Hello guys, please welcome our next speaker, Alison Matlak from Red Hat. Thank you all very much for coming. To tell you the truth, I was not expecting so many people because most of the talks related to DevOps are always about tools and new processes, and it's rare that you get what we call the squishy human element. So I'm very happy to see all of you here today. I wanted to start by telling you a little bit about myself and why I'm here. I am a program manager for a department with several global distributed teams. We have about 130 people total, spread all across the globe. And our mission statement is to provide the platform and tools that enable associates and partners to deliver enhanced subscription value. And those are a lot of buzzwords to say that we run the Red Hat Customer Portal, which you can find at access.redhat.com. And I'm also an open organization ambassador. The open organization is a book that was written by our president and CEO, James Whitehurst, along with a few other Red Hatters. And it describes how Red Hat behaves on our best day. We are transparent, we're open, we're a meritocracy. And I really think that our teams behave that way. I'm not a software engineer, but what I do engineer is culture and ways for people to collaborate, finding better ways to be more efficient and engaged in the work that they're doing. I help our teams solve problems of coordination, communication, planning, and engagement. And I'm also the open organization ambassador. I really believe in what Red Hat does and the way we're doing it. A little about this talk called People Over Processes. In my work coordinating teams, which is the hallmark of open leadership, I found that it's people over process every time. And I'm here to convince you that most of the problems that you're facing are not a matter of finding the right tool or making sure everyone is using the right tool. It's really about the people and how they're communicating or how they're not communicating. And as we go through this talk, I hope that you'll think of ways that your own teams could become more efficient just by communicating a little better and making sure that the right people are working on the right things. I'll tell you in advance that at the end, if you ask a question, I've brought along books with me and I've carried so many of them all the way from Raleigh. I'm looking forward to giving them out to our audience today. So please, as we go through, think of questions that you might have to ask at the end. So about the teams I'm going to be talking about, this is the customer platform. We deliver all of these things through the customer portal that allow our associates and partners to deliver the value our customers need, whether that's support, planning throughout their entire technology life cycle. We deliver partner certifications, knowledge-based platform, product security resources, downloads for updates. And today, I'm going to be focusing on several of the teams that deliver resources for our support engineers. So this is kind of where we are in the ecosystem of customer platform. We have three teams who help our support engineers. We have a front-end that's customer-facing, which we call portal case management. So when a customer goes to the portal to open a support case, they're using the tools created by our portal case management team on the front-end. Of course, you need a back-end to support that. And you need the middleware to abstract the back-end for multiple clients, like our front-end. And together, these three teams are really delivering one product.  And you can see this tab at the end here. This is a screenshot from our portal case management where people go to open support cases. And we had a request from our main stakeholder, support delivery, to add a new tab for an action plan where our support engineers can leave notes for customers, it's customer-facing. But of course, it's not as easy as just creating a new tab on a web page. We have three impacted teams starting with the back-end. And every team that we have is a DevOps team. We've got our developers, we've got QA, we've got release engineers. Everyone is self-contained, and we thought we had the right people working on all the right things. But when you look at all the different tools we're using, it's very hard to coordinate between them when everyone is using different tools and processes. Our back-end team is on a three-week scrum sprint. In this instance, we use Salesforce as a database, Solanopsis to deliver, Bugzilla for issue tracking, and Rally for project planning. And when you start to think about coordinating teams, it's difficult to get one issue in Bugzilla to an issue in Jira, or Trello, or some other system. So we're really three different silos trying to deliver one product. Our web service API, JBoss Middleware, when the front-end makes a request, the Middleware web service API retrieves it from the database and hands it off. This team is using continuous delivery with Docker, Rays, and Jenkins, and Jira for issue and project planning. The front-end team also on a three-week scrum sprint, writing an AngularJS, using Jenkins, and Jira for issue and project planning. So this is really what we're looking at here. Tools, additional tools, and different processes are not going to solve a problem of coordination. Because what happens right now is you have a three-week scrum sprint, another three weeks for the Middleware, even though they're doing continuous delivery, they can't hand off to the front-end team until the next sprint has started. Three more weeks for the front-end team to complete their work and deliver. So a total of nine weeks from ask to delivery. This was a little too slow for us. We shouldn't be taking nine weeks in an agile environment to deliver something our stakeholder requested. I was asked to investigate scaled agile solutions, and I know that you can't read this, that's kind of the point. There are so many different scaled agile solutions that we can implement on top of our teams. The problem was that all of these require revamping everyone's processes. We had to take teams that were working very well and totally redo the way that they're doing everything. I settled on less because it allowed all of our teams to continue running the way that they were running, and all we had to do was add planning and retro at the end, where we had leads from each three team meeting to communicate. And what happened was instead of having to wait for each team to plan, groom, schedule each feature, we were able to come together in a room, say, we want to deliver the action plan. What do we need? Well, we need the back end to add the field, and we'll give you the first four days of the sprint. You let the middleware team know when you're done, they'll go ahead and do their part to get ready. They'll let the front-end team know that their work is done so the front-end team can complete development, and all of a sudden, we're delivering a new feature in three weeks. And this is a best-case scenario, but the most interesting thing that happened was even if something came up in the middle of a sprint, we had established relationships with each other and open communication channels, so we felt more comfortable communicating and saying, oh no, emergency, we need you to fit this into your sprint, and we knew who to ask and how to fit it in, so even if we couldn't deliver in three weeks, we were delivering in six rather than nine. Another problem, three weeks was a little too fast for our stakeholders. Support delivery had to go and make sure they had the feature documented that all the support engineers were informed of the new workflow and how they should use the new field, and so that was one of the lessons that we learned along the way. Make sure that you are working closely with your stakeholders as well as with each other. And kind of what we learned here is that the relationships between the people are more important than the tools and processes that they're using. As I showed you, each team had its own method of doing, its own way of doing things. We have two scrum teams working with a continuous delivery team, but all we really had to do was get everyone together in the room to decide how to do things together. If you think you need a scaled framework, choose the one that's least disruptive. So instead of trying to redo everyone's processes, you should just use the simplest solution. Instead of trying to do safe, or there's one called rage even, all we had to do was add a meeting at the beginning of the sprint and at the end to do more coordination. It's important to manage your stakeholder expectations appropriately, as we learned. So when we were moving from nine weeks of delivery to three weeks of delivery, our stakeholders weren't very well prepared. Another one, don't let any one person dominate the conversation. Engineers love their products, and they love talking about it. So when you get everyone in a room, you sometimes find that one person tries to speak more than the others, and it's important to kind of manage those conversations. And try things that don't be afraid to fail. This is the main message of Agile, that it's okay to fail if things don't work. So what happens when we try to deliver something, and it doesn't happen in time, it's okay. We figured out what didn't work, and we can do it better the next time. So it all really comes back to making sure the right people are working on the right things. And this is a problem that I feel that we face. Red Hat was a very small company, and we're growing very quickly. And the issue of scaling is one that we're constantly thinking about right now. Because when you become a large company and you're making lots of decisions, you can't be involved in everything, right? We can't have one developer involved in every single project, but we need to have awareness of what that developer is doing so we don't make redundant efforts or make sure the product is going to be used. So really the key is making sure those right people are working on the right things. And it seems like I've gone through this very, very quickly, so I'm going to ask if anybody has any questions or anything that I can explain more further to make sense, right? So if we have a process to make right sense, but not make sense right, so if we have processes focused on the back end instead of delivering value to the clients. Alright, so to repeat again, what do you do when your manager is expecting you to deliver more work more quickly and your processes don't allow for that? So I think this is something that we learn and that's why we were trying to look at the scaled agile framework because you can have a team that has processes that are working that is blocked by another team. Is that kind of what you're asking? So for us, we had some issues where we used to rely very heavily on an IT team for delivery and we realized that sometimes teams that have formal processes that seem to be a blocker, you can still get them in the room and talk about it, right? So it says, what do you need in advance to deliver this thing? And if the answer is more money and more resources, that's a whole other thing. But if they say, you know, we need this much lead time, we need this information, then that's something that you're able to plan for. So I would encourage still trying to find the people who are responsible for making those decisions, sitting down and really having an open conversation about it. So you're moving too fast for your company, basically, and everybody else is saying, well, we can't do that. So how can we get other teams to improve their processes or break their processes or forget their processes so that we can actually deliver more quickly? So does that go back to the problem of, are we trying to follow processes or are we trying to deliver what the client wants? Right. Got you. Instead of doing the right things, we are doing things right. And the processes of doing things right too slow. So is that a question still? I feel like I should answer every question with finding the right people, right? So who can we talk to to say this isn't working? My team was able to deliver this more quickly and this is the process that we used. So maybe it's a matter of explaining, this is how we were able to do it. Can you implement it this way? And if they respond with, no, we need you to fill out this change form and we need this information and we have to fit it into a six-week process, I can see that's a very big problem. So management buy-in. That's a tough problem because I think that management support is something that's been essential in this process. When managers are seeing that it's taking too long to do things the right way, then how do we convince them that it's better to deliver what the client wants when the client wants it? It's a tough problem to solve. I'm very lucky and that's something that our team is very lucky for. Our managers are very open to trying and failing. So I don't know if there is that sense of safety in that it's okay for you to fail. What if we break some of these teams up of their processes and they try and it doesn't work? It all does really become back to trust. If your managers trust you and because there's a sense of failure too, so if we try something and it doesn't work, are we going to say, oh, it wasn't my fault? Or are we going to say it didn't work? Here's why. Here's how we're going to make sure it doesn't happen in the future. I think that's how you build up that trust that when there is something that doesn't work, accepting responsibility and changing in the future. And that leads to kind of the collaboration and sense of what we call the Oakland Organization spirit that I would love to see in more places. Yeah, so, yep, the problem of management though and I don't know how many managers are here in the room. Maybe we should make them close their ears, but I think it's important for managers to know that they are also safe, right? How do we make the managers feel safe? How do we make them understand that in order for them to succeed, they need to enable their teams to succeed? Very good question. I don't know that I have the answer. If I did, I don't know. We have world peace. For us DevOps means having a self-sufficient team, right? So we have our developers, we have our QA, we have our release engineers, all working on one product. Yes, depending on the team. So we have some of our teams that are, and not specifically our support, but some of our front-end Drupal teams, we don't really have a QA role. We have developers who are doing test-driven development. So, the kind of thing. But yes, we do actually have roles still. However, I found that our teams are a lot more open to working with each other when they need help. And I think that sometimes when you have specific roles, you know, I'm a developer, I don't do that. I'm a QA engineer, I don't do that. I don't know that we have that kind of sense. We're very collaborative. So for me, DevOps means that we have the right people on a team to deliver a feature or a product that is kind of self-contained. And I think the problem that we came into was that we had a back-end DevOps team, a middleware DevOps front-end, and there was no way to coordinate between the three of them. So to repeat the question, if we need to implement a new process, who is making the decision of what process we are using? So again, and I don't want to speak for our whole company, but in customer platform departments, we have managers who will say, we see there's a problem. We need to do something. And then we talk about it, right? So come back and give me some suggestions. So you'll go out, you'll maybe do some research. You say, here's what I think will work. Say, okay, let's try it, you know? So it's really the developers with going back to this gentleman's question and statement. It's about trust and about working together. There is not a command and control dictator who is telling us this is what we must do. There's someone saying, we have a problem that we need to solve. How are we as a team going to solve that and having that discussion and really not being afraid to fail? What do you mean by scale dynamically? So this is something that I and some of our managers would like to see. The question was about do you scale dynamically in terms of, oh, I'm losing my, do we scale dynamically, which is do we have the same people working on the same teams, or when we need more resources, are we sharing between teams if I'm understanding the question correctly? Yep, yes. Our managers are very in favor of doing that, of lending resources. Again, we're talking about people, so we're not really like... Sorry, the happiness in employees versus... First part of your question, when we have people who are doing work, they are dedicated to one project or product depending on the context. But our managers are trying to do more of that lending within our department, so when we see that there are needs, like we've built a QA team that can move around between different products. We're also trying to go outside of our department. We have realized places where we could help, and people are saying, well, we don't have resources to do that, so we can say, okay, here is a resource. And that's something that we're trying to think about, but we haven't implemented. In terms of the happiness of associates and getting them the opportunity to work on different things and get more exposure, we've just recently started a mentorship program that has allowed our senior and principal engineers to offer... to be a mentor to our junior associates who are interested. We're not forcing this upon anyone, but what has happened is we've got people from different regions and different work streams in these mentor relationships, and we also have a small group formed around Python, which is really, really exciting, but that has really allowed for more people to get more exposure to different technologies. For instance, we have an associate who's working on a customer platform who wants to learn about Linux kernel coding skills. That's something that's totally outside of our domain, but we've been able to find someone in engineering who is willing to mentor this associate to give him more exposure to that, and hopefully also career opportunities. In my opinion, it's much better for us to train people and help them grow to keep them within the company, even if it's not on our team. So I think that's something we've tried. I'm trying to remember who's getting books here. So if we find we need more people, do we break the rules and create, make the scrum teams bigger? Yes. We do. So when we find we need more resources, we talk about whether we have those in other areas that we can shift, but we end up usually hiring in our department. We're very lucky that we end up getting the budget to scale. I know that's not true in everywhere. So this is a great question. So how does this really work within a three-week sprint? So each team still has a three-week sprint, except for the middleware with the continuous delivery. They're a different beast, right? But our back-end and front-end teams have full three-week sprint cycles. But what happens is, and I can go back to that, there's a whole lot more stuff in large-scale scrum less than just this, but the part that we took that worked for us is adding the planning in retro. As you can see, each team is still doing their three-week sprint. But what happens here is we're meeting to say, is there one feature that we need to add together, this sprint, and that's the feature that we're working on together? Each team has their own backlog. They have their own issues that they're working on, their own bugs, their own features, and they're still doing that in their three weeks. But we're able to add one that we're all doing together. So we're just coordinating at that top level if that makes sense. We're able to say here, our back-end teams need four days to add this field in Salesforce. The middleware might only need two to kind of expose the field, and the front-end might need four more days to make the field visible to our customers. All during those three weeks, we're still doing other work. That's not the only thing that we're working on, but we're able to fit it into the existing structure. So first question, who is in these less meetings? Is it the whole team, or is it just the Scrum Master? And the answer is that we tried having a program lead and a technical lead. So what ended up happening was we had a product owner and then a developer, the senior developer on the team who was able to speak to the details. The product owners were saying, okay, yes, this is a feature that we want. Let's do it. And then the developers are saying, you know, this is how or this is a bad idea. So no, it's not the whole team. And that goes back to having the right people working on the right things and making sure we're not wasting anybody's time. Because when you start adding more and more meetings to everyone's schedule, you're losing valuable development time, right? No, no, no, it's a dedicated lead. So most of our teams have a senior engineer, a senior principal. The back-end, it was a principal engineer, I think for middleware another principal engineer and for the front-end. I might have just had the product owner who was also at the time the lead engineer. It was a very weird kind of thing. But all three are very familiar with the whole ecosystem which makes it a little bit easier. And once you really conform those relationships, the conversations seem to happen not just inside the planning meeting but they happen outside as well. And in terms of your second question was Scrum Masters and how we use them, do they rotate? The front-ended and back-end teams have their own Scrum Master. We used to have a dedicated Scrum Master who had a Scrum Master title and role. He moved to another department and we started rotating people through. So it's been interesting, kind of guiding and coaching those individuals through that process. And thoughts about it? And thoughts about that. I think it's been okay. The thing about Agile is it's more of a set of principles than a set of rules. So when you're able to find what's working for your team, you can kind of take and leave what you need. So I think each team has their own way of working. And we haven't, to my knowledge, you might need to be correct in here, but to my knowledge we haven't forced anyone to take on the Scrum Master position. We've kind of asked people, is this something you're interested in? And I think our front-end team has a more... They rotate more quickly just to kind of share the load a bit. But so far it's been okay. So was there any time wasted? No, for the Scrum Master, so when the back-end team lost their dedicated Scrum Master, there was a little bit of time where we were trying to figure out what was happening. For our front-end team, because everyone is familiar with the process, they're familiar with each other, we were not bringing in anyone new. It's an easy transition, and I think we've been able to kind of coach each other. Sure, so to repeat the question, are there any kind of signs that something's going wrong or that the process is not working or the right people are not involved? So, making sure the right people are in the room, you start to see after we have two or three of these big planning meetings who's contributing and who's not, and who needs to be there. So the issues that we saw in that are not that the wrong people were there, but only a few people were contributing to the conversation. So it's a matter of, how do we bring every voice to the table? In terms of when we need a scaled process, just thinking about that whole nine weeks, and I can go back to that, this is really what led us to it, right? There's no reason why one feature that each project team needed to contribute to was taking a full sprint. We can see that if we just had some kind of coordination, that it would be a little bit faster, and it's not always perfect, but because the relationships and communication is already open, everyone started to feel more comfortable with each other, so we were able to communicate outside of this process as well. I don't know if that really speaks to your question, but in terms of blockers, it's really, why is this taking so long? Why can't I get my question answered? Why is this process in the way? It just doesn't seem necessary, and why can't we just sit down and talk about it? I feel like when you start asking those questions, that's when it's time to just sit down and talk, and that goes back to that whole environment of trust, and is it safe? And is it safe to say, I don't think this is working? The question was, are we constricting self-organizing teams by adding more processes to them? How do we watch that from happening? So the whole self-organizing team idea is interesting for me, because these teams have already kind of been there for quite a while, and so it's a matter of how are we shaping them so that it's the most efficient for us? So the self-organizing part in my mind is more about how involved are the people in it? Are they free to speak and say this isn't working? Are they saying we need something else? How are we making sure that they feel safe to have those kind of conversations? And are they safe to say, this process is pointless and not working? Can we talk about it? I am a proponent of using the simplest tool for the job. When I was doing project management, I have my to-do list just in a notepad. I'm not using anything complicated. When you start trying to throw tools and processes on top of a problem, you're not really solving it. You're just kind of masking it. So I think when you look at process, it's not what can we implement? It's what do we really need? And maybe we don't need a full-scale process, but we just need this little piece of it. And that's kind of what that whole large-scale Scrum framework was. Yes. So each team has their own project backlog, and we're just trying to make sure that we're coordinating at the top. But there's not a whole lot of additional... I'm not trying to add work. Yeah, and that's exactly what happened. So an existing engineer took over the Scrum master responsibility, in addition to the work that he was doing. But he had never been a Scrum master before, and that was why we had a little bit of a gap there. No. Beijing and Brisbane, you missed them? No. Okay, so the question is, are all the teams co-located, or how do we manage the distributed teams and communications? This is something I've been saying as I've been traveling. As someone who's based in Raleigh in North America, I don't realize how difficult it is for someone in Pune to wait half the day for me to come online. And then I only have four hours where I get to talk to you and that. And I've noticed that even here in Brno, I log on, I've got all these emails I've got to go through. And I usually take care of immediately during the day. So I think that something that we need to do better is have some empathy and understand our ways of working, the fact that usually North America is asking other teams to stay online very late or extremely early. Can we balance that load a little bit and come online? So for our teams, back to my little team that'll work. Back-in team is mostly based in Raleigh with some in Pune. Middleware I think is in Raleigh and Pune. And front-in we have Brno, Raleigh, maybe Westford might have some in Beijing. I personally work with Brisbane, Beijing, Pune, Brno, UK, West Coast, East Coast. It's all a matter of juggling. And when I'm trying to meet with all the managers who are across all these things, it's difficult. And the best thing we can do is be empathetic. What are your preferred communication styles? How can we meet in the middle? How can we think about our goal? So instead of me wanting to communicate something, if my goal is to work with you to come to a solution, then maybe I need to change my communication style so that I can meet your needs a little bit better. It's a tough question working with distributed teams in different countries. But the more that we're able to have open conversations, the more some of these issues will come through, I think. I was speaking with one of our associates last night who works with a team in Pune mostly. So just one or two people here and a dozen, 20 people in Pune. And I think one of the best things we could do is send him there. There's something about meeting face-to-face. Even we have all these video conferencing tools that we use and all of that, but there's something about being able to meet a person face-to-face to build the trust that you need to work more closely. I wish I had an answer. And how to engage remotees, full-time remotees, that's another question I'm always asking myself. Well, speak with me afterward and let me know if you have good suggestions for that. Thank you for keeping this going, yes. So have we considered creating a unified team to address one requester feature and then have people go back? That's kind of what we were trying to do here except instead of pulling people from their teams, just making sure that we're coordinating better. So I don't know, again, with the self-organizing teams, I don't think that we're quite there. I think that we have dedicated teams, but we're trying to figure out how we can do that better. But that's something that we haven't really done yet. Yeah, it's not something that we consider, I think, because we're not... I mean, I personally would like to see our teams with more of the resource lending, more of we need the skill, let's come together, we need these four skills, we have these four engineers, let's bring them together to deliver this product. But the way that we are right now with... I mean, each of these teams has a backlog of... Well, big backlogs. I think when I joined the backend team several years ago, the backlog was four or 500 issues large, which is unmanageable and ridiculous. So pulling people from that team might not be something that we're able to do at this time, but we really do need that coordination piece. How do I manage such a big... Who asked the... How do we manage a big backlog? So that's something that I really wanted to address as soon as I joined that team. And the very first thing... Let me back up a little bit. We were also working with an engineer whose philosophy was even if we're never going to fix this issue, we should leave it open because someone might have the same question in the future. And so it's managing expectations. Do we want to take that approach or do we want to say, you know what, we're never going to do this, it's not going to happen, it's not on our roadmap, we need to close it out. So we had to manage that relationship a little more and say, okay, if it's really that important to leave it open, okay. So what we've been working with our product owners to use JIRA a little bit better because there are ways to have different... You have one master backlog and then different backlogs that people can pull from. We're trying to get better at that process. But really, a few product owners will go to a bar on Friday afternoon and we call it beer and backlogs and they will go through and start closing or addressing some of the issues. It's a work in progress. I think we're down to 300 issues. And also, every time there's a new product owner, they go through every issue again. Is this still an issue? Do we still need this? Do we still want this? For work in progress, like Per Sprint, or yeah, for Per Sprint I think we have 10, 12. It depends on the size of the issues and the size of the team. In our working, yeah, it's... But again, it depends. For our working backlog that we're actively pulling from that are groomed, probably 50, but in each Sprint maybe like 10 to 12. The teams are pretty big though, especially I think our front-end team is pretty big. The middleware team, maybe they have three or four issues per... Well, now it's continuous delivery, different beast, but any other questions? Yes? Right, so how do we prioritize issues? So the main stakeholder for this set of teams is our support delivery engineers. And they have their own ways of prioritizing the issues that they want and that can take months and that's fine with us when they... You can come to us when you finally decided what you want to do. But for our teams, it's a matter of meeting what our stakeholders want while sanity checking, right? So maybe they've asked for something that we don't think is something we can deliver right now, managing those expectations. When something breaks and is urgent, we do stop and address that issue, but if it's not a completely urgent issue that's broken, we try to fit it into the next Sprint and try to be very conscientious of the time that we're taking from our developers. It's very disruptive to add those issues in. Now, each developer has their task for the Sprints, but in terms of blockers, if one team is blocking another, that's what we're able to solve by that communication to say, hey, I told the other team that this is blocking us, this is an urgent issue. We need to make sure it's addressed and that communication helps a lot. So I guess, yes, one more. To try and address the problem. We had one senior manager take over all three of these teams at the top level, and he tried the siloed approach because everything was disorganized when he came in, and these silos were working very well. We got them all efficient. Everyone's doing their own thing, and then we realized that problem. This is taking too long. There's no reason for this to take so long. We need to solve it. And he actually came to me and said, figure out scaled agile. And that's when I went and looked and I saw that whole list of scaled agile going, this is just too much. This is disruptive. And the question like, how can we make this the least disruptive as possible and just adding meetings where we're talking about things. And I really do feel it's as simple as making sure those people are in the room and having that conversation. Yes, so the question of, and I don't know if I can paraphrase it very well, but basically is each team still working on their own thing, or what happens when one team has a request that they don't need the other teams for bad paraphrase. But coming back to the last model that we used. As I mentioned, all three of these teams have their own backlog of issues. And it's true that not every issue touches every other team. There are a lot of bugs and feature requests that only each project team would need to address. But that's why we have those planning meetings. It's saying, hey, there's a feature coming up that does require all of us. We all need to be aware of it. We all need to see when we can schedule it in and how we're going to make that work. So each team is still working on their own issues. Yes, so they can do work in parallel. Yes, absolutely. They didn't have to wait, but the problem is that if it's not here, they were able to start doing the UI and some of that before the field was in place, but they couldn't actually display it and make it work without the back end and the middle piece there. But yeah, absolutely. Knowing in advance what we're going to do allows us to do that kind of work in parallel. Last question. I think we're losing people. People who ask questions, please make sure you come get a book and we might have extras. Thank you. Thank you. And if you need to contact me, that's here. Thank you all for the questions. My presentation was very short. Probably have lots of extra. You asked a question. You can have both of these. I only have five of these, so. Okay. Thank you very much. Can you take your books? Where are my other gentlemen? Sure. Yes, so this is a companion. It's just a bunch of articles that were published on opensource.com. I asked a question, Allison. Absolutely. We have extra. You're okay for tomorrow at 4.30? Yes. My lean coffee? Me.


Welcome back to Foodimentary Adventures in Food. My name is Andrea and I am here today with a really quick grocery haul from Kroger. So I will jump right in. So the main reason that I went to Kroger was because they had these freshetta pizzas on sale and they were two for $10 and then you could download a $3 off coupon for two. So then they were two for seven and then when I got to the store there was a dollar off coupon on one of the boxes. So I actually got two for six which is a great deal. So I picked up the brick oven with pepperoni and that's what that one looks like and then I got a naturally rising four meat pizza. There it is and it has pepperoni, sausage, ground beef and ham and then they also had a dill on their ribs and the ribs were $1.69 a pound in the newspaper or in the sales ad I should say and then when I got to the store they said $1.49 a pound. So I got one rack for $5.77 and then I got the second rack for $5.23 and I'm just going to stick these in the freezer and Howard and I we both like to grill so he's going to take a rack and grill them and season them and then I'm going to take a rack and grill them and season them up. Then I saw these for the very first time. These are hatch chili chicken wings. They were $6.99 and look really good and you can smell them through the package of the pound. And then these were on clearance and I've seen these before and I've wanted to try them. They were originally $8 for six and it's pork and onion and they look really good. I got these things on clearance for $3.99 so they were half price and then Howard and I love most Asian things and I don't think I've seen these before pork lumpia spring rolls spring rolls I don't know why I can't talk. These are Filipino inspired and then they also had a sale on their Kool-Aid and so they had country time Kool-Aid and Tang I love Tang I grew up drinking Tang and I love great Kool-Aid as well and these were $0.99 each and then they also had their cheese on sale for $0.99 each as well so I got two extra sharp two sharp and one Colby Jack. Then I did go through their Easter clearance aisle and all their Easter stuff was 70% off and I love sprinkles for cookies and cupcakes and all sorts of stuff so this was $1.80 actually I did not realize it was that expensive I thought it was gonna be cheaper than that but they're cute they were $0.80 and then I'm making tacos tonight Howard likes avocado on his and so I grabbed him two avocados and then we needed lettuce and this was on sale for $1.19 so this is it this is my very very small haul from Kroger and I actually went to a new Kroger today it is I think it's called Kroger Marketplace I'm not sure but it's the one that has the they sell clothes and all sorts of things in there and so it was huge it was a massive Kroger so anyway I really liked that Kroger I think I'll probably go back to that one it's a little bit further away but I really like it a lot but anyway this is it this is a haul if you haven't already subscribed to our channel I hope that you'll do so and we'll see you guys next time


Just a quick message before we get into the video, courtesy of my sponsor, Control and Muds. Just over on Twitter right now we are giving away a custom controller, absolutely epic. Check out my Twitter which is linked in the video description for more details. What's going on guys? It's your boy DPJ here today with another Destiny video and today I bring you my top 10 favourite shaders from the Destiny universe. But before we get into the video, to be even with a chance of winning this Resurrectionist emblem, simply drop a like on this video and tell me in that comment section what your favourite shader is. Winner will repeat in a few days via the YouTube direct messages so keep an eye on your inboxes. Okay so getting into my top 10 favourite shaders, now this was going to be a top 5 but going through what's on offer, there are so many epic ones, it was really hard to narrow them down to even 10. And I also think as well this list may surprise some of you as I do kind of have a weird taste but getting straight into it. In at number 10 we have Prayer of Nepal. With its red blue and white look it does stand out a lot on all sorts of different armours. Prayer of Nepal is a legendary shader and it was obtained via donating to Nepal earthquake through bungee. I'm not sure if you can still get it though. At number 9 we have Gilgamesh. This shader being dark blue, orange and a tint of white looks fantastic on a lot of different armours but also looks pretty bad on certain other armours. It is acquired via ranking up the cryptarch and a few other sources. Well it used to be I'm not sure if it's still in his loop pool. At 8 we have Mercurial Dawn. This shader offering browns and dark oranges, yes it's a weird one but it does kind of stand out. Plus rarely anyone wears it which is another bonus. I do believe it's obtained via reaching a rank 40 or a level 40 on your titan. I however could be mistaken and feel free to correct me in that comments section. At 7 we have Achilles. This shader being orange, white and dark blue is one I have had for ages. Obtained I believe via the cryptarch I'm ranking that more full up. It looks epic on gear such as the hunters crosses and red gear and many others. At 6 we have Lunar Elegy. This one being blue and almost a blood orange looks amazing on almost every armour in the game. It truly stands out. This one again is obtained I believe via the cryptarch and ranking him up. At 5 we have Frostfire. This one being purpley blue and red is one of my favourites of all time and I could really have moved it up in the list a few spots. This shader is forever in at least one of my characters inventories so I never forget about it because I do kind of do that a lot. This I believe also comes from the cryptarch and maybe a few other places. You just don't see him drop anymore like many of the other shaders I have featured. At 4 we have Aura's Passage. I mean it's black and gold, neither I say more. It looks stunning on almost every armour I've put it on. Yeah for sure, some people hate gold, think it's cheesy, I think it looks badass. This is obtained from the trials of Osiris. I'm not sure if it's still available in year 3 though but I'm sure someone in that comments section will tell you if you're wondering. At 3 we have Amofia. Just look at this thing, incredible. The bright whites and the shocking reds just look amazing. There's no denying New Monarchy offer the best shaders out of all the factions we have in the game and this one being the best faction shader in my opinion. Yes it drops from a New Monarchy package if you're still wondering. At 2 we have Guard of War. Simply red, red, red. But a fan favourite to so many people, me included.  Again though this one is hard to come by. According to Destiny Wikipedia, this thing drops from the Cryptarch via packages, also from PvP and a few other sources. I haven't seen this thing drop though in ages.  So whether or not this thing is still in the loophole I have no idea. But at number one and my favourite shader of all time is Sunsetting. Yes Sunsetting is my favourite shader within this game. Not only does it look great on certain armours but it looks incredible on my Hunter's days of Iron Lord armour which is my favourite in the game. It matches so well with Fire Ornaments due to being black and that orange kind of flame camouflage. It just looks absolutely amazing. But yes guys they are my top 10 favourite shaders within the game. At this list which is your favourite? Let me know down below in that comments section. But guys that is it for another video, hope you enjoyed it. Thanks as always for stopping by and I will catch you on that next one.


Going on everyone say I'm here with late in sports cards have been 23 penini prism football first off the line photo Three box break number nine random team style Look again at your random results as always you can find these on the website on the results tab as well as a link in chat Jeremiah s for the chiefs Matthew M Broncos up top Chris L with the Ravens and Nicole L with the commanders Good luck. Ah, dude. This is brutal 3-0 Yeah Now Zach Thomas Silver to Lee to to Lee to eat pillow to choose 175 on the hyper Josh Downs and Michael Wilson Purple Tyler Scott 125 at his Clayton toon and a no-com Lockdown Aaron Donald silver rookie trade Tucker James Conner to one 75 I don't know Washington Tinkdale Merchant Jordan Love That's a Garrett Wilson blue wave to 199. I was gonna say a cast not as right shady Michael Meyer and DJ Turner Green shimmer. Okay First green we've seen today silver Kyler Murray. It's gonna be a stealer. Deontay Johnson One of five. Congrats on that one there Pittsburgh Well, uh, will Anderson and a manual forbs Stripping in the parking lot over his own feet going down one ways 235 Devon say Adams on the auto nice one there Raiders.  The 25 Nice one there on the blue shimmer. Congrats bucks. Chris Rodriguez the one Johnson My new favorite one of that Vaughn is Michael if you want the ball get the rebound for a junior It's funny man. It's funny. No, I'm cracking up. It's funny, man collage a can see Silver rookie auto congrats on that when they're bucks And it's Smith to 225 book in a cooler rookie and Tyler Scott For some break from your Gibbs blue wave curco chains to 199. Oh It's definitely going to go on till he retires for sure Lori marketing is kind of becoming the new Michael Porter jr. We're marketing does not swing the rock whatsoever That is a prismatic of Stefan digs orange wave to 60 Zach Thomas Nice one there, Brian breezy and Hinden Hooker silver emergent rock party orange Daniel Carlson to 249 Brian branch and Broderick Jones Subah Dibo Red shimmer Jake Hainer rookie to 35 That's on that Saints photo exclusive Anthony Richardson and BJ Ojalari Justin Herbert John Riggins to 35. Here you go commanders on the red shimmer Joey Porter jr.  Who are they playing von? So va drew tranquil that is a Don't our Daniel Carlson. Excuse me to 175 I'd be a foskey and Jack Campbell the Raptors. Oh, I'm a second night of a back-to-back Charlie Jones Damian Pierce 225 Evan Hall and Clayton to Portals of Anthony Richardson Carl Lawson to 225. Let's go. Okay. See shea. Timothy Kilchis Josh Deppence Anthony's losing it But I'm down a dozen. Oh, no rich. You even said that to you like watching to lose by 15 235 is Jerome Ford on the red shimmer on it. That's true And to 10 10 of 10 is Daniel Jones. Danny Dimes Sean's boy any nickels They had no comment What'd you say they gave him the bag too? Yeah Danny DeVito Silver Equinomia St. Brown George Carl Aftis Furious George to fair to 25 Michael Wilson Michael Meyer Michaels This chrome dust is getting to me That's frismatic Jay Jedis Orange wave Andy Dalton for the Panthers to 60 Hank Dell and Chris Rodriguez Jr. The ventures pissed. Well, he kind of ran in now. He's on him. You're gonna get out, right? Good redemption. Okay first redemption of the day Sort of a Fred Warner that is gonna be redemption of Jalen Carter rookie autograph prism green scope going to Eagles That's on that Philly. Very nice Good stuff Eagles to 49 that is gonna be a Tony Pollard purple power EJ Turner and Will Anderson So the E.J. Brown collage a can see to 175 Johnson Roshan Johnson There's Samuel Portals Silver as Kenny Pickett Tyreek Stevenson to 60 annual Forbes and Pukin a coolie rookie some of all purpose is just Justin Fields big play slay red shimmers gonna be a Tyler Smith going to the Cowboys to 35 red shimmy Keon whites and Brian Branch Fireworks George Kittle red shimmer is David back to Ari. Nice one there to 35 for the Packers Tyler Scott and Brian Breeze last Box of the break. Good luck everybody. So about drink London to 125. That is James Connor on the purple Jesus Thunder be the Nuggets by 20 Ivan Payson Deuce Vaughn. That's kind of insane actually How good the Denver is my Lord? Sort of a hype of Brock Purdy to 225 Jalen Petrie Purple ice for the Texans Dotson Deontay banks. Hello extra cards in this silver of Mack Jones to 225 Jordan Poyer purple ice Skironsky and Quentin Johnson red shimmy coming up here silver Debo red shimmer Chuba Hubbard Grats on that one Panthers to 35 baby on Wix JSN Hassan Haskins to 25 nice one there on the blue shimmer auto for the Titans Grats Tennessee and a 149 is Roquan Smith red wave auto for the Vends bigsby and Zach Harris You sure I don't sound like a sonar 100% I need to pull up a sonar sound March ace Quest walk-ins to 199 any Mackintosh and Felix and week is all except 11 of 60 Zach Sharpe and I nice one there congrats on that See Seattle. Yep Orange wave cam Smith and DTR Christopher picking up a bowman draft spot. Thank you, buddy. That is Nick Folt Nice Jackson Smith and jigba Blue shimmer auto going to Seattle. Let's go. That's fire. It's 25 He is man Darrell M. Congrats, buddy. I did that'll work is that some I know 18 of 25 18 of 25 Very nice get that like I said into a mag that is a Felix and week a wasoma to 175 Zay flowers and Vanna a chain who snakeskin and a gold shimmer. Let's go snakeskin case hit. Let's see a big name Come on the Cardinal Buddha Baker. That's actually pretty cool snakeskin case hit Buddha Baker go into the Cardinals There's a little bit of a ding on it I'm gonna send an empty box and wrapper with Arizona, sorry about that Arizona still a nice one and then gold shimmer to 10 Michael Gallop Grats on that cowboys Reeve 10 Marvian over shown and a will McDonald that over the Ohio State snooze fest.   I was like just thinking in the first break. I was like, oh Roquan's in this Maybe I'll go after the rainbow. That's over Congrats on that one Baltimore Chris L hell yeah, man One of one Roquan Smith That is clean dude. That is clean That is dope, dude. I am very happy for you Chris very happy for you, but very sad that Very sad that I'm gonna be seeing this one leave very nice How about a conda and Lucas Van Ness? Oh, yeah, I'm jealous. Yeah, I am I am silver Mark Andrews That is a Bradley chubb to 49 on the purple power for the dolphins like goes out it disappears Shakes Brown Who is that it's gonna be I don't know who that is actually okay. I don't know who Miami Marlin Mike Piazza is Jake, I don't think it's Jake. No, I don't think it's Jake Shawn Watson. I know I'm sorry about that Olivia. That's pretty nasty. Actually Anthony Richards and silver that is to 60 Shakir Congrats on that one It's from ours Luke Musgrave and yeah, yeah, yeah showing some love from Miami. Love it We all thought it was use. I know I know I'm sorry about that. Olivia All right, let's do a quick recap here everybody Mars It's a good one. All right red wave is Chuba Hubbard David back to yari Tyler Smith John Riggins Jake Heiner Blue shimmers are George Carl Aftis Antoine Winfield green shimmer to five Deontay Johnson Daniel Jones gold to 10 Michael Gallop a Buddha Baker on the snakeskin Got a Collider can see Jerome Ford auto Devonte Adams I saw in Haskins and Jalen Carter nice one there Really nice one is JSN the blue shimmer auto for the Seahawks and then one-of-one Roquan Smith see Roquan Smith nice one there congrats Ravens That'll do it for the break everybody. Thanks again for the Phil coming up next is number 10


All right, so you're strength training and now you're looking for a competition to test yourself with In today's episode, we're gonna talk to you about why powerlifting Is better the bodybuilding for the vast majority of you if you're gonna pick a competition choose powerlifting This one's going to start a totally start a fight. Yeah, feel pretty good about what side we're on. Yeah That's hilarious some tough guys, you know, but we have to so Training or workout wise we have to be clear here Like there are principles of bodybuilding and principles of powerlifting that are very valuable So we're not specifically talking about like the workouts, right? Cuz like bodybuilders tend to focus on the muscle the feel the pump lots of angles They'll use more like variety in their exercises kind of stuff There's nothing wrong with that lots of value power lifters tend to train heavier focus more on certain lifts They don't necessarily try to feel the muscle, but rather perfect the movement. There's lots of value on that as well This is really more about Like if you're gonna start to compete This is where things start to get really different because bodybuilding competition and part of the competition Super different not only that but I think that we've we've communicated this for a long time on the podcast And we get a lot of live caller We just had one the last last time we did live callers that I think we push two people in this direction And I think we've done that a lot I think this is an episode that we're putting together to kind of explain ourselves, right? There's I think there we distilled it down to six reasons why We think that or why we tend to push people in that direction rarely ever or maybe if ever have we ever Gave some of the advice like you should go do bodybuilding Yeah, you know think about that for a second of all the questions We've answered all the topics we've done all the live Q&A's that we've done Have you ever have we ever told someone you should probably do bodybuilding But how many times have we told somebody you should do a powerlifting all the time all the time all the time Today's giveaway on YouTube Maps powerlifts If you want to win that do this leave a comment below this video the first 24 hours that we drop this episode Subscribe to this channel and turn on notifications if you win will let you know in the comment section We also have a sale going on right now Maps performance is half off and our extreme fitness bundle That's a bundle of programs is also half off if you're interested Just click on the link at the top of the description below. All right back to the show Yeah, so this is really about the comp the competition and the culture around the competition because there's also a culture I've been around both I've been around Bodybuilding culture and I've been around powerlifting culture and they both have their pluses and minuses But in general I'd say the powerlifting culture is I would say healthier Now I'm not gonna say healthy because there's definitely unhealthy aspects of it as well Sure, but it's it's generally a better culture But I think the first thing to talk about with this and why we tend to this is probably the number one reason why we recommend powerlifting over bodybuilding is its performance based not aesthetic based right it's about What you can put up on the bar or what you can lift Not how you look in the mirror and this I learned the value of this early on as a trainer when I trained my very first Client who told me that they had just come out of a eating disorder They had just gotten treatment for anorexia in fact her mom hired me her mom hired me and said hey my daughter is recovering anorexic and Exercise was recommended I'd like for you to train her and I got in contact with this young lady's Therapist because I didn't know was there anything I should or shouldn't do or say and the therapist said don't weigh her Don't talk about how she looks focus entirely on how strong she is in the gym And it was like a light bulb like of course because she's gonna have to feed herself well if she's just looking at that Yeah, there's just a lot more psychological benefits to focusing on getting stronger and Really being diligent about mastering a few lifts So that's the other part of this whole thing is that we've reduced it now Down to just like a very few Exercises that we're really gonna hyper focus on in practice and be disciplined with improving upon Versus like taking on all I mean just look at the the type of volume and the type of like exercise Like novelty and all this like in in comparison with bodybuilder training It just kind of like takes a lot of that Pressure of like having to know a whole lot versus like we're just gonna hyper focus on this aspect I think this is actually more about what powerlifting is not rather than what powerlifting is.  I'm not arguing that It's more that what it is not and what it is not it is not this You know, it's not a hyper focus on your yes It's not a challenge about how you look over image Yeah, and I and I actually think that this conversation and Kind of philosophy around training that we all had as trainers with clients is more important today than it's ever been because of Instagram it has heightened this already. So that was our word. This was both pre Instagram. This is the same the advice We gave this advice pre Instagram that this is yeah Hey, probably better route for you to focus on there were magazines. That's it right right and and yet This was a major issue today It's way worse. It's way worse with and today. It's even more distorted because If you're into working out one of the first things that people do is they go follow all these Social media pages of you know people that motivate them and inspire them But then you get this crazy skewed view of the human body That it looks like this all the time or that these are there's a lot of these people or that maybe they're even a majority because if I'm if I follow a hundred people and 60 of them are fitness people. I have this weird Distorted ratio of like man most the people I follow or know are like super jacked and shredded and I'm not Therefore I need to do these things. So for me talking about this It's more about what powerlifting is not not what it really is because I think that's the part about a body building That's not good. No, I mean if you were to if you were to take two groups of clients and all the group, you know a Focused on just getting stronger and group B focused on how they perceive themselves in the mirror They're subjective Opinion if whether or not they're approving or not based on the mirror, okay? There's a lot more that could go wrong with the group Who's looking in the mirror and they for them to even perceive themselves as improving in other words They could do a lot wrong for their health for their energy for their performer They could really mess themselves up with their diet and their and all kinds of things But continue to think that they're I think I'm getting better I think I'm improving whereas the group that's just focusing on getting stronger now They can do some things wrong for sure, but they can't do as much wrong like you can't Underfeed yourself. You can't get terrible sleep. You can't malnourish or so you can't over train And beat yourself up You can't abuse your body as much and continue to get stronger You just can't so it's not perfect But it's a better metric that would encompass that you're doing more of the right things Your body versus aesthetic and we know this about aesthetics. We know this about how we perceive is ours It's so subjective That you know, you could take and I would see this people would lose weight on the scale lose mostly muscle And then be happy because they're lighter and skinnier Mm-hmm and not even because they're so distorted right think how they view themselves is so distorted or people would sacrifice their health To the point where their energies terrible either muscles just to attain a certain shape in their ways That you actually have that in the bodybuilding world in the actual high-level competitive competitive bodybuilding world But you know people would compromise their health their energy. They'd feel terrible But because the scale went down a little bit and they're looking in the mirror that looks smaller with the particular type of clothes Whatever they're like, yeah, I'm in the right direction. Whereas, you know, if you lift more you lift more it's objective There's no opinion. You know, I mean like yeah, I lifted 200 pounds last week this week. I lifted 250 pounds My subjective opinion doesn't matter. I'm either stronger or not and so performance Especially when you first get started at a certain point you can't keep using performance because obviously you're not going to keep getting stronger Forever, otherwise, you know, we'd be we'd all be lifting thousands of pounds by this point, but in the very especially for the first three years Performance is a great metric because you have to do a lot of things right to continue to improve performance But to to continue to think that you're doing right with aesthetics You can distort and twist things so much to look This is how eating disorders exist if you've ever worked with anybody or known anybody with a severe eating disorder You think to yourself like don't they see in the mirror how like how unhealthy they look when they don't they don't see it to them They're like I'm doing great So the performance side of it is what makes it a healthier pursuit and it's exactly what you said Adam It's the you go into working out because you're insecure about a part of your body If you're training and you're focused on the on the visual you're hyper-focusing on That insecurity and I'm gonna tell you something right now you hyper-focus on an insecurity There is nothing you could do that will get you the point where you're happy because you can man You will people will magnify it to the point where it's like I've had people tell me Do you see this like pooch right here low and I don't see it I don't see what you're talking about Because and I experienced that myself as a kid I even looking at pictures of myself when I thought I was so skinny after a couple years of working out And I was actually look pretty damn good for a 15 year old kid who who've been working out for a couple years But it was because of the aesthetic, you know, that was the big issue the other benefit to powerlifting is if you were to look at all the workouts online if You were to examine all the different workouts and you were to categorize them by workouts to make people look good and Then workouts that are accepted powerlifting workouts, especially the previous decade. Yeah You the the powerlifting workouts are science-based. They have the best workout programming There's a big factor there right because it's it's repeatable. It's tangible. It's it's it works or it doesn't So you can actually like have a scientific process to that you can add that there where it's it's hard to do It's more of an art I would say I guess is the best like eloquent way to say it for the bodybuilding side where they're Experimenting a lot, you know in all kinds of different directions But it's really it's about the individual in that regard because they're assessing their bodies Shape their form like which muscles need to develop a little bit further And so it's like what worked best for them This is where it gets sticky when you get like influencers that are pushing their programming for bodybuilding because it's like a lot of Times is based off of like how they attain these results Versus like your your strength program let that they applied to Olympic athletes This is gonna hold to every single person that goes through this process Well, it requires what one of them is required to be scientifically based and the other one is not but you You cannot get stronger without good programming like you're just gonna have to like figure that out Especially if you're gonna go win where you could get really shredded and not have a great program everybody already has muscle in your body and so if you just put yourself in an extreme diet and You get rid of all the body fat you have and you just reveal the muscle You have underneath there and since a lot of these shows are based off of just how shredded you are not necessarily if you have Your muscle size is a certain size. It's that it's more about symmetry and how shredded you are Well, you could do that and not have the best lifting program You could have got you could have trained before your bodybuilding show and actually got weaker week over week And go win you couldn't do that in fact you always do yeah with bodybuilding You actually get weaker walking into a show because of the dieting and stuff It's not that there isn't any science to bodybuilding training There's lots of science to bodybuilding training But the problem is is that genetics play such a crazy role in how you look that you could take somebody who looks incredible In spite of their crappy workout program, but then you look at the workout program and say that's gonna work Whereas powerlifting routines, they're duplicatable just like you said You'll see a group of athletes come in and oh West Side Barbell has you know their training method for example This many you know champions or this training styles train has produced this many you know type of champions bodybuilding is Because it's so much more subjective Workouts are not a science-based and in fact it becomes some oftentimes it becomes a How much you could tolerate you know type of deal So if I ever had a client that came to me and said hey, I'm following a Powerlifting routine and I'm like oh is it like what do you mean? Where'd you get? Oh, I you know It's an actual powerlifting routine. I I was always happy if I saw it Okay, they're gonna have some good some decent workout programming But if they came to me and they said oh, I'm doing a body part split You know and I'm doing some bodybuilding and I mean it could be anywhere from a good workout to a terrible workout Whereas the accepted powerlifting ones tend to are all almost all in fact when I was writing maps and a ball like in the early days I borrowed a lot from powerlifting because their side their approach was so scientific in fact If you look at powerlifting workouts, they tend to be based off of percentages of one rep max and all that stuff It's a very very scientific approach I I still want to go back to the original point that we made to about the insecurities because I Do recognize that there's some there's some there's some incredibly smart bodybuilders out there That do have some incredibly great programming out there now especially now compared to just a decade ago But I still would make this the case of the Insecurity not being great. So even if you follow great programming you dieted really well and you competed and you did a great bodybuilding show I'm still not a fan of it for most of most our clientele or most people that we talked to because it's still gonna Perpetuate that insecurity if I still have this insecurity around that in fact what I think you see as an example It's better behaviors. Well, some of the most famous people on Instagram in the fitness space are these You know champions or these bodybuilder men's physique champions And really they they've hacked into the science piece or that they've figured out some of the working out of the working out piece But they still haven't figured out the insecurity piece. That's still driving them to to to work out and the truth is they're okay So they figured out how to get shredded They figured out how to win a trophy but as far as longevity and health and also to be teaching others about health and Exercise and diet like probably not a good person to be doing that because they're still riddled with their own insecurities So riddled that they've been able to bury themselves into this sport and not look up for 10 years and just go after trophies all day Long and they might have good science-based programming But it still means it's not ideal for that person or all the people that are talking to well What you typically get to with the coaches, you know, I'm gonna probably ruffle some feathers but we get callers all the time who say I hired a Bodybuilding prep coach or I hired a powerlifting prep coach or powerlifting coach What you typically get with a powerlifting coach is someone who understands exercise they understand workouts understand workout programming What you typically get here's where I'm gonna ruffle some feathers with bodybuilding prep coaches are people that just over diet There's a lot of people and make them do tons of cardio leading up to a show They do a 12-week diet and they take their calories and they just start cutting the crap out of them And the workouts are somewhat interchangeable And it's more often than not that I get that I'm like a gasp when I see the bodybuilding prep coach Routines and diets versus the powerlifting ones now the powerlifting ones tend to not focus so much on diet But they do focus on kind of basics eat your protein You know make sure you add equal calories, but they typically don't give them like meal plans and stuff like that But they do tend to know exercise.    Yeah, it's actually looking a lot better.  You're like, okay, that's pretty good You come down you go up to the judge is what you're supposed to do. Hey, what can I improve upon your glutes? Ooh that insecurity got me right in there. I thought I built them up. Oh my god.  That's right now powerlifting again It's the judging is literally this is the jobs the judges job in powerlifting to make sure that you complete the the Exercise the movement Properly, did you touch your the bar to your chest and pause? Did you get full lockout?  We're highly regulated type of thing This is like definitely kind of thrown together and a lot of behind the scenes under the table type bullshit is happening Where there's people that are hanging out that shouldn't be hanging out that are making decisions on Who's going to win or not win in these shows? So then you add another layer of complexity with your insecurities like i'm already insecure there Maybe my glutes were good or maybe I was maybe I was good enough to win But then I get told i'm in sixth place Because these other guys or girls were you know, they've been competing and they're part of a team That's friends with the coaches that's friends with the sponsors the show like and so I get thrown in sixth place when Maybe I should have been second.  I thought I did everything right I thought I I brought the right I got when I look at myself and I look at these people I feel like I should win but wait, maybe I'm all distorted. Maybe I don't look as good as I mean You just start to go down the rabbit hole. So yeah, very dangerous when it comes to Uh, like your insecurities and then being judged by somebody else Around those insecurities.  You are literally being you're literally standing on stage and saying Uh, look at my insecurities and tell me how bad they look and and that's what they do and it just Whereas when you compete in a powerlifting competition You bench squat or deadlift. That's it You go unless your big insecurity is that you can't deadlift a lot or something like that which is rare right that's not as common because social media and society at large doesn't Put that on people nobody walks around says you can't squat twice your body like people don't talk that way So unless that's your insecurity then really it's just I lifted more or I lifted less And that objective part of the judging, um, is just it's so much more satisfying Because so much, you know, if you've ever been to a bodybuilding show, you'll see like very It's not often that there's a super clear winner And sometimes there is and that person doesn't win and then you're like, what is this? Yeah, what's going on now now the next point is that Now people will argue and make jokes about powerlifters and say how they're fat and this and that there's weight classes and powerlifting But yes powerlifting, uh, they don't care how lean you are. That's true But that in my opinion For a lot of fitness fanatics is a positive Because it discourages under eating Here's a here's a common thing that a lot of people don't realize when people get really serious into working out Especially when they first start working out and get serious and because most people's goals is weight loss A lot of people the fanatics people who start to become fanatical about it They start to under eat and they do this consistently under eat under eat And then because the scale moves down and they see a new striation Or because they're they're watching looking themselves in the mirror and the subjective opinion is of course subjective They ignore the low energy. They ignore the hormone changes. I haven't got my period or i'm weaker. Doesn't matter It's all about how I look type of deal now with powerlifting If if you under eat you won't lift more. Yeah, I mean, that's just a fact you have the best, you know Programming in the world you will not get away with under eating for very long So for people who have a bad relationship with food in that sense who tend to restrict and try to under eat and whatever Um, you're not gonna do with power. Yeah, no, I mean, I'm sure people are wondering like wait a second You know, I thought you said there's no diet stuff or they don't give out much diet advice in the powerlifting world But it's it's not that it's not that they're giving you advice about eating more under eating It's simply that if you're in a caloric deficit for an extended period of time meaning days weeks Of being in a diet like that you are going to get weaker It's just a fact you're going to get weaker by doing that and so by Making sure you stay fed or making sure that you are chasing those pr's or getting stronger You're going to want to be fed and you're going to want to be feeding your body enough protein So you recover and things like that by the way even even when because I've also seen this Powerlifting has weight classes. So you could let's say I enter a competition I don't know what the weight classes are It's the taper that off because you might push out of your weight limit You might you're right. So unless you're super heavy weight or unlimited, right? Let's say you go into a class you look and you say, okay I weigh I'll just make up a number. I weigh 195 I can either compete in the 195 to 200 or the 190 to 195 So let me try and lose some weight now. Here's the difference between dieting for powerlifting versus dieting for bodybuilding I'm trying to maintain as much strength as possible And you see this a lot with power lifters Well, they actually try to drop a weight class so they could compete against people lighter than themselves But they have to play that delicate balance of Chloric deficit, but I'm also not so low that I get too weak or whatever Or I'm in this weight class. I'm in the upper limit of it. I'm building strength I got to make sure I don't overeat because I'm going to go in a new weight class And now all my the weight that I lift is going to be competing against people much bigger than me So it there's actually some interesting checks and balances there that work out pretty pretty well What happens though is that people get the image of the super heavy weight powerlifter And that's what there's a oh the fat powerlifter Whatever, but the reality is with the weight classes and the strength it actually encourages a healthier outlook It's built in there if you're trying to like get into a lower weight class Where you know, and you're focused on maintaining that strength There's a muscle preserving benefit to that because you're still lifting You know these these heavy lifts but at the same time like you got to feed just enough to make sure you're stimulating that muscle Well, listen to the the advice you just gave it's advice that we always give like your goal is to Not lose too much weight or not gain too much weight, but stay strong or get stronger I mean that's the advice we always give If we're talking to somebody who's trying to lose weight or build it doesn't matter with the goal Do it slowly Yeah, we're always telling people to go slow as possible You don't want to lose too much weight. You don't want to gain too much weight You want to stay strong or get strong is the ultimate goal And so that when you think about that those are those natural checks and balances you're talking about That just don't exist in bodybuilding bodybuilding. It is get shredded at all cost By all means get as lean as you possibly can at all costs It doesn't matter how you feel it doesn't matter about hormone levels. It doesn't matter your weight class It doesn't matter any of that stuff It doesn't matter if you get weaker all that matters is that you look a certain way for the for the stage Which is a terrible idea for 99 of the population But what's nice about the powerlifting so long as you are in a normal weight class and not the super heavy weights Right, which is unlimited everybody else has these guidelines of oh, okay I've decided here. So I want to kind of keep my weight about the same or maybe a little lower or a little higher But I don't want to move too much and I want to try and get stronger Which is exactly how we take a client. So if a client comes to me and they want to lose 40 or 50 pounds or more of weight the very first thing I tell them to do is I don't want your weight to go down I don't want your weight to really go up. I want to kind of keep your weight the same But I want to get stronger and increase calories and make better food choices. Like that's the goal at that time I mean, that's literally what we would do with someone who's trying to lose weight Which is interesting because powerlifting naturally kind of does and then slowly what happens and I've had clients do this I've had clients who wanted to lose weight Who took on powerlifting and then clients that want to gain weight who took on powerlifting a gain weight part That's easy, right?  So they get they gained good lean body mass But the people who cut it was great because it was such an incredible checks and check and balance If they lost weight too fast their strength plummeted And then they'd have to bump their calories a little bit and kind of play that game And it it created this nice metabolism Preserving effect because they were testing themselves with strength, which is exactly what I would do With a client. That's not competing powerlifting. It's the same thing that I'm looking at So it tends to encourage that now the other part which you know, I think part of this has to do with the Dieting that bodybuilders go through when they lead up to a show But if you've ever been to a bodybuilding show And if you've ever been to a like backstage like I don't mean just like watching not like from the audience But like backstage I had friends that competed I'd go backstage and see what the environment was like And I've also been to powerlifting competitions The culture and the community at powerlifting competitions Is so encouraging Bodybuilding is weird You know like people are weird backstage, you know, I've been to some where there were some friendly people But they're kind of keeping themselves in quiet And it's kind of strange and I don't know if it's because of the diet and they're so like tired and irritable Or if it's just just this weird.  It's an incredible environment. I'm not even into marathon running But it's a great environment powerlifting environments like that too the the competition is Everybody's cheering for everybody In fact, the beginners get the biggest cheers the people who go up there have never done it before Are getting everybody super and helping and the advanced lifters are helping them out You know try and do this and grab the bar this way and get tight there It's this great community. So of the six things that we listed. This is the one that I'm neutral on because I I mean I can make the case that that's how I felt in bodybuilding too There's a really good sense of community there and I think that there's always an asshole in every sport So it doesn't matter what sport there's going to be somebody in powerlifting. There's going to be somebody in bodybuilding that's You know to themselves or in an asshole or not nice, but generally speaking the community was always really welcoming and positive And so it's less for me about that Powerlifting is better than bodybuilding in this aspect. It's just that it provides this right? There's an incredible community I think you can make the case that there's an incredible community inside the bodybuilding world also Yeah, I'm talking primarily about the competitions. I mean the community itself is yeah I mean, I guess I guess maybe backstage I mean that backstage was I mean, it depends like when I was brand new and I was just getting into it Like I was kind of the person who isolated himself. I like I didn't have a team, right? So I was kind of doing my own thing But you know, it's uh, it's a small it's a small click, right? So once you're once you are you come back to your second show and you get recognized by the people Oh, hey, man, I saw you the last one it begins it becomes very friendly And I I never felt like there was any animal and afterwards.  I feel like there's good community there, too So I think they both have that I think I think power but that's just another plus four powerlifting I don't think it's necessarily a negative Of bodybuilding. I just but I do remember this of the bodybuilding community is Um, there is a lot of people that are are not doing healthy things And so a lot of the conversations around the drugs and the dieting were unhealthy Now they didn't realize that they thought they were being friendly and nice by sharing all this stuff That was one of the things that was really glaring for me as I'm sitting here listening and I'm like, oh, shit That's terrible advice.  Like that's not good or like, you know And so I think a lot of the information that they're sharing in their community Is not the best information when it comes to diet and drugs related to the sport And so that part of the community I wasn't a fan of yeah, I think yeah, I think you're probably right for the for the Majority of it. I think there's probably some aspects of that Alludes to what you mentioned before in terms of the politics of you know, how they end up like scoring and judging and like Animosity in that regard versus like that's true Sort of the purity of like I'd got these numbers and it was like objective, you know So it's not like, you know, the the competitors like really hold that against the other person maybe as much But but yeah, I feel like everybody that's kind of going in the trenches and they understand the work It takes to kind of present, you know on stage or or you know, do the work to actually lift really heavy weight It's like, you know, everybody's there and kind of celebrating that there's that mutual respect like either either category Uh went through some serious grind consistency and sacrifice to get there and there is that mutual respect I will say bodybuilding and powerlifting gyms are all very supportive. Everybody's working out. Everybody's yeah I've been to gyms that are both If you guys have worked out like what you see, you know, both power.  Oh, I'm not that weird Or they're just as obsessed about the striation of their glutes as I am and so what's dangerous about that community is They they do find each other and they and they are very welcoming accepting And then what ends up happening is that they normalize An unhealthy behavior and think it's normal because they've got a hundred friends now that are just as obsessed as they are Yeah, now the last point, uh, this is generally true not always true, but generally speaking I would say for most women who are getting into strength training First off, most of the goals are for weight loss Um, most of them are going to be healthier if they pursue a powerlifting and then pursuing bodybuilding For all the reasons that we said earlier, right discourages under eating It's performance based so you got to feel good. You can't do a lot of things that are too damaging Otherwise you wouldn't get stronger the objective aspect, uh, is good because it takes your focus off of You know how you look in the subjective part and so my female clients this became for me This became a my secret weapon.  Yeah. No, I was just gonna say like, um to I just don't think it comes intuitively in terms of like the focus of strength like even culturally or like this was always like Something that was like a selling point that I always had to present to some of my female clients but once they really like caught on to Um focusing on that strength drive it becomes You know this this rewarding experience and it's it's an empowering experience on top of that But really again to all the behaviors that we mentioned earlier Just how it kind of reinforces a better Outlook in terms of like you're eating and then also to what to really focus on I 100% agree. This is a healthier move for women And a lot of that has to do with the culture shift that we're a part of that, you know, for the longest time You know, um muscle mommy get strong for women. It was build muscle Those were just didn't exist. Yeah those terms did not exist yet all very very good Empowering good Metabolically things that these that that they should be doing And so I think that power lifting is so much healthier for them to be focusing on getting strong And a lot of that has to do just because of what they're coming from because they're coming from this terrible messaging Of tone and skinny and you don't want to be bulky and like oh, it's not about lifting heavy weights Do lightweight let more reps and so that has been the culture around exercise and fitness for women for so long But I think power lifting is one of the things that could save women in this case And if the more than that do that the more of them that join that community the better off all of us are going to be Well, what percentage of women do you think lose their period getting ready for a bodybuilding show versus What percentage of women lose their period getting ready for a power lift? Yeah, probably none for power None in fact, I've gotten women to get their periods to come back Because they started power lifting and started reverse dieting bodybuilding You see a lot of this hormone dysfunction because the extreme dieting in the in the overtraining It's just a healthier pursuit. Now. It doesn't mean it's always a healthy pursuit Can you power lift and be unhealthy?  Yeah, I think that's the major takeaway this conversation is that you know There there are people I'm one of those people that um love competition And competition helps me set goals and follow through on my goals. And so I can totally relate To the the the man or woman that is considering, you know doing one of these things because they want they want that goal Right and I can respect that But I think the point of this was to encourage you to go in the powerlifting direction first not to say that Maybe you're not at a place With your body your body image that you could do bodybuilding. I did bodybuilding, right? So how can I tell other people they can't do it? I think I was just at the A healthy place when I decided to do it. It was later in my life. I had worked through a lot of those insecurities I had as a young young man and a young trainer Um, so if you're considering one of those two things because you like competition I think I would urge you to move in the in the powerlifting direction Look if you like the show head over to mind pump free.com and check out all of our free fitness guides We have a lot of free guides there that can help you with most of your fitness goals You can also find us on instagram. Justin is at mind pump. Justin. I'm at mind pump to stefano And adam is at mind pump adam