If you want to pump your body and expand your mind, there's only one place to go. Mind pump, mind pump, with your hosts. Salda Stefano, Adam Schaefer, and Justin Andrews. Holy moly. Listen, in this episode of Mind Pump, we met with a very intelligent and large human being. It's a whole lot of intelligent meat. Ben Pekolski, probably, now I follow bodybuilding a little bit. I did quite a bit as a kid, and even now I'm still kind of in the world in terms of watching it, whatever. I know Adam is very in the world.  Ben Pekolski is one of the most respected bodybuilders.  I've been a trainer, and I've been training for a very long time, so I understand nutrition, and I understand lifting weights very, very well, but I've never got on stage and competed, so right away I started looking into all the pros that were out there, both in men's physique and bodybuilding, and I had a really hard time finding guys that were putting out good information.  Like this guy, all these guys are like, are you kidding me?  He has a sound approach to this. Very sound approach, very, very sound approach, and very intelligent, and instantly I was drawn to his message, and even though he hasn't won Mr. Olympia yet, in my opinion, he is one of, if not, the smartest guy that hits the Olympia stage. And he's impressive as hell. What really impressed me a lot about him is he also has a good understanding and openness to what total wellness is. He's not just, he hasn't pigeonholed himself in terms of just being a bodybuilder. Of course he understands bodybuilding very, very well, and he takes a very scientific approach, but he's also open to other avenues of health and wellness, and experiments with them, and learns from other people in those realms. He is, you know, he's like a renaissance man, he's one of those people that's kind of in all these things and wants to learn. That was the most surprising for sure, to meet somebody of that stature and that sort of, like being ingrained and well-known in the bodybuilding community and having that kind of an open mind and thought process where, oh wow, let me look into, you know, the microbiome and, you know, all these other wellness, you know, pursuits, so that was refreshing to see. And he drops, I believe, I don't think he has yet, released the information that he releases on this show, so there's a major announcement. He makes a major announcement in this episode, so this will be the first time he says what he says on this episode publicly.  But again, tons of respect for the guy, we were invited down to his MI40 gym in Tampa. We had a great work out there, one of the best bodybuilder gyms I've ever been to. He took us through some exercises, we all got to do some photos together, which was really cool. You can find his website, it's beenpacolski.com, P-C-L-C-S-P-L-T-P-A-K-U-L-S-K-I. His YouTube channel is BenPakI-F-B-B, and he also has a podcast, Muscle Expert Podcast, and his Instagram is I-F-B-B BenPak. Make sure if you guys really enjoy this episode, aside from just sharing it, go over to Muscle Expert Podcast, check out what he's dropped, and he's got some good guests over there, and leave him a five-star review for sure if you guys enjoy this. And don't forget, we got three days left. It's the final three days for our massive buy one, get one promotion, where if you enroll in our Super Bundle, which includes all of our maps programs, it's a year's worth of exercise programs. So basically, you pay this fee, you get all these programs, everything's worked out for you for an entire year, and it progresses you through different kinds of programs, different types of adaptations, everything from maximal strength training to mobility work, to training like a stage competitor or a bodybuilder, learning how to prime your body, correct imbalances, how to train without equipment so you can get that proprioception that you get from bodyweight exercises. It's all there, and it's all phased and put together, planned out for you. So it's like a year's, like again, it's a year's worth of exercise programming, and it's discounted anyways, but on top of that, you enroll in the map Super Bundle, you'll get one for free for anyone you want.  It's the last three days, it's not a full month promotion, we're ending it short because again, it's a big promo. So to enroll in this program, go to mindpumpmedia.com. And without any further ado, here we are talking to Ben Pakulski. Ben, let me hear your voice, talk. Check, check, check, check. He's a little quiet, give me a little more Ben.  A little more Ben. If everybody needs more Ben in my life. Yeah, there he is, there he is, there he is. Now he's... I might start singing, you're in trouble.   I really hate you if you can sing too, bro. Okay, god, I'll thank you. Come on!   I mean... All you need is an epic ballad. Besides the fact that I was lifting more weight than you, everything else is... I'm just busting some Pavarotti in a minute, you guys don't even know. I think my head would explode. Dude, I tell you what, this is probably top three for me. Gems, I've ever been in, man. I think you designed this pretty well, buddy. I think for bodybuilding, it's got to be... It's perfect, especially if you're in hypertrophy style type training.  I know, he's like, it's one, bro. I'm just kidding, man. No, no, you're right, I was trying to think, I said, well, tell me guys, I was like, we've been in so many goddamn gyms. Well, Shapati's gym is great. It's different though, it's different though. Shapati doesn't even crack top three for you. It's cool. I like it. Yeah, that's your style, but I like it. Don't get me wrong, like there's... But I got to have all this... I get inspired by this. I got to have this stuff for sure. The atmosphere is everything, right? Is the atmosphere here like to you... Obviously the equipment is world-class and anybody can do that, though. So, dude, we do a good job with the atmosphere. Absolutely, 100%. No, absolutely. Even the way you separated, and we were talking on the floor earlier, the way you laid out the squat rack in deadlift areas, just the way you separated it from all the machines and the dumbbells, I think that's perfect like that, man. Well, we're very mindful of human being. Everything I do, I try to be mindful and it doesn't stop in the gym, right?  How should this be set up? And it all needs to be in the right place. It needs to feel right.  Did you have that as a child growing up? Like, when did you evolve into someone like that? Good question, man.  I don't know, we're already boys now, bro. We had dinner together, we worked down together, I go right to the heart, right away. I've already been calling your names for the last couple hours. Open up, man. Tell us about your parents. So, as I'm mindful as a kid, man, I'll tell you the honest truth. I became very mindful at a young age, so pretty much everything in my family, not to throw anybody into the bus, is overweight and most of the people are alcoholics. So I became very mindful of the idea that that family over there across the road, whomever they happened to be, had the ability to drive what they want, have a really nice house, be happy, smile, take cool vacations and we didn't. And I was like, well, what separates them from me? Like what makes them different from me? Are they better? Are they different? And what allows them to do the things they wanna do, have the things they wanna have? And I'm maybe not there. And why is my family maybe not happy?  What's the difference? And I just became aware of asking that question for me. And that was the step one, right? It's like awareness I think is massive. And I remember being aware from as early as maybe seven or eight years old.  Now, was there attitude like in that victim kind of mentality where it's like, it's my genes, it's my, or did they feel empowered to change those things? I think they just accepted their reality, man. Nobody has ever changed their reality. They just said, hey, this is what we have. I don't even think they had the awareness to realize that more was possible. I think that's all. And a lot of people get stuck in that, right? And luckily for me, I wasn't.  What's different from him and my family? Hey, that guy's got abs.  He's got a hot chick. What's that? And what's that? What sets him apart? And I just asked those questions from a young age.  Probably one of the most self-aware. And I'm talking from a fitness standpoint, bodybuilders that I've ever met in the sense that first we come into your gym and when you go to a bodybuilding gym, you expect to see machines. You expect to see some dumbbells and barbells, but I was surprised to see chains in the back and put some powerlifting stuff, sleds. And then when we were talking last night, you were talking about doing yoga four days a week and mobility work. And even Adam was messing with you a little bit during our workout, asking you to do a pistol squat and, you know, squats on the sides of your feet.    It's so, you know, so narrow. It has to be, man. And I was just as guilty as everybody else is. Literally, as we spoke about briefly in the workout, I blocked out the whole world.  And that was the way I became successful and a lot of my, the people that I've encountered along the way will attest to that, man. I wasn't a mean person. I was a never a mean person.  Can I swear? Oh yeah.   This is a Howard sort of fitness, bro. You can say whatever you want to say. Yeah, so I was very, very focused, man. And I get very offended if you were so audacious to get in my way. Yeah, I was very singular focused. And when I was outside of the gym, it may have been different, but inside the gym was very singular focused. And I realized that was maybe one of my biggest attributes during my career and one of my biggest detriments toward the end of my career, man. As I hated the idea that like I started to lose mobility, I couldn't run anymore. Like I could, but it just didn't feel right, man.  You know, the biggest realization for me was I'd be at home and there'd be something on the floor and I'd intentionally wouldn't bend over to pick it up. And like, I'm like, what the fuck's the matter? Like I'm not, I didn't, wasn't raised this way.  And I'd be like, man, just don't bend it over, pick it up anymore. Maybe it hurt. Like maybe unconsciously, like my back would hurt and my hip would hurt or something.  And that was like the first awareness. I was like, all right, this is something's wrong here, man. You gotta fix this. And that's where I started getting back into yoga and mobility. I've always been a very mobile person. You know, I was a guy at 18 years old put my ankle behind my, behind my head. Oh wow. But I lost that because I was so singular focused on needing to be as big as possible and to get as big as humanly possible, which is bodybuilding, right? Now, do you see a place in that type of training of mobility, yoga, flexibility in someone's arsenal? Who is, you know, you got a guy, right? I'm sure you get lots of these messages from young dudes who are like, listen, I just want to build muscle. I just want to look muscular. Do you see there being a place in their training for these types of things that not only will not take away from building muscle, but may actually contribute to it. And range of motion, active range of motion is everything in bodybuilding.  What does that mean? It means their bodies become really, really good in this really small range of motion. And if they go outside of their weakest kittens and oftentimes they get hurt and to eliminate that muscle bound, you know, restriction, it's absolutely necessary that you're getting strong at these ranges that you've never gone in before. And for most people that requires like bunny first off contractions to start. Like it's literally not even body weight, right? It's less than body weight.  So it starts with stability, right? You got to create stability in every aspect of every range of motion that you have access to and then getting stronger from there. And that creates the impenetrable physique, right?   Even besides that, like one of the pillars of hypertrophy training, something that was mind blowing for me years ago in my training was, you know, one of the pillars of hypertrophy training is to train a muscle in full ranges of motion. And that full range of motion changes as you challenge that range of motion, as you gain more strength in those new ranges of motion. So training for what you're talking about is not just going to help you with mobility and stability. You're also going to build more muscle because now you can connect. You know, if I'm doing a fly and I'm coming down to 90 degrees and if I start to work in that deeper range of motion start to connect in those deeper ranges of motion I may have to go lighter but I'm training in ranges of motion that I've never trained before. It's a new stimulus and I'm going to grow more muscle and this is a message we try to communicate sometimes that people is like, look, it's not going to take away from your ability to build muscle. It's going to contribute to your ability to build muscle. It's going to add aesthetics. So here's an important realization. You say, you know, you have to go lighter in certain ranges and that's an absolute reality but the realization is just because I go lighter at certain parts of the range doesn't necessarily mean I need to not go heavy in the mid range.  But if you're really weak somewhere else it's okay to go weak there just realizing that your body has a different capacity or different ability to generate work or generate force in these different parts of the range and that's okay but you still have to appropriately stimulate muscle everywhere. It's not like, oh, just because I'm using girly weights or pink dumbbells in these particular ranges doesn't mean I'm not using really, really heavy weights where I'm strong because you still want to challenge the muscle as much as you could possibly challenge it as much as it can handle without being hurt. So here's what you're big on that challenging that strength curve, right? Yeah, I noticed that in your gym like a lot of the machines are based off of that. Can you explain that a little bit about that? Sure, man. It's the simple reality that a muscle has a varying ability to generate force at all parts of its contract that range. So when a muscle is fully lengthened, it has one ability and the mid range has a different ability and the short range has a different ability. So wouldn't it just make sense that I would want to appropriately challenge that muscle to what it's capable of at all parts of that range and the perfect, if you could design the perfect set of the perfect rep, it would challenge my muscle 100% max effort through every part of the range but nobody's designed an exercise equipment like that. It would be kind of an iso-kinetic thing. It doesn't exist. So what we do here is we have a company called Prime that we have a lot of their equipment and it allows us to as close as is possible match with the bodies capable of at all parts of the range. So there's parts when you're strong, man, and load it heavy and there's parts where you're weak. So take a little bit off and that's okay. That's the most efficient way to challenge a muscle. So I'm pretty vocal on the show about not necessarily being a fan of machines for the most part, but what's interesting is when you're talking about what we're saying, it's absolutely true in where you're gonna be doing a movement and you're much stronger at one part of the range of motion than you are in another part of the range of motion and free weights have their own, just because of gravity, they're gonna be heavier at some parts and lighter at other parts and you can't necessarily challenge those other parts unless you change angles and whatnot. But how do you do that within the movement? What I found that was interesting with your plate loaded equipment that was out there was that they were different. You could load the plates in different parts of the machine so that you could overload different parts of the rep. And I remember, I think it might have been Nautilus that did this a long time ago with their selectorized equipment or at least they made an attempt to do something like this where you could kind of change the attachment of the cam or whatever. Was that, okay, was that what it was? So, but yeah, with the plate loaded equipment, you're able to do that and I can see some real benefit in doing that. For people who, you know, even old people or people who have weaknesses or injuries going to those places where you're really weak. So most people have this preconceived notion that if I'm weak somewhere, I should avoid it. And that doesn't make any sense at all. Like if you're weak somewhere, you need to go there. You need to go there with what's appropriate for what you can handle right now and then challenge it progressively. So doesn't that make perfect sense for anyone who has an injury or anyone who's trying to optimize performance? Like you gotta go through these ranges but you gotta load it appropriately to what it's capable of doing. And that's what these machines allow us to do which is what you can need a opportunity. Now that being said, what do you think about because I feel like there's this trend happening right now of kids attaching rubber bands to all these machines. Mindlessly just slapping it on there because it looks cool. Yeah, have you seen that? Are they doing it right? Yeah, of course. So yeah, it's mindless. I mean, is there a benefit? So bands have tremendous benefit when used properly in specific exercises and specific scenarios. One of the things that it does though that may be a side benefit to these guys who really have no idea where to load. Like we see guys loading on equipment and you're like man, that's just backwards. But what the benefit is it changes the inertial properties of free weight. It changes the inertial properties of machine which means it forces you to either have to slow down deceleration.  New adaptation, right? Yeah, so it's gonna force me to dampen the inertial properties which this benefits on. And it may even be accelerating me in one direction. So again, so there's different benefits. So either I'm pushing against a band so it changes the resistance or I'm decelerating a band which again is gonna change the resistance. All of which just makes people more mindful and more in control. And if people can do that alone they'll make tremendous progress in their training and that's what everybody lacks, right? Everybody goes to the gym, they're too busy like thinking about their Instagram post or whoever just wrote a negative comment on there or who didn't like their page or something and they're not being mindful of anything they do. And if we can at least shift the paradigm of people in the gym to being a little bit mindful and putting a little bit of a thought process in there we've probably moved the needle a lot. Well now how do you do that with, and this is the challenge I always have which is teaching people that there's a place for almost everything and like how to focus on the big rocks. Like how do you speak to that to like a young kid, I'm 17 years old, I see you doing like these really unique cool movements but yet maybe I don't even squat or deadlift or bench, like how do you speak to a young mind like that that is just maybe seeing something on Instagram and trying it because they think their idol does it. So how do you talk to someone? So I mean, I guess it depends where you are in your journey and everybody's a different point in their journey but we kind of develop the process, right? Is I think everything needs to start with execution. You need to master your execution first because just from a muscle recruitment perspective you're trying to prioritize the muscle you're trying to prioritize. If you're trying to work your chest at least let's start by making sure your chest is doing work. If you're trying to prioritize your shoulders well the first and most important thing is make sure your shoulders is actually working when you're trying to work your shoulders. So execution from my perspective is number one and then learning how to load that muscle to maintain tension and then from there you start looking into what is your limiting factor. So Justin and I had this conversation in the gym when we were training is I've always approached a different perspective of well what sucks? Like what is holding me back? What's my limiting factor? Whether it be something as simple as my cardiovascular conditioning? Whether it be my mobility? Whether it be my stability of certain joint? Whether it be my range of motion somewhere? My ability to clear lactic acid? Do I get a tremendous amount of lactic acid? Do I get a really bad focus? What is it?  So make that a strength. Like do everything in your power in the next short amount of time whether it be four to six weeks or three months however long it takes. Make that your number one priority to be awesome at it, right? So most people don't just, they'll see it and like forget about it. I'll change my type of training to not stress that system where it should be the opposite training, right?  I need to do more of it. Something you said last night that was awesome because having been, I was a huge fan of bodybuilding. It's what got me into exercise when I was a kid. And one of the things that bodybuilding has been espousing now for a little while and I don't know when this transition happened was if you're not growing, you're not building muscle or if you're not burning body fat, it's all diet or supplements or drugs. And nobody ever talks about exercise programming. And something you said last night which I don't ever really expect to hear from a bodybuilder or a pro bodybuilder is you said, no it's their programming. Like nobody puts any effort or thought into their exercise programming. The workouts all look the same. When did that transition happen? Why did bodybuilder stop really paying attention to their exercise programming as one of the main reasons why their body may not be responding or changing? Is because the gear got so good that they could get away with bad programming? Yes and no man. I think that this is actually the opposite. So that's kind of the conversation we had last night is all these kids coming up had the access to the internet and they started having these presumptions as to what pro bodybuilders cycle look like. And when you're taking, and they go, oh, this guy's taking this much. So I gotta do that. And if I wanna look that big and they just start disregarding the relevance of the nutrition, disregarding the relevance of the training. So back in the day when guys weren't so, or the business wasn't so drug focused or up and coming athletes weren't so drug focused, they had all their attention on, wow, I mean like I gotta optimize my training. I learned how to do this properly. Like I gotta make the most of this. And that was their primary focus. And then when the internet came along and you started seeing these ridiculous cycles being posted by guys, it's shifted from an intelligent training approach focused like I need to be awesome at training. And now it shifted to, well, how much drugs can I take? I think that's what took it away, man, is people just had a singular focus on making the assumption that it's all your drug protocol. And it's the stupidest thing, man. Like guys are hurting themselves. And you talk to the best pro bodybuilders in the world and they're not the guys doing the most drugs. They're the guys who have are absolutely the most genetically blessed. That's always step one, right? Like if you're gonna be the best in anything in the world, like which one of us in the room can go compete with Usain Bolt?  But you know that. No matter how much we train.  But that's what people's perception is. It's like, oh yeah, I mean, if I take that, I could go compete with these guys.  Like it's impossible. There's so many variables, but obviously to optimize your body for what you are capable of, training has to be number one, right? And steroids are an augment if that's your chosen direction. Yeah, when you, it's funny we talk about that. Like if you take away the drugs, which obviously play a role in any professional sport, but if you take those away, you're still dealing with a bunch of massive human beings. I mean, I've seen pictures of Jay Cutler when he was a teenager working out. And I mean, he looks ridiculously impressive to a level that I would never achieve even probably with drugs. And I think people assume that the top guys are the ones taking the absolute most gear, but having been in the world a little bit of bodybuilding, having known bodybuilders, I know amateurs who've taken just extreme high doses of gear who look nothing like guys who, you know, I know at the pro level who take a lot less. So there's a genetic component to training, but I think there might be a genetic component to how you react even to anabolic. Of course there is, man. And that's the thing you notice amongst the elite is they take the smallest amount and they respond extremely well. There's two things that I think kind of set the elite apart from everybody else. Is there, since they've been to drugs, it's massive. You know, I'll take 200 milligrams of testosterone a week, which is therapeutic testosterone replacement therapy dose and put on 25 pounds. And also their ability to retain muscle, I think is massive. So you watch guys, and this is, you know, where I kind of separated myself from everybody else, or at least I saw a separation from everybody else. Some of these guys will take two, three months a year off training and they won't lose any muscle. The big equally as lean, maybe not, maybe just a couple pounds of fat or a little bit softer, but they don't really lose any weight. Like if I take two, three months off training, I get smaller. Like I look different, I get smaller, I get fat. And that's the difference, man.  And I think that's the difference. If we stop training, what are you gonna look like? Yeah, like a swimmer, or a cyclist, right? I would go 180 pounds, like a, you know, I remember having kids that worked for me as trainers that would be 22, 23 years old, eating Taco Bell and just, you know, and their programming was terrible and they just looked amazing. And to me, that was the connection when I realized how much genetics play the first role. I mean, that's the big piece. And I, you know, the average person would look at that guy and go like, oh, he must be taking steroids because he looks this way. And it's like, no, if you only knew that the genetic piece is the biggest piece. But now what I'm afraid for, I'm curious to hear what you think. Like, you know, I only dabbled in the men's physique world for a little over two years. And, you know, why I even got into it is I felt like men's physique was kind of the answer to bodybuilding getting out of control. That a lot of the average person looked at bodybuilding and said, these guys are just unobtainable. I could never look like this. And so here's this new category that, hey, the average guy, if he trains right, diets right, could obtain this look, this natural look. And so that appealed to me. I thought, okay, I could hang with that. You know, I know I don't have a physique to, you know, hang with a bodybuilder for sure. It was a professional. It was a professional speedo, to be honest. Yeah, that's all right. Most of those men should be. So, but what I saw when I got back there, I was floored by how many of these guys were taking bigger doses than some of the big bodybuilder guys I know. Is it getting worse? Is it getting better? I don't know if it's getting worse or getting better. I'm not directly in the men's physique world, man, but there's definitely a misunderstanding as to what that entire section of the sport is. And I think I agree with you when I say, like it should be the more attainable. Like, hey, man, I can not have to take a whole bunch of gear and I can look this way. And as long as I work really hard and eat really well, I can look that way and is it human nature, man? People just want the shortcut and they want to do it a lot faster. And I want to be there now. I want to be Mr. Olympian now.  But speak to your point, man. I think that it's definitely being abused there too. And it's unfortunate, but it's a reality, man. I also think that, and you're not taking anything away from the physique guys, but I think the difference is just the genetic predisposition. So the physique guys are just genetically smaller. They're taking the same shit probably more often or maybe at the same amount, I don't know. But the difference is just like, hey, these guys are genetically mesomorphic and these guys are genetically ectomorphic. You added some supplementation in it and now they look, they're a genetic limit, right? I love that you went there because that's my theory is that I believe that that's really the biggest difference. I think people think on the outside looking in, they see a guy like you and they compare the two of us and they go like, oh, you just must be taking four times more. You're taking four times the dose I am, but that's not the case. That's not the case at all. I mean, not to take anything away from the physique guys, but I think it's just like, I think it's an unfortunate thing that they got away or they got the board short thing going because it's just an excuse for guys to go, well, it wasn't really good as a bodybuilder because my legs were shit. I didn't want to put in the work. So I'm just gonna throw some board shorts on. Yeah, that's not right, man.  I grew up and there was only men's bodybuilding and women's bodybuilding. And if someone said they're an IFBB pro, I put them on a pedestal. And I was like, fuck, I know what you went through. I know how much work, how much time, how many years, how many shows yet to win. It was such a tremendous level of commitment. And now somebody says, you know, I've got an IFBB pro card and people don't even. Well, let's talk about, you talked about last night a little bit about the social media sort of stars and how that sort of changed everything. Sure. Bodybuilding, like. Sure, yeah, I mean, just as I said last night is you go to a bodybuilding show now and the bodybuilders don't have a lineup. You know, you see previous Mr. Olympias, Ronnie Coleman, Lee Haney, Jay's still got a lineup.  I will. Joey Swole.  Whoever, man, whoever, you know, like whatever it is. But their lineup is three hours long and it just speaks a lot about the reality of today. People want to glimpse into your life, they want to relate to you and nobody puts credit on or any merit on hard work. You know, for me, it's like, I respect, the only reason I got into bodybuilding, man, is not the zero, zero, but vanity for me. It was all about, I want to push my body, I want to push my mind. Oh, you're disciplined. You guys can see that now.   I resented it. I always thought I was a very lazy guy.  I never want to identify with that. So like now, like I told you, man, at four years old, I'm going to do all the Navy SEAL training and stuff. That's one of my goals.  So you talked a little bit about now, perhaps intentionally trying to shrink your body or go down so that you could do all this other kind of training.   Obviously you, I mean, I know you were saying how you're not, you feel like you're not the most genetically gifted, but compared to the average person, you're another type of human too. You've got a real-est process, yeah.    I train harder than everybody. Like that was my exclusive focus.  Like I'm not going to stop. And that was always my mentality.  It's like I just wouldn't stop. So people seeming, oh, you're genetically best. Maybe at some level, maybe I think what I had genetically given to me was shape. You know, for a big guy, I had pretty good shape. You know, am I as gifted as a flex wheeler? Obviously not. But I obviously didn't build muscle as well as flex did either. So it was a very just different existence, man. But, you know, for me, speaking to losing, you know, what effectively will end up being 100 pounds of muscle. It's definitely- Yeah, how do you do that? It's definitely going to be a long process. You know what the biggest shift for me as man is not, you know, the training. It's shifting your paradigm around food, because when you walk into a meal environment or you all wake up in the morning, your natural innate instinct for the last 20 years has been eat, consume, to, and not only to, here's the funny thing people don't realize. When you're training to failure as a bodybuilder, you're often eating to failure. So it's not just like, it's not just eating to eat food.  So you got to break that habit. I've been doing that for 20 years.  I hate eating, man. Became a job. And now you have to change that paradigm. So like, I'll go a whole day without eating. But at the end of the day, you're kind of innate instinct kicks in and you go, well, I'm gonna eat some full. And you got to have to switch that thought. So I think that for me so far has been the hardest thing is I'm trying to connect with the idea of, hey, man, you're not eating to be big anymore. You're just eating to be awesome. You're changing your relationship with food and all that. You know, the quote we give is rather than, you're eating to live rather than living to eat. And there's a big separation there, man. Now, how long have you been doing this, this process? And have you lost any size since doing this? Yeah, I'm down 25 pounds, maybe 30 pounds. Did that come off real easy that first 25, 30? No, man. No, people think that, right? I just speak fairly on your show.  And comedy is like I haven't done even testosterone replacement therapy for almost eight months.   Like my sex drive sucks, but I'm trying to lose some muscle. So I kind of have a purpose. So have you rebounded at all? Are you testing your natural test to see if it's up to normal or? It's not still low, man. It's still low. But yeah, I'm testing it. I'm experimenting. I'm actually testing my blood every week. So that's kind of a new thing because I'm in the process of just trying to see how things affect my body. So here's what's fascinating to me about that. So I know you've lost 25 pounds and you're saying your testosterone is low, but you're still a massive human being. And that just goes to show there's more than just that that goes into building muscle. And I wonder if because you trained so hard for so long and pushed yourself to that limit for so long and we're so singular focused that a substantial amount of maybe muscle fiber hyperplasia happened to where you've got permanent size to the point where you're going to lose muscle, but you're always going to look muscular because you keep the frame there. You've created so much permanent, almost permanent muscle size. Yeah. Well, it needs to be a pure focus on catabolism. Like it needs to be complete opposite of what looks like.  It is, man. It really is.  I'll go the whole day without eating and I don't think about it. But as soon as you switch and start eating, your brain goes like just consume everything in sight. So you have to like slow down and control that in a response to consume. Yeah, it's a very different shift, man. Like, so training is obviously very, very different.  Well, because you're gaining back what you lost. It's that whole muscle memory.  I'm so curious now.  I bet you, I bet you money, you know, some of the best, some of the most impressive body, but I know Kevin LeVron, I believe, used to do that. Right, which he would shrink down and blow up and shrink down and blow up and almost would come back bigger each time. And I mean, bodybuilders have been talking about for decades where the most anabolic that you'll ever feel as post show after show, right after a show. But I just find it fascinating.  I've been trying to kind of shrink down for like eight, nine months and my testosterone is low and I'm not eating that much. And I'm looking at you going, what? Like how is this even possible? But so I want to speak to that first man cause people are going to go, why are you doing that, man? Like what the fuck's, what's motivating you? And I kind of want to talk to that cause people, I know people don't ask that question. Good. Yeah. I lost my purpose.  You can do anything. I can conquer the world. Everybody in the world said, man, you'll never be a professional bodybuilder. Everyone said you'll never get to the Olympia stage, never get to the Arnold stage.  And it wasn't, at that point, it stopped being about proving any both wrong. I started being about, you know, telling myself that I could do anything. And then we talked about having kids and having kids shifted my paradigm. And like I said, I was, I was a very focused guy. I was very driven tunnel vision, like all about hard work and having that killer instinct. Very selfish. Very 100% selfish. And you have kids, you can't be selfish anymore, man. Like my singular focus in life is my children. So did that switch immediately when you saw it, when you had kids or did it take a second? I think it switched immediately, man. Honestly, I don't know that it was a conscious thing.  I felt it. Same thing for me. Dude, it was weird, right? It's like God's giving you some sign. But anyways, but yeah, I mean, you just become, yeah, you just become much more aware of your. Decision making. Yeah, aware of your surroundings, aware of being your protective mechanisms for this other human being you're now responsible for. Yeah, it was very, so speaking to why I decided to lose 100 pounds of muscle, man. I love bodybuilding.  Never have. I think I spoke to you guys yesterday.  I was when I was my most insecure. So I'm like, and I'm getting to this point in my life, I'm going, why would I want to bring that back into my life?  I hated the being on stage. So at your most ripped, at your most muscle. This is where you and I connect so much. I hated the stage part. I loved the prepping for the show. I loved, I loved getting ready for a show. That was my favorite part. I love getting into the science of paying attention to what I'm eating, my programming. I loved all that. The getting up on stage and being judged and knowing that people are. Who the fuck, that's exactly it, right?  I loved working hard, man. I love getting about it. Yeah. And you get up there and ultimately I was called the pageant. I'm like, why do I want to go there? And even if I was to win Mr. Olympia, I don't know that I would have, everyone goes, well, how did it feel to win your first pro show?  Not to take anything away from bodybuilding, man, but it meant nothing to me. It was all in the process. You know, my greatest victories were when I actually had the best preparation and I didn't necessarily get the best result. If I had won Mr. Olympia, would I have felt better about myself? I don't think so, man.  I was perfect in every meal. I worked harder than I've ever gone before and then the end result happened to be that I won the Mr. Olympia.  But if it would have been, you know, anything one-one thing went wrong, I would have been focusing on that one thing that I could have done that better and it wouldn't have been a victory for me. So it was never about the end result, man. It was always about the process and it sounds cliche, but isn't it the reality?  Fuck, yeah. That's one of the conversations. If you guys don't follow Jim Rohn, anyone of the listeners that there's followed Jim Rohn, he's actually passed away. But he's always the guy who said, don't set the goal of becoming a millionaire for what, for the money. Set the goal of becoming a millionaire for what it'll make of you to become it, to achieve it. Process. Yeah, man, fuck, isn't that amazing, right? So that's what bodybuilding was for me innately, and it was just this avenue to develop an awesome inner being and become an awesome man and become a better representative for humanity.   Yeah, a little too much oil on your shoulder. Yeah, right.  I looked at myself objectively and said, you know, hey, Adam, you could improve your delts here. You could do this. And then I would love to go back to the drawing board, build my programming up, get ready for a show, and then compare and contrast. That was the best part of the contest.  It's saying, man, I've been working for, you know, eight months or 12 months, and this is what I was able to do. And if you didn't see it, you're like, fuck, that was discouraging, right? If you didn't see the changes, maybe you were expecting. Yeah, man, that was always about it. So having kids change that? For sure, man, for sure. Yeah, I mean, they're just the most amazing teachers. You know, people always say, what's your responsibility as a parent? And I say, you know, my responsibility is to keep them safe. Their job is to teach me. I think that's truthfully how it works, man.  So, you know, the things that they're shortcomings is an indication of my limitations as a parent. So I see a lot of your insecurities kind of play out right in front of you, right? And then you try and like, get them to avoid these things and it's just like, you have to let it play out. So how can I be a selfish, you know, self-motivated prick when I see, would see that manifesting in my kids, like it just doesn't make sense in my brain. So, and so the reality is, why did I stop? Is I no longer had a purpose. I was like, what am I doing it for? Am I doing it to prove something? Nope, am I doing it to make myself feel better? Nope, like, so what am I doing? And ultimately, like I love training. I can still keep training. I'm still training as hard as I can. Do I need to walk on around 300 pounds? I'm 36 years old, probably not. So it's now trying to get into a fit. You know, I love the idea of being a role model or a kind of figure in fitness. So I love the idea of getting in shape and doing some other type of physical endeavor. You know, we talked about Spartan races. We talked about maybe an Ironman. We talked about doing the Navy sail training. All that stuff is appealing to me, man, and getting back to my athletic roots. You know, the irony of all that, because you're also a very, I consider you one of the, probably the smartest businessmen in the bodybuilding world. The irony of what you're saying is that would be brilliant for business. To have an ex-pro bodybuilder change and adapt and train in these different ways. Is this a dramatic shift?   I'm gonna be a small guy.  What?  Like, you know, that's just the mentality of- You better be documenting this whole process. Well, 100 pounds. And I tell people I lose 100 pounds, I think I'm crazy, but I don't just wanna still be a kind of big guy. Like I wanna be able to do triathlons. I wanna be able to do, you know, I've got this genetic, if I do have a genetic gift, it's my legs. And if I have a genetic gift- I agree with you. Well, why not use some sprint cycling? Why not do some track like palindrome type stuff? Fuck, it's there, you know? And use it. And I've got a tremendous innate endurance. So that was kind of my, if another thing if I was gifted with, it was to be an endurance runner. Interesting. You're kidding me. Well, I actually know what you were saying when you train with other pros, the way you would crush them is with volume. Yeah, but that's my gift, man.  So it's like viking on an aerobic capacity?   I wanna go back to the family stuff because I immediately, yeah, I do. And I immediately connected with you right away. Your level of self-awareness, mindfulness to get somebody like that. And you're a young age. We're young still, we're 36 year old, both of us are 36. Did you, would you say you had a rough childhood? Would you? Introspective. I don't think it was rough. I wouldn't say I was, I wasn't abused. I wasn't particularly neglected, I don't think. It was just a lot of time to observe. I was a very, I was always the observer, man. Mouth closed, ears open. You went the opposite like I did from my childhood. And I know that I had to work through a lot of animosity that I had towards my parents or my mom, my father killed himself when he was seven. My mom remarried into an abusive relationship. And I learned, a lot of what I learned was from seeing what they were doing, going the opposite direction. I was very blessed that I had my grandparents. So my parents split up when I was young. My dad and I had basically no relationship. My mom was working. So I don't know that I had any animosity. I said a lot of time to myself. My grandparents were older-ish. They're great people, but older. Zero health consciousness. So just existed. So yeah, I didn't have a bad upbringing by any stretch, man. Like I was never abused. I was never, I mean, never beaten or anything like that. But it was just a lot of time to be by myself and observe. Now, were you more of an intellect or more of an athlete? Like, I would say I was an athlete, man. Yeah, I didn't resonate at school, man. I was a straight D student for most of my life. Oh, wow. I would have never guessed that because you were really smart. Well, yeah, I grew into that, man. I grew into that. So I just didn't like school, man. It was boring for me. And here's the funny part about school is, and most people find this funny, is I had a speech impediment and a learning disability. So now the irony is like I teach people and I'm a public speaker, right? That's always the irony of it, right? Is the things that maybe your limitations as a kid, you turn into your greatest gifts. So yeah, I mean, those are the two things I love to do. I love to teach and I love to talk. And it's funny. Do you remember the, because I remember the turning point for me. I was at school, it was not interested. I did, I did okay. I was a 3-0 student, but definitely didn't apply myself because I wasn't interested. And at 25, there hit a switch where I started to read things that I was interested in. And then it just, I became, I just started reading and reading and reading. But there was a moment in my life that I remembered. Do you remember a moment where you kind of made that transition? I do, man. So night in Canada, I was in school. I went to ninth grade, first year high school. And the high school I went to was in a bad area and I had no sports. So I switched into a new school, which is actually near my dad's house. So I moved in with my dad. And at that new school, it was a completely, it was a complete paradigm shift for me with the people I was associating with. And every single person from that school went to university. So I went from a school where literally when I graduated one person, so if I looking back at when the school I went to in ninth grade, I knew that the graduating class had one person that went to university. In the school that I went to in 10th grade, every single person went to university.  That's honest, man.  Like, where am I? And none of them played sports and I was very athletic and I had kind of nowhere to no outlet. So I go to this new school, actually all these kids were really smart, good athletes.  So I just stepped up my game and it was just kind of part of the crew. Like you didn't fit in, if you didn't go to school, they would make fun of you. That was kind of where I stepped up my game ago. I better start this reading thing. And I was always, like I said, I wasn't always an introspective guy. So at 14, I started doing endurance running, man. Just cause it was my outlet from my life, you know, observing these people around me that I didn't want to be like. So my disconnect was I'd wake up every day at five o'clock in the morning and I'd run for two hours before school. That was just my thing, man.  I'd be outside at five in the morning, literally every day running until I basically puked. Because it was my disconnection from the observation of the reality that I was existing. When did you find your passion for learning? I think once I found something I liked. So, you know, I said, I started off with endurance running cause I liked to push myself. And then I found training because I was an athlete and I was 15 years old and I wanted to become faster for sports. So my coach goes, hey man, I want to go try the weight rooms. I just started doing some legs. And notice it made me faster. So I literally went in every day before I practiced or before games to like, cause I was like, oh, when I do this, it makes me feel faster. And then I started to respond, I started to grow. So that was kind of the catalyst for, you know, 15 years old, you just go into the gym to train. And I literally went every day because I noticed when I trained, I was faster, I felt stronger, or maybe felt more loose. And then just progressed from there, man. Like it was never really an inspiration or a goal of mine to be a pro bodybuilder. Just kind of something that- Now, did you dive in and really learn the science behind training at this point or was it just, I'm going to go do it? And then later on, you became much more of a, you know. So yeah, I guess that didn't really answer your question. So yeah, my learning, my discovery of learning or my desire to learn happened when I was probably 18 years old. So I found bodybuilding and that because it was my passion, I tried to consume everything. And I tried to find the one guy, I think one of us were talking about this thing was you actually. We were talking about trying to find that one bodybuilder who you could kind of attach to and be like, I want to follow this guy. And he didn't exist, man. Like nobody existed, at least I couldn't find him. And so it just became this self journey of trying to find, you know, fill in the gaps. Like what should I be eating? How should I be training? You know, what should I be taking? What should my sleep look like? What should my daytime routine look like? And trying to model it after somebody and then ended up being, unfortunately, there was nobody out there. So it was just kind of this, you know, plethora of people that I was pulling information from. That must have been really tough because we should share with the audience that you kind of represented that guy for me because I was getting into a world that I knew nothing about. I was not like Sal. Sal was somebody who followed all the old-time bodybuilders was into that. I was always just an athlete. Like I love sports, I was competitive and I purely got into the sport for business reasons. I'm 30 years old and I saw the opportunity. And so right away, I began searching for, you know, the guys that knew and I'm searching for the same stuff. My sleep, my diet, like how about that? And I'm not finding anybody and I'm going, Jesus. And there is nobody. And so that's kind of what it got. And we spoke up this too as I'm pretty, I don't know if I'm introverted, man, but I'm a private guy.  And I almost should because there's probably guys, there's probably thousands of guys that they're like you looking for it.  They do.  Yeah, no. They, like when people, I had a lot of people ask me when we were coming over here, like, yeah, find out.   Yeah.  No, no, you're incredibly self-aware and mindful and respectful and just, I mean, an incredible guy. Even nicer than what, and I knew because I dug deeper. I'm not somebody to judge after I just see something. I'm gonna, I've learned more about you to do that. But because you have kind of more of an introverted quiet personality, people took that as an arrogance. And we kind of talked about this. Yeah, that's the thing is it's not introverted. It's extroverted, but it's selectively extroverted.  I've had that taste of quote unquote fame. And you know, it's not for me, man. Like I'd like the idea of helping people.  It's not my thing. So I kind of disconnected because I want to keep my family life private. I don't want to keep my personal life private.  I'm starting as my life shifts away from bodybuilding. Maybe it's afforded me the opportunity to get a little bit deeper into what actually happened behind the scenes, what my life does look like. And I mean, I've just always been a private person because that's just who I am. I don't like the idea. I'm not a spectacle guy, man. Like as much as that sounds contradictory.  It's like, it's one of those things. It's like, I don't like the center of attention. I don't like being the guy in the spot and like it has all the answers. And let me just do my thing, you know, leave me alone. And so just for me to kind of even become part of the group and express myself through a podcast was such a big challenge for me. But like, I seek these opportunities to challenge myself. And I feel like you're the same way with that as far as like getting yourself out there. And, you know, this is something where I can improve and project myself in this light. I've got a pretty cool platform in front of me. And it's just a matter of picking and choosing how you want to kind of leverage it, right?  Like, hey, I'll show you my quality.   And then I'm going to feel insecure about myself again. And I'm just not someone who builds my self-worth based on people's judgments.  Like, ultimately. So you were, so for so long, you were judged based on your appearance, your aesthetics, your size, right? For so long, and now you're making a very, very sharp pivot. What would you like to be known for now? Good question, man. And so that's funny. I'm actually leaving today to go on a vacation with my family. And it's just a week of introspection. It's a week of journaling. It's a week of literally identifying that is who are you? What are the hats that you wear? What does your life look like in 10 and 25 years? Who don't want to be known as now, man? I don't know that I have a clear depiction of that. You know, honestly, what my entire, the entire focus of my career has been is I want to be that guy that I'm speaking about that anyone can turn to about if I want to build muscle and be an awesome dad, a great businessman and the ultimate modern man. Ultimately, right? Like, I want to be that guy.  I want to love my wife.  So when my kids grew up, they go, my dad was my superhero. I want to make million dollars a year, but not because I need, I need millions dollars worth of material to ship, but because it allows me an opportunity to travel the world, see new people, meet new people, and help new people. That's probably the ultimate definition of what my life looks like in five years. Sounds awesome. Yeah, right. I mean, I think a lot of people can relate to that if they take the time to step back and identify what it looks like. And most people don't, right? But luckily for me, I make time for a lot of introspection and answering that question, you know? But I think I need to dig deeper too, just like anybody. I think I need to get really specific on what it looks like, where am I living? Who's in my life? And whose life I'm impacting in what specific way?  We had some pretty good discussions last night on, I mean, a whole gamut of health optimization, everything from gut health to brain. Yeah, great. We introduced you to Grindr. We didn't have to educate you a little bit.  Yeah, brain optimization. Like what are the subjects that are really peaking your interest now? All of the above. So, man, it's gonna sound arrogant as fuck, but I think I've kind of mastered the muscle building thing. So my execution. You can say that. Yeah, man. You're allowed to say that. I mean, I don't know that there's very many humans on the planet who get it, as well as myself and my staff do. You know, we pretty get it, we get it, man. Like we get the execution component, get the programming component, we get how to nourish it as much as we can. Obviously, there's a lot of answers that aren't there as far as research and that's necessary. But I think I get the muscle building component, the execution, the weight of everything and how to balance all those factors. And now for me, it's optimizing brain performance, consistency. So we talked about the idea of self mastery. What does that really mean, right?  And obviously being a good or, you know, ultimately being a great role model for my kids, man. That's what it comes down to for me.   So when we need, we need a word. We need a word. We need to be like, we're doing this. So I always connect with the ultimate modern man. I'm like, okay, and it may or may not be the term, but we need to create a word. It doesn't exist.  Alpha's like old and has weird. It's too much bro connected to alpha. Yeah, yeah, yeah. There needs to be some word and we need to create a word. We will create a word today. What do you think? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I like Jedi like wizard, man. It's something, I know it's something. But when you say Jedi, people think of something else. So I want to think of a word that everyone's like, hey man, that's exactly what it is. You know, the ultimate modern man is like, I'm connecting with all of these things.    And let's create the single. Now let's talk about longevity for a second, because bodybuilding at that level is not known for being great for longevity on any, pretty much any. For many levels. On many levels. What do you do now in terms of training, nutrition, and you know, I don't know. You talked about doing yoga four days a week now and stuff like that. What are some of the things now you implement for longevity in particular? Meditation is step one, man. And it sounds cliche, man, but it's one of those things that if you've never done it or you're thinking about it, you got to try it. If you don't know if it's too... Oh, we talk about it all the time. Dude, just the ability to eliminate the bullshit. Eliminate the noise that the world is trying to pull you in all these different directions is so important. Especially in this time right now. We are becoming more and more disconnected and present with all these tools that, I mean, how often now do you sit, look around at a dinner table and see people are all on their, they're not even connected to the people that are sitting right in front of them. So if there was ever a time that it's important to be present and I don't think there's anything out there that I've ever put into practice that has helped me like meditation, like meditate that. I mean, and I'll tell you what, it's actually was difficult. And we talk about the challenge because we all shared our first experience of trying to meditate because I went after it the same way like my athlete mindset, like I'm gonna meditate, you can't go in like that. No, you can't meditate hard. Yes. You can't say I'm gonna meditate so hard today. And it's another big paradigm shattering moment for me with it was that it's a practice. So it's like, imagine this, imagine going to the gym for the first time and trying to squat.    You're not gonna feel it where you wanna feel it.  You're not gonna have good mobility and all of the above.  And I think setting expectations is massive. That's one thing we talk about with the trainers here is you gotta set someone's expectations. Like what do you expect and get out of this?  That's okay. And like coming to terms with, hey man, your brain's gonna wanna think about everything.  Just do your best to bring it back. Do your best to focus on bringing it back to the breath and keeping it very, very easy, very flowing. And that's really all it is, man. It's just eliminating the monkey mind, man. It's such a simple thought. Now, knowing this, knowing about meditation and doing it now, do you think that would have benefited you in the 20 years of bodybuilding? I think for sure it would have, but I think training was my meditation. And I think that's why I talk about it. That was your flow state.   That was my state, right?  I was like, what are you doing? So same thing now, man. Like if I was meditating somewhere and I was like deep into my, you know, my flow state and somebody came over and like startled me, I might not, I might not smash them like I might have in the past, but now I'd at least be like startled, right?  So that was the same thing, right? As a fear-based response previously, it was like, well, you know, you came into this world you weren't supposed to be and I thought I was here by myself. So yeah, man, I mean, that's all meditation is, right? Is getting into that state where you block the rest of the world. How often do you do it now? I try to do it every day. So I get up every day at 4.30 and my first practice is I brush my teeth, clean my teeth and then I meditate.  But yeah, man, so the certain days I miss, but if I can control it, I meditate. And so if we didn't have plan on training today or doing a podcast, I probably still would have got up at 4.30 and do my meditation. And I just would have assumed that I'm not gonna train later because training on four hours of sleep usually ends up sucking or if I have to do something that requires a lot of focus, it's gonna end up sucking. So I decided to sleep in a little bit today, which was five o'clock.   So I know a lot of our fans are gonna be like, I wanna hear all this muscle building advice and all, because you said yourself, you've mastered a lot of what goes behind hypertrophy and muscle building. What are some of the suggestions or ideas or I guess the big rocks when it comes to hypertrophy to building muscle, because that's something that you're so well versed in. Sure, man. Within the business, so my business is MI 40 as you guys know, and we've created a, we try to create a kind of a framework where people can latch onto and at least giving them a jumping off point. And I think the biggest thing that maybe is a paradigm shifter in the beginning for people is creating an internal focus as opposed to an external focus. What do you mean by that? I'll explain. So internal focus, what goes on? Also let's talk about external focus. What's outside your body? Bars, dumbbells, machines. People are focused on what's going on outside of their body. And what you wanna do is you wanna shift your focus to an internal focus. So let's think about what this muscle is doing. If I'm trying to muscle, the only thing that matters is what's happening at the muscle. It doesn't matter how much weight is in my hand. It doesn't matter what machine I'm doing to do it.  And they get this attachment without realizing that everybody's body is different. So if you can create an internal focus and focus on what the muscle's doing and realize that muscular contraction is relatively simple, it's pulling an insertion closer to an origin. That's it. So if I can conceptualize and visualize, like in a lot of times for me, this is closing my eyes. You guys probably saw that one was training. A lot of times it's very internal. Close my eyes. And I envision bringing my insertion closer to my origin. And that's it. And if I can, so there's a few other things we latch on to from that or we add on to that. And so it's important realization that if both ends of a muscle are moving, you're not generating any attention to the muscle. It's the idea of I'm holding this rope in my hands and both ends of the rope are moving, how much tension can't create in the rope, zero. So one end needs to be anchored, the other needs to be generating tension. So when you're training, one end needs to be anchored, one end needs to be as stable as possible. So my main focus is I need to stabilize my body, create a stable jumping off point. So the idea is you can't fire a cannon from a canoe. So stabilize your body as much as possible and this term I often use is lock it down. And then generate tension in the muscle at the other end and bring the insertion closely to the origin. That's it. And then once you find that, and then it's a matter of, okay, well now I found it, how long can I keep it? And how long much can I stress it? And how much can I, how much tension can I create? And how much can I properly disperse that amount of tension over the entire range of motion? And then loading it. So what you're really trying to do the entire time, and this is what one thing that bodybuilding has contributed, I think greatly to fitness is the ability to connect to individual muscles. Now, from a personal trainer standpoint, when we're training clients, the average person who just wants to get in better shape, a lot of times they're completely disconnected to their body. Completely. In fact, I can't tell you how many times I'll do a tricep press down and a client would ask me where they're supposed to feel it. Where am I supposed to feel this? Well, they don't know. And that's why I try to detach from names of exercises, man. Like, you know, if I say a bench press and I go, guys, what does that work?   No, it doesn't. It works whatever I want it to work by how I set up for the exercise and how well my mechanics determine. So a bench press may be an awesome exercise for me and maybe a terrible exercise for you. And acknowledging that I can turn a bench press into a lat exercise for you. I can turn a bench press into a re-adult and tricep exercise for you. Just by changing what you're thinking about, maybe your body position a little bit, you know, I can make it an exercise that works absolutely zero chest. We could take Justin the gym floor right now and he could do a chest exercise with zero pec. And you're like, oh, well, that's interesting. So disconnecting from what you think is happening, those biases you have and attachments you have to exercise and the name of an exercise and trying to train the muscle. And that's a very dichotomous thought process from, you know, CrossFit and things like that where it's just training a movement. And I have nothing against that, man. If you're training for powerlifting, you're training a movement that's a completely different thought process. But if you're training for hypertrophy and you're training to optimize your body composition, transform your body, it's not an external focus. It's a 100% internal focus. And that's a very different paradigm for a lot of people, man.    Obviously not, right?    Like it's meditative. So question on that then.  Why, and your, and this has been a debate for a long time and there's lots of theories, but I don't think anybody's ever really explained why a close grip bench press or a dip is gonna build typically in people more tricep than something where you may even feel the tricep more like a tricep extension. It's not. So, okay, let's go there. Yeah, so, well, that's what I say. Detach from your attachment to exercises, right? So the only singular thing that's gonna be correlated with growth is increased muscular tension. So you just would argue, well, that muscle's putting more tension through it. So why, let me ask you this, man.  The singular reason is stability. So if I'm lying with my back in my scapula's pin to a bench or on the floor, it's important to realize that the long head of the tricep inserts or originates on the scapula. So if that scapula's moving, which it often is when I'm doing a tricep push down, I can't drain any tension at long hit. So if I lay on the floor and I artificially stabilize that scapula by shoving into the bench or into the floor, I've just created a stable environment for that long head to now recruit more out of. So that would make a lot of sense as to why maybe then I could create more tension, perhaps use more load and thereby would translate to more growth. But it's not a better exercise. Nothing is a better or worse exercise.  It's all just a matter of creating tension in the muscle. That's a great way to argue that. That's an excellent way to argue that. If the volume is the same, then you're right. But that's the difference really is that somebody is more than likely going to be able to close grip bench press, you know, 100, 200 pounds. Just because they're creating more stable environment. So if you were to load, you're obviously a very strong guy. If you were to load the tricep push down, what's the first thing that breaks on a tricep push down? Like, so if you think about, I've got perfect form.  I'm starting to get close to failure. What happens? Do triceps fatigue first? No.   So what's happening at the scapula? Moving. So how much tension am I joining in that long head? Very little. Like it's still joining some tension but it's not maximal, right? Cause I'm getting motion at my scapula. As soon as that scapula moves, the long head can't work. Why do people get elbow problems? We got these three heads of the tricep that are capable of working. The long head shuts down more at times because the scapula is not stable. So I got these two heads trying to kick up, doing twice as much work to try to compensate for the long head, which is the big one, primarily as far as size.  It's like, why does everybody build them with all the elbow problems? Cause they just don't know. So here's the counter to that because it's all goes down the central nervous system. It all goes down to being able to connect that muscle, activate it with as much tension as possible. So it's a central nervous system. It's a CNS signal, but we do know that when you activate more of your body, in other words, if I were to have you squeeze something as hard as you could with your hand and isolate just that area where the rest of you were stabilized, you would be able to squeeze much harder if you squeezed your entire body along with your hand. And this, because you're creating a stronger stable environment. No, it's just a stronger signal, but you're also creating stable environment. So maybe this way, maybe why a barbell squat or a barbell row or an overhead press is more effective than, let's say, an isolated foot man at building even the target muscle. No. So you're saying a side lateral done in a stable environment would build a deltoid as much as a standing overhead press? No, because it's a different, it's a different play. It's a different play. But so if we were to compare the exercise we did today, the cable side lateral against a dumbbell side lateral, which one builds more muscle? See, I would have a tendency to say dumbbell. It's not correct. It comes down, well, obviously load being equal if we equate load. That's the real thing, right? To me, it's load and volume really matters. Well, it's load and then time under tension, volume. So the time under tension with the cable would be greater because we did a better job of matching the resistance profile to what my body's capable of.  Come down to the bottom, there's nothing there. With a cable, because of the direction we chose for the cable coming across the body, as soon as I move, it's loaded. So I've got, instead of just being maximally loaded at the top, it's gonna be maximally loaded through the entire range. So I would argue that you would get substantially more hypertrophy from that cable version rather than the dumbbell version. Now, from the way you're arguing it, it does make sense. From an experienced standpoint, I've seen people do so much better with free weight movements and that's also the common, if you will, common knowledge in the muscle building world. Is it because then maybe people are able to generate more tension with free weight movements because they're, I don't know, adapting to them differently or able to use them differently or are you just saying, no, that's just incorrect all the way across? So you're saying that people will get better results from dumbbells. That tends to be the common knowledge, right? Free weights. Everybody says free weights is gonna build more muscle than a machine or a cable. That is straight ignorance. Not from you, but from the paradigm. No, and I don't mind. Look at this. No, it's just straight ignorance.  But anyone who understands biochemistry, anyone that understands biomechanics would know the answer. It's close your eyes.  It's just tension. It doesn't matter where it comes from. It doesn't matter that it's a machine. It doesn't matter. It's a dumbbell.  Think about it.  Right, right. It doesn't know. Yeah, I love you through a shake weight. No, it doesn't know. That's why my right arm is so big. 1,000 shake weights just sold across America. I'm sponsored by Shake It Now. The number one advocate across America. Yeah, no, it doesn't know. So what's the argument for a dumbbell? Probably marketing. Probably the fact that 25, 30 years ago, Joe Weider said, I'm gonna sell you a set of dumbbells because these are the best for training. And it's been indoctrinated into our thought process from a young age. There's no difference. And you're speaking from a purely hypertrophy standpoint. Sure, yeah, yeah. Functionally, man, if your goal's something different, it's something different. But for hypertrophy, my goal is I need to stabilize the environment and I need to load the muscle. That's the next step. Glad you made that distinction.  And if you're looking for broad spectrum performance and all these different things, you wanna be able to utilize. If you're training to be an athlete, it's often and should be a movement-based emphasis, not a muscle-based emphasis. Yeah, we're talking purely hypertrophy. Yeah, so that's an important realization and distinction I'm gonna make right now. If you're training for hypertrophy, it's not the same as training for athletics. And it shouldn't be. Like, I dissuade athletes from training muscle isolation most of the time. Unless there's a glaring weakness, it will often decrease your performance. So, because you want that elastic response when you're training for sports, right? You want to train that ability to have... Well, and you want your entire body to communicate with it when you're doing a sport versus when you're getting on stage and presenting something totally different.  It's just a different thought process, man. So, everyone disconnect from the idea that I'm saying, hey, you need to do this. This is exclusive to muscle-building. Yes, exactly.  All the crossfitters that are pissed right now. Yeah, exactly.  Come on, man. That's Charles on my page right now. No, this is great, and this discussion needs to happen, and I'm glad you said that, because there are different ways to train for different particular goals. We're talking about optimally for purely hypertrophy-based reasons. I mean, heck, our program, MAPS Aesthetic, incorporates machines... For that purpose. For that particular purpose, because when you look at the highest level of any sport, you're gonna learn something from it, and bodybuilders are the, if you look at the entire sports arena, nobody can feel and isolate a muscle like a bodybuilder. Nobody can connect to an individual muscle like a bodybuilder, and that's what you're talking about, specifically. Yeah, man, but even disconnecting from the fact that I'm a bodybuilder, I'm a biomechanics student, like I've got a kinesiology degree. I've studied biomechanics for the last 15 years, and I've learned from the brightest people in the world, and it's not just, hey, this guy's a bodybuilder. Like that's kind of my, I don't identify as a bodybuilder, right? Like I'm saying, a bodybuilding, bodybuilding is what I do, not who I am, kind of thing. So yeah, man, I've studied it inside out, and I think the thing you'll realize is the higher you get to the top of the totem pole, everyone talks the same language, everybody says the same thing, so. Now, being a guy who is transitioning from being a bodybuilder and kind of being more functional-based, how does your training start to mold and change?  Are you doing a lot more functional-type stuff? Yeah, I don't know that I'm doing very much functional stuff. I just, I wanna maintain a certain level of aesthetic. I wanna maintain a large degree of my strength and mobility and starting, like I said, transition into more athletic endeavors. So I wanna be able to sprint.  And I know it's just pounds off the joints. Like I gotta take some pounds off the joints, right? Like my ankles, my knees, my hips are gonna hurt if I sprint, it is what it is. So it's transitioning into maintaining as much strength as you can, while still not training to the point of, hey, I'm gonna build muscle because it's a different stimulus. So I'm trying to maintain as much strength as I can while improving mobility, improving, I mean, all my overall strength is pretty balanced. So my body doesn't tend to have very many injuries, knock on wood, but yeah, so the idea is maintain as much of a balanced symmetry and a balanced strength as I can as I gradually transition to this lighter body weight. That enables me to train more. Well, let's talk about that. What does that look like? Because this is something I'm currently going through myself. Like I was one side, the men's physique, focus all on aesthetics, then I went the complete hippie, crunchy, meditate yoga looking guy and now I'm trying to find this balance myself and I have things that I'm doing in Incorporated. I'm curious to your approach on that, what? Yeah, man, training is a little more scarce. It's a little more infrequent, two or three times a week. And honestly, I'll be honest, it's a new process, man. Like my whole life for the last 20 years has been exclusively consumed with Eat Sleep, Train Grow, Eat Sleep, Train Grow. And now it's predominantly based on what I look like in the mirror and how I feel when I'm doing shit, like when I'm performing stuff. So my training right now is based on I try to make sure that I get everything in twice a week. So I'm kind of doing like an upper body, lower body split and volume is determined exclusively. Honestly, this sounds ridiculous, but by aesthetic, like if something looks like it's, like I'm going by this visual ideal that I have in my brain, like, okay, I wanna build this and I wanna build that or I wanna maintain this certain visual appearance. Well, if my arms look like they're getting small, I'll do a little more arms. And if my legs aren't gonna get small, so it's not like I'm doing legs often enough that I'm trying to hypertrophy them. I'm just doing them to maintain mobility, maintain structure on the joints and still be able to squat 600 pounds when I'm 40. It's a dance because you wanna atrophy, but you don't wanna lose function because atrophy goes hand in hand with losing function. It's a very unique, I mean, I've never obviously experienced this. I don't know if very many people have, like who's ever tried to lose 100 pounds of muscle? Yeah.  Well, maybe there's an attachment or a relation with like an ex NFL football players. Like I said, I felt alignment like Michael Strayhan. I'm sure he lost 100 pounds and pretty damn close to it. So some of those guys maybe can relate to what I'm doing and trying to lose a ton of mass. Yeah, but he did the slim faster. What did you do? Me too. Jay and Craig. Is there anything in terms of supplementation that you're doing for that? I mean, I'm wondering if the body's metabolizing that much muscle or adapting at that direction. Does that, because I've never even contemplated what that could mean for the organs. Does that change anything? Are you looking at elevations at the CK level and all that stuff? No, all my liver enzymes are great. All my kidneys look great. My protein consumption is much lower, like I talked about. It's about 120 to 150 grams a day.  So I actually felt awkward last night having to order 15 ounces of fish because it was my only second meal of the day and watching you eat half the size of the protein being twice my size.  It's like, I always eat of a bowl.  I got a big red bowl. Yeah, I have the same big red. I dump all my food.   It's like 90% vegetables. So I literally have like a pound to two pounds of vegetables and like different like salads and green beans and broccoli and like everything. And it's always changing. And then I have like this little serving of meat and like a big chunk of fat. Like, so depending what it is, if it's coconut oil, if it's avocado, if it's some fatty meat, you know, that's really it. So it's predominantly, most of my volume right now is coming from vegetables. How many grams of protein did you eat when you were competing and trying to build? Good question. Were you one of the like eat, you know, five million grams of protein? Or were you still, were you even conservative there? No, man, I went through phases. So it was kind of dependent on my carbohydrate intake. So if my carbohydrate intake was high, my protein intake was low. If my protein, if my carbohydrate intake was low, my protein intake was higher. So carbohydrate obviously has a muscle sparing effect. So if I was taking in, you know, 12 to 16 ounces of carbohydrate per meal, so, you know, 80 to 120 grams, depending what's coming from, my protein was, you know, six, seven ounces, so pretty small. And then if I was getting ready for a contest, those two would kind of just gradually change. Cause obviously the less carbohydrate you take, the more protein perhaps you need. And I found that to be true. So I got up to eating, there was a certain time where I was eating 12 ounces of protein per meal, five, six times a day. And actually, ironically correlated with when I did best competitively. Do I think I need that much? No, but it comes down to that. And this is the ultimate question, right? It's like, if I'm not taking it from protein, what am I taking it from? So, and I would always believe that manipulating carbs worked for me. I didn't really believe in a low carb diet, but I believe in manipulating carbs. So some days I'd be, you know, six, 700, 800 grams of carbs. Some days I'd be 100, 200 grams. And some days I'd be lower than that. But it would always be fluctuating based on my work capacity, my work volume. So were you over a gram per pound of body weight with protein? Or was it always around? Yeah, I was always over a gram. Looks like 350, 400. A gram would be kind of staple for me. A gram would be kind of baseline. Got it, got it. But again, in the off season when my carbs were up around 800,000 grams, it'd be lower. Cause this was necessary.  Sometimes. Yeah, once a week, man. Once a week, we recommend low or, you know, meatless Monday kind of thing where we don't eat meat. Now we talk about that on our show all the time. Explain why you do that. Just resensitization to protein. I think there's a tremendous benefit from a gut health perspective as well. Oh yeah, well. Dude, and we talked about this again when we were training. Just the idea of getting uncomfortable and being mindful. Like if I remove a nutrient, I think that's one of the greatest benefits of all these diets that people are attaching to is like, hey, what's the benefit of ketogenic dieting? Is it beneficial? Sure, from certain perspectives, certain people at certain times of the year and certain parts of the life.  Most people just eat so mindlessly and just shove whatever they can into their hole. Like, just stop and think about it for a minute and then that'll be step one in changing your body, right, taking control of what's going on. Yeah, pay attention to all the signs and signals and minds. And dude, we're all guilty of it. I'm just as guilty of the number of tubs of peanut butter that have disappeared over the last couple of years. I'm like, fuck, where did that thing go, right? Everybody does it, but being mindful of it as often as you can. Let's talk a little bit about the support of bodybuilding. I know we're going to have a lot of fans that are like, I want to hear more about what they're doing, how bodybuilding has changed. I was a huge fan growing up. And I remember distinctly there being a dramatic switch all of a sudden. And it was when Dorian Yates won his first Olympia and he showed up on stage and took bodybuilding. I mean, there were several phases of bodybuilding that I can remember. I mean, you had the 70s, then the 80s, all of a sudden they looked so much more shredded and more muscular. And then it was like that for a while, and then Dorian showed up and just was this new level of mass monster. And now we're seeing some changes as well. What's happening to cause those dramatic shifts? Like, what at Dorian Yu was it growth hormone, insulin, like, what were they doing differently that changed their bodies? And what's happening now that's different? I mean, we talked about Kuwait last night and bodybuilding going over there. I mean, we can run the gamut here, but what's happening now that's really different or changed or is it just more of the same? Well, what happened with Dorian, I think, I think, and I don't want to take anything away from anybody that came before him, but I think maybe for the first time he was the guy who was all consumed, right? It was the only thing he did. He didn't leave his house. He didn't leave his gym. And that shifted the paradigm altogether, right? Like, previous to that, you know, Arnold was at the beach a couple of times a day. He was probably experimenting with mind-expanding things. Well, I mean, he's the 70s, right? So he's doing what he's doing. And then you could start getting to the 80s.  And then you're pushing to Dorian who lived this consumed life and he brought this package that nobody had ever seen. So it changed the paradigm of the entire, which is the same idea with Roger Benster in the four minute mile, right? I was just gonna relate this topic to, if you're a fan of sports, it's pretty common across the board on all sports. If you compare to basketball player and a football player today to 30 years ago, you would think that they're doing all these other antibiotics increased up, but really the dedication level is starting at an earlier age, some anotypes we're learning more, what body types are better for what sports. The sport has evolved, right? And without a shadow of a doubt, the chemistry changed in the 90s. There's a lot more designer drugs and those guys will be transparent about that, I'm sure. So that changed it all. And I think that's what was responsible for the hard shredded look.  Yeah, man, I don't wanna throw names out, but people would tell me like guys would walk in, like guys from Balco and all those chemistry companies would walk into Gold's Gym and look at guys and go, oh, you need a little bit of this and a little bit of that. We're gonna make you this drug the next day it kind of show up at their place. Yeah, interesting perspective, but obviously that doesn't exist anymore so that's changed the paradigm of the sport. But I think that Dorian just changed the paradigm, changed people's belief as to what it could look like. Well, what was possible. Yeah, man, and like what it took.   Changed everything, man. I'll tell you what disenfranchised me as a young kid that was such a fan of the sport. I knew they used drugs, I knew all that stuff happened. It wasn't a big deal to me. They still had to work hard, find or whatever. So when I learned about synthol and the injectable oils that didn't even build muscle, that's when I totally like disconnected from the sport. Man, I don't know, man, but I don't think that, I really believe that's more prominent with the kids who want to look like the bodybuilders than is with the bodybuilders.  I'm sure there's a few that stick out of my mind that have done it, but like. I remember the nineties, there were a few bodybuilders that know at the time before anybody knew about synthol. There was that guy, Manfred, whatever, and Ernie Taylor. Ernie Taylor is one that comes to mind. Yeah, and you're like, wow, look at those arms.  How are they so big? And then of course later on, you learn about synthol. Like he was one of the first motherfuckers experience. There wasn't even synthol back then. It was something completely different. Escaline. Escaline, as I said. I don't know, I said. Semantics, right? But yeah, that was a big deal back then because it expanded the muscle without blurring it. And that was very different. Now, synthol is oil, which is different.  It looks painful. Oh man. What are you doing, man? Well, the muscle doesn't change from flex to relax. Or they look like they have implants. There's one dude that does it all in his pecs and it looks like he's got implants. What's going through the head, right? I don't know. And I wonder if it's like steroids with women, right? So steroids with women I'm completely against, obviously.   And they don't know what the long-term effects are. I mean steroids with women, I mean I've seen pictures of, I mean people, women don't realize it's like clitoral enlargement. Like if you go online and look at some of these body builders and it looks like they have little penises, that doesn't shrink. And the thing that people don't point out is the psychological change. It's literally becoming a man. Changing the hydrogen profiles in your brain, you're just not the same human being anymore. I couldn't imagine how much that fucks with women's psychology to realize like, hey I didn't really want this but this is one of the results.    What do you see happen with women when they start to go on cycle psychologically? They're just angry, man. Women aren't meant to be, they're meant to be emotional beings, right? And you amplify an emotion of a woman and she. Oh wow. Yeah, you're amplifying her anger, you're amplifying her insecurities or anxiety. I mean at the time you amplify someone's anger, you're amplifying anxiety, right?  You introduce it to the system or they're meant to have a little bit, but it's a very interesting paradigm, man, that I try to dissuade any women listening out there like you don't realize once. So here's a perfect story, man. I knew this girl 15 years ago now who was this beautiful girl working at a tanning salon and she goes, hey, you know, like I wanna do this. And I go, why?  I go, well, you don't have to do that to compete. So she did one shot of Winstraw and her voice changed. It never went back. One shot. Wow. It was like from difference from Friday to Monday. Wow. And her voice never went back.  Like, I don't know, man. It's immediate.   Right, because the unfortunate part is they think it's part of the reality. Maybe it's for some of them it is, but the truly gifted ones don't have to do it. And if you're not one of the truly gifted ones, do it for the love of the sport rather than for the desire to be Miss Olympia or whatever it is. Like, if you're not doing it for the love of the sport, you're doing it for the vanity, you're doing it for their own reason. It's not gonna change. Like people think that becoming this amazing, you know, Instagram person is gonna change their confidence or change the person that they are, but it doesn't, man. It's just gonna make it more amplified.   The first thing they do is put you on anabolic steroids. So you're literally doing that to yourself and you are changing. This is why the clitoris grows.  Whereas when a man takes testosterone, he's not changing his gender, he's just getting more testosterone. And he's not gonna have such a drastic change in psychology. He may get hornier, he may get, you know, all that kind of stuff. And all those things already present in his brain and your body is evolutionally adapted to that.  It's all just amplified versions of who they already are.  Yeah, high estrogen. Yeah, low testosterone will do that.  Right, right. I wanna hear what you think about this. I shared this on a podcast. Maybe about a month or two ago. And I know I got a lot of feedback. I got some, obviously hate, but then I got a lot of people that changed their mind about competing after what I said. And one of the things that I had said is, you know, I feel like, and I feel like Instagram and social media is part of the reason is it's become like trendy that everybody wants to become a bikini or a minster, a Zika bodybuilder or whatever. Like it's become very trendy to do. And I said, you know, a lot of people don't know that I spent a solid year to, mind you, I've been training for 15 plus years already. Then I spent a solid year to two, year and a half or so, almost two years of training to get ready to just step on the amateur stage. And I tell people that if you've never dieted down and leaned down and got yourself in the best shape of your life, naturally by yourself and figure that out, I don't really think you have any business getting on and competing at the highest level against the one percenters in the world.  Right, it's like me showing up and running against the same bolt. Right. It's a little ridiculous, but it is what it is. I try to dissuade people for a different reason, man. I think it just changes your perception. One, if you're doing it for Instagram, Instagram is just a dopamine hit, right? Every time you get, somebody hits a like, you get this amazing, so I feel good about myself.  But in reality, the reason I try to dissuade people from competing is it changes the way you perceive food, particularly for women. Men can usually detach from it, but some men can't. But particularly for women, food becomes a reward system. So they reward themselves with cheating, big cheat days, like I've done really well. Let's go, let's go there, let's go there. I don't know if we need to go there, but just the idea that, man, if you're an emotional leader to begin with or if you think you're trying to do a show because it's going to get you in great shaping and maintain it, it's not a good idea. You just have to make a lifestyle change.  This is the person I've become. Rather than, hey, I'm going to do this one show in 12 weeks and then I'm going to become, like I've seen a woman, no exaggeration, I know her very well, put on 60 pounds in under a month, four weeks after the contest.  And then four weeks later, completely different human being, unrecognizable and could never go back.  I'm going to make you go there, dude, because a lot of the stuff I used to speak out on when I was going through competing was, because I didn't know about it until I got in it. And I found this cheat meal, cheat day, cheat thing. And I just couldn't connect with it because I didn't understand why you would want to create that relationship with food of, I eat really good, then I reward myself with all this bad shit, right? And calling it a day. And it's not only that, man, if people that rationalize it as like, this is good for me, I'm doing something good for myself. You know, yeah, anyways, it's the idea that it's been perpetuated by a few coaches saying, you know, cheat days are good for you. And there's absolutely no reason why physiologically cheat day would be beneficial for you. There's absolutely a benefit as to why a calorie increase- A surplus would be good for you.  No, I'd say probably the worst connections to food or eating disorders and self-image issues I've seen are people in the competing world. That's terrible. And I mean, if you don't believe me, go see any bodybuilder or bikini or physique competitor post contest and watch what they do with food. I know people who will buy boxes of, you know, Oreo cookies and ice cream or whatever and literally have it in their fridge and their cupboard and be like, I can't wait to eat this. This is what I'm gonna have. So the trophy case. I dated this girl years and years ago who used to eat entire Baskin Robbins ice cream cakes, the big ones.  And I'm like, and this is on top of her stop donut places and all this other junk on the way home.  Like she had like B.O. coming out of her system. And it's just like, oh man. That's awesome and attractive, right? This reality, man, girls get such as this attachment with I've been depriving myself for so long, I can make up for it. And but where does this stop?  And by that point, you're usually too far gone. And the sad thing about, and the difficult thing about competing on a stage is if you're not in a secure situation with yourself, that's probably the last thing you should do. And the unfortunate thing is it tends to attract people who are not. That's what I was gonna say, those are the people that are drawn to the sport because they think it's gonna change who they are. It's gonna make me really confident myself. And it won't, unfortunately, like it just can't. A game changer for me with food because I had horrible self-body image issues. This is why I got into resistance training and why I even abused my body in my younger years. And a game changer for me was fasting.  And I had food with me all the time and protein shakes with me and bars. And the first time I actually broke free of that and did a fast and didn't lose all this muscle.  And it was just this mind-blowing experience. And when people ask me advice on nutrition and competitors in particular, one of the best things I can tell them is try intermittent fasting. Break free from the chains of the, I need to eat every other hour and see what happens. I was the first coach in the bikini and men's physique world that I knew that was actually prescribing that to his athletes.  It'll be great for you. And just through a curve ball and everybody and everybody was tripping out that I was doing that. But I was blown away that here we are, we're getting ready to lean down anyways. So we're in cutting for a show. Why wouldn't we throw a great day of intermittent fasting in there every once in a while? You talked about it earlier. Do you incorporate that right now into your routine? I do, yep. Probably once a month. I'll do like a 48 hour fast. Nice. What do you notice from it when you do it for you? I have tremendous mental clarity. I actually notice as soon as I reintroduce food, my energy levels dip, my mental clarity dips.  Like you have no attachment to anything. So like I said, I'm heading on a vacation today and my plan for the week is to kind of like not eat. Like I might eat a couple of times, but I won't eat some veggies and like, I don't even know what I'm gonna do, but I have no attachment. It's the first time in my life I can take a vacation. This is a cool thing, right? I should probably document this. The first time in my life I can take a vacation and have no attachment to having to eat, having to train. Wow, that's a paradigm shift right there. Dude, this is the first one really? First one ever, man.  You're gonna find, I don't know, you may find that I found this myself the first time I did that, because vacations for me used to be, and I was never a competitive bodybuilder, I was just obsessed. Vacations to me were like, does the hotel have a gym? Where can I get my food? What do I need to bring? Oh, we're gonna go see this thing. Okay, I gotta make sure I have this food.  It was mind blowing to me, and vacations became so enjoyable. I'll be interesting to see what your experience is with that. Yeah, man, I have no attachment to anything. Like it's the first time where I'm packing shit, and I'm like, why don't I have to bring six different changes outfits for the day to get in my two workouts and my cardio, you know? I'm like, I'm just gonna go and kind of exist. So yeah, it's a new- Did you catch yourself reaching to those habits, though, or did you, or did you know? I think you went in with- Yeah, I'm pretty mindful of the fact that I'm going out in the woods with my kids and it's gonna be like no workouts. I mean, we'll swim, we'll meditate. My kids are starting to get into meditation and yoga, which is a cool thing. Yeah, I'm not pushing them into it. They're actually asking, like, daddy, can I get up to you at 4.30 to meditation? I was like, no, you can't, but we'll teach you when you wake up. That's daddy time. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And also don't want you to get up at 4.30, but it's definitely daddy time. How about it'd be cool, man? Just disconnecting and see what happens and have no emotional attachment to what I look like when I come back. And if I look like I haven't been in gym in a week, hey, you haven't been in gym in a week, that's okay, right?  I love the fact that you can talk about all these different things that are so outside of that scope of muscle building hypertrophy. We talked about gut health even last night. You're one of the only bodybuilders that I've heard ever talk about the microbiome and taking care of the microbiome. We have, I guarantee you, we have some bodybuilders listening right now or some aspiring bodybuilders and they've heard all the usual advice. What advice can you give them that's different that may be encompassing some of that that may help them? Fasting's a good one, that's a good start.  It's actually may accelerate them. And I spoke of that, I do that with- Now explain that, why? Because I've heard people are like, no way, fasting's not gonna help with gains. I've experienced that myself. Just kind of a resensitization to pros and synthesis, to the mTOR pathway, right? So when you're constantly stimulating mTOR, your body, it almost becomes like the mute signal, right? It's the idea of that perpetual noise your body stops hearing. So I'm taking a break from it, same idea with like not eating for eight to 10 hours at night when you sleep. Like some people are like, I gotta wake up and have a shake in the middle of the night. No, you don't.  Same idea, but in having that day, I wouldn't suggest two days for most people, but 24 hour fast, or even like- Like a warrior, 16 or 18 hours.  And just disconnecting from the idea of having to eat every couple of hours, I think that would have a huge benefit and have been shown to shift the microbiome. The biggest thing, man, I think, if anyone's out there, starting to acknowledge the fact that you are not what you eat. You're what you absorb. And if you can supplement your microbiome with a diverse array of, you know, mitochondrial or microbiome-accessible carbohydrates. So- Like pre-biotics. No, insoluble fibers. So all those fibers are fueled off insoluble fibers. And if you can take in a vast array of different types of fibers, you're gonna be fueling these different, micro, these different bacteria. Yeah, we talked to Dr. Ruscio about that. Chicory root, I think is a good one and certain types of starches. And he did talk about, and I wanna make sure I say this on the show, that there are some people where they may benefit from sometimes trimming back their microbiome load.  I was one of these people for a while. Something that reset me was a 48 or 72 hour fast. It brought everything back down. And then I could eat those things and then my body responded. It could be an inflammatory thing, right? So your microbiome is directly correlated with inflammation. So you could just be bringing down the inflammatory. Exactly. The other thing that's very fascinating is, Dr. Walter Longo talks a lot about fasting. He's doing some of the most amazing research on it. And he does what's called a fasting mimicking diet.  It's your increase apoptosis and stem cells start to get stimulated. When you eat again, you build up these cells again and they're newer and healthier. And I know that studies have shown that 72 hour fast will recycle your white blood cells, almost all of them in animals, which is pretty fascinating stuff. Organs will shrink. You'll actually lose size of your liver when you fast and then rebuild. Yeah, maybe buy some. So liver's got a lot of protein in it, right? So maybe it's just catabolizing the amino acid. Yeah, it's really, really fascinating stuff. And this process really does benefit the muscle building process. I've been doing a low protein day now for a couple years. And on the low protein day, I can feel it. But the day after when I eat that protein, it's like you blow up turbo charge. It's like turbo charge. And this is all important stuff. Even if your goal is muscle building, it's important to stress those things. I think the hard thing that I had with that as a body, I think I would have been okay with doing it. Just picking the day to do it.  Yeah, so it's like, man, I gotta have like three days in a row off, right?  I mean, I would suggest you don't fast if you're having any type of high-intensity training. And if you're gonna train tomorrow, you don't wanna train, you don't want to fast today. So it's like one of those, most guys don't take more than two days off in a row, and maybe start there. Maybe it's like taking two days off training in a row, like, oh, hey, that's a big paradigm shift for some guys too.  That was a big paradigm shift for me was being the young skinny kid who was trying to build muscle. I put it in like, oh, the more I'm in here hammering it, the more I'm going to grow. But I was burning so much and not allowing myself to recover that, just taking days off. So that just kinda points my brain in the direction of speaking to one thing we talked about on the gym floor was Arthur Jones. And we said, you know, Arthur Jones had some things right and some things wrong and speaking to that, I think the biggest reason why a lot of people don't build, I'm not the biggest, but one of the reasons that people don't build their bodies is it's this constant low grade stimulus. So when they're training, they're training seven days a week. So how intense are they training? How hard are their workouts? Probably not that hard.  And I think that is the first step for people. Like if you're training seven days a week, step outside the gym for three days and go back and tell me how you felt that day. And if that's still the same intensity you were generating when you would do seven days in a row, then keep doing seven days in a row. But you need to be able to take three days off and maintain that level of intensity. Like, you know, how do you guys feel after you take three days off?  Oh yeah, absolutely. Like I get, my weights go up 20%. Everything's awesome, my strength is awesome. Kind of how I feel every time I get in the gym now because I'm only training three days a week. So I'm replenished, my intensity's there, my focus is there.    Still getting out of that, breaking that habit. Right, and you know what? It's probably the nature of the beast, the nature of the alpha male or female to want to do more and more and more. I was guilty of it just as much, if not more than anybody. Like, you know, if I'm getting in there and I'm crushing it today, I'm gonna get in there, I'm gonna crush it tomorrow. When do you stop? Like, you know, for me, I always was of the mentality I'm gonna work harder than everybody. So I absolutely overtrained, I absolutely trained too much. And it's hard when you're in it to go, oh, I need a couple of days off. You know, that's where having an intelligent coach comes in. I'm like, hey, man, like push as hard as you can for the short period of time, overreach, and then chill out or take three days off. What helps me, what helped me a lot with that was also deciphering the difference between a day off and doing nothing or a day off and having active recovery. That changed everything for me because I was under the impression as a kid that today's my day off. I should sit here and do nothing and let my body feel muscle. Lay in bed, yeah. When you do that, you actually send a signal to atrophy.  And so when I learned that active recovery was actually more effective for me, stretching, mobility, even going into the gym and just moving through full range of motion, stretching and squeezing. Boy, did that amplify the muscle building signal that I had sent the day before. And we've branded that in our programs, we call them trigger sessions and maps anabolic or focus sessions and maps aesthetic, but it makes a huge difference to understand that. What about frequency of training? I know bodybuilding or bodybuilders now for a long time have been preaching once a week, hammer your muscle once a week, rest it until the next week. What is your belief on that? Do you believe in more frequency, maybe another day a week with less intensity? I know studies right now are showing there's a few that have come out that have shown, yeah, that if you get like, instead of doing, you know, 15 sets one day, you're better off doing five sets three days a week or something like that. Have you looked at the populations? No. Oh, well, one of them was athletes, but the other one I believe was- This is usually sedentary. Sedentary. Yeah, which is normal. So my thought on that is it depends. Oh, as always. Of course, of course. So if someone is a lower level trainee, I mean they haven't been training for a long time or their execution isn't great. It's a learning curve. It's a learning process. So the amount of stimulus that's actually going into their muscles when they're training is very low. So it needs to be more frequent for to optimize the learning curve and optimize just getting more stimulus into that muscle. So someone who hasn't, who isn't really a highly trained athlete would absolutely benefit from higher frequency. But someone that more advanced you get, I really believe the frequency goes down.  And then can that change? Of course, based on your cellular nutrient levels. So like, am I nourished or am I depleted? Where am I? Am I cycle as far as like, you know, am I dieting for a contest? Am I in caloric excess in the off season? So all those things are variables, man. So, but I think that the simplest way to express it to people is, if you're new or if you're a beginner, if you're learning something new, it's a learning curve. If you do it once a week, what's the learning curve like? We talked about this for your training. It's terrible. So if I want to optimize learning curve, I need to go often, two to three times a week, sometimes four times a week for some people. And then so you're training with less volume, obviously. So volume and frequency are inversely proportional. So if I'm training with high frequency, I need low volume. And then for someone that more advanced you get, then you start kind of spreading out your frequency and eventually going into, you know, maybe one session every four to five days, I think that's optimal. But then again, that cycles back and forth in both directions. So if there's a period where I know my recoverability is low or my calories are low, I can't sustain the recovery from a high level of volume. So I need to then shift back to higher frequency. So it kind of shifts back and forth, man.   Yeah, neurologically as well. So there's a lot of considerations. But I think, you know, this is where periodization and programming comes in is just you got to, you know, you're waking up, you're working up to this peak environment of creating as much volume as you can every five days. But how long can you sustain that? How long do you want to sustain that as being a novel stimulus? And then once that novel stimulus loses its novelty, well, then change it and then, you know, decrease the amount of volume a little bit, increase the frequency a little bit and kind of just go back and forth from those.  Like you can adapt to a lot of frequency as well. I know Olympic lifters will squat every day. Twice a day. Twice a day and have, I mean, and they're recovering fine from that and they're squatting tremendous amounts of weight. It's not a muscular stimulus. No, they're training a movement. Yeah, they're training their CNS. And which is also important if you're looking for, of course, overall right function performance. You want to be able to work with both those. I think that's kind of what you're. Well, how do you feel about that feeding into hypertrophy? Even if hypertrophy is your main goal, how important do you feel training the central nervous system and training adaptations like that, like a power lifter occasionally? Like, do you ever flirt with that as a bodybuilder? I think there's a benefit in strength training, but I wouldn't, if my exclusive goal is body transformation, muscle building and hypertrophy, I don't think there's, I no longer think there's a need to diverge from perfect execution if I can put that in quotations. So, you know, people go, well, should I do cheat reps and forced reps? And when should I lose my form?   So what do you think about, I feel that this was something else I talked about a few years ago, the chasing of PRs, like I didn't even know the term PR 10 years ago. I never even heard that. And I feel CrossFit has really brought this to the masses and now I see all over PR this, PR that, PR this. And so many people chasing that. What do you feel, how do you feel about that?  And I say that in this very specific context. So most people put progressive overload in the context of more weight on the bar means more muscle. But you got to realize there's more to progressive overload. So if we're talking about strength training, more weight on the bars is your holy grail. If we're talking about hypertrophy, there is absolutely a benefit to quote unquote progressive overload. But progressive overload for hypertrophy does not equate to weight on the bar. There's more variables to increasing- Like time and attention. Yeah, load. And so there's, listen, so there's more components to force than just load. There's, like you speak about time, there's also distance that people don't think about. So if I'm doing, here's an example, man, this is the analogy I give in my classes all the time. If I'm doing a hundred pound dumbbell press, unless I'm doing a flat bench press dumbbell press, and I'm doing a hundred pounds and I'm doing 10 reps. And when I'm doing it, my hands are directly over my elbows. So I'm doing a press and then through the entire rep, my hands stay directly over my elbows. I do a hundred pounds for clean rep, a hundred pounds, 10 clean reps. And then I go, well, that was easy. I want to go up. So I do go to 110, but now all of a sudden my hands dump two inches inside my elbows. What have I just done? I shortened the lever. I've decreased the distance from the axis. I decreased the distance from the shoulder joint, which is the, you know, the joint I'm trying to influence. So I've decreased it by potentially up to 20%. So I've actually decreased the load that's influencing that joint by up to 20%. So people go, ah, man, I just did 110s today.  Like, what did it look like? Did it look the same as the hundreds or did it look worse? So the progression may be as simple as, hey, I'm doing a hundred pound dumbbells for 10 reps. Well, guys, if you're out there, try changing this. Try taking your hands from me directly over your elbows to take it in one inch outside your elbows. So you just increase the distance from the axis a little bit. So you increase the length of the lever a little bit and now I'm doing 10, 20% more work during that set. And that's the first progression, right? And then once you can own that, we talk a lot about ownership in this business. Like I want to own every inch of that contractile range. Once you do that, then maybe we can go up to 110s with my hands directly over my elbows to the entire, you know, see what I'm saying? Absolutely.  You're training your triceps, man. You're training your front delts. You're not really doing much for your pec because there's no distance from the axis. So the analogy is if I were to hold the dumbbell directly over my head like this, I'm showing you guys here and we can see this on a podcast. But if I'm holding a dumbbell directly over my head where my wrist, elbow, and shoulders are stacked, how hard is it? It's really easy. I can stand there all day and that's the same idea.  And nothing's changed. It's still the same way. It's just changing the distance from the axis. So if I'm doing a dumbbell press and I'm bringing it right over my shoulder joint, what's that doing to my pec? Nothing, but it's doing a lot to my tricep potentially. But what muscle are you trying to influence, right?  I just say it's rough with people's feathers a little bit, but just make them think. Like there's more to it than load.  How did you deal with it? Yeah, did it look the same? Was it better? That's why execution has to be the standard because it's the only way to objectively assess progress. Yeah, we talk about that all the time. The quality here. Yeah, quality of your reps, like rather than adding weight to the bar on your squat, get your squat better, get better control. And defining what that objectively means. Right, right. So we're really clear on when we teach this stuff is like, what's the objective? Am I trying to turn my quads or am I trying to turn my glutes? Or am I trying to do a powerlifting squat? Which one is my objective? And learning how to manipulate the exercise to influence either one.  They're always just completely different, but when guys write programs, I do a squat.  It's a completely different thought process, man. It's a completely different execution and we can go through videos, all that stuff. If you guys want to do it for your followers, man, it'd be cool to actually dive into that. Yeah, when you come visit us, we got to do some of that stuff. Cool series, yeah. Dude, it's the simplest thing to see visually, but people are like, oh, I never thought about that before.  Well, there's so many ways to make the muscle do more work. And the last way that you should go to is adding weight to the bar because that also happens to be the most risk for injury. And the heavier you go, the more likely your body is to revert to muscle recruitment patterns that are your defaults. And many times, those default recruitment patterns are the ones you don't necessarily want. They're your strongest muscles. So your body's always gonna revert back to its strengths. So if you're trying to develop your weaknesses, then you should probably not allow the source reps to enter the equation. Absolutely, well shit, man. Yeah, great conversation, brother. Great time, dude. Great time. You're running on, huh? Yeah, I know, seriously. No, we'll definitely do this again for sure, man. Definitely have you into our place. And hopefully we'll have you down over at Tahoe, man. I'm gonna have those dates until we're two. Yeah, I'd love to have you there. Yeah, it's been a pleasure having you on, brother. Thank you, guys. Thank you, man. Check this out. Go to YouTube and check out Mind Pump TV. We post a new video every single day. You can also check us out on Instagram at Mind Pump Media. You can find my page at Mind Pump, Sal. Adam's at Mind Pump, Adam. And Justin is at Mind Pump, Justin. Thank you for listening to Mind Pump. If your goal is to build and shape your body, dramatically improve your health and energy, and maximize your overall performance, check out our discounted RGB Superbundle at MindPumpmedia.com. 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