Mind Pump: Raw Fitness Truth - 1082: The Truth About Beachbody®

Episode Date: July 25, 2019

In this episode, Sal, Adam and Justin address the controversy they stirred up on a recent Quah about Beachbody and go into greater depth about what they feel is the good, bad and ugly with respect to their programs.  Mind Pump ruffling feathers for the sake of integrity & transparency. (2:20) Why is Beachbody a household name? What are they doing RIGHT? (5:35) Beachbody = Processed Food of Health. (12:50) How the value of their workouts is based on YOUR experience level. (16:30) The raw truth review of Body Beast. (20:00) The raw truth review of P90X and Insanity. (23:25) How the average person places the value of their work out on the calories burned. (26:40) Why is multi-level marketing (MLM) so easy to pray on when it comes to the fitness space? (28:38) How Mind Pump is DIFFERENT from Beachbody when it comes to their marketing strategy. (34:50) The steps to achieve LONG TERM successful results. (36:21) Why Beachbody programs are NOTHING to be excited about. How Mind Pump WILL WIN. (44:21) People Mentioned Ben Pakulski (@bpakfitness)  Instagram Layne Norton, PhD (@biolayne)  Instagram Mike Matthews (@muscleforlifefitness)  Instagram Dr. Jordan Shallow D.C (@the_muscle_doc)  Instagram   Related Links/Products Mentioned July Promotion: MAPS Anywhere ½ off!! **Code “ANYWHERE50” at checkout** Mind Pump 1041: The Biggest Myths in Fitness, Beachbody Review, the Benefit of Squatting Below Parallel & MORE Beachbody.com: At Home Workouts - Expert Nutrition Plans – Healthy Living Herbalife Distributors Claim in $1B Suit Events Were a Sham 1st Phorm: Muscle Building Supplements Mind Pump Free Resources

If you want to pump your body and expand your mind, there's only one place to go. Mite, op, mite, op with your hosts. Salda Stefano, Adam Schaefer, and Justin Andrews. Oh boy, this was an exciting episode. This needed to happen. Yes, it needed to happen. You know, Mind Pump, one of our pursuits in this space is to try to get the fitness industry to be a little bit more effective in the long term. And there's a lot of people in the industry that do things that we don't think are done with integrity, whether it's workout programs or pills that promise to make you lose 30

pounds in 30 days and all that other crap. And so there's a company called Beachbody that's out there and they're the number one seller of fitness workout programs in the world. This is a billion dollar company. It's a multinational corporation. They have infomercials, multi-level marketing, e-commerce, they sell weight loss, supplements,

and fitness workout videos and all that. And so in this episode, we break it all down. We do a review of mainly their workout programs and talk about what we like and what we don't like. You may be familiar with some of their programs. P90X is one of them. Body beast is another one. These are extremely popular programs in terms of sheer number of sales.

And so we go through and we break them down and we give our review and we are totally honest and raw. There is no holding anything back. You get our true opinion of what we think of both the company and their workouts in this episode. Now before we start the episode, I want to remind everybody that maps anywhere is 50% off. Now Maps Anywhere is the workout program that we designed that requires no gym access or exercise equipment.

So it's a workout you could do at home on the road or in your office and it's extremely effective to get the 50% off, go to maps.white.com. That's MAPS, WHITE.com and use the code anywhere 50. That's in YWHER50 no space for the discount. And that's it. So without any further ado, here we are reviewing the mega company BeachBody.

Recently we did an episode, one of our Q&A episodes, and one of the questions was asking us about our opinion on beach body, and you guys know beach body, the creators of the best selling fitness programs in the world. They're a monster. They're a billion dollar company, right? Yeah, I believe so.

And I think- Stay up late enough, you're gonna see a commercial. And I think they're- I think their fitness programs late enough, you're gonna see a commercial. I think their fitness programs alone makes up for like half of that revenue. I think the other half has to do with their supplements, supplements and stuff like that. They have kind of like a multi-level marketing type of,

you know, breakdown or whatever. But anyway, we gave our honest opinion and boy did it cause a lot of controversy. It was one of the most commented on answers, I think we've done in a long time. I was actually surprised by the response from that. Like they didn't even see it coming from us for some reason.

Yeah, the unfortunate part is I think it just, it offends somebody who bought it, right? So I think that maybe it comes off that way when we are talking about it, because I think we just kind of glazed over it real quick and just shit on it and then moved along versus really diving into it. And then if you're somebody who's invested in one or two or multiple of their programs, maybe you feel like an asshole a little bit for that. And I don't think that was the intention like from us was to do that. It was just us

answering a quick Q&A. It's also we're just being honest. If you want our opinion, and our opinion is based on our experience training lots of people. We've, if you listen to the podcast for more than one episode, you know that we were trainers for decades, two decades, lots and lots of clients, and then train lots of trainers that train lots of clients. So by proxy, we probably have trained or helped train lots of clients. So by proxy, we probably have trained or helped train

thousands of people. And these were everyday average people, most of many of which we actually were in front of, we touched, we saw the results, we saw how to change the workouts. And when you've trained people for a long time, the experience you gain is invaluable. You start to learn how to program

and write workouts for people. And so we just gave our honest opinion. And if we like something, we say that too. Now, we feel comfortable talking about a company like Beachbody and giving our honest opinion because they're a monster. This is a company that dwarfs mind pump tremendously. We're not picking on some small up and coming business

that's struggling to get by. No, no, no, again, like you said, Adam, they are probably close to a billion dollar company. They own the fitness workout program market. Now, there's a lot of fitness programs that are out there, some are better than others, but in terms of pure revenue and people reached, I don't think anybody comes close to beach body.

No, and I mean, we've done a pretty thorough breakdown of why we have a difference of opinion with CrossFit, but we just haven't, and they're bigger than CrossFit. Far bigger. Far bigger, it's more of a household name. I know a lot of people out there probably have at least one of their programs or know, you know, one of their family members

has gone through their programs. So I definitely think that we need to do a better job of addressing some of the issues we have. Well, it's a household name for one major reason. I think. And I'm glad you're going here, Adam, because people will say things like, well, if they're, you know, if you guys are in a quit,

why are they so good? Why are they everywhere? If they're not good or whatever, why are are in a crib, why are they so good? Why are they everywhere? If they're not good, or whatever, why are they everywhere? What are they doing right? Well, one, they weren't the first to market, but they were one of the first to market. So they were early adopters online with the at-home workouts.

We know that the Jane fond is and stuff were some of the very first people to do that, but they were really to took it mainstream to the male market and the general population and then to sell all these subcategories. And really what they did well was the marketing piece. They were the first to do a really good job of marketing to the masses. And when you're the first ones to get there, then you start, it's a snowball effect. You start making a good amount of money and then they keep pouring it back into the marketing side, and they were brilliant at that. They were

absolutely brilliant at, they gave, I think a lot of what, when we talk about them, and I think there why that we have a chip on our shoulder about a company like that is because they're an example of the opposite of what we represent. We're trying to present people really good information. We're not just trying to market and sell to people, and it's hard to do that. They represent a lot of what is wrong with the fitness industry. Let me explain. This is a general statement I'm going to make. So not just for Beach Plotty. This is a general statement through directed at the fitness and Health weight loss muscle building industry at large. The

Value is placed on getting people's attention and marketing and very little time energy and value is spent on actually Really truly helping people, okay, and so beach bodies a great representation of that because if you look at them You can see that they do a phenomenal job getting people's attention. Oh the packaging. Oh, it's in the videos and the hype I mean you get DVDs you get online print stuff you get the diet that comes with it You get the tan buff guy in a tank top. I mean, you get it all. And you get the different versions of each, you know, program, you get some that are, you know, the cowboy fitness and urban fitness and, you know,

different types of things. They do that phenomenally well, because before that, the dominant, like, video at home workout programs were like Jane Fonda, Denise, something something I can't remember her name as well. She was another big one. They were mainly these at home for women workout plans. They were advertised that way. Peach body comes out and kind of, for my understanding, one of the first ones to really market something that looked more hardcore and was also towards men.

Like P90X and Sanity, that was like one of the first, I would say, at home programs that men really purchased at large, right? Before that, I can't think of any others before that. So they took the old model and just made it more effective and better and they dominate, again, they dominate the market. So looking at how they do that, and here's the thing with the end, this is something that we've talked about since day one, it's not just about complaining and saying

something's not good. We gotta look and see what they're doing right, because if we want to do something better, we have to see what they're doing that's right, so that we could, you know, kind of fight fire with fire, type of deal. Well, yeah, one thing I noticed in going through their videos and also like some of their marketing promotional,

like, like, infomercials, they, as you're going through this workout, you're literally doing the workout with them. And so it's like you have somebody is almost like a built-in gym buddy that's going through that. And then also you have two examples. You have somebody doing the workout,

then you also have a regression to that exercise, which I thought was actually smart to show. Somebody going through that exercise, but if you struggle with it, here's another option for you. Yeah, yeah. They did a really good job of this too. We sometimes, because we see this within our peers and in our space, sometimes as

trained fitness professionals and trainers, we tend to market and speak to ourselves. Right? A lot of times talking to our community, the people that you see in the gyms, other trainers, the way we talk about things, the types of things we talk about, the level that we talk at sometimes, and what they did really, really well was they said, you know what, we're not going to worry about those 12% of the population. We're going to worry about the other 88% of the population. All relatable. And yeah, and target the people that are intimidated to come in the gym. Target the people that don't know any better

or the difference of phasing workouts and sets and reps and things like that. And we're gonna really address that group of people and they did that really well. And so I think that's the positive side also about them is, and that was a defense that we heard on our forum, what I love about our private forum is they will anytime we say something like that, they do like the challenge and they like to start discussions on there and we have

it. And there was quite a few people that have now found Mount, Mount, Mine Pump. And they felt, well, I would have never found mine pump had I not first found Beachbody because they were the ones that introduced me to working out and exercise. And because of that, I've now found you guys. So they did a good job of getting people that may be too intimidated to go to the gym into working out. Now here's my argument against that is if beach,

okay, did beach body get these people to think about getting fit and healthy? Or did these people think to themselves, I want to get fit and healthy, and then look for the most popular thing that was out there. In which case was Beachbody. In other words, if Beachbody never existed,

it would have been the next most popular thing. And that's the big question. Did they really get a bunch of people who would have never considered their own health and fitness To get into the space to think about those things or was it just the first thing on the list? Once the person made up their mind and said I needed a war maybe does that make sense? Yeah, maybe But I mean what they do a really good job of two is that they really check off all the boxes You want meal ideas and a diet. It's on there. You want to work out

sheets so you could track along to that, it's in there. You want to follow along video, it's in there. You want an app to do it, it's in there. They really have, they really kind of checked all the boxes that the average per, you want something that you could do at home and you don't need a gym required, it's in there. Like they did a really good job of kind of checking all the boxes to leave those pieces. Here's what simplifying the process, which I could argue a lot of them are too simple in the way they deliver some of these things,

but in terms of your consumer getting into something like that, where they're overwhelmed. This is a whole new thing that they're trying to get themselves involved in. Let's simplify that process on a level where they're like, okay, I can just step into this and I can get going. This is what it reminds me of, okay. And right on the back of what you guys are saying right now,

this beach body programs, workout programs, remind me very strongly of the healthy processed food market. So when you go to the store and you're just starting to learn about getting healthy or you're just starting to think about it. You're like, you know what? I need to start eating healthy. Every morning I have lucky charms for breakfast. So I'm going to look in the healthy section. Magically delicious.

I'm going to look in the healthy section of cereal. So now you're looking for cereal and you're looking at the box and they check all the things. Oh, no preservatives. Okay, that's good. Oh, it's got extra fiber. Okay, that's good. Oh, added protein.

Oh, the title of the cereal is healthy something or homemade something or whatever, that sounds healthy. I'm gonna get this cereal because this checks all the boxes and it's healthy. Now, for those of us in the space, we know that 99% of that is packaging and marketing. Just because you buy a cereal that says fortified with vitamins, added fiber, added protein, does not make it healthy.

Now, maybe healthier than lucky charm. Right, it's one step a better than the striped. Right. So doing a workout is usually better unless you're hurting yourself for a workout. That is such a great analogy because that's exactly how I feel about the workouts is and that's when people defend it. Like, oh, I would have never got started on the right path. Like, okay, you're right.

Like, it's better than you sitting on the couch and eating fire cheetos. 100%. It is better than that, right? It's a little bit less dire. It reminds me of, I had a client a long time ago who, and she was really starting to get into trying to get fit and healthy.

So she came in, started talking to me about personal training. And so I asked her, just like I ask all potential clients, I'll say, hey, you know, what have you been doing? Like tell me about what you've been doing now and what led you here. And she said, well, one of the first things I did was start to change my diet. And I said, well, how did you change your diet?

And she says, well, now I eat special case cereal twice a day. So I ate it for breakfast and for lunch. And I said, okay, I said, now what made you do that? She goes, well, I know special case supposed to be healthy. And they said, if you eat two bowls a day, instead of breakfast and for lunch. I said, okay, I said, now what made you do that? She was, well, I know a special case supposed to be healthy and they said if you eat two bowls a day instead of breakfast and lunch that. Now granted, those two bowls of cereal were less calories than she was eating before and they were better than the

donut that she had in the morning and the slice of pizza that she had for lunch. And so it was an improvement and she did notice a little bit of weight loss and she did notice that she was a little bit healthier. Now obviously when she worked with me, we progressed her out of that, but again, it's that processed food of health. And now here's a deal. If you're a big company making trying to attract a market with food, again, let's say you're craft or generals or whatever, and you're trying to attract people

and you want to sell foods that are, quote unquote, healthy or are peer to be healthy. 99% of the time money and energy spent on that food is not on making healthy. It's on making it taste good and look healthy. That's what you're spending all your money on because that's what people, especially the early stages of trying to get healthier,

is still value-taste so much. So these programs that we're talking about with beach body, and the reason why we criticize them so heavily, is because, and I know this because I went through their programs. I'm not speaking out of my ass, we actually bought some of the programs, went through them, I broke them all down, didn't take me long to see what they were doing, and I've other programs of theirs before as well because I've had clients bring them to me But when you look at their programs, it's it's it becomes crystal clear and anybody who's been a personal trainer for over 10 years We'll see the exact same thing who's a good trainer. We'll see this exact same thing 99% of the time energy and money

Spent on these beach body programs is spent on how good they look, and how fun they look, and the marketing, the packaging. One percent, I guarantee you, the time spent on writing the workout was 1% of all the time spent on the program. Oh, to the point that the guys in the videos, like, I mean, I know what it takes to build a physique that's 200 and something pounds, and strong enough build a physique that's 200 something pounds and strong enough

to lift bench press, 300 something pounds. And that guy is not doing 50 pound dumbbell presses on a stability ball and chest flies for his workout. Like so, they promote it as if this guy trains this way. And you can tell by the way, his build and his physique is that he absolutely doesn't work out that way. You don't build that kind of mass on somebody's body by training this way.

Well, think about it this way. When they put out a program and they say, and they pick a face for the program, they're not picking someone who wrote the workout. No. Even though they're saying that this is the guy that's doing the workout, they're picking someone who looks a particular way. The workout is written by some people in the back and they're just like, oh cool,

we need some chest exercises. What's fun? What's entertaining? Let's test this on a test group. So when you have a company that's worth a billion dollars, what you typically do is you have a test group. So they'll have 15 people in a room and they'll have them do different workouts.

And at the end, they'll say, rate the workout at the end. Now, this is the truth now, as a trainer, someone who's worked with people a long time, that is a terrible way to judge whether or not a workout is good. Because here's what you're gonna get. The average person off the street, or if I get a test group, the workout they're gonna rate

as the best is the one that's gonna make them sweat the most. And that was the most fun. That was it. So creativity is highly encouraged and also sweating and feeling sore. And so that's basically the parameters of whether or not you had a successful workouts, which,

and we can unpack that through the rest of this episode. But I think that that's a major point of everything that they're trying to engineer in these workouts. It's all based off of experience, and experience being the driving force, not necessarily adaptation and actually changing your body to what you're in there for. Well, think about it when we were all first became trainers, early days, like first year

as a personal trainer, first couple years of personal trainer. The way that we wowed our clients or the way that we brought value to them was how fun, exciting, different, high energy, creative exercises. That was all the value that I would bring to my client. That I'll try and bring my clients. Now, as a result of that, I had higher turnover clients than to stay with me very long because that doesn't last very long.

I didn't get the long- term success that I found later on and it required less education for me. Now, as I got more experienced, I started to train people properly, but it also required a lot of education on my part because the person coming in, they don't know. All they know is the workout fun, is it exciting? Why am I, I wanna get real sore,

I wanna feel like I just got beat up and I have to educate the clients, why we have a podcast, we educate people and tell them, no, those are not metrics of an effective workout, it's not how you measure an effective workout. I need to get you past this because otherwise you'll never get long-term success. To that point, how many, how many made-up set names did they have?

Did you, for the BC? The B-lease four or five. Yeah., the different compound superset king set multi set like yeah For set. Yeah, that was one of that that was one of the programs that we bought and looked at because There was a couple there was a couple people on our forum who were like well, I did the bodybeasts and it looks like a you know a good You know building muscle building split so we bought it and we looked at it and building, muscle building split. So we bought it and we looked at it and going to be totally honest. So if it was great, I would say it. And by the way, present to me a good program and I'll tell you it's great. I don't care who's if they're a competitor. We do all the time. We do all the time. And some

of the best workout programming you'll ever find or strength sport programming. We've talked about this in the past mainly because the results are so objective. Like if it either makes you compete high at a higher level as a power lifter or not. You're either lifting more weight or you're not. It's pretty simple. So anyway, we looked at this program and it's just the run of the mill split

and there was no real time or energy put into the program. I can tell. It's not just the run of the mill split. It's circuit based. Yeah, it's circuit based. The exercise selection is terrible. Yeah, it's circuit-based. The exercise selection is terrible. Yeah, it's not the right. I mean, the best exercise in there is a dumbbell press.

And then the rest, they get this fin press, superset a fly. To a fly, like, what are you doing? It's alternating on. The movement choices that they have, and then the way they decide the rest periods, right? So the rest periods, I think, all of them are 90 seconds. And then and a super set. And they kind of maintain that. They're the first week, I think, is like a body part split. And then

it moves into a two, two muscle group. And then it goes into the final phase, which is the circuit full body circuit where it's cardio and that. And it's just not real phasing actually. Right. There's no real strength phase in the program. It just goes from easier, harder, harder. That's all it does. Yeah, that's that they shorten the rest periods. They add more, they superset the exercises

and then they turn it into circuits. So all, so the way they create their phases, if they were phases, you know, blocks however you want were phases, blocks however you want to exercise blocks, however you want to categorize it as, is just by increasing the intensity through shortened rest periods and adding exercises. There was like one was called, like beast, one was called bulk, one was called build.

But there is no real understanding. And again, I don't want to sound hypercritical. I'm trying to maintain as much integrity as possible here. And be honest, I look through the program, and I can tell whoever wrote it doesn't have an understanding of how the body adapts. There is no strength phase. There is no phase on, you know,

there is no balance on correct, on potentially causing muscle imbalances and issues. There is no understanding and value of the, you know, the different ranges of motion that muscles may experience and how you apply tension. There is none of that understanding. It's a very straight, you know, get a pump, straight sets, you know, or excuse me, you know or excuse me You know body parts split type routine and it's not even a great body parts split I to be honest with you if you want to do a body parts split and you want to do something basic Just do you run the middle body building body parts split you can find free online They're written even better than this one and this is the one that I had the most hope for

Don't even get me started on their other programs, like P90X and insanity and stuff like that, which is all, that's all intensity-based. You could swap the exercises out. Totally demographic there. Oh, yeah. And those are the most popular sellers. I know P90X, if I'm not mistaken,

is one of the number one selling fitness programs all time. Well, because it's, I mean, it's so creative. Like, there's just so many different types of exercises they kind of merge together in this program. And it's, I mean, the biggest selling point for it is muscle confusion. It's, you're never really going to do the same thing. Like, you're always going to switch it up.

Well, P90 X did a good job of, you know, talking about market and timing. That's always so important. There was a time, if you guys remember in the last 15 years, that plow metrics hit the scene and became very popular. They were the first ones that capitalize on plios and an online type of a program. So that is what really, I think, made that program sell so much was, you know, right when the science started coming out

where people were talking about the benefits of plyometrics and we were seeing that hit all of the fitness space, they were the first ones to capitalize on that by creating a program wrapped all around it. But I'll never forget when my dad bought that program, my dad bought that program whatever 10 years ago or more. And you're a trainer? Yeah, and we're like, oh, damn.

Well, you know, he knows we live far apart from each other and I'm all for him trying to get in shape. And he's like, hey son, you know, I bought this P90X program and I've been doing it for the last couple of weeks and I love it. I'd love for you to take a look at it. And, you know, the positive things I had to say about it is they had some pretty good general rules nutritionally,

which is ironic, right? Because it's about an exercise program, the stuff that I had positive to say about it had to do with the food, that they were recommending. And I thought was pretty decent. But the programming was awful. I mean, I'm looking at my dad, who's, at this time, I think he's in his mid-50s or so,

who is doing, you know, jump lunges and ice skaters. And so with that, I'm going like, oh my God, dad. And he's like, oh, I'm down like 15 pounds. He said, well, dad, you're down 15 pounds, because this shit is hard. And you cut your calories. Yeah, you're eating better. You're making better food choices

and you're moving intensely for an hour. Here's the thing, you could take the exercises out of there and swap them out. You could swap them out. Literally, almost with any exercise, follow the same tempo. And guess what, same results. You're gonna get the same tempo and guess what same results you're gonna you're gonna get the same results it's all about burning calories and eating less calories in which case put the video

on here's the thing put the video on of your P90X and rather than doing all the exercises just do jumping jacks in place or running place jump rope and push up and jumping push ups jumping same same effect there you go and there's not, there's no emphasis on the workout program, the most important part. Now, this is a lesson for us. I mean, here's a deal. Look, if you want to make millions of millions and millions of dollars selling fitness programs,

here's the model. Make it look cool, make it look fun, doesn't matter what the workout really is. As long as it's fun and hard, you're gonna be okay. You're gonna sell a lot. Now, well, this has always been the battle. I mean as it's fun and hard, you're gonna be okay, you're gonna sell a lot. Now, well, this has always been the battle. I mean, this has been the battle as personal trainers worldwide know,

like to sell to your client, like, look, we're gonna have to do the stuff that isn't that fun. We're gonna have to have legit rest periods so you actually build strength so we can put you into, you know, a new level, like we can get you somewhere instead of just having you spin your wheels all the time until the inevitable burn out. This is because we place most of our value, that the average person who doesn't understand

exercise programming, places most of the value of a workout on its calorie burn. So when people look at workouts and I know this because you go to gyms and you see cardio listing the machines We'll tell you how much calories you burn per hour or people will ask me which one burns the most calories We place all of our value on the calorie burn now. I'm gonna give you let you in on a little secret If you want to burn the most amount of calories for an hour, just go run No joke now that's not doesn't mean it's the most valuable overall. It just means it burns the most calories. Burning calories while you work out is one factor you should consider in terms of whether or not

a workout is effective. And it's only one small factor. It's not even, yeah, I'd say it's not even one of the top factors. No, you want to look at how is your body adapting? What does that adaptation look like? Now, you can burn 600 calories in an hour of just moving like crazy, but what if you had a faster metabolism to where you were burning 600 calories every day

just because your metabolism was faster? Well, that, to me, sounds like a far better adaptation. That comes from building muscle and getting stronger. Not only that, but how you look, would you, you can tell when a body's balanced, it just looks more aesthetic. What kind of weight do you wanna lose? Do you wanna just lose body fat

or do you wanna also have your body lose muscle to try to become more efficient with the calories? The workout matters. And it's not about just about the calories. The workout programming matters a shit ton. And unfortunately, we just place no value on that or a lot of people don't. They think it's all about the calories.

You know, everything that we're talking about, it's funny because that's not even the thing that bothers me the most about the company. The thing that bothers me the most, and this is my own shit, right? This is me because I grew up at a home with a stepfather that did every multi-level marketing business that existed.

And it was just, I hated it. I hated it to the point where, I remember when I got older and he would constantly try and pitch me on the next idea. And of course, whenever it was, he knew I was in the health and fitness space, he knew that I had a lot of trainers around me and influence on clients,

and it was always trying to recruit me to do it. And, you know, I hated them. And I'd always tell them, dad, like, you know, the people that make the most money, the people atop of this pyramid, dad. So when you're ready to create a pyramid, like, talk to me, otherwise, I want nothing to do with this MLM shit. Nor do I want to be trying to get people to do this all the time. And this is something that Beachbody did incredibly well.

They're not the only one in the fitness space that did it very well. You get like herbal life, one of the biggest companies ever, multi-level marketing. It's an easy space to prey on. Think about that. Now why is fitness and health for multi-level marketing so easy to prey on? Well you're dealing with the illusion of doing good. So first off, if I have a multi-level marketing company that's selling like refrigerators or make-up, which those exist as well, you have to kind of, if you have any kind of conscious, you think to yourself,

like, okay, what am I doing for the world that's good? Now, if I'm selling nutritional supplements, or if I'm selling fitness programs, oh, I'm doing good, I for the world? That's good. Now, if I'm selling nutritional supplements, or if I'm selling fitness programs, oh, I'm doing good, I'm helping people. This is good. It also prays on a health food. Yes, and it also prays on a community that's there's a large segment that are insecure. A lot of people get into fitness

and make it a career or people who've dealt with their own insecurities to begin with. So now you're just praying on those people again and being like, hey, do what you love, help people out, and get rich fast and easy by doing, by, you know, enrolling on our multi-level marketing. Well, to that point, it also does this. Like, when you, when any of you that have been pitched by somebody who's running an MLM, you know,

the first thing that you want to see is their paychecks or their success, right? Because it's like, oh, if I'm going to get into an MLM and try to make money, I want to know that my buddy who's pitching this to me, he's already made tens of thousands or millions of dollars, and I see his Lamborghini is big house and like, that's what sells me. It's not the phone service or whatever MMM thing that he's a part of, it's that he's been successful. I know him, so now I'm bought in.

Well, how much easy is that to do that in the fitness space? All I need is a fit looking person to pitch this and they're gonna have a hell of a time like getting people, it's gonna be easy for them because they have to look. You've got, you've got a fit body, you look healthy and now all I have to do is get you to pitch my product and people are gonna see you go like,

oh look, she looks amazing. Oh, it must be from these shakes. Oh, it must be from these this workout program. I'm gonna try this workout program. So it's a great model for this space. It's why shreds dominated so well. It's also why, and to answer the, I can drop this right now,

even though it says nothing to do with beach body, but I get asked this all the time because I've openly come out and said that I don't care for the company first form. This is part of their model with their supplement sales. That's how they use an MLM type of scheme to grow the business and they've been very good at it. And they go and recruit popular people

that have large followings at our buff and fit and sexy and look good, and they get them to push their supplements. Even though we all know damn well that those people didn't get to that point looking that way because of these supplements. They were already that way then they were recruited by this.

Come here, there's no difference than Beachbody. Beachbody goes out, the guy in this video when we're watching this body beast, I guarantee other than shooting for this video that dude never trained that way to look that way. He has put some time under the iron, probably training pretty well for a long time to get the physique he has, and they're just using him for the marketing purposes. And then we all buy into it believing that, oh, this is a great workout.

Look how amazing he looks. Yeah. The way it works for the Beachbody coaches, and I just went on their website. You sign up for a fee for $40. So if you want to be a coach, you pay $40 and then you pay $15.95 a month, which gives you access to the website, training, reporting, personal development content and all that stuff. And now they're going to say it's not a pyramid scheme, it's not, no, that's actually the description of a MLM. Now majority of, no, that's actually the description of MLM. Now, majority of the revenue doesn't come from those fees.

The majority of the revenue comes from these people who their coaches or whatever, selling their products. But let's do the math here. On their own site, their beach body coach network has over 400,000 members. 400,000 members paying $16 a month each. How much is that in annual revenue? What does someone do the math for me?

That's 400,000 times 16 bucks a month. Yeah, that's $6 million in just reoccurring revenue alone every single month. Just from their coaches. Just from the coaches, $6 million a month. So that's not including, of course, whatever products, they push and sell and all that stuff. So it is definitely a big piece of their model

and the supplements that they sell. Well, and imagine too, if we enlist 400,000 coaches, what are the qualifications to become a coach? Do you need any experiences of personal? I actually was at the dermatologist, just this last visit for my psoriasis. And you know where she's like, oh, what do you do for work?

And I'm telling her about the podcast. She's like, oh, that's so great. She's like, I actually just started as a beach body coach. Oh, no. Oh, my hands on a chalkboard. Oh, great. We're gonna do an episode of that, we should do it.

We should try and tell you how awesome the shakes are. And I had to do it. No, she knew better than to try and pitch it to pitch it to me whatsoever. Because she had no background in it. You know, she's had no background in nutrition, no background in exercise whatsoever. Well, you can tell that's not the value. I mean, you can't even get, like, we were trying to look for the actual format of the workouts and like, how they outlined all these like acute variables and what exactly was included,

wasn't even in the package. You had to go download it off the internet. Okay, so here's the thing that needs to be considered here. And again, I'm not trying to demonize anyone, okay? But when Adam Justin and myself write a program or co-write a program, because there are programs that we've written with other people when we felt like we needed

outside expertise. Again, that highlights by the way, the integrity that we write these with. Like if we're gonna write a strong man inspired workout, you better fucking believe we're gonna take a actual strong man and write the program with them. If we're gonna write a correctional exercise program, you better fucking believe we're gonna work with the best correctional exercise program, you better fucking believe we're going to work with

the best correctional exercise specialists that we know. Now could we write those programs by ourselves? Absolutely. But our integrity will not allow us to do that because why our vast experience, you get to understand one thing here, our media experience, the podcast experience, pales in comparison to the experience we have training thousands of people either directly or indirectly through training other trainers. That is the most, that is what we value more than anything. By far, we value that more than, in fact, when we do these live events and we meet people and we talk to people, it's awesome because we can see the people that we're impacting. So when we create programs, our number one idea and goal is not how do we get this program

to sell to the most people. It really isn't. Now of course that's a factor because otherwise the business would not be here if we didn't sell programs and profit. But the number one thing is how can we get the people that buy this program the best results and the best good results long term with integrity because I could 100% write our programs in ways that make them flashier, create them and make them more marketable. To lose weight quickly.

Oh, let me tell you, our marketing team, several times now, has had long discussions and debates with us and we won't budge on this on writing programs specifically they want us to write no just write a program just for women and I say to them what's the difference between one for women and one for men unless we're writing like a pregnancy program what's the difference between men and women they're like oh it's it's so easy to market this is the way you market we're like no that's against our integrity and yes we'll sell more programs but at the end of the day I identify if I identify day, I identify,

if I identify it with anything, I identify as being a trainer, first, first and foremost, and a good trainer always has their clients best intentions in mind, not just getting them to sign up and buy more sessions or buy more programs. And so that's the way we wrote the programs. And I can tell you this much right now,

looking through the beach body programs, they were not written by people with that in mind. They were written by, with the intention of just selling as many as possible, and it works people by them, but the workouts are not long term effective programs. They don't have that adaptation in mind. It's always hard to make this argument with somebody who's gone through something

and seen results. And's in it's like I don't know how many times I have to explain this that if you were not exercising before and you were making bad food choices And you weren't really doing much and you switch and you and you all sudden decide to buy one of these programs and you start making better food choices No fucking shit. You're gonna see No fucking shit, you're gonna see results. Like 100% you're gonna see results. But it has nothing to do with the programming. It's so hard to convince people though, that it wasn't the program that got you there.

It wasn't because beach body got you involved in this program, why you have all these results, it's because you weren't doing anything before. And now you're moving. And now you're moving. And you're probably making better food choices because you're exercising, right? That's moving. And you're probably making better food choices because you're exercising, right? That's it.

And that's not a bad thing. It's not a bad thing. It's better than what you were doing before. But not for long. And what I mean by that is if your programming is not appropriate, if it's not well done, your body will adapt, stop adapting. And then if you keep pushing it with the well done, your body will adapt, stop adapting, and then if you keep pushing it with the same mentality,

so if I use the mentality of P90X or insanity or what are their other programs, then my body stops responding, my next step is to go harder and faster, and then it stops responding again, and then the next step, harder and faster, and then what ends up happening because in order to go harder and faster consistently without really focusing on the workout

programming, getting your body to adapt, you know, in scientific ways and ways that are favorable, the only way to keep that up is to continue to elevate your motivation. Now here's a secret about motivation. It's not a permanent feeling. I don't care who you are. Motivation is a terrible, it needs to be fed daily. It's a terrible thing to rest your laurels on. If you just focus on motivation at some point, you're gonna stop. You're gonna burn out, hurt yourself, or just get bored.

And here's what ends up happening. You do one program and it's P90X. You do that, you do that, and you get results. You're like, okay, fuck, I'm stopping. I need something else. I need something new. You go through the program, oh there's a cowboy workout one, that looks like fun. I'm gonna do that one. You do that, oh shit, what do I do? I'm bored now, it's not working for, I'm not, I'm burnt out, I don't wanna work anymore.

And you go on the wagon, off the wagon, where you work out, and you don't work out, which is the vast majority of people that work out. The vast majority of people do not have a consistent exercise practice, and a big part of that is because the way they were applying exercise in the first place encourages that kind of a habit. You can't possibly sustain or continue on that path because it's not the right path, it just doesn't work. So if you want long-term success, at some point you have to move out of the, I'm just moving more and eating less phase, which I get, that's the first place people start. But at some point, if you wanna keep going

and really get the physique you want, long term forever with less effort, you gotta move out of that. That's like phase one, right? That's step one. Step one, move more, eat less. Step two, let's start to do things right now. Well, this is why I love that you gave the analogy with the processed foods or the healthy

processed foods because it's a good example too because somebody who's eating Taco Bell and jack-and-the-box McDonald's every day, multiple times a day, and they don't care at all about the food. If you all of a sudden start buying the healthy cereal and the low fat this. And you're gonna be in a better place than what you were just shoveling fast food down your face. But it's still the first step in that direction. And it's not a long term step. It's not a long term step.

It's hard. I have yet to find anybody achieve real life-long health and fitness success, eating, having a diet entirely comprised of packaged and processed Quote-unquote healthy foods. It's not it's no different than somebody who went from drinking soda to going to diet soda Okay, that's one step you've cut your calories the next step though is to value foods aside from just their taste and maybe just drink water And and that kind of stuff. And so that's kind of what we're looking at.

Again, like, and then again, I could, I could come, almost with 100% confidence predict how these programs are created. They sat in a boardroom, okay, what's the market look like? How are we gonna put this together? Who's the model? What are the videos gonna look like? How are we gonna advertise it?

How are we gonna market it? And at the very end, they're like, all right, quick put together a workout that we could film. Well, it's just, it's unfortunate because people don't really know any different. They know, they think that this is the formula to, you know, to get them in shape or to, you know, have them lose the weight, that this is their only option out there. And they don't realize there's a more effective, more efficient, more optimal way to work out. That's actually going to be more sustainable long-term. It's just not highlighted. The science of exercise physiology is not something that people are very much aware of.

It's not marketed. It's not in the general household doesn't know how to train the body to where your muscles Actually adapt and they get stronger and then they actually need a specific amount of rest period in order to You know get stronger and grow and there's there's an actual formula to this like that has been proven But is just not in the public eye. No, and again if you're the best workout programs that I've seen in the fitness space that are really well written and put together are the ones that are designed for power lifters, Olympic lifters, you know, those types of program. And the reason being is because they have to, they're tested through competition. And so a crappy powerlifting program quickly disappears because people are doing better.

We're not the only people that write good programs. We talk about all the time. You have the Ben Pukolsky's, the Lane Norton's, the Mike Matthew's, the Sean Shalos. There's lots of people that understand programming and write good programs. This is just not one of them. Each body is not a, they did not make their money because they wrote good programs that really helped people at all.

That is not why they were successful. There's many other reasons why this company was really successful and that is not one of them. They feed into what people expect. And there's the same argument we have with group classes in general. It's an experience.

It's something that people go in, they want something out of it, very specific things, they want out of it, that's why they have test groups, like you mentioned, and they base it all around with the consumer actually wants, instead of, what's actually prescribing, what's right, and what they need. Yeah, yeah, I will say this though,

I've seen their programs in the past, I'm very familiar with some of the programs because clients have brought them to me. You know, when they first started hiring me, I know you guys, we all talked about it. But before we did this episode, we bought some of their programs because we wanted to make sure that we were accurate

with our opinion. And I'm gonna be honest with you, when I opened up and looked at these programs, I, from a business standpoint, I got excited. Nothing alive. When you're in a space and you're trying to do well in a particular space, and you look at the top competitor, and you see that it's nothing to be excited about,

nothing to be intended to learn from, like I'm looking at it and I'm going, wow, like this is a wide open, I mean, this is a billion dollar space that they're, a billion dollars in their business. And this isn't, I mean, all we have to do is figure out how to outmarket them and outsexy them because that's what they crush everybody up. Absolutely, master.

Yeah, but other than that, it was, I was a little bit, I think I had different expectations being that big. I thought, okay, let's, you know, let's, let's look at this and maybe we'll, we'll be surprised because they, they sell so well and unfortunately that wasn't the case at all. So this is a wide open space. I hope, I hope we can impact more people in ways that are, you know, that we know to be positive and make our mark in the space. And I mean, we'll see what happens.

I just don't think there's a lot of competition, I guess, maybe that's the case. I don't know. Not too exactly what it is. They've already, I mean, the third billion dollar company, they're not worried about going back and writing their programs to be more effective. It doesn't need to be more effective. It doesn't need to be more effective. It's like trying to convince chips of hoi or Oreo when some news comes out that cookies make you fat

and are bad for you to switching their recipe to healthier food or healthier cookies. If it ain't broken, don't fix it. Yeah, they're gonna laugh at you. Why don't, why? I don't care. You're right, you're right, because imagine if Beachbody came out with like a big press release and spent a lot of money on

The fact that they have new trainers Programming and writing the best most scientifically accurate, you know, in effective workouts They wouldn't make any more money. They wouldn't they wouldn't now waste more on making that happen They would now we try to consistently educate with our podcast which makes I think our programs possible because otherwise it would be very difficult to compete with good workout programming to with something like theirs which is a lot of flash and a lot of marketing. And so I guess to sum it up I'll say this excellent marketing, excellent packaging, a lot of fun, terrible workout programming. If you want long-term success, any trainer with experience

will tell you the exact same thing I'm saying. I'm not saying this because- And if you're doing it right now and you're listening, it's not like we're not trying to shame anybody like that. It's just you need to move out of it. Finish your program. There's other options as well. Move the fuck out of it. Move out of it. You dig the first step, which is you need to move out of it. No, you know. Finish your progress. There's other options. Move the fuck out of it. Yeah, move out of it.

You dig the first step, which is great, which is getting yourself exercising and moving and making better choices, which, you know, we commend you for doing that, but you know, evolve past that. Yep, get out of the processed food and move into your whole natural foods, which in this case would be real workout programming

designed by people who actually have trained lots and lots of people. Something that's going to give you long-term sustainable success that keeps in mind how the body adapts, understands how muscles actually build, understands how the body burns body fat, and understands how to make something so that it's actually sustainable and not just driven by intensity hype and the short lasting motivation. And with that, go to mindpumpfree.com, download our guides, they're all absolutely free. You can also find us on Instagram.

You can find Justin at Mind Pump Justin, me at Mind Pump Sal and Adam at Mind Pump Adam. 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 body, dramatically improve your health and energy, and maximize your overall performance, check out our discounted RGB Superbumble at MindPumpMedia.com. The RGB Superbumble includes maps and a ballad, maps for performance, and maps aesthetic.

Nine months of phased, expert exercise programming designed by Sal Adam and Justin to systematically transform the way your body looks, feels and performs. With detailed workout blueprints in over 200 videos, the RGB Superbundle is like having Sal Adam and Justin as your own personal trainer's butt at a fraction of the price. The RGB Superbundle has a full 30-day money-back guarantee, and you can get it now plus other valuable free resources at MindPumpMedia.com. If you enjoy this show, please share the love by leaving us a five-star rating and review on iTunes and by introducing MindPump to your friends and family. We thank you for your support, and until next time, this is MindPump.

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