Hello, everyone. Welcome to Mime Pump. In the first half of this episode, we talk about the best foods to eat in the morning if you want to start your day off right, as well as other fun and exciting topics. In the second half of the show, the guys coach four live callers on questions such as, my coach has me avoiding squats, deadlifts, and overhead presses.  Did I train differently during a cut and a bulk? What is the best workout and diet for mental performance? And what is the best way to work out for longevity? All right, enjoy the show.  Check this out.  It's a simple hack, but start your day that way, and then watch what happens. It actually makes a pretty big difference. It's your me. Yeah. You know, I like stuff like this because it works with your behaviors rather than forcing you to follow like some kind of plan.  You're going to adhere to that a lot more effectively. Yeah, eat like a three-egg scrambled with a little bit of meat with it and some vegetables, and boom, you're done. And then what happens is throughout the day, they find that when people start with a high protein and fat breakfast.  Even if you eat sugar later on or carbohydrates later on or whatever, had you not had the high protein breakfast, you would notice these bigger fluctuations. And we know this now with CGM studies, right? Continue glucose monitors will measure your glucose in real time in response to the foods that you eat. And they found that simply starting your day with protein stabilizes it throughout the day. Now what behaviors do erratic ups and downs in blood sugar tend to promote cravings, irritability, overeating? So if you just start your day that way, it's like one small thing you can do that can improve or at least push your behaviors in the direction of helping you eat healthier and be leaner. So can I add to that hack? Yeah. I think that this starts in the evening with just portioning off like the dinner meat that you normally have because typically people eat carb-heavy breakfast and don't eat cook a meat or whatever.  And that goes with your eggs. Yeah.  And now you've got this killer scramble and it was super fast and easy. So I make breakfast most mornings for for Jessica. And that's exactly what I do. So like the other night, we had ButcherBox tri-tip. So ButcherBox company we work with, they deliver like grass-fed meats to your door and we always get tri-tips. It's like my favorite cut from them because they're really versatile. I do the cast iron skillet on both sides putting the oven really easy. If you season it well, it's really tasty. And so we'll have some leftover and I'll serve her every morning, two scrambled eggs with cheese and probably two ounces or three ounces of tri-tip. And boom, that's your breakfast right there. And I like what you're saying, Adam, because you know what's interesting about breakfast foods before the introduction of cereals, okay?  That's what people used to eat. And then the invention of cereals came along, which by the way, some of the first cereals people don't know this, people don't know this. One of the first cereals invented or marketed was cornflakes, Kellogg's cornflakes. Wasn't he trying to solve like some kind of masturbation problem? He advertised here, it prevented masturbation. So I was like, eat this in the morning. Was that the story? I knew it was like a weird story that went behind it. He was trying, okay, explain how making a cereal prevents masturbation. I don't think there's anything that I can explain. I think it was all he just said that. Yeah, that's how he's marked the end. I don't know if it happened to him. He's like, man, I eat this because then he feels tired. I don't want to do that anymore. I don't know. Yeah, I have no idea. Do you remember that story? Yeah, I'm looking it up here. I'm trying to fact check it. We have. We have on the show. It says mostly false, but again, a snope. So I don't know if I can find that. No, no, no. It's like it prevents masturbation. Just do that and then you'll read. But that's the story. But anyway, nonetheless, breakfast cereals kind of hit the market. They're so convenient. They have a long shelf life. So instead of taking 20 minutes to cook, you just pour something in a bowl, add some milk to it, and then you have your quote unquote breakfast and then it lasts a long time. A box of cereal doesn't go bad like other perishable foods. And so breakfast became, and this is the funny thing, by the way. It's funny to me how we have breakfast foods, lunch foods, and dinner foods. Yeah. And that's just a, that's a product of marketing. But breakfast foods do tend to be carb-heavy meals. Yeah, they all look like cake now. Yeah. Pancakes. French toast. Muffins. They're little tiny cakes. Waffles. Yeah. Oh, it's true. Isn't it wild too how our cravings and everything have shifted from that too?  Do you want me to do that? I just stated that with dinner. Yeah. Yeah. What? It would act like that's such a big deal not to do it. You know what broke that for me? It was competing. Because it was, I had, that was like what I was eating all day long. So so many times breakfast was dinner. It didn't matter. It was just like, I had to hit these macros and it was what I had prepared. Yeah. And most of what I prepared were like. Do you guys, do you guys remember, they don't really, I don't know if they do this anymore because I don't watch too many commercials because streaming doesn't do the same. But when we were kids, you know, you watch TV and you had to watch the commercials. And anytime they had a breakfast cereal commercial, at the very end they're always like part of a complete breakfast. And the picture would be boxed cereal, bowl of cereal. There'd be like three or four slices of toast, a glass of orange juice and an orange. It was like 150 grams of carbohydrate. Dude, well, I blame, I mean, look at our food pyramid, you know, like they had this like insane, it was like 60 something percent carb focus. And then between that and then how they attacked fat back when we grew up, like that's how our whole breakfast, I think, changed because of that on top of the cereal eggs got demonized for a long time. Yeah, eggs got completed and bacon got demonized for butter, got demonized for a long time and they told you to eat margarine, which is, oh my God, that's so bad for you. Yeah. And eggs are incredibly, eggs are literally nature's multi vitamin. They're so nutrient dense, so healthy, especially for children, especially for kids.  Like if you want your kid to grow up and have a healthy brain, you give them eggs.  I better eat, you know, I better fuel myself. And it was like five pancakes, toast, dude, every single sports event game, whatever, like I would just load up on pancakes, carbs, you know, it just would crash right before I'd get to playing. And it just I couldn't figure it out. Yeah. What does that say? Crazy. So, yes, it seems like it was invented as a food for patients of a sanatorium in which he worked. So this is John Harvey Kellogg. And at its inception, the cereal was functional. It was supposed to be healthy and deliberately bland and also designed to suppress sexual desire. That, OK, OK, that's what it was, Adam.  OK, so the thought was, yes, the thought was back then that anything stimulating would promote masturbation. So anything with flavor or music that was lively or spicy or bright color, just sort of like, we're going to make the blandest, like, taste like nothing food, which is funny, because then they turned it into like a breakfast for the market, everybody.  So this is what John Kellogg thought masturbation did. He said mood swings, bad posture, acne, baldness, stiff joints, palpitations, as well as a taste for spicy food. What kind of posture? Hairy hands, you know, for days. This reminds me of since we went this way. Well, how many of a problem was this event where he was working? Oh, my God, I know that we just saw this. I've seen this everywhere, you guys. What's up, everybody? Today's giveaway program is Maps and a Ballot, because the original Maps workout program is the one that most people love the most. Here is how you can win it. Leave a comment below in the first 24 hours that we drop this episode. Subscribe to this channel and click on your notifications on YouTube. And if we pick you as the winner, we'll let you know in the comment section that you want free access to Maps and a Ballot. Also, we got a sale going on right now on all of our at home workout programs, our best ones. OK, so we put them together in what's known as the at home holiday bundle. This bundle includes three, four, four programs. Here's what you get. Maps Anywhere, Maps Suspension, Mask Prime and the No BS six pack formula. So four programs, which would normally retail you for over $330 in this bundle, you only pay $99.99. If you are interested or you just want to learn more, click on the link at the top of the description below to get set up. All right, here comes the show. Did you guys see Derek with more plates, more dates? Get after Dr. Mollie.  You know, I don't know why you said that.  I mean, why? When you go off, let me know. OK, so here's the deal. He is super smart, great content, love his content, super smart. The thing that I don't like so much and that a lot of people in our space do is they make a career out of making fun of or ridiculing other people, and it's like a thing, like it's a big thing. Now that's not his main thing. He got again, he's got good information. I think he's very balanced with how he presents smart dude. But some people like Greg just said, that's another guy. All his videos, all I do is making fun of. Well, those are those are two different categories for me, because I think that I actually think that and I agree with like Greg. With his annoying high pitch voice, well, Greg has a different approach. Derek, I think has a I don't at least the ones, the stuff that I content of his that I've consumed doesn't come off like attacking even when he was kind of like clowning on Dr. Molly for like he was doing it in a respectful way. Like I don't I didn't yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, totally like back. Like some like Greg and some of these other influencers can do this where they really like they're trying to create controversy where he he is normally responding to his audience, tagging him like crazy. Like, hey, we want to hear your take. Is this possible? Could somebody, so her claim is that she sat in a chair where somebody else, a male had rubbed testosterone on his forearm, testosterone cream, testosterone cream and it rubbed off on the chair. Then she sat in the chair and absorbed it and relatively quick was starting to feel these senses of sexual desires for her co-workers that she had never felt before and she attributed that to the spiking of the her or testosterone.   And then she got it on her arm and probably well, how fast is to start? You have to apply it every day, right? So testosterone cream raises testosterone pretty quickly. It's not like an injection where it takes like 24 hours before. No, it's the you're the opposite is true.  It's like six to 16 hours for the cream. Yeah. Yeah. So six to you have to apply it every day. So what's your point? So is it because it's a small dose every day? Maybe maybe, Doug, when look up how peak testosterone concentrations I mean, he broke into he broke all this down. Like he yeah, he got he actually down the difference between the injection injection versus the cream, how high, how long it actually takes to report back that the levels are elevated. And and this is all assuming that you got the full dose. Right. Is, you know, say, so we're not even talking about rubbing off on because I know testosterone can raise dopamine and dopamine can definitely be involved because imagine this. OK, so a male rubs a full dose of testosterone on his forearm. You got to think some of that is immediately getting absorbed. He's not even getting all of it. Yeah, tiny amount. So it's got to be a very small amount and the amount that that would then affect the the hormones.  And then after a while, you know, of like your seven years exposures. Yeah, they start affecting. Yeah, I think I told you guys this story off air that I had was a friend or a family member had a dog. OK, here you go. That was losing hair and having issues. Hold on a second. That's what I remember you. OK, so no, so this is what I thought. OK, so the data suggests this is what Doug pulled up with testosterone cream that after application, therapeutic levels are reached with concentrations of 12 over 1200 nanograms per deciliter, which is a lot within two hours. Additionally, consistent concentrations remain beyond six hours. That's what I thought. So cream is very fast absorption versus unless you inject like suspension to what nobody does, right? Because you'd have to do that several times a day. So but nonetheless, the effects of testosterone. I don't think you'd feel that fast, but you may feel dopamine.  It's not just hormones. It's so many other things like totally. She could have been like, oh, my God, I had to move this. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. I mean, I think that and that is the point that I think that's what he was making. Yeah. That he was making is that, you know, there's a lot of other factors and to attribute that to this testosterone that rubbed off on a chair or something. I mean, I actually thought he did a pretty good job of responding. I thought she failed by responding again to him. I think she should have just left it alone. I was just like it left it as it is. But she came back around and then like tried to attack. Yeah, the the effects of just from testosterone itself actually take a while for people to feel typically. But some people are more sensitive than others. But usually it's like, what are they saying? The study is that it's like four to six weeks when people start to report that they notice. Yeah. And that was the stuff that he was saying. Yeah. Six to 16 is what I think or six to 16 hours for people to report feeling a difference or something like that. So but I do know, I do know testosterone suspension within an hour, you feel that like, I know athletes will take that before doing a powerlifting competition. Injection, though. No, but suspension. Yeah. Injection. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. I know that hits you like boom right away. And yeah, I know I'm almost positive that the injection is hits your system faster. Suspension, but not like what you like. What? Yeah. So that's so that's a slow. That takes 24 hours to hit peak concentrations. And then it's a slow decline. It's attached to an ester that's a slow releasing. So suspension is just testosterone water. Then there's different esters that have. There's ananthate, which takes even longer. A little bit longer than sipping eight. But but but yeah, cream is fast. That's why they have to apply it every single day on whatever. And people put on the arm, their leg. But yeah, you're right, Justin. There's been stories of like men using it and it gets on their pillow and then their wife uses their pillow. And then she starts to notice masculinizing effects like, you know, a year later. Like what's going on? Why is my. Yeah, right. I would imagine like the calm effect. That was like what I was telling you about the dog, right? So this person, I can't remember who it was that was that was but was taking and it was a female that was taking testosterone but using the cream. So just a mild amount, but, you know, from pet and pet and her dog. Her dog got it. No. So her dog had like losing hair is losing all hair by by its neck. And like she had taken it to multiple vets and nobody could figure out what was going on. I was getting jacked. So and then like, I guess finally took it to some vet and and they asked right like, you wouldn't happen to take any hormones or anything like that. And she was like, Oh my God. Yeah, I take testosterone and I rub this cream on. He goes, Oh yeah, it's the cream is rubbing off on your.  I mean, I've never been a fan of the cream. Anyways, I would rather do. I know, but some people have like an issue with the the needle and stuff like that, isn't almost everything is better that way. Right. I mean, I like people it's convenience. That's why they like the cream. Right. It's just pure convenience. They're afraid of whatever, you know, freight or or apprehensive of using a needle. But yeah, there's there's a dopamine effects from testosterone. So and some people are sensitive to that, especially typically women, when they'll take testosterone, they get this kind of dopamine burst and it can make them feel a little wow, like this is this is kind of wild or crazy or whatever. Well, it depends on the speaking of women and hormones and all that stuff like that. I was talking as you share this with Doug and and Justin, because I haven't heard this yet. So I'm talking to Sal yesterday or the day before. And we're we're talking about, you know, period cycles and things like that and hormonal changes with that. And he's he's like, oh, man, you know, I've got got two in the house now. Right. Talking about his daughter.  She goes, I said, I'm just driving to school. And she goes, why do you breathe like that? Yeah. Why do you breathe? Why do you make those noises? I died laughing because I am very familiar with Sal's breathing and noises. And smiling because, you know, oh, dude, like she wakes up in the morning. Why do you breathe like that? Well, it's it's micro climates like, hey, I'm happy. Two seconds later, what is going on right now? Oh, yeah, finds that thing, you know, right to the core, bro. Like, stop, like something you can't control at all.  I was like, you know, I don't think you told me. What did you, how did you respond to her when she said that? I said, I said, that's how I breathe.  No, I mean, it's everything. We're driving and she's like, she's like, oh, she makes this sound like what? You're knowing the way you're breathing. I'm like, what? The way I'm breathing. Oh, yeah, dude, I got. I can stop breathing, breathing for you. Yeah, I got I got the teenage daughter and postpartum wife at home. So basically it's what did I do wrong now? That's the game that we play when I walk in the house. What did I do wrong, everybody? That's why I stopped, bro. I got two boys. I got no, but you know what? You get to flip side to like, she'll be so loving. And so I love my daughter. She's like, she's, she's a she's a lot like me in just female form, but a lot like she's super ambitious, super whatever. But it's funny to see this. And then later she apologized. Oh, sorry, dad. I wasn't I was kind of, you know, snappy at year or whatever, which is pretty good. That's pretty self aware for a 13 year old. That is that she's already like caught on to that's wild. Dude, you got to see the, her and she doesn't do this with me.  I've heard it's, yeah, it can get epic with the moms. Oh yeah, it doesn't happen at home with me, but I hear stories about it happens with my sister and my mom were like that. Oh yeah. Like still to this day, actually, like I can't talk to my mom the way my sister can. I mean, and it's not just like a respect thing because I'm a man. It's my mom. And so I don't want to ever like disrespect her that way. But like when we were kids, like if I backtalked my mom, my mom would haul off and slap me upside the head, like right away or elevate like yelling with me. And so and to this day, like if we get into it, she'll escalate. She'll escalate really quick.  Throttle down, yeah. What is it about that? Is it just because they're both girls? And so that's what I treat like. Obviously, no matter how much my mom escalates it, I'm never going to take it physical or go beyond because I'm a man, right? So I'm not going to do that. But my sister is like, let's go. Did you know that?  OK, so here's this is what this is interesting. You know what this reminds me of? You can I want you to fact check me, Doug, because I want to make sure I'm accurate. Did you guys know the domestic abuse rate is highest is among some of the highest rates in same sex couples when they're both women? I've heard that. Did you know that? I have. They have some of the highest physical abuse rates when it's two women. It's interesting. Yeah, and I'm trying to speculate. You know, I remember reading this, maybe Doug can look this up. And I think it might be because there isn't so much of a maybe social it's not so socially acceptable for girls to hit. I mean, socially acceptable. But definitely if a guy hits a girl, totally socially acceptable. Two guys hitting each other. Maybe there's the risk of real danger and damage. So it's like, we're not going to do this. Whereas maybe girls think like we can do this or whatever. I don't know. It's interesting. What does that say? Forty three point eight percent of lesbian women and sixty one point one percent of bisexual women have experienced rape, physical violence and are stalking by an intimate partner at some point in their lifetime, as opposed to thirty five percent of heterosexual women. That's a big difference. Yeah, that's a lot. That's 10 to 15 percent higher. Yeah, I wonder why. I like I'm thinking there's probably a lot of factors, right? So a lesbian couple, you would assume that the the the women have a lot of masculine traits with a with a gay guy couple. They have more female feminine traits. And so they're less likely to probably be agro. I don't know. Because of the role split. Yeah, but even when they're split like that, you still like two two gay guys that are that are, you know, one of them's more, more masculine, the other still have female, still have a lot of feminine traits in comparison to a heterosexual man. I don't know if I agree with that because really, I think it's more. I think it's this. It's it has to be a very generalizing. Let me put it this way. It's it's more. It's much more socially acceptable for a woman to hit a guy, right? For sure. And much more socially acceptable for a woman to hit a woman. A guy hitting a woman. Definitely like that's a huge no, no, no matter what. Even if she's coming after you, if that's imprinted on us at very young age, right? And then two guys. Here's the deal.  Yeah, there's consequences that if she goes down, I'm the be the one. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We're usually the fall guy. Right. So I'm wondering if it's because the guys, the men know like if we, if this goes down, it's gonna get physical and it's gonna get really bad and really ugly potentially. Maybe that's why. I don't know. But I find that very interesting. Did you guys see those clips I sent you of what's her face? I think Jebediah, I think is her name. The girl, the two clips I sent over. I did see that. Yeah, it's hard. That's off of Value Tainment, Patrick by David's. Oh yeah, yeah, I did watch that. I think he brought her on underneath the Value Tainment umbrella and like she now works for the company and she has her own podcast and like that. She goes hard. That's interesting. Yeah, she goes real hard. It's definitely kind of a counter cultural message out there. Well, especially coming from another woman too, like some of the stuff that she addresses is like. Did you know that, I read this the other day, statistic that 80% of divorces are initiated by the wife. That's a majority are initiated by the wife. And did you know that the divorce rate is significantly higher when the husband earns less than the wife? So those, those are two very interesting. Yeah, it's interesting roles that like it's, it's one that gets kind of convoluted. Seems that, I don't know, we fall back on roles a lot of times and it's interesting. Well, who was it that made that point? We keep trying to change it, strip us of everything, no money, no social content and just throw us on an island, see what happens and like naturally like these these gender roles that we're trying to disrupt and change like everyone will kind of naturally fall right into that, even in an island like that. And that doesn't mean there's not anomalies in each category.  It just means bulk, a majority will naturally go into gender roles. I think the key is that, that people should be not ostracized for as long as not hurting anybody and they're good people or whatever to live and organize their families however they want. So I agree with that. However, the flip side of that is, I think sometimes it pushes people against what may work for them because they think, oh, I don't want to do this, you know, traditional thing. When in reality that might be what works best, that might be what you like. You know, I think that's like basically do what works best. You have to open mind even for maybe old values. Yeah, I don't know where I, so this is an interesting dynamic that we have, that Katrina and I have to have had to work through because of her upbringing was so, her mom raised her to be such an independent woman and need no man and always keep some money aside for herself and like just, and so that has been this, and then now that we've had this kid now and we're building this family together and there's certain things that I need her help in and vice versa, there's been this kind of muddied area of, you know, not like falling into a gender role type of deal that and it's, and she was presented such a counter message growing up that I'm just like, it's not a bad thing for you to do this. It's not, you're not less because I'm asking you to stay home and do these things or do that. It's like, it's not at all like that. It's just that, and if, if you were the one that was going out and, and making more money for us and you get, it would make sense, I guess for me to go over here and do this, it's just, it's not, why does it have to turn into this thing where it's like. Well, there's, there's another piece of that too, which is, you know, like going into something with the idea and thought like, if this doesn't work, I better protect myself. And there's a downside to that. There's definitely a downside to that, which is, look, when you go into a marriage or a relationship, you have to, I think for success to really, the best chance is for success, you have to make yourself vulnerable. Like it's, it's like this, it's like, don't love someone fully just in case they cheat on you or don't date anybody because they may have like an insurance policy, right? Yeah, but, but then you miss out. Like you miss out on the opportunity for this to maybe be a thing. Like, you know how many married couples, a lot of married couples have their own bank accounts. You have your money, I have money, my money. And I get where that comes from. But I feel like you, you got to go all in for this potential to really work the way it's going to work. And yes, that increases the potential risk of, you know. But, and I get that, but it's. However you structure it needs to be communicated like, like extensively before really kind of going and taking this to obviously, but I think it's just where the problem lies is where those roles start to kind of bleed together. And it's like, you need definitively separate, you know, divide and conquer. That's just the mentality. It's just efficiency in your household. It doesn't matter what it is. You got to agree to it and structure it accordingly for it to work. Otherwise, it's a competitive environment. My point is like running a business. And it's exactly the thing is when you, when you get this messaging from as a child, so hard. Yeah, like you're almost like you're the lesser because. Yeah. And it's like, it's, it's like, okay, here we are building this thing together and it makes obvious sense. You should go do this and I should go do that because it just, it's like, it's like, it's just like running a business or running a sport team. Yeah. It's like, you're great at rebounding the ball. Right. I'm great at passing the ball. So there's no reason for you to try and be the best passer on the team. Go be the best rebounder. I'm going to be the best passer together. We're going to win. Especially if it comes naturally, right? But this idea of like, you shouldn't be a center.  It's just like, okay. We should all be the lead singer, you know, even though you're the best. Yes. Right. So then it gets, it gets complicated when you get in these, these situations where. Well, I mean, it's what's interesting to me. This is true. I'm going to be very objective here of all the things of the family. You have a family. So you have kids, husband and wife or whatever, right? Or, you know, couple, couple, children. The most important thing I could possibly think about in that, in that all the stuff that has that goes into running that, right? You have a house, you got to pay the bills, you got to earn money. That's what we teach our children. Is who is with the kids, right? Who is raising my kid? The most important thing. I give up, I would give up money for that. You know what I mean? I'd rather be struggling with money, but you know, working and doing, but have my kids be raised right, then us make a ton of money and my kids be raised by other people who I don't like or trust. Somebody else is going to raise them. Yeah. Yeah, or, or social media is going to raise them or something else. So it's one of the most important roles. I mean, I feel like some of the two biggest. And we know this, by the way.  Yeah. The, the, and, and whether, whether you can make a case that they're, they're rooted in like good intentions or whatever. Yeah, there's a little bit of truth in it. Right. And that's what I'm saying is I'm not saying that it's, there's all bad to that or there's not some value to some of the things that are wrapped in it. But I really think that we, we, we went extreme on both of those. And I think both of them have been detrimental to the, to the family unit. Yeah. And this, especially if it's a partnership. Yes. It's so weird to me that we don't look relationships more like that instead of it being like this competitive thing of like, why can't I change my job? Why can't I do this? Or why do you have to be back? It's like, you know, I mean, we didn't we join together to, to create as one and then build a team. And then just like you would build a business or build a sport team to be very successful, we would evaluate who is better at certain things.  It's, I'm really good at this. You're really good at that. Like go, let's go. It's also, it's also, there's other, there's other side effects, negative side effects of this, which is part of that message is men and women are the same. Okay. Like, I think we should be respected the same. I think we should be treated by the law the same.  But generally speaking, men and women are different. And I think if you accept that, that maybe your spouse doesn't communicate or hear things or listen to things the same as you, you'll be able to communicate better with them. Like for example, when my wife comes to me with a problem, 90% of the time she does not want me to provide her a solution. Now, when I provide a problem to somebody or to my wife, 90% of the time I want a solution. Give me an idea. Totally different.  She'll come to me and talk about something. And I'll be like, well, why don't you try this? And she's like, you're not hearing me. Like I just want you to be like to understand. And I'm like, oh yeah, that's what you totally want or whatever.  You're such a, God, you work so hard for your family. You care about us so much, go out there and do it. You know what's gonna happen?  So it's very, so if you wanna learn how to, by the way, this isn't just men and women. This is also individuals, everybody's different. So you gotta kind of figure this out.  Anyway, cracks me up. Adam, I wanna hear about the crocs that you were gonna buy.  I can't imagine you wearing crocs.  So I put a pair on. So I was, when we went- You're getting old, bro. When we were up at truckie last with all the family, my nephew, who's in high school, who wears the same size shoe as I do, had a pair that were out and I was going in and out of the garage. And so I slid in them real quick and I gotta admit, like I slid in them and I went, oh, well, that's kind of nice. He had the crocs- Was it like the furry inside ones? Yeah, they had the furry inside and I was like, they were comfortable and warm and- Just don't worm around anyone. Nobody sees them. Okay, so that's why it's like, no, you're not getting those. And I'm like, I'm not gonna wear them in public, hun. Come on, too much of a shoe guy. Too much of a shoe guy to wear them in public with an outfit, right? What I do have though, and I don't know if you guys like, cause I think everyone here is shoe off guys in the house, right? Yeah.  So we're all shoe off guys in the house. So when I go out, I actually have a pair of like old sneakers at every exit.  That way I could just slide my shoe. But they're always like shoes inside of them. I'm smashing them or they're like all the back, the heels all compressed. I do have one pair of Birkenstocks that I keep on the garage for taking out the trash. I don't, and then my other ones are sneakers. And so I actually want them for exactly that. Just so when I, eight o'clock at night, I gotta go take the trash out. I'm walking out the door. I can just slide my feet in those comfortable suckers and walk out to the trash.  You do. And you guys may find me funny, right? But dude, yeah, I have those, for that same exact reason though, I have a near the door and I'll go get the trash or I'll, you know, take the dogs out or whatever. Just like, so that way I don't have to like make a whole ordeal about putting my shoes in. Yeah. I like crocs. Big fluffy socks. That's what I do. Outside? No, no, inside the house. Oh yeah. I'm just talking about when you walk outside. So that's, I do the same thing as I just have shoes that I just smash. That's what you do, right? You smash them. So that's kind of how I feel. I'm like, okay, that or I can get a pair of the other. Some of them might see you walk outside, bro. I know. If you saw what I looked like walking the dogs or walking the trash, I do not look put together whatsoever. You know what I'm saying? I look like I'm in my car. I'm gonna buy those little pins that you put in the holes, right? Those are cool. Decorate it for you? Those are kind of cool. I actually, that's another reason why I wanted to get them for my son because I think that's kind of cool what the kids do with all the, like the little, whatever, charms or whatever they put inside of them. I'm like, yeah. Well, there's a reason why they've been around for so long. It's because they're super comfortable. Yeah. And they're cheap too. They're not expensive. Really? Yeah, like 40 bucks you can get a pair of them. So like they're, yeah, I'm not a fan of like, you know, like wearing them with an outfit. I just don't see it. They don't seem to go well. Dude, Katrina some jellies. You've ever jellies like the same thing? Is it like the same thing? These crocs are just like crappier. Make your feet sweat like crazy and everything. You guys remember inflatable furniture? Wasn't that a thing for a second in the 90s? Like real inflatable furniture? You don't remember that? Like some kids would have like purple or whatever. And it was like inflated like piece of furniture in the room. You guys don't remember that? No. Really? Not like real for, I remember like. It wasn't like, you don't have a living room. Oh. Kids will have it. That reminds me that cool historical fact of like World War II where they had those inflatable tanks. Yes. To scare the of us. I was like the most brilliant thing that. Oh, I saw that. It was on that history Instagram, huh? Yeah, they just move on, but it made it look like they had all of this. Have you guys ever read about the crazy plans that they had during World War II to try to, you know, fight the opponent? Like all these, because it was like, you know, it was a crazy war. And they came up with some of the craziest ideas ever. Like one of them was to strap bombs onto dolphins and get dolphins to swim, to ships and blow up. Yeah. That was one. Another one was to attach incendiary, like small incendiary explosives to bats. They almost did this, by the way, in Japan. And they would launch these bats over big cities. And because Japan at the time had lots of those, you know, the Japanese style architecture with the overhangs or whatever. Yeah.  The bats would fly under the overhangs and then at, you know, the right moment they'd set fire to everything. I feel like... That's terrible. I feel like they were just in a room with a bunch of comic books.  What are we gonna do?  All right, you guys want to hear some crazy, a crazy fact or whatever, statistic. I just looked this up. Don't ask me why I looked it up, by the way.  You guys want to know what the, I was, okay, so you know how a black hole in the universe, the gravitational pull is so powerful that not even light can escape it, right? It's so powerful that it sucks in light and then that's it. You don't see it come out. Okay, so is the center of each galaxy a black hole? Did they confirm that? I believe so. So do you want to know what the mass of a black hole is to have that kind of gravity? Because mass gives gravity, right? Yeah. So the sun is massive and so powerful that the entire solar system revolves around the sun. That's how powerful the gravity is of the sun. Okay. The mass of a black hole is 4.385 times 10 to the 30th power in pounds. In other words, a black hole has the mass of 20 billion suns all condensed into one point. It's just super dense. Super crazy dense. What? Like it makes no sense. Isn't that wild? Yeah, because you think of space as being this big vacuum, like emptiness. Oh, but there is a part of the universe. Maybe Doug can look this up. We found this part of the universe because we have observable universe. That is a vacuum. There's nothing in it and they don't know why. There's nothing in it.  And they don't know why it's empty. It's like this one thing. So this dark matter. I mean, and this is something they've speculated. If they could harness sort of the energy from it, like have they made any breakthroughs in that? Fusion. Yeah, I wanted to bring that up. I didn't get to read the article, but I know. So I wrote down this quote because I don't think people realize how insane this is. Well, I saw the interview with Neil deGrasse. Like I saw that he didn't even bring it up on a rug. And so this just happened just after that. Oh, it happened. It just happened. I mean, this is I mean, this was like weeks ago. Yeah. Okay. So fusion promises to give us essentially limitless energy. Okay. Now, what would that mean for humanity? Everything. Yeah. The change is the entire structure of society. Well, what carbon based energies like oil did to humanity? If you look at the population of earth when we started using oil and stuff like that, it's like exploded because now we have energy. We could power things. We can heat things. We can create machines. And just it became obviously just this huge boom. All right. So check this out with what they did. They didn't even, they didn't achieve break even. In other words, break even would be we put in so much energy and it gives us so much energy back, which is by itself would be amazing. Because the way that energy works, you put in energy, some is lost. So you only get, you're not going to get all of it back. They didn't need, they didn't do that. They got more energy out than they put in. So they put in so much energy and got more out. So that is, that is literally like. And supposedly the hardest part is done, right? Like to actually figuring that out. Now it's like up to the engineers and stuff like that on how they. To make it like. How do you make it into an engine for a car now? Applicable and how do you use it now? Yeah. How do you now use it? Yeah. How do you harness it? How do you use it now to power a city? But the science is where we need to completely put our focus, right?  That would make us interstellar. That would make humanity. We would no longer be bound by any of our previous boundaries. What are we going to fight over? I mean, after that takes over. Well, we'll find something. I know we'll find something, but I mean it's like in terms of like conflict with countries and like, a lot of it is over resources and energy. Here's the fear. The fear is that the first country to do this in a practical way. If the first country to get fusion to the point where it's practical instantly becomes the world superpower by far. Yeah. Instantly. It's just so annoying. Cause like that's just something like you're like, why would we want to keep that to ourselves? Or like, that would just be something that just naturally every country should just have it. Human behavior. I know. It's like- Why then there's also- It's going to turn into that. Isn't the fear that somebody's going to harness it for bad too, right? So that's part of why you don't want to, you wouldn't want to share. Yeah, what kind of super weapon could be created with it? Yeah, right. Well, what it is is here's the fear. The fear isn't that we have limitless energy. The fear is that we have different ideologies and opposing ideologies. And what could somebody do with that? Right. So if you have like, let's say China, whose ideology is pretty much on the opposite end of the spectrum to let's say Western ideology or American ideology, whoever gets that, that's not necessarily a good thing because they're going to want to impose it on the other side.  Now we're probably decades away from this being- This is the next race though. I mean, I thought, I thought it was going to be over AI, which obviously is still a big push in a lot of countries, especially China.  You, the, actually two things. One, before I move on and move to what you just said with that AI, did I, did I ask you guys, the trivia on, do you guys know how many Earths will fit in a sun? How many Earths? Yeah. A million? Yeah. A million Earths? Yeah. One million. Isn't that crazy? Yeah, that's a- That's massive, big. That's massive. Everybody asks that you must, I must ask. I forgot by the way, one of the first people to speculate that other stars may be suns was executed. This is, of course, hundreds and hundreds of years ago. Hang him. I messed up his dad. You know, the other stars might be suns, kill him. Kill him. So the, where I was in transition with the AI talk.  Yeah. Did you see him responding to all the hoopla around the chat GPT one? Oh, what? So it's spitting off workouts. Oh, yeah. I did see that. Yeah, yeah. And I guess it's stirred up all, it's supposed to be pretty good. And the workouts are bad. Yeah, supposedly they were pretty good. They're not bad. We're gonna push out of our job. No, it's not that good yet. But it ain't maps quality. But they're better than, okay, now here's why they're better than most workouts on the internet. Cause most workouts on the internet are so shitty. Yeah, yeah. That they're not science based. That's right. That's why they're not science based at all. And so it didn't take much for an AI to like write some somewhat science based programming. Well, because it's basic. And it basically put 90% of the influencers out of business. Yeah, it's literally compound lifts, basic lifts. Shreds was just getting going again. Well, so, so my son. He had a great take on it. So if you haven't watched a little clip on it and I agree with him, right? Well, I think I put under their great take because I agree. My son went on there. He went on the, what is it called? The chat. Chat GPT. He went on there and he asked it to write him a term paper. And I remember with this, the specific specifications were, but it was complicated. Like a term paper in the, during this time era, discussing this, debating this particular issue. Like this really spit out a term paper right away. And he goes, dad, he goes, this, what are they gonna do? How are they gonna? How are they gonna police this? They can't. Yeah. Schools and stuff. It's totally disruptive. I used it too. So that was like blew my mind what it like produced almost instantaneously. Okay, so what's now, okay, to this right here, okay? Now, if five students queued it the same thing, would it respond the same way to all five? Okay, we should test that. We should ask it the same question and see if we get the same answer. Because that's where this will be quickly, you know, when the whole classroom shows up with the exact same. It's like, wait a minute. It's pretty obvious, right? I feel like I've read this. But if this thing like spits you out something unique every time, like how are they gonna track that? But I would imagine that if you ask the exact same specific question that it's going to spit off the same term, paper or answer. No? Yeah, you just, yeah, you'd think. I mean, if it's single answers to stuff where there's an objective answer. Obviously. Yeah, but a paper. Two plus two is always gonna be four no matter how many times you ask it. But a paper with specific parameters like, or even like, I mean, you would think that it would probably spit off the same. You're right. Same constant. So if you're a kid though, now I'm thinking as a student, how would I do this so I wouldn't get caught? I would try and make it unique the way I'd ask the question. So like, let's say that. Yeah, but like, okay, let's use the term paper. You know, 30 kids are doing it. How many kids could you come up with that exact term paper with 30 different cues? Probably not. I mean, maybe a couple. Maybe a couple. You could say a little bit different, but then you get too different and you're not gonna get what you want from it, right? Yeah, I don't know.  He's a, he actually helped found some big tech companies and he's got a company right now that he's working on. He's gonna be a billionaire. This is a family member of mine.  He said, Sal, he goes, this will do to the world what the internet did. He goes, that's how big this is. Oh, I mean, I see that. I see that already. I mean, look at just the fact.  You had it right at Florida. Yeah, and so I was like, let me see what this thing could do, right? Cause I knew kind of what I wanted to say or whatever like that, but I knew that would actually take me, you know, 15, 20 minutes, especially me as slow as I write. And so I'm like, let me cue it in there. And it spit me off something that was better than I would have wrote myself. And I was like, damn. That's such a trip. It was. So at first I cued it, like write me an Instagram post that is related to a partnership. That talks about partners, yeah. And it literally gave me like a witty short caption with hashtags is what it gave me. And then I was like, oh, I want to write something longer. So I said, write me a paragraph about friendship and partnership. And then it gave me this law and both of them were fine. Now, was it, was the verbiage the same or was it different? Totally different. One was a witty one-sentence caption. One of them was like a witty one-sentence caption with hashtags. The other one was a gone out paragraph. So let me ask you guys this question then, okay? Entertainment, what's gonna prevent when they can get to the point when they can digitize a character, okay? Where it looks real, because they're getting close to this, it looks real and they can literally make the character as likable as possible for whatever they're looking for. And then this technology makes it talk and it's got a personality and it's debating and it's entertaining and whatever.  Like are people even gonna do that anymore? It's like artificial entities, yeah. I mean. They're almost like their own little life forms. God, that's gonna be a weird future. I mean, tell me we're not moving faster and faster to the plugged in and unplugged division in our society. Because, and things like this are only making the case in the argument for the plugged in people that it's gonna be great. And it's like, oh, we're gonna be able to make AI movies and we're gonna have friends. I'll be able to create a friend digitally that is like the most awesome supportive friend you could have.  You don't have to worry about anything. Everything's done for you. And I'm like, you better. What's gonna get you up in the morning?    You won't, you'll be great for six months. And after that. That's why I love that.  You used to bring it up all the time. That Twilight Zone episode. I just think it's such a great metaphor for that is that we think we want everything, but you be surprised. I mean, and how many times have you heard that story? I mean, I've shared that story.   Yeah, like how bored would Superman be if there was no crime, no villains? And like, would he play sports? He'd be bored as hell. Would he do anything, you know, physical? He'd be like, yeah, of course I'm gonna win.  I'm like, I do this here. There's no excitement, there's no fun, there's no challenge, there's no failure. Dude, Mount Everest is gonna be crowded again. What? I'm just saying. What? Just, dude, people are gonna look for that epiphany and that.  We're gonna get deep right now, so I'll help you out. Yeah, I mean, that's why we have gyms because we don't work in the farms anymore. Oh yeah, yeah, so no, actually we have to mention seed right now, we're supposed to talk about them. Still by far, by the way, I have given, I have had family members try seed who were loyal, loyal to their probiotic. Like, I have a cousin who's like, dude, I take this one, I've taken it every day for the last five years. I don't wanna change it.  I'm like, just trust me, try this out. Switched, right away, switched. So he's like, why is it so good? What's, is it different bacteria? I said no, I said it's how it's delivered. It literally brings a bacteria where it's supposed to go. You guys aren't on the kids' one yet, are you? Cause they have the kids' one too. No, no, I didn't do that. Yeah, we have, we give it to Max. Oh really? Is it, okay, is it, what is it, drops? Yeah, I think it's like a drop, a drop. I think you have both options, actually. I'll have to ask Katrina. How old do they have to be? Cause I gotta give some to my two year old. I don't, I think, I don't know if there's an age limit on it. I don't know. There's probably a dosage, different, depending on the age. He's obviously old enough to have it. All right, so let's go, let's go deep into the, let's just pretend everybody just smoked a bunch of weed right now. So check this out. What if, so you know the whole, like, we live in a simulation? Why would you pretend? Stupid. You know the whole, like, we live in a simulation theory, right? Yeah. What if humanity reached that point where they solved all the problems, they were super, everybody's like, this sucks, they're so depressed. So ultimately, the solution was, let's create an artificial reality, plug ourselves in and make it, so we don't know we're in that reality and experience challenges and hardships. And that's what we keep doing. What if that's, what if that's the deal? So this isn't real?  That was really cool. And then you're back to just, you know. You guys got me all the things possible, Drew. That rabbit hole, that rabbit hole page, that's what, I was just watching one of their little short videos, their clips with all the ominous music and some of that. The universe is weird. The theory is that we, you know, why we can't remember anything from ages like one to three or something like that is that that's our memory being wiped clean. And the reason why we have- It's making room for- Yeah, it's making room for this new life that we're going to live. And the reason why we have deja vu is because there's certain parts that didn't get completely wiped clean.  It's a fold in the space time continuum. Oh, damn, what did I start? This is awesome. Hey, so I want to say something real quick. I want to ask you guys your opinion on this because I wish this would happen to me because I know what I would do. I was driving by the lake. There's a lake over there in Elmadan and I was stopped at the stoplight and there's geese that are there sometimes. And I'm watching these kids play and you know geese are aggressive, right? And they're running and then the people ran away. I was laughing while they're running away. And then I'm like, it was adults running away from geese.  Like if a geese- I'll just bite you though still. Okay, if a geese charged me, that geese is going down. Oh yeah, I know this. Is that actually a goose? Goose, my bad. If a goose, I don't know why I call this singular goose a geese. If a goose charged me, I feel like I could punt that thing across the- What made you think of this? Cause I was watching, I was parked, I was at the stoplight- Cause they're running away. And people are running away from the geese.  Stand your ground and give them a good kick in the, you know, much what happens. We're about as soft as they come, dude. I mean, you know that like every generation says that about the previous generation, but- And they're right. They are right. They really are. We're way softer than our dads and our dads. We're softer than our grandparents. Like life is just way easier. The stuff that we consider like hardship and challenges is just like, oh my God, we're- I mean, I was actually talking about that, that limitless thing that what's his name does. What's the- Oh, you're talking about the series of Chris Helmsworth? Yeah, yeah.  It's a good message. And it's, I'm like, yeah, but it's all fabricated. They hired him after the fact. They already had the message lining, the stuff that we're talking about. And I know we're trying to normalize conversation around mental health. I get that and I support that.  I mean, and I was watching that show right before that I was watching Yellowstone. And I'm like, and you know, they were, it was this, there was this scene in Yellowstone where, you know, there's a time of the year where they run the cattle and it's like a two week thing. And they, you don't, you don't bring anything. You like sleep out on the ground for two weeks out with your hat, your cowboy hat on.  And that's how you sleep for like two weeks and hard labor day and night and stuff like that. And guys are, one of the guys died on the trail.  Like it killed a guy. It was like literally normal life. And then the stuff that we had to overcome and just get through was like so crazy. And the stuff that we complain about. That shows you what we're capable of. Right. Well, okay. So let me ask you guys this in 40 years, what will you be bragging to your grandchildren about? Like, what will you say to your kids that we did that they'll be like, not your kids, but your grandkids that we did, that they'll be like, you did what? I don't think there's anything impressive we did. I think there is. Like, imagine telling- When we do that's impressive.  You had to talk? No, no, I'll be like, you know that we used to get into like 5,000 pound machines and just operate them.  What? You guys did that as dangerous. Oh, okay. Something like that. Like, is there anything? Oh, that's a good point. I feel like they're gonna think that's crazy. In the future. You guys operate those yourself? That's a good point. You had a 16-year-old do that? You walked outside?  That's so dangerous or so. That's a good guess. Because when you look at the statistics around like car accident deaths. That's crazy.  Nah, we had a radio, we listened to it all the time. Texting on phones. I'd eaten there. I knew you were in my seatbelt. Oh my God. Dad. That's crazy. You're insane. That's a good guess. I can't think of anything else that is. I bet you, you'll be talking about football. I bet you'll be like, we used to play the sport or... Oh yeah.  What? Yeah. That's crazy, you know? I bet it'll be something like that. Yeah, I don't know. Dude, that's an interesting thought. I mean, sports have already evolved so much. I definitely think that sport, there's a very good chance when you see the rise of video gaming and sports, there's a very good chance that it could potentially in our lifetime overtake real sports and that we will watch like... Honestly, it's like anything physical, right? Yeah, because it will, then the case don't make is that it's safer and you're either we'll see fake robots that look like real humans that are on a field hitting each other with people controlling them, whether that be through their mind or through actual control, but let them hurt each other and kill each other because we'll be like, you believe that we used to do that? We used to hit each other and take our life expectancy down by 30% and we get injuries. Our brains are gonna be even more, like people are gonna be so much more concerned because we're gonna find out, because it's like one of the last mysteries of our body really is like, how the brain works and like how all of these like little micro impacts or physical things affect it.  I mean, you're right. I actually think that's how, that's how you'll get rid of something like that is cause the research around and the statistics on it, of like how much it declines your cognitive ability, your life expectancy, your joint health, your injury rate, all, they're gonna compile all of that and then we're gonna be able to have real-time data that shows like, look at what you're doing. You used to do that in real life. I can plug into the game now and I got, you know, 20 lives. Right, and I'm 100% safe. Yeah. Do you guys remember the movie Demolition Man? Yeah, yeah. Okay, do you remember how they had sex? Remember? Didn't they simulate it?  So they had to like plug each other in. That movie's actually, I mean, it's kind of campy now, but there was a lot of like good predictive stuff. I mean, I think Player One did the best. I think Player One's, you know, idea of... Yeah, we're kind of closest to that, I would say. Yeah, I think that they did some of the best as far as like predicting what we're gonna kind of look like. Hey Doug, we have a giveaway tomorrow, right? The day after this show airs, we need to mention right now? Yeah, so this is on our Instagram account, our Mind Pump Media Instagram account, and it's the 12 days of Christmas that we've been running. Tomorrow's the final day, that Saturday, and we're giving away a dock pro worth $1,000. So $1,000 goes on your bed and heats it and cools it, and you control it with an app on your phone, and it's like a game changer when it comes to something. Absolutely, super charger version. Absolutely, absolutely love that. In fact, I think where our stuff for the Utah property is getting there soon too, that's the last one. Isn't it already, like aren't we booking it up? January is almost completely booked already. So I think we have eight or nine days left. So for people who don't know, this is a property that's like Park City, right? Park City, Utah, and in it we have like all the stuff we talk about, PRX Gym, Red Light Therapy, we have the Euler systems on the beds, warms and cools them. Cold plunge, sauna, jacuzzi, steam. Yep, and then of course you're Park City, so skiing and activities and it's gorgeous out there, so. All the pictures, the only thing we don't like, we haven't flown out there when the, so the sauna isn't there yet and the cold plunge isn't there yet, they're getting there. And so, but Doug did take pictures the last time that we were out there and it's, MindPumpParkCity.com? Correct. Yeah, so MindPumpParkCity.com and then you can email Jerry on dates. We've been, anybody who, by the way too, so I don't know if I've even told you guys this.  So if you're a MindPump person, we're hooking everybody up that books with a program of their choice. In addition to that, when you have a MindPump person go, we're stocking the house up. So we're doing like the beef jerky sticks, the element tea stuff, all the Organifi stuff, we're gonna have Pathwaters in the refrigerator, we're gonna have creatures, creatures if I have an oatmeal in there. So you'll have access to all that stuff for free when you stay there. So we, when we find out with, you go through her and you book it, we know you're obviously a MindPump listener. So we kind of give our people read. All right. Now here at the end, here at the intro, we give out, now we've been shouting out pages on social media. There was one you wanted to show. I got one, yeah. Chris Williamson with Modern Wisdom. So we interview him coming up here in January, I think. And so I've been, and I knew of him before, but obviously since we're interviewing, I'm kind of going down the rabbit hole of his content.   Yeah, you were saying. Yeah, he's great. Very, very good. A few of his interviews. And he's had incredible guests.  And he does an incredible job. So I watch him on YouTube, but I know he has the podcast format too. And his YouTube channel I think is under Modern Wisdom or it's under Chris Williamson. It's one of the camera outfits under his name or not. But yeah, definitely a good follow if you like those really good interviews like that. Live On is a company that makes supplements that are absorbed better. They reach your target tissues more effectively because they use pharmaceutical grade, liposomal, technology. It's a better way to absorb your vitamins and nutrients. Critical nutrients for optimal brain, immune, and metabolic health. Go check this company out. Go to liveonlabs.com, that's L-I-V-O-N-L-A-B-S.com forward slash mind pumper. Right now you can get a free sample pack of all six supplements with any purchase. All right, here comes the rest of the show. Our first caller is Casey from Texas. Hey Casey, what's happening? How can we help you? Hey guys, so my biggest pet peeve is people that I follow who contradict themselves on advice that I'm trying to gain from them. And so, I came into this whole thing through Mike Matthews and then he introduced me to you guys and then I actually hired a coach one-on-one and he isn't crazy. In fact, he doesn't program at all the compound lifts like the big ones, military press, bench, squad, and deadlift. And then I heard you guys talk about how important they were. And then you had Mike Matthews on and you both were on the compound lift thing. And so I was wondering if I could just read you this coach's opinion and get your direct feedback. Yeah, sure. Go for it. Go for it. Okay, so look, it's not too long. Right when it feels too long, it ends, I promise. All right, so I'm not against programming bench, but squad, deadlift are quite poor from a hypertrophy standpoint. Far superior options out there play some more direct stimulus on the target muscles without causing a massive disruption like squats and deadlifts. You could stop there. We could try this. That only directly program them if the client is A, limited on equipment, B, insists on the list. Three, the focus is more on increasing overall strength in the list. Beyond that, I don't see the direct need when you could do a hack squat over a squat or a straight-legged deadlift over a conventional deadlift. Those could be considered compounds but the direct stimulus and fatigue one will experience is much different. Also hesitant on form and technique. They're quite technical but could also turn into an ego lift. I've had quite a few clients who are persistent that they knew how to execute the lift properly but ended up getting injured had to take multiple weeks off. Reason why I try to program dumbbell pressing more than regular bench is because of the range of motion. I think a lot of people get stuck on the idea that you have to squat bench deadlift to get a decent physique. This is far from the truth. I personally haven't deadlifted in two plus years. Haven't done a barbell back squat in one and a half years. Legs are still growing, getting stronger. Stimulus is just poor on them and there's no way I can get under a squat bar for 10 to 20 reps or do a deadlift for that amount of reps. Yeah, Casey. So you literally could have stopped after two seconds. Yeah, I tried to interrupt you going, I already know this guy's gonna go. Yeah, this is one of the first off he's, I don't know who he is.  So here's the deal. People will look at exercise from a few different ways and one of them is just the pure hypertrophy standpoint, just muscle building. We don't care about function. We don't care about carryover. We don't care about anything but just, We don't care about learning curve. Yeah, we're just about just about hypertrophy, okay? Now, if we're just gonna argue hypertrophy, I could still make the argument that free weight exercises can outperform a lot of these machine exercises. But even if they were equal, here's where the free weights win. In real life, there's very few leg presses that you're gonna do but you're gonna be doing a lot of squatting. There's very little machine rows you're gonna do but there's gonna be a lot of barbell type row or deadlifts.  You'll be doing something where you're pressing something over your head. So the carryover to real life is much higher and in as far as, and he says I didn't lift, I haven't done these exercises for a year and a half or two years. I bet he did a lot of them when he first started. I bet that's what happened. And once you work out for years and years and years and years, you can get away from a muscle building standpoint to not doing it but I will say this, you will lose this skill and the ability of doing those exercises. I bet if you got under a bar to try to squat, his squat now would look terrible or he could potentially injure himself. So yeah, I guess if you're just looking from a stimulate the muscle on its own standpoint, maybe there's equivalency, they're not superior. No, no. And I say maybe because I can hear the arguments but you know what's funny is that even the best muscle building body builders of all time will tell you the value of free weight exercise. People like Ronnie Coleman, Dorian Yates, Kevin Livrone, like people who've built massive physique but I don't like to point to body builders all the time because that's such an extreme endeavor. It would be like pointing to any extreme endeavor in physical athletics and trying to get their specific advice. The average person wants to build a lot of muscle but would like to also be strong in the real world and it's not a trade-off, it really isn't a trade-off. We're also, you're not even addressing, yes it is better for hypertrophy and I'll make that case for all day long, okay? Okay, in case, have you ever done a new lift that you've never done before or do you remember when you first started lifting weights and how much your body responded because it was a new stimulus, it was the first time? Do you remember that feeling? Yeah, of course. Okay, so you do something like that and what that is is that it's a novel stimulus and your body has to adapt to it. It's new stimulus and it goes, oh and muscle builds, okay?  So you do get benefits from it, you do build some muscle and then that the curve of the learning curve of it starts to taper down and the adaptation process and the benefits start to diminish. The beautiful thing about very high complex movements like the squat, like the deadlift, like the overhead press is it has a long learning curve and guess what, a long learning curve also equals a longer process of adaptation which means over time more muscle. When they do these studies for these knuckleheads that to argue the hypertrophy argument is they're looking at a six week study that shows which one stimulates the muscle on an e-stem machine. Oh, the hack squat fires the quads as much or more than the squat does in a six week setting but when you look over the course of somebody who trained for two years straight and we took one guy who did nothing but hack squats and another guy who did squats, I guarantee the guy who did squats and not the hack squats versus the guy who did the hack squats and didn't do the squats will have seen more muscle over the course of those two years. Now, the irony too. I'll take that bet all day long. And the irony about the ego lift, first off, here's the irony of that. I've seen more ego lifting on leg presses, hack squats, machines than I've ever seen with free weights. You know, I've seen people stack the weights on a leg press and do like a two inch leg press or whatever, so that's funny to me. Injury risk can be high on any exercise. Of course, some more complex in exercises, the more careful you need to be with your form and technique. That's what makes it high value. That's the value. But man, the carryover is just through the roof, yeah. So you were talking about functionality versus just muscle growth. And you said, well, I could see the argument of hypertrophy being almost equal. What if your only goal is aesthetics? And you're talking about it, we asked the bodybuilder. And I know, Adam, you were a pro bodybuilder, but if you asked those guys, I'm like, those are the guys I kind of want to ask. And if they say, yeah, leg press, all that, then why would I go with that as well? Okay, so I disagree with what Sal said. By the way, I said maybe. And the reason why I said maybe is that's the only argument that they make that I can kind of see the logic. Everything else they say is... Let me tell you something. One of my, and of course, this is my personal experience. I do not think I have the genetics to be a bodybuilder. I got into that space just to prove that I could build that physique. And I went from amateur to pro with no coach, nobody else, no team, no nothing. And I tell you, one of the things that I think was one of my biggest advantages when I looked at my, because I worked out at a gym where there's probably 10 to 15 pros at all times we're in there. So it was a really cool environment, right? This was in NorCal, I worked out at what you would consider like the, what's the LA one that... Gold's gym? Yes. Venice, yeah.  And they all trained the machines and cables and trained the pump all the time. I think the reason why my physique exploded was because I was the guy that was doing that stuff. I thought that was my advantage. And when I looked at the way they were training, I thought, oh, this is crazy.  They're missing out on the benefits of training like a power lifter, of training singles, doubles, triples, and hitting heavy weight. Now you don't stay there forever because it's important that you phase out of that type of training. That training is tremendous value for your central nervous system and packing on some serious muscle. So these guys that, yes, you could build a physique by, I had a decent physique before I started competing, but it wasn't anything like... Was it capped to it? Oh, there was a cap to it. Yeah. That's the thing, there's this huge systemic effect to these compound lifts that they don't consider in terms of muscle building.  So... Yeah, what's funny to me too? One of the big problems was the fatigue to stimulus ratio. I've never really experienced that myself where I go, oh my gosh, I'm so fatigued. I need a deload week, so I don't know. But then I think the other thing was that hypertrophy reps can be from four to 30, right? And so you, Adam, we're talking about the different stimulus, right? The different stimuli. Change it up. But what if you're not able to change it up to those higher reps with the big compound lifts? Are you taking something away there? Or do you do 30 deadlifts? Yeah, well, why wouldn't you be able to? Yeah. I mean, do you program 30 deadlifts? Wouldn't that be kind of like a cardio exercise? Well, 30 is a lot. 20, 20 though. Yeah, I typically don't program anything over 20 reps. 20 reps is more than that. And you don't think that's really out of the question or strange to be doing 20 deadlifts? No, it's hard. You're gonna have to go real light. Yeah. And I do prefer deadlifts in the one to, you know, maybe 12 rep range depends on the exercise. Some exercises do better lower reps and others with higher reps. Like I don't like to do, you know, sets of two reps with laterals, right? Side laterals, I'm not gonna do sets of two, but I'll do that with deadlifts. So it depends on the exercise, but no, you can go up to. And by the way, it doesn't mean that neither one of those don't build some muscle. Two reps of lateral raises could build muscle. Yeah, just the technique is really good. But there are certain exercises that lend themselves better with higher rep versus lower rep. Deadlifting happens to be one of those things. I will go all the way up to, I just, actually just talked on the podcast of the guys, I went all the way down to 135, which for me, I can deadlift over 500 pounds. So 135 is nothing. And I did 20 reps, slow and controlled. It was like just a light day. I was working on technique, the way I pulled off the floor, making sure I was keeping the bar balance. I loved to throw that in there.  So tremendous value by doing that. It's funny when I hear this though too, because if you look at the, just the biggest strongest people or coaches, that coach, the biggest strongest people, and you were to take a consensus, okay? Cause you'll get some dissenting views and opinions. But if you take a consensus, it'll be something like 80%. We'll say, yeah, there's tremendous value in the barbell squat and the barbell deadlift and the overhead press. There's tremendous value. Now in athletics, it's that there would be 100%. Like you're not gonna get a football coach or strength coach that's gonna say, yeah, I have my athletes, I don't have my athletes squat, I have them do leg press. Like you're not gonna see very many football coaches say that that's a good idea. But even in just the building, your physique, you're still gonna see a majority. I mean, look at like, who's Mr. Classic Olympia, C-Bomb, right? Chris Bum said that. The guy's been deadlifting and squatting towards the back half of his career and has completely changed his physique and had a lot of muscle.  So my whole like teenage 20 and my 20s, I actually loved hearing this information because I hated the squat, I hated the deadlift and I avoided it for my first 10 years of lifting. And I built an okay physique. Like I didn't look bad. Like I look good. Like I had a good physique. And when I actually started to deadlift, squat, overhead press, like that was the core of my routine.  I mean, it responded in like a year or two compared to the 10 years I've been doing hack squats and leg presses. And I liked hearing that as a young 20-year-old kid because squatting was hard.  I wasn't good at it. I was frustrated. I was weak. And so when I'd hear these bodybuilder guys be like, you don't need a squat. You don't need a deadlift. And then I'd be like, hell yeah, I'll just leg press. I'll just hack squat. Cause I like doing that. It's easy. And so I fell into that trap of closing myself that it's a better way to train cause I'm a bodybuilder and I care about a stack. Cause I don't, my saying used to be Justin will say this all the time, right? No, I'm all show no go. I'll show no go.  I don't care about being the strongest guys. I want to look good. No girl ever asked me when I take my shirt off, how much do you bench? So what do I care about that shit? That was my attitude.  And that I attribute that to what took me from amateur to pro in such a short period of time is that that was the foundation of my training. And when I looked at my peers in the space, they just, they just neglected that.  Let's just do machine curls. For some reason, free weights are okay for isolation exercises. That'll give you clue. And what's the clue here? They just don't like hard work. They're lazy.   But then when it comes to like curls, yeah, dumbbell curls, barbell curls, those are super awesome. So all of a sudden, now free weights are okay. So their logic is flawed and it's based on can I do less work, because this is hard and I've already built a solid physique. And so therefore I can kind of maintain what I'm doing.  But now you're seeing people say, oh, free weights are great. And by the way, the risk reward argument is a fair argument. And it's definitely something as a coach, I apply it when I'm talking to a seven-year-old lady.  Because I fell into that trap and I wish somebody would have like forced me to squat deadlift bench overhead press when I was younger because I have no idea where I'd be today if I would have- I trained a lot of old people too, okay. Yeah, I'm not gonna have a seven-year-old lady do a barbell squat, but I'm gonna have her do a body weight, sit down, stand up squat. And that's safer than a leg press for her. So this whole like it's, you modify the exercises. There's a million and one different ways to squat and a million and one different ways to do a press. So it doesn't have to be with the barbell on your back. But that's a fundamental human movement. It's very strange that people would have any cave. You're challenging the movement. Yeah, don't train this fundamental human movement. Very strange to me. Let's just get the muscles that we use with fundamental movements stronger, but let's not practice the movement as if just getting strong muscles allows you to move well. That's not necessarily how it works. Well, you stay too long in that, you create dysfunction. Totally. Your body doesn't fire in an ideal way when you actually go to do these types of movements would set you up for potential injury down the road. You should see, KC, we have models that come in to film exercises for our programs.  Justin has to prime them for 20 minutes. I'm 65, 70 year old guys that can press better than these guys. Yeah, and they can't because they never do. They always use a machine. I don't know about you, but... It's just the patterns they created. I'm not trying to lose the ability to lift something over my head straight and squat down on the toilet. It's funny because I'm not there yet. I haven't graduated to the part where I'm thinking about functionality and longevity. But Adam's point, I think, really drives it home for me in terms of how he changed the game for himself, so. Bro, you're in the same place as I was. Literally, that's how I thought and I thought the same way.  I wasn't talking about functional stuff because I didn't have all kinds of pain. I wasn't talking about performance.   Just wanted to look... Yeah, but I'm sure I'll get there because honestly, I've been doing this for so long and I see myself, as Sal says, as a fitness fanatic. And so I'm sure at some point, I will graduate to exactly what you guys are talking about. Yeah, you know what? You will because father time is undefeated and eventually you will have to... I'm just trying to be the voice of reason for you. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Do you have any of our programs, Casey?  Oh my God, I do not. I do not. All right, I'm gonna send you...  So you are doing something every single day but the main workouts are three days a week and I'm looking at you right now and I'm hearing you talk and I bet you're gonna put more muscle on with that program than anything that this guy's written for you. Awesome. Okay, I appreciate it guys. Go to that and then I would love to see you do right after that aesthetic and then split. Like that's like the cool like... Like bodybuilding. That's the next three. Yeah, bodybuilding lineup for us as far as programming.  We're gonna send you anabolic right now. And then make sure when this airs, because I'm sure you'll see it, send this to that coach and be like, hey, if this annoys you, you should definitely tag Mind Pump and try to make the case. Okay, yeah, yeah. I should do that. By the way, when I'm running this stuff, am I in a surplus the whole time or... You trying to build? Yeah, yeah, right now I am. Yeah, I would be in a surplus for most of it.  You're really trying to build aggressively than just three days of a low-cal for... Every three, four weeks. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's a nice way to interrupt that and then go right back to your bulk. And then at what point do you fully commit to the cut?  That's right, yeah, keep... Okay, so you're super uncomfortable and you just know it's time. Well, I mean, you can determine that. I don't know if super uncomfortable would be the limit, maybe just uncomfortable, but it's up to you. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, cool. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, I appreciate it, guys. You got it, man. Thanks, KC.   Bro, it's exactly what I said. It's lazy. And you know what? And the reason why I get so... Because these buff dudes can't fall. When I got into an argument with Eugene way back when, and this is exactly my argument right here, is, okay, he's 36 and he's probably been lifting for a little while already, is I was the exact same way. I just wanted to look really cool and so I paid attention to all these bodybuilder guys and they basically gave me the free pass that I didn't need to do these hard movements that were difficult for me that I hated doing because I sucked at them. And so I was like, hell, yeah. I ain't got a squat. I ain't got a deadlift. Why should I over... I'm a bodybuilder. I'm gonna do all these... For years, that's how I trained and in the real true reason deep in my core why I avoided it when I'm being honest with myself is because it was hard. And I know as soon as I said that, it resonated with him.  This just reminds me, this is a long time ago, I was 18 years old trainer and this when I first became a trainer and there was another trainer that worked there and he was this like really jacked, like a kind of bodybuilder type or whatever. And we were talking about working out and he was relatively young. He was in his early 20s and he was talking about how much he could leg press.  We had this argument about squats and deadlifts and leg press, because I remember when I was really young that group of power lifters took me into the wing and taught me how to squat.  And I said, I tell you what, let's go and you show me how much you could leg press for five reps. I'll show you what I could squat for five reps. Let's see who gets closer to the other. And then let's switch, yeah. And let's switch. And needless to say, he hurt himself trying to squat what I could squat because he didn't have the skill. He didn't own it, he couldn't do it. He went down, came up, he's like, I hurt my back. I knew I shouldn't squat. And I remember being like, that's embarrassing. My favorite part of this was that, it turns into an ego lift when your point to it being like the leg press being like a super ego. Dude, I've seen guys in there like literally taking every single 45 that they can find and stack and they're going on there. Like why? And doing two inch, two inch. Nobody's impressed. Range of motion.  It's cause it's hard. And that's the main reason why they avoid doing it. And listen, I have never, ever, okay. In my career, convince somebody to start squatting and deadlifting. And then they come back in a year and go like, that was a waste of my time. I should have just never.  You know, one more point I wanna make with this is that machines are not designed for you. They're designed for this average body type. And you can adjust the seat and do that kind of stuff. But it's always kinda off. Free weights follow you. You could be six, four. You could be four, four. You put a barbell on your back. The barbell is stuck to you and you determine the range of motion. You determine how the bar moves. You go, you're outside of five, nine. If you're six, two or you're five, two and you go do exercise on a machine, the adjustments don't really make it that appropriate for you. It's just a fact. So free weights are just superior. And now cables come close. That's the only machine I'd say that comes close where it can kind of follow the individual. But aside from that, free weights are superior. Now there is value in machines.  There's definitely value. But for people who say those exercises, dead lifts and squats, don't do them. Into the ego thing, it definitely can get away. Like I was on the other end of that spectrum where it was just like everything was about your PR and like what you could literally lift to the most extreme and put your body through the grind for that without considering like individual like single joint movements at all. We would avoid those. So that too has its own flaws. Totally, it could kick in anywhere. Our next caller is Richard from California. What's up, Richard? How can we help you? Hey guys, good to see you. So my question is I'm coming off of a bulk since August and I've been switching back and forth some bulk, some mini cuts. But as I go into the new year, I'm gonna start a cut. And what I've noticed is that during cut phases, because I'm eating less, it's hard to maintain strength and I don't wanna lose all the muscle. So my question is in regards to rep ranges. I've been following your program, the anabolic and performance. And I've been trying to do like the five by fives and trying to do like strength training. But I'm wondering about when I go into a cut is it better to do like lower weights with more reps or try to maintain the strength so I don't lose that much muscle? So that's my question, what's the optimal range? Yes, to both. Yeah, so the same rules apply. That would apply to when you're in a surplus is that you wanna cycle through and phase your workouts because your body does get adapted to a specific rep range and it stops becoming or it can start to stop becoming an effective muscle building signal. So in other words, three weeks of five reps, follow that up with three weeks of 10 reps, of course adjust the weight accordingly, right? And then follow that up with three weeks of 15 reps and then go back to the lower reps. So you wanna cycle through and it doesn't matter whether you're cutting or bulking. Now the only caveat I'll give you is that you really have to deal with the psychological aspect of cutting. You are not gonna be able to lift as heavy even if you don't lose any muscle just because you have less energy, okay? Cause I'll be weaker when I go on a low calorie diet before I ever lose any muscle at all just cause I'm just don't have the same capacity with energy. So keep that in mind, don't pay attention so much to the weight that you're lifting because it's probably gonna go down but that's somewhat expected, somewhat expected. So the part that you touched on with the psychological part, that to me is this is where the answer lies for the individual because yes, the truth is both have value. The idea is to always be phasing out of reps no matter where you're at in your diet cycle or whatever with that. But I do encourage people to, hey, run MAPS anabolic phase one and run it one time through with a bulk, run it another time through a cut, do the same thing in phase three, try both ways. And the thing that I want you to pay attention to more than anything else is psychologically what happens to you.   So how you see yourself react psychologically I think is the answer to how you should run during that personally. What I have found is when I am in, especially when I was competing and I was in a hard cut for a long time, it is inevitable. I almost feel like I'm getting weaker week over week.  So that is when I tend to kind of to taper off of doing a lot of my big lifts where I'm trying to push heavy weight and I focus more on the hypertrophy and the pump and slowing down the tempo so I love to start playing with things like that where the weight doesn't matter as much. Like if all of a sudden you guys hear us talk about do like things like, when was the last time you did like a six second negative or when have you done like a pause squad or you do like these isometric type of exercise in there? I like to start to incorporate stuff like that in a cut because then it takes me away from like thinking about man, last week when I was bench pressing I was doing 225 and now I can only do 180. That messes with my head. So I try and switch my programming up to things that are less focused on weight but still are sitting a novel stimulus to my body. So it's sending a signal that my body wants to build muscle even though I know it's not going to because I'm producing calories. And really there's no science to support why I do that or why it's better other than the psychological game that I'm playing with myself. Does that make sense? Yeah, that makes sense. So I guess what I'm hearing is that you want to maintain a novelty through the cut so that the body is still responding to preserving the muscle and maybe not so much like, oh, I got a PR during the cut. I mean, if you can, if you can maintain it but not hurt yourself, that's great. But I think most important for what I'm hearing is that just keep it novel throughout that cutting process. Correct. What builds muscle is best is also what preserves muscle best. Now here's one other thing that I want to comment on with the mental piece. People often look at the physiological aspects, what's going to build, what's going to stimulate the muscle. But I think you need to consider the mental piece more than anything because if you stop a cut or if you stop your workout or whatever, it's almost always due to something mentally, lose motivation, lose commitment. Oh, I don't know if I feel good doing this or I think I can lift heavier. Why can't I lift as much? So here's another tip. I like to do a lot of body weight type exercises when I'm cutting and here's why. When I do pull-ups, if I lose five pounds on the scale, I'm lifting less weight when I do a pull-up and so I notice that I'm not, I feel like I get to do the same amount of reps. So it doesn't mess with me as much, right? I like to do body weight dips when I'm gonna cut and I'll use weight around my waist and it's like, wow, I can lift, I'm on a cut and I'm lifting a heavier dumbbell than I did before. Well, yeah, I'm 10 pounds lighter too, right? So I know talking about it sounds silly but put yourself in that position and you know what that feels like. So that's the most important thing to consider, I would say. But yeah, what builds muscle the best is what also preserves muscle the best. So consider that. Great, great. All right, thanks guys. You got it man, thanks Richard. Yeah, how long did it take you guys as trainers to realize that the mental piece is the number one most important thing to focus on with your clients? It's huge and to kind of reiterate, like that being something I had to consider a lot when you're going through a cut was like, first of all, you're gonna lift less.  You're not gonna, it's not gonna be the same experience. I think, and so going through I think and revisiting it with a different mentality towards it was huge for me. So it was like, not necessarily avoiding it because also too, that was one of the best ways for me to preserve muscle, which was like, I used to take it all on at once. So being the athlete, like if I'm gonna cut, I want it to do the most extreme like cardiovascular, like crazy circuit or like whatever I could do to like kind of punish my way to get there. And so, but I would lose muscle, as I would go through that cutting process and not get to that desired outcome. And so, to train my mind to stay in those same lifts, but realize I'm gonna be weaker in those lifts was part of the training. I mean, I think so much of this lifelong fitness game that we play as far as like, so much of it's psychological. It's 95% of it.  When it's like really, you know, the big argument is like figuring out how this person ticks and what motivates them and what keeps them going and what discourages them and why do they quit normally and like piecing that all together. And I think as an individual who's listening like that's trying to figure this out, like that you have to always be factoring that in too. It's not just, oh, this is the best exercise for this or this study says that when you're in a cut, you do this and this response. It's like, well, wait a second, like that only applies if you're perfect about falling everything into a T which I've yet to meet anybody who's like that. Most people, yeah, most people are inconsistent. Most people fall off, most people get discouraged. And so it's like, you gotta factor all those things in when you make decisions like this. And so I just learned over time that, man, when I was cutting because I have this issue with building muscle and I used to think that my muscle would fall off my body.   And then I would fall off the diet.  Yeah, I go right back in a ball because of that. So even if that was the best thing for me to do that bench press, because I've learned that lesson so many times, I know like, you know what? This is a good time for me to do push-ups or isometrics or do things that like, I don't have like this arbitrary like number that I know is like, oh, I'm strong when I bench press this. Well, I don't have that for body weight push-ups or suspension trainer push-ups or like weird exercises. You know what I'll say is to do to, I do this even now to this day to help with the psychological piece. When I'm cutting, this is when I'm more likely to work out in a tank top because I can see the definition. So I don't worry so much about the weight. When I'm bulking, sweater, long sleeved shirt, whatever, cause I don't care. I just about how much weight I can lift. And it was just something I figured out years ago. It's like, well, okay, if I can see the definition, I'm not as disappointed as just a sweater wife, Peter. Yes, that's both best of both worlds. You know, I used to use creatine like this. So this was like- Creatine in the cut to help, yeah. Yeah, so I would actually not use creatine consistently and I'd save it for the cuts for a show and I would then start to do it. So I'd get a little bit of, you know, the loading of the water in my muscles. And so I'd get a little fuller look and do the same thing.  Our next caller is Lewis from the Philippines. Lewis, what's happening? How can we help you? Hey guys, how are you guys doing today? Good, great. It is awesome, man. So of course, before I get to my question, I just want to express like, how much you guys have really changed my life and how I get to live. Like obviously I found you guys for the fitness and for the health, but the lessons I've learned have transcended so much past that. And just a special shout out as well, because you guys talk so much about fatherhood and being a husband. And even for as young as I am, I think that I'm really learning things that I do hope to apply in the future. If ever I am lucky enough to become a father as well. So the rabbit hole I've really jumped into ever since listening to you guys have really been a blessing. So thank you guys. Good man, thank you. That's great, man. A lot more conspiracy theories as well. I've been listening to you guys. Yeah. So, but I'm gonna get to my question. So I'm 21 years old and I'm a graduating engineering student and I'm about to enter five months of a very heavy review classes for my upcoming licensure exams or board exams. So to give you guys some perspective on that, these review classes are about five days a week of lectures and practice exams. But beyond that, people generally do study all day, every day for five months straight. And a lot of my upperclassmen have warned me that this kind of becomes your life. No real choice there. And it can be very difficult to balance other things with the workload and amount of topics that's necessary for us. So with this, I've been consistently training for about two years now. And over the past year, I've ran anabolic twice and I went on to performance and I actually just ended aesthetics a while ago. And my original goal or my original plan rather was to get power lift because I really just wanted to focus on getting as strong as possible. But now I'm not quite sure if this temporary shift in lifestyle and a whole lot of added stress from the review classes would be complimented by a program so focused on percentages and maxing out for a competition. But that being said, I'm definitely not looking to compete in anything. I just want to get as strong as possible. But my question is, how should I change my training and nutrition in what's probably going to be the most stressful five months of my life so far? And is it still realistic to focus solely on strength or should I just look to maintain general health for now? What a great question. Great question. That very well. That's MAP-15 though for sure. That's it. MAP-15. When do you start this period of five months of study? When does this start? January. January four. Oh, January four.  But once you get there, MAP-15 would be the perfect program for you. You're absolutely right, the stress is your body, yes, there's different kinds of stresses, but they do all accumulate. So mental and emotional stress can definitely accumulate and take away from your body's ability to handle physical stress.  So it could actually hurt your ability to do things like study, take tests. You'll notice your sleep will get worse and then it becomes this downward spiral. MAP-15 would be absolutely perfect because you get to be active every single day. There's still a good strength focus on it. And it's easy to stay consistent and it should not take away from your ability to do what you're doing with your studies for that five month period. Do you have MAP-15? No, I do not. Okay, we'll send that to you. And there's two versions of it. The first one is at home. The second one is more advanced where you use barbells. With your experience, if going to the gym or is not an issue for you or you have a barbell accessible at home, I would say go with the advanced version just because of your experience. Now, after that, after you're done with your study and you can get to more of a normal life, then I would go to MAPS PowerLift. But I think you'll be surprised. I think you'll be surprised with MAP-15. You'll probably see some progress with it at the same time. Yeah, I think that we have these periods in our life where we tend to shift our energy and focus on different things, whether that be family, work, school, lifting. And you're in a period in your life right now where this is like super important.  Everybody's telling you that, you pretty much have no life other than the studying for this five month one.  If there was ever a period of time when you say, you know what, this is where I'm gonna scale back on that. Do what I need to do to maintain because I care about health. I want energy.  I want to be strong.   So you want it to compliment this new area that you're gonna be like doubling and tripling down on, which is the school. And so map 15 in my opinion is perfect for something like that where you're gonna be heavily focused on the studying part. And then you're just gonna get in there, get your little 15 minute workout. And I tell you what, you still could potentially build and see good results during that time. Cause you could actually move forward. Yeah. You're actually working with your body instead of against it like most people would do in this situation. Louis, I have a couple of questions for you. Cause I'd like to give you some advice for nutrition and then some additional exercise advice. Have you ever tried like a ketogenic diet or really low carbohydrate diet to see how it affects you mentally? No, I've never done low carb or anything like that. Okay. So for some people, now for some people, this is the opposite. You have a little bit of time though cause you have till, you know, the beginning of January. See if you can get yourself into ketosis. So go low carbohydrate, no carbohydrates, high fat, high protein.  A lot of people make a mistake when they do this cause you lose a lot of water. So make sure you have a decent amount of sodium in your diet and see if you notice improvements in your cognitive function. If you do, that would be the diet that I would recommend during that period of time. Now I noticed improvements in cognitive function. So if I had to go through a five month period where I'm going to be testing my mental acuity, my ability to remember things, that kind of stuff, I would do a ketogenic diet. You have some time to experiment. It would probably take you about three, four days to get into ketosis and maybe three, four days to adjust after that. So you're looking at a week or two and then you'll know like, oh, I feel better or I feel worse and then go back to how you were. Yeah, if anything, it's a valuable tool. If you go through that process, you realize it does help with your mental clarity, your sharpness to use that to kind of prep in towards like a big test or like, you know, something like that where you're gonna need that extra bit of performance cognitively. So, you know, that's just something cool to consider that, you know, we can manipulate these things and find out what works best for our body for very specific needs. So I do, I piggyback on that. Yeah, now the other thing I would say with activity is, okay, let's say you follow maps 15 and you're doing 15 to 20 minute workout every single day, then the rest of the day you're sitting down and you're studying, make sure every 40 minutes or so you stand up and you do about a minute, one minute of activity. So it could be standing squats, it could be band presses, it could be push-ups, it could be a walk, but studies show that interrupting your, that long periods of sitting every 40 to 60 minutes or so improves your ability to learn, improves your ability to retain information and it keeps you sharp. So again, every 40 minutes or every 60 minutes, stand up, give yourself 60 seconds of something and then sit back down and you'll find that you'll be a lot better. You'll be able to remember things and be able to do a lot better with your mental tasks. And that's awesome. Definitely try and do that. Is that something I can just jump right in through or is that something I have to transition to? No, no, no, no, you do it now. If you're sitting down for longer than an hour, stand up literally 60 seconds. In fact, I just pulled up a study that I'm gonna talk about in one of our episodes that showed that this makes a significant improvement in a person's ability to retain information. Literally you stand up and for 60 seconds, it doesn't have to be a hard workout, you just move. So you do 60 seconds of stretching or standing squats or some pushups. So you can walk around the block. You go for a walk and then come right back. That makes a huge difference with your ability to learn and retain information and even creativity. They actually show improved creativity as well. Do you have MAPS 15, by the way? No, I do not. What about MAPS PowerLift? No, I don't either. All right, I'll send you MAPS 15, okay? After that, after you're done with your five months of study, then I think you can get into MAPS PowerLift. But I'll send you MAPS 15 right now. That's awesome. Thank you guys so much, man. You got it, man. Thanks for calling in. Thanks for listening. I have a follow-up question if you guys don't mind. Yeah, sure. Just some context. After listening to you guys, I've reversed dieted from eating just above 1,000 calories a day to eating around 22 to 2,300 calories a day. And I noticed that I've stalled at around this point. And if I go anywhere beyond that, I just see a lot more rapid weight gain, which is not that favorable. So I was just wondering, is this stalling calories a sign that I'm not building as much muscle? Or is it just like, this is like a threshold that my body can handle right now? Yeah, it's a threshold that your current body with your current level of activity and the current context of your life can handle.  So right now, what you're currently doing, that seems to be the upper limit.  It can go up or down. And by the way, during this time where we're about to go in this five to six month dark phase of learning, I actually wouldn't stress too much about that. I would eat to be healthy. I wouldn't really worry about getting lean, trying to build a bunch of muscle. Like you run maps 15, feed yourself accordingly as far as like, when you're hungry, eat, make good choices, hit your protein intake. But I really, this is not the time that I would be kind of manipulating that when you get out of that five to six month phase and go into power lift, then I would try and get you to increase calories and really get after power lift. That would be a good time to do that. And I'm just taking a guess because of what you do. You might be have like a kind of a sedentary lifestyle. Do you have you ever tracked your steps? Like, so if we get into power lift, I might have you like do walking with power lift. What are you doing? A day, do you know? Yeah, I ever since, well, when I started listening to you guys, I was doing a lot more cardio. Now I'm just focused on really walking. So I get around roughly 7,000 steps a day. Okay. Not bad, but I could easily. So what I would do is when I get into power lift, I would actually increase your calories and then like give you step goals. I'd say, okay, Lewis, first phase of power lift, I want you to do 9,000 to 10,000 steps every day. And I'm going to bump your calories, 350 to 500 calories every day. And let's see if the extra moving is enough to make sure we don't put on too much body fat. The surplus of calories helps you build muscle. And I'd try and reverse you like that. That was what, but I'd wait till you're done with your five to six month thing. All right. Thank you guys so much again. You got it, man. Thanks for calling in. Happy holidays, guys. Same to you. That's awesome. We got caller from around the world. You know, when it comes to like diet for I guess mental performance, I mean, I know for me, if I go a lot of vegetables, well-cooked vegetables, high fat, high protein, low to no carbohydrates, I am absolute sharp. It's fasting is even better than that. Unfortunately, but the only problem with fasting, you can't fast for obviously forever.  So I've identified that and it's, this is good stuff to know for yourself because your life's gonna change. And it's really cool when you can change your diet and your training to improve your life. Yeah. You can adjust things to really benefit wherever you are and whatever season of life you're in or whatever the focus is for performance because performance can be in all kinds of different directions, even if it's relationships or something like, you know, I'm focused more on being flexible now because I want to, you know, build and foster a relationship with more people. And so I'm willing to kind of like include maybe some alcohol where I normally wouldn't or whatever the case is. My only point to that is that, you know, that's something that we can adjust and we can fine tune to be appropriate for wherever you are right now in life. Our next caller is Marcus from Germany. Marcus, what's happening? How can we help you? Hi, hi guys. Thanks for having me on the show today. Really thankful that you're taking the time to answer my question. I really appreciate it. Thank you very much. You got it Marcus. So as for my issue, I'm 35 years old. I'm quite fit and muscular, I would say. In a normal week I'm doing resistance training like four to five days, power and gym yoga like four times and recently up my cardio up to two or three times a week for about 45 minutes. And actually I'm pretty happy with my balancing, my workout and my family life right now. I have two small kids so it's, you know about it is kind of challenging to do it but I think I found a good way but since my dad passed away last year at the age of 65 I'm kind of overthinking a lot and I'm trying to optimize everything with the goal of having a long and healthy life of course. Well, of course also I wanna keep my physique and in the end the ultimate goal is to spend as much healthy time with my kids and family and my wife as long as I can. So leaving things like nutrition, stress and sleep out of the picture for now how should one exercise to have the most possible long and healthy life? What is most crucial from your perspective? Great question. First off my condolences for the loss of your father and I know what that can do when you lose somebody close it could definitely cause you to analyze things, look at things, both your quality of life and also if you're doing things the right way. Was your father a smoker by any chance? He actually he wasn't a wheelchair, he was smoking yes. Yeah, so when it comes to longevity it becomes a lot of what not to do a little bit more than what you should do. Number one would be not to smoke, don't smoke. The second thing would be to not overeat and then the third thing would be to not be sedentary. Along those lines when you're looking at your exercise routine or what you need to do if you look at longevity from a longevity standpoint it really becomes about being active appropriately and not overdoing it and not underdoing. In other words, you wanna kind of find this nice balance. Now okay, what does this look like for me? Well, you feel good. You feel good, you've got good energy you don't feel like you're over trained you don't have a lot of joint issues. You're doing the strength training aspect you've got some cardiovascular component and you've got your kind of meditative flexibility component. I think you're doing all three perfectly fine. Now the only thing I would say is just try not to overdo it. In other words, try not to just add more and more onto your plate to where you're pushing your body to its limits. Always think in terms of balance. Do I feel better? Do I have more energy or am I exhausted? Am I tired and my workouts taking a lot out of me? And that can change depending on how busy your life is how much sleep you're getting and that kind of stuff. So that's really it when it comes to longevity now. And like I said, you have all the components in your exercise routine.   To be more specific on the training side I actually think there's only one program that we have that I would tell a client of mine potentially to run that forever and just keep repeating that over. And I think that if the goal was just longevity and overall health, and that's maps performance. I think the way we phase the four phases in there because there's an endurance component in there so you're gonna get some cardiovascular there's definitely strength, there's strength in different planes. There's rotational stuff that's involved in there. There's mobility that's involved in there. That program is in my opinion the only program that we have that you could repeatedly run over and it really encompasses everything for like long-term health. Joint health, strength, cardiovascular health. I just think that that is when you think, when you have a question like this, that's what comes to mind for me is like I would run a routine like very similar to that and that would be the core of what I would be doing for my body. Yeah, I mean, I was thinking along those same lines personally what I'm always considering is like where the deficits may lie. So if you get focused on a lot of lifts where you're doing a lot of dead lifts, you're doing a lot of sagittal plane type movement, that's something where I need to interrupt that. And so I need to consider more rotational moves and I need to consider more planes of motion going left to right, just to get that kind of stimulus so that way your body reacts appropriately and two to Adam's point of this program really does take you through a lot of those different phases. So naturally you also address power which is something that people don't consider for longevity. To move fast is a skill you wanna maintain and preserve just because anytime like we're gonna face something where you have to react very quickly and I might slip or something on the sidewalk and how my body reacts is everything in terms of like whether I'm gonna get injured or not. And so to just be able to train that it doesn't have to be all the time but it has to be a consideration that you're always kind of rotating all of these types of movements and focuses consistently. So it's just something like, I think more people need to consider that our body has to be able to be provided with that type of stimulus so that way you're strong in a lot more directions. Do you have a spiritual practice, Marcus? What kind of spiritual practices? My only spiritual practice that I'm doing is yin yoga. Two or three times a week just to calm my head and just to be in for myself for a few minutes. Yeah, because studies on this show that if you have a practice that allows you to step outside of yourself, so like meditation, prayer, religion and view things from the outside kind of like this 40,000 foot view. It makes a big difference because like you're talking about in your case one of the things you mentioned was overthinking it. And it's like, okay, now I'm gonna get super healthy because somebody close to me passed away but that stress and anxiety surrounding that can actually be detrimental to your health and spiritual practices tend to help a lot with that. They provide meaning and purpose to some of these challenges that we have. And they do show in studies quite conclusively that those practices also contribute to longevity. Now, when it comes to exercise you can exercise for performance but at some point if you're pushing performance you are taking away from longevity. In other words, getting strong is good trying to be the strongest man in the world now you're taking away from longevity, right? Having cardiovascular fitness is good trying to be the fastest marathon runner in the world. Well, that starts to take away from longevity as well. So that's why I talk a lot about balance with the exercise. Did you optimize or adapt? Marcus, did you listen to the episode that we just did with Jason Phillips? Actually, I did, yeah. Yeah, that's a good one. I think he does a really good job. It's been something that I've been repeating since I heard him say it. He has that, his, I don't know. Fitness triangle. Yeah, his fitness triangle. And at the top, at the top is longevity. Then you have aesthetics and then you have performance and the further you move in any of those directions the more you take away from the other ones, right? So just keeping that in mind as you were structuring your programming but personally for me, I really, that's what I love about performance is I just think we did such a good job of kind of hitting the broad stroke of everything that I'd want a client to incorporate for the rest of their life from a longevity perspective. And Sal is right, you could easily, because the program's called performance you could start pushing the performance aspect of it so hard that you're trying to hit PRs but that's not how I would approach that program. I'd go through that program and I'd go through it not with the idea of like, I need to be hitting PRs every time I do it just the movements that we address in there and the things like with cardio and mobility. I think we just hit, we hit everything that you need to for longevity in that program. Sounds perfect. For me it's like, for me and resistance training is by far the number one fun of all of them. So I tend to overdo the resistance training and not do enough of the cardio for example. So do you have some kind of recommendation what kind of cardio is the best for my case or is it just whatever everything is fine, just move? Yeah, you know what's funny about like when Peter Atea talks about, because I know you mentioned in your question about like zone five and also the longest living people in the world walk a lot every day, they walk a lot every single day. So probably the healthiest form of just activity is just to do a lot of walking. Now cardiovascular stamina and endurance that can be very different depending on what you're doing. Like you could have the kind of endurance that allows you to run 10 miles or you could have the kind of endurance that allows you to do a 15 minute, high intensity circuit in the gym both of which will provide some value. And also don't take this out of the equation. You just said something very important. It's what you enjoy is enjoying what you do. Is that important to longevity? You better believe it.  Well, first off, good luck trying to do that for the rest of your life. But let's just say you did. I think that that would actually take away from longevity. Hating what you do all the time isn't very good for longevity and studies will show there's a certain level of enjoyment that goes into longevity as well. So I do think you're overthinking it a little bit. Like if you like to strength train, there's nothing wrong with doing more strength training and less of the cardio stuff. You just don't wanna be so cardiovascularly unfit that if you do more than 10 reps on a squat, you need to lay down on the ground for 30 minutes, right? You wanna have enough cardiovascular fitness to where you can work out, essentially. But going extreme in any other direction, I mean, it's not really necessary. I really think you're really hitting everything I would want you to hit as a client right now. I think all the things that you're incorporating, you're really hitting everything. And I think Justin actually made such a good point is that what you're doing is perfect. And then I would just be having a regular check in with myself. Am I strong? Could I go for a run for a mile or two? How do my joints feel? Yeah, how's my energy feel? Just checking in with yourself.  My knees and hips have been really bothering me. Okay, well, I need to incorporate more mobility. Scale back, maybe on some of my heavy lifting, include more mobility and focus more on that direction. Or maybe you're like, man, the other day I was playing with my kid and realized I was running out of air just to run up the hill with him a little bit. Maybe I need to include a little bit of cardio now. And so I think you have a really good foundation of what you're doing. I think that you're probably, your Achilles heel is overthinking it and stressing yourself that way. I don't think you need to do that. But you have regular check-ins with yourself on those aspects of health, you know, the ability to rotate, the ability for your joints not to hurt, your ability to run for a mile. Like, and if you can't answer yes to all of them, then okay, put a little focus in there.  Sounds very promising. And it looks like I'm on the right track. You are, Marcus. We're gonna send you maps for formats. All right, Marcus. You're doing good, man. It's amazing. Thanks a lot. You got it, man. Thanks for calling. Thanks, have a nice day. You too, man. You know, this longevity conversation, people can get so carried, he wasn't, right? I don't think he was getting carried with it. Boy, people can get so carried away with it. Like, I met somebody in our space who was so obsessed with longevity because studies will show that eating low, super low calories, right? That that is better for longevity. And man, I looked at this guy and he did not look good. He looked like he was dying. I was sunken. Yeah. Isn't that what, what's his name? Mark, whatever was all about. And then he kicked out of that, or not kicked out, but he stopped doing that so much. My assistant? Yes. Wasn't he hardcore, like super, super low cow? Like. You know, I think what you need to do is define life quality. Okay. Define that and be honest about it. Like, don't just be like, yeah, hedonism, you know, just party all the time. No, that's not really life quality. At some point that's gonna, that's gonna be hell. But like, what's real life quality? Like, okay, I can, I've got good sharpness. I can, I'm a good partner to my wife, play with my kids. I have enough strength and mobility to do what I want. I enjoy my workouts. I'm learning, I'm growing. And that, I believe, is what we should focus on more than like, how can I live till I'm 110 years old? Cause that can sometimes get carried away. Well, I just think that there's no like real blueprint, you know, for longevity. It's a check and balance situation. Like there's always things that inevitably like fall off. And to be able to know how to navigate, I think is everything, to be able to like adjust and to be able to put more emphasis in a certain direction. And so I just look at it as a revolving wheel, a constant. It's just something to always consider, if I'm like so focused on strength, my joints are gonna feel it. If like to all those other points where if like I'm playing with my kids, I get tired, I just have to like, I just have to always keep that top of mind. Like I can adjust and I can move in a direction that's gonna benefit me for wherever I am. And then I have to revisit that again. And I think that's the point to Sal's point too, is that you don't wanna over stress about that. You just check in every once in a while.  It's been a while since I've been doing that. You don't need to stress about it every day. Like, oh, I'm not doing this. Oh, I'm not doing that. It's like, there's always gonna be something you're not doing enough of, right? Like it's inevitable. It won't be neurotic about it. Yeah, and so when it reveals itself in your life, then don't ignore it, address it, and then implement it, and then something else will reveal itself. And you just kinda ebb and flow like that. But I mean, do you guys agree? I really think that maps performance of all the programs we have, if you were to tell someone like, if someone said, okay, I'm only gonna follow one program for the rest of my life, which one is it? Just go through it over and over again? Over and over again. Yeah, I would be that one. This guy would be the most complete. I train my clients very similar to the maps. I really think that it addresses the big rocks for somebody who is looking for just overall strength, health, longevity, mobility. I just think that. And then again, like the studies are like, actually becomes most important. It's not necessarily what you're doing, but what you're not doing. And that's why I asked him if his dad was a smoker. At one point I trained a lot of vascular surgeons and some cardiovascular. And that was always the commonality. I asked him, I said, what's the number one thing that everybody has in common? They're like, oh, 90% of my patients smoke. But for the same thing. So like if you want to live longer, just don't smoke. That's the biggest thing you could possibly do. Look, if you like Mind Pump, head over to mindpumpfree.com and check out our guides. We have guides that can help you with almost any health or fitness goal. You can also find all of us on social media. Justin is on Instagram at Mind Pump. Justin, Adam is on Instagram at Mind Pump, Adam. And you can find me on Twitter at Mind Pump Sal. Today we're gonna teach you everything you need to know to build a strong, well-developed chest. When I think of weak points and areas that I struggled with developing for a really long time, chest was up there with the work. Yeah, it was for me, 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.