking at porn, not having sex, not masturbating, all that kind of stuff. It's all November. Like this is the lame month. You know what I think that comes from? I think that's a little bit of a self regulation that has happened online because of the accessibility of pornography. Yeah. That's what I think. I mean, I'm all for it, but it's just funny because it's like we need like a designated month for like all these things. We can't just like implement it into our own lives, like on our own and not like be a part of like everybody in this group mentality thing. Yeah. Well, you know how people are. They need like a structure and a thing sometimes to get to do it at first. And it- That stuff just doesn't work on me at all. No. Like, oh, everybody's doing it?   Yeah. Justin's doing it- Over time. I'll be the only guy in Pornhub, I guess. You know what's funny? I wonder if, because Pornhub keeps crazy statistics. You ever seen the statistics that they spit out? They must get like a, like a drop.  And what happened recently where- I would imagine to your point in your theory of what you're talking about right now though, it would actually end up only benefiting them because probably people would restrict. And then binge. And then binge like crazy. Yeah, exactly. You know what I'm saying? Go from not at all to all of a sudden like, ah, now I need it four hours. You guys remember that one, there was that one missile scare? It was like a- Yeah, was that in Hawaii? Yeah, I remember that. And like people were like literally going into like sewers or whatever, like like climbing into trenches and like all scared. Yeah, I forgot what it was. It was like a news report that there was a missile launch. It turned out to be false, but everybody totally panicked for like 30 minutes or an hour. That was the warning that the radio station accidentally played. Yes. Yeah, that was crazy. So Pornhub showed a significant drop. Oh, yeah, that's right. A significant drop in porn use right when that happened. But then when everybody realized there was no, oh, there's no problem. Yes, Spike. Massive search. Yay! Yeah, everything's okay! Broke it. I'm gonna celebrate. Put the port, put the port up on. Well, speaking of stations and things like that, did you guys see what NBC is launching, their new e-commerce site? What? So it's gonna be on, NBC's gonna be start doing this first and you'll see like the way they're gonna do commercials. And I think what it's gonna look like if I was reading the article correctly, it's kind of similar to like how we do on YouTube where it shrinks and then you have kind of an advertising. Oh, I see. But then there'll be a QR code on the TV that you can walk up to your phone and scan it. It takes you right to the e-commerce site. So think of an advertisement for, you know, your favorite, whatever, sneakers or shirt or Viori, right?  And then right next to it will be a QR code.  Like a discount or something. Yeah, yeah, 20% off right now on this or that and you'll walk up, scan your phone on the QR code. Take a picture of it or whatever. Right, not even.  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, just skew it. Your phone picks it up. Oh, that's right. It's a square thing with them. Yeah, yeah. And then it automatically will send you right to the website. Interesting. I feel like at some point there's gonna be, if you keep your phone on Bluetooth, it'll just come on and you'll get an invitation. Would you like a $25 off coupon on your phone? And if you turn off Bluetooth, you don't get it or if you haven't, I feel like that'd be easier, right? I don't know. I'm having to walk up. Yeah, I don't know if it'll be a Bluetooth thing that'll be like that. Normally when you go onto websites now, you notice that they ask you right away if they can have access, right? So a lot of times you agree to that as soon as you go to a website. So I'm sure maybe after the first time you hit the QR code, then it's like, can we access? So is this a- Send you notifications, right? Is this a site specifically to that NBC owns where they're gonna be selling things online? Is that what's going on? So I think, what I think what will happen is, I think NBC, this will be one of the ways that they make money is they'll make a cut. Like so, and I don't know, this is me speculating because the article didn't go in real depth like exactly how NBC makes their money. But what I would assume is you would work out a deal with advertising. So we know that advertising on television and radio has been taking a nosedive, right? Podcasting in spaces like this and social media has been on the rise. So my theory would be one of the ways that you would save deals with these companies is offering like a company like Pepsi who's used to spending millions of dollars on television but have seen it decrease over years and is now probably looking at other platforms or mediums for them to advertise on. They can probably offer them a discounted rate or hey, you could still advertise on TV or we're gonna be doing this e-commerce site this way. But then NBC will probably make some sort of a kickback because you go through their e-commerce site, does that make sense? So now Pepsi, instead of paying a million dollars in NBC to advertise on that, they only pay a quarter million dollars but then NBC makes a 5% kickback on everything that goes through that or something. I don't know, that would be my guess on how they would control that. It is interesting to watch how advertisers are having to figure out, you know what I mean? How to get to people. Get into the streaming side of things. Because you used to be forced to watch commercials which is funny thinking about it now. It's funny, have you tried, Justin, have you tried ever watching like live TV with your kids and just see what their reaction is? Katrina won't even watch it. They get angry. Yeah. Katrina does too. It's like you're held hostage, you know? You're just like waiting, is this over yet?  They hammer you with advertisements. Yeah, they do, right? You don't realize how used to it we were and how used to it we used to just sit through that. Or I would go make myself something in the kitchen and be like, is it on again?  It doesn't bother me as much because whenever I'm watching kind of unless it's a movie, but if it's a movie I'm really into, I'm buying it. I'm buying it on Apple or I'm watching Netflix or whatever that. So if it's on television, TV time now for me is like past time where I'm working most of the time. So you're doing both. Yeah, I'm doing both. So commercials don't bother me but this is actually a little battle in our house. Like Katrina gets hella mad when commercials come on. And that's the other thing too, commercials, they jump them up volume too. So you'll be watching like a movie and then all of a sudden the commercial comes on. Oh, I'm the guy that mutes it, right? So that's what she, she's always getting onto me. Mute it, mute it. And I'm like on my phone working and I'm like, ah, here you take it, you mute it. I don't care, it doesn't bother me. I forgot that commercials did that. Yeah. You know how they do that, right? Because there's regulations that say that they're not allowed to change the volume or whatever, but the way they do is by compressing the sound. So they figure out a way around regulations to make commercials louder. I remember reading about that long time. Yeah, they're always, they're always loud. At least on my TV, they're significantly louder than what the actual movie or whatever you're watching. Yeah.  That's why she's always getting onto me a lot. So I just give her the remote and I'm like, if we're watching- Sham, wow! Oh God, my ears. I'm like this though. I just deaf hear it. I'm on my phone doing something. You know what's funny is that thinking back, back in the day, there was even a piece of me that valued the commercial because it gave me an opportunity, because you couldn't record or pause TV. So it's like, oh commercial, cool. I got to pee. Yeah, yeah. But now that I can pause it, I'm like, well, there's no use for this. It's like little intermissions. Yeah. There's no use for this commercial. I know.  Dude, I was reading about, this weekend I did a workout on, did an extra workout on Saturday and then I did the whole sauna, you know, over at, what's that place? It's not Club Sport anymore. It's a big, is it a big club? Yeah. Yeah, yeah. They're the new owners. Great place. Anyway, I'm in the sauna and because I'm in there, I think, God, I want to read more about the history of saunas. I don't realize this, but sauna use the heating up a room and sitting in that room to benefit from the heat. That dates back over a thousand years in Europe and in other parts of the world, there's evidence that it goes back even further. And it's funny, anytime you find something that's shared by people in cultures that didn't communicate with each other. Like if you see, for example, Fasting, you find that in every major religion. You'll find it in Asian cultures. You'll find it in European cultures. You'll find, you know, just at practice, it's practiced everywhere. That means that there's some truth to it. Same thing with sauna use. Oh yeah, Romans. Isn't there like Russian bath houses and all these types of things? And it's a part of culture. Like the Mayans were doing it forever too. Like in the, what do they call them? They call them like hot tents or whatever where they like keep the heating, they progressively heated up over time. The tree has gone and done it.  Yeah, what is that called, Doug? That's called, I forget what it's called. Sweat lodge? There you go. So they call them now, right? So anyway, so obviously there's value to it. And we now have studies that support the value of, you know, training your body through heat because it causes changes in the body, the adaptations that you get from the changes or from the stress or where you gain the benefit. So I was reading a study on, that was done on athletes because now we have some studies done on athletes. Like what are the actual benefits of sauna use on athletic performance? There was a study in the Journal of Science and Medicine and Sport. They took distance runners and they had them use saunas for three weeks total. So, and there was a total of 12 half hour sauna sessions in that three week period. So it's not a ton of sauna use, it's just four times a week. Yeah, four times a week, 30 minutes each. They're time to exhaustion. In other words, their endurance boosted 32%. Wow. Wow, substantial. That's not a little bit. That's a massive boost in stamina and endurance. Now I noticed this myself when I use the sauna regularly. And think about this. When you're exercising to exhaustion, when you're pushing yourself that hard. It's usually the heat that's the big indicator, right? Heat plays a role. Yeah, your whole body starts to kind of shut down and be fatigued and be like down regularly. When I use the sauna regularly, I can squat more reps. I don't need to rest as much. But the end of my workout is way stronger than it is if I don't use a sauna. And that study right there kind of shows. Now that's just, yeah, go ahead. And that's just benefits from a regular sauna. Then you throw in the fact of like what I love and you were at bay this weekend. I was in here this weekend using our clear light because that thing, you get the infrared on top of it. So you get the benefits, the heat benefits you're talking about. But then you also get the benefits from the infrared because it has near and far infrared in there. So I mean, it's a double whammy. I love it. It's been one of my like, and it's easy for me. Obviously we have it in our studio so it makes it a lot easier. But it's like one of my favorite things to do post-workout. Dude, it is, okay, think of it this way, okay? Think of your body's ability to acclimate to cold or hot because by the way, there's also benefits and studies support this quite conclusively to also getting your body used to cold. But think of your body's ability to acclimate to heater cold as a muscle. So imagine if you have this muscle that is responsible for your body's ability to acclimate to temperature changes.  You're in air conditioned or heated home, air conditioned or heated car, air conditioned or heated office. So it's literally like being extremely sedentary for this muscle and what happens when you're sedentary? Imagine if you barely ever move your legs, what happens to the muscles of those legs? They get really, really weak. They lose their ability to do what they're supposed to do and that comes along with poor health. So I think the health benefits that come from heat and cold therapy are part of it is the benefits because you're stressing your body but part of it is because we're so damn weak in that area. You just become more resilient to all these forces. And I look at that as like a whim hoff or somebody that goes to that extreme of being more tolerant can function normally in arctic temperatures. Yup. And that's, it seems like a superpower but really that's just a training that led into that. Dude, it's so funny. So years ago I owned part of a gym down in Palm Desert which is next to Palm Springs.  It would hit super, super hot, right? So I had a gym down there, super hot all the time. It took me a little while to get used to it but then I kind of got used to it. Came up to San Jose to visit my family and everybody was complaining about how hot it was and it was 89 or 90 up here. And I remember going outside and being like, oh, it's pleasant. What are you talking about? Yeah, it's perfect. Totally used to it. Then I thought, then I think about, I had a client who moved here from Minnesota and I started training her and I remember she showed up to it. It was literally 48 degrees or 50 degrees outside here in California. She wore like shorts. She had shorts on and this really thin kind of long sleeve shirt. And I'm like, aren't you freezing? And she's like, what do you mean? The sky is clear. It's a beautiful day. That's how I felt coming back from Chicago. It was crazy. Cause like I was at a football game and we were watching a high school game and everybody was out there with like parkas on and like beanies and everything.  And then coming back was a totally different story. Well, you guys talk about the benefits of being on the acclimate to hot and cold. The biggest thing that I noticed and I've talked about on the show when we've brought up sauna use before is when we really got into that whole hot cold contrast which has now been, I don't know, what four years? When are we, we were at the other studio At least a few years. It was the other studio when we first started talking about it. Yes. Like cryo came out and it was all popular. Yes, when cryo was getting popular, we went and did it was the other studio we were at and that's when I started doing the hot cold thing. And boy, I have since then it's just been something that I keep it in my routine. I don't ever go longer than a month without doing the hot cold contrast. And I've never felt so good as far as not getting sick. Oh yeah.  Oh, this is well documented. This is actually well documented. There are studies that show significant reductions in infection rates with a cold or influenza. Now, as a, and here's another strategy. Let's say you start to feel, you know, you start to feel like I wonder if I'm, I think I might be getting a little sick, go in a sauna and get your body really hot. Now people think, well, how does that supposed help? Well, think about the function of a fever. Why does your body have a fever when you get sick? That increase in body temperature, part of it is a result of your mounted immune system, but part of it is also it's inhospitable to bacteria and a virus. So going into a sauna is an artificial fever. So you start to feel sick, go use a sauna. Of course, make sure you're hydrated.  You're not gonna add a fever to a fever. It's too late at that point.  But let's say you're feeling like, ah, I think I might be getting sick. Boy, it's a killer. It kills whatever's going on. I've done it several times and it's amazing to me how amazing I feel anyway. Oh, I wanted to touch on something. You know how last week we talked about that haunted house? Well, get your hands away from me. You know what I mean? Yeah. Boom. Yeah. You know, we talked about that haunted house last week that offered $20,000. Yeah, yeah. We watched the videos for that too. We need to tell the audience exactly what this is all about. Dude. So we didn't talk about it afterwards. No, no, no, no. What it all entails. Stupid. Makes sense now. Yeah, it's not even like a real haunted house to me. It is people that are seeking out like... It's BDSM or whatever. No, what do they call?  It's a masochist. Yeah, the people that are into that that just want to be totally tortured. That's what it is. It's a 10 hour, eight or 10 hour process. So I read more details. $20,000, if you make it through, every time you don't, you take, you say pass on a whatever they call it, they call it a stunt, but it's basically a type of torture. They find you $500. So out of the $20,000, right? If you don't make it all the way through, you don't get the $20,000 either. There's a 40 page waiver that you have to sign. And what you're signing away is that they can cut your hair, slap you, punch you. Pull a tooth out. Pull a tooth out, break your tooth. Yeah, dislocate your shoulders.  I mean, they were doing all kinds of... You can like just mangle you.  And he's like, how do I do this legally? Oh yeah. No, you, we were watching some of the clips. You could see the people going through it. There's no one laughing about it. None of the people that went through it. So originally when we talked about it, it was like a haunted house, $20,000. I would do that, right? Yeah, I wouldn't do that. No, I wouldn't do that. And it's the people that are doing it. You don't even hear them talking about, oh, I almost made it to the money.  No, they just want to get tortured. Hammered, yeah. Disgusting. Yeah, it's not even like the house, it's just a house.  This isn't a haunted house.  There's a petition online right now to ban us. Yeah, because people are like, this is legal torture. Where do you stand on this? Because everybody, the people agree to do it. I mean, they obviously want to do it. I mean, isn't that weird?  They want to do it. And there was a waiting list of what? Was it like 70,000 people or something crazy? Yeah. No. Yeah, dude. Well, think about it this way.  Where are you going to go? He's got the market cornered. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Speaking of Halloween stuff, did you see the Airbnb thing here in California? No, what happened? Yeah, five murders in a... Oh my God. What? How's it an Airbnb? I saw that on the news. Yeah, so they're, and of course it's been made big news and now Airbnb is trying to pivot and figure it a way out to keep this from happening.  Just how you could, they're going to restrict certain people and I guess more screening just to get to rent a house. So the person who rented the house, you know, claim that, oh, they're trying to get away from the fires and that their family was going to come to rent this big house out or whatever they thought. And so, you know, Airbnb rents the house out. Well, they end up throwing a 100 plus person party at this house. Oh, wow. And there ends up a shooting happens when five people were shot and killed at this Airbnb property.  Yeah. Oh, people will get shot. Maybe that's why someone got shot. The owner showed up. Crazy though, right?   So crazy. Oh dude, I read, this is kind of disturbing. I want to share this with you guys because it's pretty crazy. I'm actually wrote down the quote. So this was a study that was done on cancer. And it was done by North Carolina State University. And they found that when enteric glial cells are exposed to secretions from colon tumors. So these are brain cells. So brain cells exposed to the secretions that colon tumors, so tumors from the colon, make the glial cells convert into promoters of tumor growth. Okay, so what does this mean? This means that the cancers in the colon are signaling the brain to help them make more cancers.  This might cancer is such a hard thing to treat. You know what I mean?  And there was, I remember one time reading a study where they developed a drug. Cause when tumors grow, they start to develop their own, they increase the amount of nutrients that they receive to feed themselves more. So it's like they'll make more blood vessels and whatever to continue to feed their rapid growth. So I remember reading the study where they came out with a medicine that blocked the new formation of blood cells and stuff like that to see, you know, these blood vessels, like there we go, we'll cut them off.  Yeah, dude, isn't that crazy?  Yikes. All right, first question is from Ben Vana. Is there a difference between training with bands or cables? Oh yeah, there's a big difference. The benefits of training with the resistance band, so here's the thing. The benefits of training with any form of resistance is typically the unique aspect of that form of resistance that you don't find with other types of resistance. You're manipulating the strength curve. Yes, so bands, what are bands unique for? Why are bands different? Bands, the further you stretch them out, the harder it gets. The harder they pull. So how is that, so it's very different than a cable, a cable. But we had to explain that real quick. So in what I said about manipulating the strength curve, what that means is most exercises are easier at the end of the rep, right? So towards the end where a band flips that on its head. As you get further towards the end of the rep, the bands being stretched out completely and so then it now makes the exercise more challenging at the end of the rep, more so than it would be if you didn't have a band. Yeah, so think of it this way. Let's say you're doing a barbell squat, it's gonna be hardest at the bottom of the squat. It's easiest when you're almost at the very top, right? Like if I gave you a bunch of weight to squat and you just went down three inches, wouldn't be a problem.  So by attaching bands to the bar, the bottom of the squat is still kind of easy because the band hasn't stretched that much. But as you go up, the band stretches and it gets more and more difficult, applying more resistance when you're stronger. And this, adding bands to weights was an absolute breakthrough for power lifters and strength athletes. And that was a West Side barbell, right? They were the first ones to really implement this. But Soviet athletes were the ones to, you know how Soviet athletes messed with variable resistance at first? It was with... The little thing that looked the hooks and then it dumps when you drop it down. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I remember a thing, I think I watched a documentary on that and they talked about that. I saw, you know, Ben Pollock was using those the other day. I saw, I hadn't seen anybody else use those before. I'd never seen anyone else. And they have the hooks and it was common with bench or squat. And it's designed that when you hit the bottom, it unhooks so you can come out. So you lower 500 pounds, but you only squat up 400 because the lowering part, you're strong. Yeah, I like the deadlifts. They have that flexible bar. So that way when you're pulling from the ground, you're starting to rip each plate off one by one. Oh, right. Yeah, it kind of builds up the resistance as you get higher up in your lockout. It is a lot harder to deadlift with a super stiff bar. I remember the first time doing that and I realized why. I'm like, why is this so much harder? Yeah. It's because you're lifting all the weight right away. Oh, at once. Rather than moving up an inch or whatever. Yeah, it's pretty ingenious. Without the whole... No, it's bands are an exceptional tool. I didn't use bands until the way later in my training. I never used bands. I used to think bands were complete waste of time when I was working out.  Why are you gonna work out with bands? Well, it didn't... Just for jazzer sizes. What I didn't understand, that's why I wanted to clarify that for those that are listening is I didn't understand how it was manipulating the strength curve and why that's important. Because unless you're doing that, you can't really match. I can't tell. Yeah, you just can't. But cables, now cables are consistent all the way through. Right. So the resistance that you get with a cable at the bottom of the exercise and the top of the exercise, it's consistent. It's matching the strength curve all the way through where most other exercises that you're doing that are free weight, there's gonna be this natural strength curve that happens as you get towards the end of the rep. It becomes a lot easier, but by adding bands to those, it flips that on its head. Now, if you were to compare bands versus cables alone, cables are superior. Consistent resistance by itself in comparison to the band type of resistance will build more muscle. But bands, I will say this. Less damaging. Yes, they're less damaging on the body. That's why I love them so much. In MAPS Anabolic, I recommended bands for trigger sessions. Trigger sessions are these little mini short workouts you do on your off days and you do them super frequently. And I noticed when I used bands, they just worked much better and it was because they produced less damage. They didn't hurt my muscles as much as if I used weights.  So it sort of matches that explosive feel that you can get with these power moves. Here's a little trick, by the way. If you wanna do an explosive movement with a cable, one of the drawbacks to do an explosive movement with a cable is you have to do an explosive. It jumps a little. Yeah, to do an explosive move with a cable, you're gonna use a weight that's sub-maximal because otherwise you can't move very fast. The problem with that is you throw the weight stack up and it flips everywhere and it makes a lot of noise and it's not good for the machine. So here's a little trick. Take the pin that sticks out of the weight, attach a band to that and then anchor the band on the floor and it keeps the, it allows you to move the weight super fast or prevents the weight from flopping all over the place. And I started doing this. This is back when I was in Jiu-Jitsu in Judo and I'm like, God, I wanna practice explosive throws. I don't have a partner. I wanna use a cable. The problem is if I fling the weight, it's gonna flip all over the place. So I attach bands. Brilliant way to apply explosiveness.  Totally. In fact, now- You're starting to see bodybuilders now use bands. I don't think they know how to use them properly or whatever, but I'll tell you what, if you use bands in your training and you're relatively advanced, you're gonna build more muscle. It's one of my favorite things that I add to my training arsenal. Next question is from Ella Beasley. What are the best weighted exercises for building abs? We have a guide on training your abs and we talk a lot about weighted exercises and how best to build abs that show. So this is, it's a free guide. It doesn't cost anything. It's at mindpumpfree.com. We'll make sure that we link it. But in terms of this question here, why would anybody first off wanna build their abs? This is something that I learned later on again in my training career. I was one of those people that I had to get to seven or 8% body fat to have a six pack. I just, I don't store body fat on my arms or my legs. They're almost always lean. But if I do, it's right on my abs. And I just, I was not one of those guys that a 10% had a six pack. I had to get lower than that. And even then when I was relaxed, I didn't have, I was always envious of those guys that had abs or girls that had abs that you could see when they were relaxed. You know what I mean? They're just walking around with their shirt off and you could see their abs stick out a little bit. And I was like, man, I wish I had that. And I couldn't figure it out. I was doing high rep exercises and you know, twists and all these crunches and just wasn't working. Then I realized, why don't I build them? Like if they get a little bigger, they'll stick out more. So that's what I did. I started doing weighted exercises from abs and they stuck out more to the point now where I have a visible six pack around 10 or 11%. So I don't need to get quite as lean to have those abs show. Now the question is, what are the best weighted exercises? By far, one of my favorite is a good old-fashioned decline sit up. Just do a decline sit up, curl your way up real slow and you'll feel those abs build. And it's because the reps are really low. So. Now to that, I think it's important to talk about the importance of first making sure that you have good mechanics with abs. Because in fact, I got tagged on the guys over at Squat University did a post and I think the post said something along the lines that crunches were a waste of time and for most people are either hurting themselves or not doing it correctly. And somebody was like, send it right away. Of course, I get tagged or that stuff sent to me. And I said, well, I haven't read the post. I don't know what he exactly is talking about, but I could make a case for why crunches can be worthless for some people. Some people, in fact, when I think about my average client, I would have to say that more than half of them did not do crunches correctly. Most of them were so hip flexor dominant that they were using more of their hip flexors to crunch up or sit up in an exercise.   Yeah, you're gonna end up hurting. And that's what actually what the statement was, was that crunches hurt more people's backs than I think they did and they helped people build abs or something along those lines. And so, you know, and Sal alluded to our free guide, it addresses that talk set in there. We also have great videos on our YouTube channel that we talk about addressing that if you have hip flexor dominance and how to work on that before you do abs. But that's important. It's important that you get really good, non-weighted control of your abs and you can feel your abs working because I can make a perfect sit up and fail at like five reps by just going slow and controlled and slowly rolling each vertebrae down as I open up and make that extremely difficult and challenging for five to seven reps before I load it. And I think too, like this is one of those muscle groups that commonly like people lose connection with. And so it's very easy to think that just going through the range of motion that you think is preferable for a crunch or that just like a hanging ab leg raise is gonna start building that back up again, but you don't have that like connection established to where you're actually directing the work to the abs. And so to establish that again is paramount before adding load much like any other muscle or anything else that you've, you're probably more familiar with like in a curl if I'm not feeling my bicep get involved, you're probably gonna try and stop and figure that out. So... Yeah, so here's the problem though. People do feel their abs, but they're not working their abs are as a stabilizer, but not working them through a full range of motion. In fact, you take the average person, have them stand up straight and just tell them to do pelvic tilts. See if they can do that. See if they can articulate their pelvis. Right, just bracing. Yeah, just take their pelvis and go for them, sticking their butt out to tuck in their tailbone without having to use their hips. Just articulate that and they still can't do it. This is super obvious when you see people do leg raises. Watch someone do a leg raise, especially the one where you brace your arms at the bottom and to bring their knees up. And what they're doing is they're just using their hip flexors. So you have to understand what the abs do. The abs, when they contract, they fold you at your lumbar spine, not at your hips. And that's the thing. The average person watches a person fold. They look very similar if you don't know what you're looking for. That's right, they just see someone fold forward and they say, oh, that's an ab. You can fold forward at the hips and not fold forward at the lumbar. So it's really about working through that lumbar, getting the lumbar spine to flex and then extend. That's what the abs do, not at the hips. So once you figure that out, then you can start to add resistance. In fact, most people just doing that will give them all the resistance they need. Oh yeah, I mean, myself. I openly admit that I probably neglect my ab training more than anything else. We've talked about this before.   So it doesn't take much when you do it correctly. Now, if you're somebody who's been training your abs and you've got great control of it and you can do 15, 20 perfect sit-ups, no problem, then okay, well then loading it, I think is totally fine and encouraged and a good idea because a lot of people don't do that. And I would agree with Sal with what exercise I would start with. Next question is from more Jojo. Why is the compete and cheat mentality with food so common among bodybuilding athletes? Do you think athletes and other sports have a better relationship with food than bodybuilders? Okay, so great, great, great question. Also not fair, okay, so I'll explain why, okay? If we're gonna compare bodybuilders to any other space in terms of food relationships, you can't compare bodybuilders to athletes. Bodybuilders are judged on how they look, not how they perform. Now compare bodybuilders to models, okay? Look at models, look at bodybuilders. What you find is a similar pathology with nutrition, very, very similar. The problem is two things. One, bodybuilding attracts people who tend to have insecurities with how they look, but forget that for a second. If you're hardcore about bodybuilding, you are competing in a sport that is basing everything on how you look. Athletes, on the other hand, sure, especially if you're professional, how you look is kind of important for sponsorships, but really it's about how you perform. It's all about performance. The reason why athletes have a better general, now I'll agree with that, I think athletes have a generally a better relationship with food than bodybuilders, is because it's all based on performance. This is why doing a program like MAPS PowerLift for somebody who has body image issues is brilliant. It's absolutely brilliant.  And is that gonna benefit your relationship to food? Yes, will it completely fix it? No, there's more work to be done, but it will change the focus. But if you're always, imagine that, always, it's always about how you look, how you look, how you look, you get on a stage.  That's what fucks with people. I can also make the argument coming from an athletic sort of background that it would behoove an athlete to kind of go through the discipline and dedication it takes to manage your macronutrients, to figure out the best formula for you specifically in your body, besides the performance aspect of it, just the knowledge of it to know how your body reacts and dive deep into nutrition. But again, I think the other is more common. I don't necessarily think it's a better or worse relationship, it's a different relationship. That's what it is. I mean, it could be just as detrimental to your health on both.  And you cannot think that that's not affecting their insides. And sometimes I think that can be, it's like the skinny fat person. I used to always tell my clients that were like really overweight and they put on fat so easy. I used to tell them, hey, this is a blessing in disguise. Your body tells you when you're not eating well and it shows you. I've had many clients that have a lot of issues going on inside because they're skinny fat because they don't put on a ton of extra weight. So you see that relationship very similar in your athletic people that are in sports, like basketball, baseball, football. They're burning so many calories that they get away with. I think there's just a lot more ignorance. Right, yeah. It's a different relationship. That's what I saw. I mean, we're going to buffets, we're going to like as many calories as, I mean, yes, it is like what's gonna do best for me performance-wise on the field, but then the association of consuming and buy it like whatever it is, like it doesn't matter the quality of it. It was just a matter of like getting it in and performing and then I was gonna see what was gonna happen. Well, you guys have trained X NFL and major league baseball play. I mean, I have and a lot of them are in terrible shape because they were so used to always practicing, always playing games that they never had to watch their diet and then now once that slows down. Oh, yeah. These athletes are fucked. Yeah, the same behaviors they've had for 20 years of their life playing sports they no longer can have. And they're completely lost. So, and that's a very bad relationship too. If it's, but it's different, right? The bodybuilders- I would rank it. I mean, you can definitely rank it in terms of what's probably a worse place to be versus where it's easier, but you're right. I mean, when you're in season versus off season for performance for athletes, that can definitely happen. It's worse. So, if I were to rank these, I would say this, the worst is basing your diet on how you look, which would be bodybuilders, models, that kind of stuff. The second one would be weight, how much you weigh. So, if you look at the sports where athletes tend to have the biggest disparities between when they're competing, when they're not, look at the sports that have a weight class, boxers, wrestlers, MMA fighters, those guys, way different. I can make a case to challenge that though. I can make a case to challenge that and say the opposite is true because at least the bodybuilders, although they're driven by insecurities, the way they look and they have a poor relationship because of those reasons, at least they've learned the tools on how to control their body weight up and down and what's a good amount of calories. They definitely are more informed. Right, they're way more informed. That's for sure. Because I've had professional athletes that looked amazing when they were professional athletes but now that they're 40. They don't know how many calories.  All they cared about was playing their sport.  So, at least with a bodybuilder or let's say, I get both of these X, right? X bodybuilder, X pro athlete. They're both 45 years old. They both had bad relationships with food and now I'm gonna have to work on them. It's just a different thing I'm working on. With the bodybuilder, when I tell them macros and all that sort of that, it computes very well with them but then I have to get them to detach from this insecure thing that they were driven by for so many years where the athlete, they may not have some sort of an attachment to the way they look.  So, they have no idea on X athletes have no idea on proper portions. Right. You know, I'll train like these X female athletes and they'll be like, this is how I used to always eat, you know? And I'm like, well, show me, like, what is a typical meal? And I look, I'm like, that's a massive meal. You were eating that when you were training twice a day for- And then the answer is always more hit cardio to make up for it. Right. So, I could make the case that, Sure. You know, both of them, they're different relationships. So, I don't think that one is worse than the other. I think that they both could and they both can have okay relationships too. I don't want to beat up on all athletes or beat up on all bodybuilders somewhere in the middle. Yeah. But if, you know, if we were, if I were to say that I had two people in the, you know, middle age that were X athlete and then it was an X bodybuilder, both had poor relationships, I couldn't say, I wouldn't say that one is worse than the other. They're just different challenges as a coach that I have to overcome. It's like the difference between hyper focus and no focus. You know, like too much focus or none at all. No, that's a good point. And then what I said earlier about a little bit of a, what you might call a self-selection bias kind of plays a role.  That's why a lot of people become, you know, bodybuilders, less in terms of sports.  Next question is from Lewis Wooten, 92. How have you all dealt with being disciplined and going after and achieving personal fitness goals whilst maintaining a healthy social life and personal relationships? I think the going after fitness goals can contribute positively to your social life and personal relationships so long as it's not an obsession or an extreme fitness goal. Here's the thing that I think a lot of people need to realize. This took me a long time to realize if you have super lofty extreme goals, then that means you're going to have to apply a certain amount of singular obsessive focus in which case it's probably going to take away from- People will suffer around you. Yeah, it's going to take away from certain things. And that's okay, so long as you don't live there for the rest of your life. I think it's when you start to get problems where you're just singularly focused on one thing and everything falls apart and that's where you are forever, then there's an issue. But I mean, if you're starting a business, if you want to get to a new PR, if you want to compete in a high-level competition, are you going to be able to go out as much and hang out as much with your friends and that kind of stuff? Probably not. It's going to take some kind of obsession. Yeah, it's just the level of what it means to you. Are you trying to be the best of the best that's ever done it? You're going to have to sacrifice a lot. And there's an extreme to that. And so the further you go in the extreme path is where most of your eggs are going to go. And that's like, at a certain point, you just got to weigh that out. How much can I still balance having friendships, having all these people and contributing towards them? Because really, it's about being self-pursuing something. I'm doing this all for myself. But how much of it is just yourself? Or are you going to go ahead and be available too and make time for other people? All that stuff is going to feed into what you're going to experience. It's an interesting thought for me because I obviously went through this when I competed.  And it wasn't a singular selfish thing.  Like, I mean, to go from being way out of shape to all the way the professional level competing on the stage was a journey. Like, that's not going to be unique. I went pretty fast too. Like, that was a shortcut for most people. So, and in that time, I remember, especially Katrina's family, because her family, they celebrate a lot and the way they do that is food and drink.  And I got a lot of grief and a lot of shit from her family and my friends. And I got teased.  Like, I knew what I was doing. Like, I knew I had a plan on, this wasn't going to be forever, that I set a serious goal for myself. I knew what comes with serious goals like that is sacrifice. And I was sacrificing some of these social events and things that we're going to do. Now, here's the thing that's interesting is while I was going through it, you know, I'm probably, I probably got invited to less parties or things because people knew that I wasn't going to drink or eat like that.  But when I followed through on everything and I reached that crazy goal and then built something around it, I was revered in her family from it. And now everybody is, I mean, they talk about it how proud they are of watching that and they can't believe it.  Especially because you did it the way you said you would. You got into it and left. Right. You know what I mean? And that's what I think this person has to really ask yourself when you are trying to go after achieving some personal fitness goals is why are you doing it and to what level and then, you know, and have a full plan. You know, my plan is I'm going to achieve this sort of that. But then after I get to that goal, I'm going to have more balance and that's exactly what I said I would do when I got into it. It was funny because when we got into this podcast, I was in the middle of this already. And so, you know, early, I don't know, first 500 episodes or so, you know, everybody thought I was the bodybuilder guy. And I knew all along that I wasn't that guy. It was I had a serious goal at that time and how I do anything is how I do everything.   And, you know, maybe rubbing some people the wrong way about it because they don't like it or it's a direct reflection for them and how they're not addressing their health and fitness goals.  It was I'm going to hit this goal. And then when I do, I'll have more balance in my life. So I think there's ways around it. And I still came to social events.  Like, again, I was focused on a goal.  Because at the end of the day, I think that's where you'll lose respect from your peers and others is when you say you're going to do something and then you don't follow through.  Just do it. Or if you're going to talk about it and say you have these serious goals, then execute. And even the people that are teasing you while you're going through it are giving you a hard time. They'll come around. They'll respect you. They'll respect you at the end of it. I also think people get into trouble with this when they don't realize the reason why they're so disciplined and focused. Is it because you're trying to fill an insecurity that can never be filled? You know, let's say, you know, using Adam's example, let's say he went into this because he was insecure about his body. He'd still be doing it. It would never end because that can never be cured by reaching new bodybuilding, you know, goals or whatever. That's such a good point. The goal was specifically to get a pro card, leverage that through social media business. It was actually one of the more important things that helped boost my impump early on. It was the only social audience that we had. I had zero social media anything. Justin had very little. Doug definitely had zero. So it was a part of a plan. So that's where balance comes from. This is why it's okay to, this is why it doesn't counter. I think people think balance counters discipline. Which one do I do? No, it's not. If you have a goal and you're doing something and it's for a particular purpose, that's okay. But it depends on the purpose. Like if the purpose is to like, I need to be, you know, I'm super focused on becoming a millionaire. Well, why? Because then I can retire, make money, have balance. Okay, is it or no, because I need money because it makes me feel good. Well, you're gonna be doing this forever. You're never gonna find balance.  And it'll never be enough. That's where people come into the issues, I think, with the obsession is when you find yourself obsessed and there is no end in sight. But I mean, this is how you succeed.  And this is, I'll tell you this one right now. If you're listening and you don't have kids, that's the time, that's the best time. Not saying you can't do it when you have kids, but when you have children, it's very difficult to find that kind of obsessive focus because you'll be taken away from the most important thing that you've probably ever had in your entire life.  Exactly. I'll tell you that right now. That's when you'll kick yourself later on and be like, man, it wasn't- Well, I think you said it best, which is what I was trying to allude to, which is you really have to question why whatever it is that you're doing and have a plan and understand the purpose behind all of it, because you're right. If it's rooted in insecurities, if it was because I was insecure about the way I looked and so that's what drove me to be so good at it, that'll never end and you'll just find something else and it'll be completely obsessed with it until you address the root cause. But there's nothing wrong with saying, hey, you know what? I'd like to see what I feel like when I get to this level of shape. I'd like to know how strong I would be. I've never committed myself to a diet and a plan for six months and I wanna see how it would enhance my work life, my family life, my personal life, my overall health and it's an important goal for yourself.   You won't be able to have drink on the weekdays. You probably won't be able to have Sunday, Sunday, but that's okay though, the experience.  Not just because it was amazing to get in that greatest shape, but I mean, as long as I've been doing this for and all the books I've read and all the certifications and experience and knowledge I have, it still taught me a ton about myself and it made me that much better of a coach. So the value that it added for my life was incredible. So, I mean, if you go into it with that attitude that what you're doing, the reason why you're making the sacrifice on the social side, I think it'd be very beneficial. Totally. Now, we did mention in this episode the ab training guide. You can find that at mindpumpfree.com. Now on that side, you can also find other guides. We have guides on getting you to squat more weight, burn body fat effectively, and other performance and aesthetic goals. Again, that's mindpumpfree.com. By the way, you can also find the three of us on Instagram. We each have individual Instagram pages with their own information, a lot of it about our own personal lives. So you can find Justin at Mind Pump Justin. You can find me at Mind Pump Sound. You can find Adam at Mind Pump Adam.