Mind Pump: Raw Fitness Truth - 1281: Techniques to Bring Up Lagging Body Parts, Tips to Maximize Ab Development, Front Squats vs. Back Squats & MORE

Episode Date: April 29, 2020

In this episode of Quah (Q & A), Sal, Adam & Justin answer Pump Head questions about the benefit of doing extra reps on a smaller, less developed body part, relying on compound lifts like deadlifts and squats to work the core, whether the front squat is actually more beneficial than the back squat, and the hardest obstacles they had to overcome during their fitness journey. Weird Science with Sal. (5:47) Mind Pump Weekend Update. (8:38) Obesity, the most common comorbidity in COVID-19 patients in New York. (11:35) Why are hospitals laying people off during this pandemic? (12:43) COVID-19, the death of the gym industry? (14:53) False signaling with the Toilet Paper King, hustling gym equipment & MORE. (31:44) Happy Birthday to Felix Gray. (35:09) How Paleo Valley meat sticks have been a game-changer for Sal. (40:59) Mind Pump talks Politics. (42:45) #Quah question #1 – If my left bicep and shoulder are bigger than my right bicep and shoulder, does that mean I should be doing extra reps on the smaller, less developed arm? (47:21) #Quah question #2 – Do I have to hit abs directly for every full-body workout or can I rely on compound lifts like deadlifts and squats to work the core? And just work out my abs directly once a week? (54:26) #Quah question #3 - The front squat is now often regarded as more functional than the back squat. It doesn’t allow for as great of overload, but allows for a greater range of motion and is more quad focused, core and upper back demanding. Plus, if you deadlift the hamstring and glute emphasis is already there. Should the front squat take the pedestal from the back squat? (57:53) #Quah question #4 – What were the hardest obstacles you had to overcome during your fitness journey? (1:03:11) Related Links/Products Mentioned April Promotion: MAPS Prime/Prime Pro ½ off! **Code “PRIME50” at checkout** Special Promotion: MAPS Anywhere ½ off!! **Code “WHITE50” at checkout** Killer Whale vs. Jaws | National Geographic Study: High Blood Pressure, Obesity Are Most Common Comorbidities in COVID-19 Patients Why Hospitals Are Laying People Off Mind Pump #1280: COVID-19 – The Death of the Gym Industry? Visit Felix Gray for an exclusive offer for Mind Pump listeners! Visit Paleo Valley for an exclusive offer for Mind Pump listeners! **Code “Mindpump15” at checkout for 15% discount** Biden says he'd pick Michelle Obama as running mate 'in a heartbeat' The ONLY Way You Should Be Doing Dumbbell Bicep Curls! - Mind Pump TV Mind Pump Free Resources People Mentioned Jason Khalipa (@jasonkhalipa)  Instagram Red Dot Fitness (@red_dot_fitness)  Instagram  

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. Welcome to Mind Pump. This is the world's top fitness health and entertainment podcast. In this episode, we answer fitness and health questions asked by listeners like you. But we open the episode with introductory conversation where we talk about scientific studies, sometimes random

conversation and other times we mention our sponsors. So here's the breakdown of what happened in today's Mind Pump podcast episode. Here's the break. I open up the episode by talking about random fish news, science alert. Then we talk about how... We need a button for that. Obesity may be one of the worst things you can have if you get infected with the coronavirus, they're showing that that is one of the worst cold morbidities. Then we're talking about how hospitals are laying people off. That's right, with all of the stuff that's going on. That's interesting. They're not getting enough work. That's kind of crazy. Then we talked about the gym industry.

We recently did an episode where we interviewed industry leaders and asked them their opinion on the future of the gym industry. So we kind of went in on that topic. Then Justin brought up his interesting thoughts on gangs and social distancing. Then he's not really a gang anymore. Then he talked about the toilet paper king, Roll Exotic, is that right there?

Yeah, Roll Exotic, that's what we're calling them now. That's pretty good. Adam mentioned how Felix Gray, they are the company that makes the best looking blue light blocking glasses you'll find anywhere. It's their birthday. What does that mean for you? 15% off any products on their entire site.

So Felix Gray is known for having some of the best blue light blocking glasses, they look amazing and they never go on sale. So this is huge take advantage. Here's how you get the 15% off birthday sale from Felix Gray glasses. Just go to Felix Gray glasses, that's F-E-L-I-X-G-R-A-Y glasses.com, Forge Sashmime Pump.

Go there, you get free shipping, free returns, and of course 15% off to celebrate their birthday. Then I talked about how I'm eating tons of paleo valley grass fed meat sticks. Now I'm eating them right now because I'm at home and I'm trying to avoid eating all the processed food. Well meat sticks, you know, they're convenient, they have a long shelf life, they're grass fed, naturally fermented, low in calories, high in protein. It's a great snack

for the house right now. By the way, if you go to paleovali.com.forge-mindpump, that's P-A-L-E-O, valley.com.forge-mindpump and use the code mindpump15, that's the number 15, in the word mind pump, you get 15% off your first order, and then we got into politics a little bit and I talked about the Democrats, political, potential political strategy that I think could be a game changer.

Interesting. And then we got into the fitness questions. The first question, this person has unbalanced muscular development. So one arm is bigger than the other, and they want to know what the best strategy is to balance those out. The next question, this person does lots of squats

and deadlifts, which definitely worked the core. The core has to stabilize the body. So they want to know, should they even work their abs directly? Is that something that's even going to benefit them? The next question, this person says, look, the front squat is now often being regarded as more functional than the back squat. Does that mean I can just do front

squat? Should I avoid back squats now since I already deadlift? So that gets my glutes and hamstrings and I'm front squatting. So what's the deal? And the final question, this person wants to know what the hardest obstacles each of us have ever had to overcome in regards to fitness. So Justin tells his story, Adam tells his story, and then I tell my story. Also, this month, Maps Prime and Prime Pro are both 50% off by the way, as of the airing of this episode, you have 48 hours left to take advantage of this promotion. After two days, these programs will double in price. Now, Maps Prime is a phenomenal program to teach you how to set up your priming session based off of the way your body moves. There's an assessment tool in there. You take the test,

figure out what your imbalances are, design your own pre-workout priming session. Now, you can do 10 minutes of targeted priming before your workout to give you better movement, greater ranges of motion, more strength, reductions in injury, and just better results overall. Now, Prime Pro is all about correctional exercise. So this program, you go in there, you identify the joints you wanna work on,

areas you feel like your mobility can improve, areas that may have bothered you in the past with pain, and you target them with the Prime Pro exercises and exercise demo videos. Okay, so both are half off. Here's how you get the discount. Go to mapsfitnisproducts.com and use the code Prime50 for the discount. That's P-R-I-M-E-5-0, no space again. You only have two days left of this month

to take advantage of this promotion. Oh, yeah. Teacher time. And it's Teacher time. Oh, shit, don't you know it's my favorite time of the week. Oh, yeah. Did you see that come up? Didn't see that coming.

So we have three winners this week. One for iTunes, two for Facebook. The iTunes winner is Aristotle, Daffness Fitness. For Facebook, we have Kisha Watts and Mary Jorgensen. All three of you are winners. Send a name I just read to iTunes at mindpumpmedia.com, include your shirt size and your shipping address

and we'll get that shirt right out to you. Hey, I got some random science fish news for you guys. Sounds fishy, right? I was sitting at home and I was just, you know, I haven't done this in a long time. I said, love doing this where I would just get into rabbit holes and just learn random shit, you know? Yeah, I've been doing that a lot.

This is very fascinating. I did not know this. So you guys know great white sharks, right? Yeah, I've been doing that a lot. This is very fascinating. I did not know this. So you guys know great white sharks, right? Okay, I've heard of them. Now, great white sharks in my mind are like, they're like the lions of the ocean, like jaws. Ain't nobody fucking with them. They're the apex predators.

They're a freaking great white shark. How do you see them attack seals and like bust through the top of the water, like launch? Oh, they're like torpedoes. They're like missiles. They're frightening, frightening. Here's something very interesting. If great white sharks go to a hunting ground,

let's say there's a bunch of seals, and they're hunting the seals, and it's like amazing, there's so many seals and they're eating them. If orcas pass through that area, the great whites run away, they don't run this way. They swim away and they don't come back for months,

sometimes years, because they're terrified. The ultimate flash. They're terrified of killer whales. And then in 1997, this is the first time it was ever... The killer in their name. You do recognize. Who they got good PR.

That's what they do. What kind of name should we have? They do recognize. Yeah. They got good PR. Yeah. That's what they do. What kind of name should we have? Hey, they, they, in 1997, this is the first time this was ever filmed, they filmed Orcas attacking and killing, uh, killer whites, actually hunting them. And before that, they kind of speculated that this happened, but never saw it. Yeah. Here's what's even weirder.

So, you know what they do when they get to, they're the great white. Hmm. They, they attack them, they bite open their gut, then they crush them and squeeze the liver out, eat the liver and leave the carcass and swim away. So when they find empty, like liverless, great white carcasses, they know that it was killed by these bin here. It was a killer whale that did that. Wow. Tell me, that's not crazy. That is too crazy. Killer whales are like, they look like they're, you know. Let's killed by... He's been here. It was a killer whale that did that. Yeah. Tell me, it's not crazy.

It's not crazy. Killer whales are like, they look like they're, you know. What's sent you to the hospital? Down the heart hole. I have no idea. Were you watching? I think that's like five levels of rabbit holes. Yeah, see, because I knew that occasionally they'd run

into them and they would, you know, some of them would kill them, but I didn't know that they actively hunted them. They actively hunt them. And then because Orcas are, you know, from the dolphin family, they work together. So great white sharks are kind of loners, right? They don't really work together. Sometimes they fight each other for food.

Orcas swim and will trap food or push things up to shore so they can attack them. Yeah. Sharks are fucked. I didn't know that. I thought sharks were together too, no? No, not like some sharks might, but not the great ones. Not the great ones. When you're No, not like some sharks might, but not the great ones.

Not the great ones. When you're great, you're by yourself. Yeah, not the great ones. Isn't that crazy? Not just crazy. We're all, we think they're so cute and friendly. No, it's not the case. Deadly, deadly killers.

Anyway, how's you guys doing? It was good. Oh, you know, it's funny. So this new norm thing, right, with not being able to go places used to go, like my parents decided they would watch the kids for me. I'm like, oh, sweet. This is great. You know, the one family we've been interacting with, you know, I'm sure I'll get flacked for that. But whatever, my kids go to stay there overnight,

we get a date for one. So where do we go? We have no idea what we're gonna do. So we go get like some tacos and then we take it out to like Westcliff where there's a place where you could like watch the sunset and all this kind of stuff. You can't park anywhere. Everything's closed, you know, there's nowhere to go. So we found the spot that was like, I could pull off like the road that was just next

to the ocean, and we kind of were in somebody's driveway. And we just parked it there. You know, turn it down, we're listening to music. We're eating. I snuck some white claws. We're sitting there like drinking Allegedly, you know Drinking like looking out for cops and stuff. I felt like I was a fucking in junior high Yeah, but it was awesome. We had a great time. That's hilarious. Yeah, the windows all fogged up Is it people were driving by, we ducked down. You know what I'm saying?

Dude, have you ever get caught like that when you were a kid in the car? Yeah, I think it was, somebody was hot boxing, you know? Oh, dude, I was, it was obvious. I was in the car with my girlfriend at the time, and that's what you used to do when you were a kid. You had nowhere to go. You're not gonna go to a hotel room.

You both live with your parents. So it's like, where are you gonna go to get some privacy? So we had this, there was a specific parking lot that we used to go and park in, and we would do whatever hangout. And the windows would get all fogged up. Well, this is a true story. We're in the car and we're fooling around or whatever,

and I hear tap, tap, tap on the window. And I look up and it's no joke. It's a cop with a flashlight through the window. And we were in various degrees of undress and the car, super. That's happening to me too. Frightening, yeah. And embarrassing.

Hopefully they cop just let you guys go though, right? I mean, that's like, no, here's the pad part. You didn't mean me like, like walk and do the whole thing. Like, he was messing with me. Oh, they do it for you? Yeah. Like, it was like, like, like, walk and do the whole thing. Like, he was messing with me. Oh, they do it for you? Yeah. Yeah, like, it was like, I was like drinking. I wasn't even drinking.

We were just necking. You know what I mean? Wow, you did that too? Yeah, you're hell of white too. That's weird. I know. Just dated yourself, right? That's what I said, that's it.

Nobody goes out next. We were doing it. You imagine if Justin was ethnic, they would have beat their shit. That's terrible. Yeah, they would have. No, dude, what was weird with me beat the shit. That's terrible. Yeah they would have. No dude what was weird with me is the cop, not only he flashed our light through,

but you know we were like I said we were in various you know degrees of undress. Fucker stood there and watched us. Wow. You know that's it. Power move. No it's a creepy move dude. Like what are you doing bro?

Just looking in and my girlfriend is trying to get a close-up. I mean at that age though you're probably just happy to get a close-up. I mean, at that age though, you're probably just happy to get in trouble, like, whatever. No, it's true. He did. I should probably tell your parents, I'm like, please don't do that, dude.

Yeah. That would be the most embarrassing thing in the world. Yeah, it's a good time. If you're telling my parents, dude, you know what they found in New York City, the number one, I guess, coal morbidity, the number one reason that people would have fatal, you know, Would die from the coronavirus what it was? Diabetes? Obesity. And obesity-related diseases.

I saw that. So being overweight in that case, yeah, a parent and they're finding, they're mirroring that in other, in other studies. It's so interesting. It's like, and then you look at like where the culture the culture was leading into this whole crisis and everything of how we were just trying to justify obesity and the new... It's normal. It's healthy. The spin that we were trying to place on it, when in fact, it's not advantageous for you to stay off like diseases. No, no, it's again, it was the number one, you know, I guess common reason why a lot of people didn't make it, it was obesity and obesity related diseases like high blood pressure, diabetes.

So stay in shape, man, stay fit and keep yourself healthy. What's your guys' thoughts on how this plays out then? We just recently did an episode where we interviewed five different fitness leaders in their space and we talked about the potentials of it crippling a lot of businesses. Now, we didn't cover this, but I have something that I think as a theory will happen potentially is if we go back to normal and no businesses are affected that bad and everybody pretty much is okay, do you see that as a possibility is happening? Like for example, if more and more data keeps coming out and before we, and when it's all

said and done, we find out that the death rate is extremely lower than what we saw. In fact, it's no more dangerous than the flu. We know that it spreads faster, right? That's already been proven. It's been proven that it's more infectious and we don't have a vaccine. So therefore, it does make it scary for those reasons

and how overwhelming it can be for hospitals. But if these tests start coming back, like they are right now, and more and more people potentially already had it or asymptomatic, can be for hospitals. But if these tests start coming back, like they are right now, and more and more people potentially already had it or asymptomatic, do you think this potentially could be enough for people to go like, oh, this is no scarier than that? Well, I just have, I've been talking with Courtney and like some of her friends are actually are still working in the hospitals and in the environment. And they're reporting back that they, I mean, they're getting sent home.

They don't have enough, you know, patients coming in for them to even service. And so it's like, it's total misinformation that's getting flooded out there. Like, oh, we're just going to, you know, crowd the hospitals. Like, there's hospitals that are struggling to just make it, you know, business-wise. That's actually true. Some of the biggest layoffs are happening in hospitals right now. Because what you have is you have laws ordering non-emergency surgeries to be shut down. You have people who are not going to the doctor.

In fact, you know, strokes and heart attacks are down. You guys know that? Well. Which is weird. But people aren't going to the hospital, they're not going to their doctor, and so they are laying people off like crazy. Here's my opinion on what I think is going to happen with the gyms and what you said Adam. There's two main factors that can affect businesses.

One is consumer confidence, consumer fear. That's gonna play a role. Consumer fear is hard to predict. People are really easily scared, very, very difficult to unscare them. Once we're frightened, it's hard because now the game can be this, like, oh, not as many people died and then people can come back and say,

well, that's because we should everything down. That's because we weren't going anywhere, so you can kind of get in that spin. So there's that, but that's up to the consumer. We'll see how we all feel, and if we're scared, or not scared, or whatever. Here's the one that I think, the factor that I think has the biggest impact.

Legislation. Legislation, because the legislators are gonna be passing laws that require businesses to maintain distance between consumers that are going to maybe, maybe they'll pass laws that say you have to take people's temperatures, you can only allow this many people per square foot in your facility. And many gyms are based on a model of getting an X amount of people per square foot. Well, if legislation comes out and they say, you have to cut that in half, well, that's gonna kill that business.

The whole model was designed around something completely different. So the legislation is where I see the problems. Now, how long could legislation last? I don't know, three months, six months, until a vaccine is out, which would be even longer. But let's just say three months. Let's say for the, three months, six months, you know, until a vaccine is out, which would be even longer. But let's just say three months. Let's say for the next three months, you've got to make a third of your income after being shut down for two months.

How many fitness companies do you know that could survive that? No, I agree with you. I think that's tough. I think that's what we're, it's going to be, that part is going to be scary. Imagine how frustrating on for a small box owner that owner that like a crossfit or an orange theory, how frustrating that is, if even if the stats come out and people are like, oh, I'm no longer afraid anymore, but it doesn't matter because they've already said,

listen, until we get the vaccine or until we know for sure, these are the precautions. And that's why I liked that we did that episode because of all the different industries that are gonna be impacted. Once the fear goes away, I can't see anybody being more impacted than Jim's. Do you?

Jim, I would have thought restaurants would be up there too, right? I disagree with that now. Like, we're up in, we're staying up at the sanctuary where I'd love to go out by the beach right now, right? And we ordered a curbside at the Fisherman's Grotto, my favorite place of Fisherman's Wharf up there. And the kid runs up and he's got a mask on and everything, and he got gloves and delivers it into my, in the passenger side of my car and everything. And I asked him, I said, hey, so how's business, how you guys doing?

He goes, you know, we're doing okay, actually, a lot of people are, and by the way, they are offering people that did curbside, 25% off of their bill. So it's even a better deal for us to get food from them. And he goes, I guess city officials are there already talking about what it's going to look like in their in least in their county. The restaurants are looking to open up next

month, but it'll be you're allowed half the tables. So half the tables will serve any says that they they they have now made this model work so well that it'll probably be a model they keep forever where you just do curbside like that and come pick the food up, which they weren't doing before. So I think a lot of restaurants that have pivoted really quick have found that they're having a lot of success with this, and they might be okay. I've noticed the same thing. I was talking to one of my favorite restaurants about that, and they converted to GrubHub and like all these like food service deliveries that they had like a specific part of the backdoor open for them. And so they were like in and out like all day long just getting food and driving out.

And then in the front you could come in and you know pick up and do curbside with that. But it's still a pivot. But it's yeah. But I mean, they've been able to like lessen the blow versus like a gym has not been able to just slightly, you know, add rev it like the whole virtual model for a commercial gym is, I mean, come on. No, no, there's no doubt that the service industry, travel industry and the fitness industry,

the gym industry will be hardest, but I think the gym industry will be among the hardest hit of all of those. Again, because their models are so dependent on something that will probably be made impossible to do with legislation. And I'll tell you what, look, I grew up in gyms, okay. I became a member of a gym at the age of 15.

I have not, not stepped foot in a gym for longer than a few weeks since, since the age of 15. So I've been there for decades, you know, working in them professionally, managing locations. I have never seen some of the current trends that I'm seeing. Here's some, here's one example. I'm getting no joke. At least 10, if not more, DMs a day of people who have made their own home gym equipment. Yeah. Made it. Either they made it with iron or wood or and why are they doing this? Because at home gym equipment is so high in demand right now, you can't find any and so people are building.

I've did two polls on my stories and my stories get a decent amount of views they get. So it doesn't represent everybody, but I'm getting 16 to 20,000 views on those things. And I did two polls. One of them was would you be willing to pay double or triple your monthly dues to continue going to the gym because

20% that 80% said no and and and by the way my audience is skews hardcore people who follow me are really exactly like their real gym goers. Yeah, and 80% of them said no And you know what the comments were it's not worth it. I'm just gonna work out at home I'm gonna buy gym equipment and stay there. I agree. I found that interesting too, because I posted the little teaser of the episode we did. You know, and I got a couple of people on there.

Oh, I don't care what you guys say. As soon as the Jim's going to... Do you want? Yeah, day one, I'm back there. I'm like, okay, that's great. But it's not about you. And you're... Are you willing to pay twice or three times more?

Yeah, but even then, again, what depends on what your, your Jim is forced to do. Like, that's great. Are you willing to pay twice or three times more? Yeah, but even then, again, what depends on what your gym is forced to do. Like, that's great. You are one of the, you know, thousands, let's say, that agree, like, hey, day one, I'm back in there. I'm not afraid of what's going on. So I'm going to go in there.

It doesn't even matter what you think if they don't allow you, if they don't allow enough people, that it's just a numbers game. It's like, listen, if you take two thirds of anybody's fitness business, I don't know, we've already talked about this. Fitness is not, it's not numbers game. It's like, listen, if you take two thirds of anybody's fitness business, I don't know, we've already talked about this. Fitness is not, it's not like finances. There's not huge margins.

You own a gym, even a well oiled machine is not cranking out huge revenue numbers. And if they are, you're an anomaly, right? For the most part, majority of people that are running these businesses, it's a passion. It's costly too. You love to do it because you love having a gym and hey, you found a way to make decent money doing it. If you told most of those people that you now don't have the ability to make two-thirds the income,

boy, that's going to be crippling for a lot more people than you think. A lot of gyms are heavily leveraged. Very few gyms own their equipment outright. Most of them lease a lot of the equipment, which makes sense because you have a lot of people using it. And when you lease equipment, you can switch it out, keep things new. So they've got high bills, big footprints, so there's a high rent, you have a staff

that you have to pay. It's just, and here's the thing, if Jim's closed down, it will be more because of the legislators and regulations, and less because of consumer, because of consumers. I'm gonna tell you that straight up, right now, it's the legislation and the laws and the regulations that will cripple the gym industry. It's not gonna be the consumers.

The consumers can decide for themselves how they wanna show up, how they wanna work out. I'm already annoyed with this whole mask thing, man. It's everywhere now, right? You have to get into just like a convenious story, you have to wear it. I borrowed my dad's a hanker chief, So I have to look like a gang banger. Yeah, that's red, dude.

So I'm like going into the store and I was like, ah, the bandito is here, you know? I thought that was so crazy to me that that makes you feel more comfortable. I totally felt like a bank robber going in there. And then it got me to think, I'm like, wait a minute, like what about actual gang bangers? You know, are they like practicing social distance? Like what does that even look like? Is it really a gang at that point or is it just a plethora of people? We are a plethora. Yeah, stay at home.

Okay. No, it's, it is kind of, look, I was also thinking about, you know, liability waivers. Like when you walk into a gym and you sign a liability where are they going to put on there, increased risk of COVID for coming in, or liability waiver is going to change. Oh, I'm sure. And again, it's about the environment. Here's why I think the restaurant industry, I also going to suffer heavily.

Now, I'm sure they can pivot, like you said, Adam. But I think they're going to suffer because just like the gym, you go to a restaurant and a big part and restaurant owners know this. What makes a restaurant successful? What do they call it, the ambiance, right? It's the experience. What if you go in there, waiters have masks on,

disposable menus, you're sitting far away from everybody, you've got this kind of weird, like. I don't know, I'm on the fence on that one because I also think that we are in the middle right now of an explosion of a And in totally new market that didn't exist a decade ago and that is the door dashes the grub hubs that Eats like that didn't exist a decade ago and that is exploding But it's still and it hasn't hit the peak yet because I still have lots of family and friends that don't use those services because they've never

Done it before and they don't realize how convenient and nice it is now. I love it But it even even me I was I remember I was eating at rest, I used to eat at this breakfast spot every single morning, right? And I remember when DoorDash first came on the scene before even knew it it was, and I'd see I'd be seeing there, and then also not to know where I've been here for years, right? Same spot, everything. Also, and I start seeing that these kids coming in wearing this red shirt all the time, and they're picking, I remember asking the owners, they're like, oh yeah, that's DoorDash,

that's a new service, and they explained it to me. I'm like, oh, that's brilliant. And it must have been probably a year or so that was there before I even decided, let me try this and see how it is. Now I live on it. I love it and use it all the time. I think there's actually a ton of people

that have been introduced to that, that have never been introduced to that before, and if businesses have now pivoted to be able to offer that service, it may be enough to supplement them to continue to be okay and survive. And then the future might look like for them to downsize their restaurant. Maybe now we don't have a restaurant that's massive

and this is- They just have a kitchen. Right, they have mostly a kitchen, and they cater more than that. It's almost like a drive-through just for the door, the door dash people, and then you can come in the front, right. So, totally, it's gonna be a kitchen.

I find what Jason Kalipa said the most interesting. Like, when we, some of the points he made, I thought were really, really good. And one of the ones that, you know, like, there's a lot of gyms right now that out of desperation and necessity have pivoted to virtual. Like, we've got to figure something out.

And they all seem to do that. Some of them offered it as a free service just to stay in touch with their members. Some of them completely pivoted into a paid service that way. And when he made the point about being very careful of losing your identity and going all, you know, or having one foot in the brick and mortar and one foot in the virtual, that is a really good point. And it's one that we can speak to and have intimate knowledge of all three of us of Fran and Ben and Brick and Mortar for more than a decade. And now we've got over five years of experience

of a complete virtual business. And one thing I think we can all agree on is they are total different monsters. Completely animals. Yes, and so you may be finding that you're okay and you're surviving by pivoting the virtual right now because it's kind of a Weird time and so it's kind of getting by but if you think you're now going to become this virtual business and that's a main strength There's other things you need to be thinking about that like building a serious online presence that maybe you don't really have and that

We know how long that takes it takes a long time to do that Yeah, I think I don't think that demand again, and here's something that the fitness industry may use to their advantage. I just talked about how obesity was the number one risk factor for severe complications from COVID. Well, that may be something that the fitness industry and the gym industry uses to lobby to lawmakers and to also use as a selling point,

like, hey, one thing that we've noticed is that, people who are fit and get sick are far less likely to have severe complications and die and have all, so that may be one way to do it, but here's what I think. I don't think people will stop working out. I wanna be very clear. I just think that their behaviors are going to change.

I think people are going to probably want to work out more at home, more stuff outdoors. The people who are really hardcore fitness fanatics may either really well equip their home gyms or maybe the ones willing to pay the high dollar amount to go work out at a gym, but those gyms business models did not, they weren't

built on those kind of people. They were built on, I definitely see those streaming services in the forefront, like really taken off, like these classes and, you know, Peloton was a good one, but like also, I mean, there's a few different examples of that, but, you know, that sort of live feel where you can connect and have community with people still somehow, but like through virtual means. But again, it's never gonna really replace the same thing. So it may be just a bubble, a bubble where people aren't comfortable yet, you know, we're gonna go in this direction for a while, and then maybe the dust settles,

it comes back. You had to factor in too how many people, so we said what, 676% increase in gym equipment at home gym equipment, there's going to be a good majority of people that just invested $1,000 on a squat rack and whatever a whole setup. And just that in itself is enough to keep you from going back. Maybe I want to go back or maybe I may even think about it at one point, but right now it's like I just spent all of your invested now.

Yeah. You want to hear little, some alarming comments I was getting. These are from hardcore gym enthusiasts who you would think would be like, no man, I'm gonna pay, I'm gonna go to the gym, I'm gonna support them no matter what. I got messages from them, they're like,

well, I'm gonna wait till these gyms liquidate, I'm gonna buy their equipment. That's, I got a lot of those messages. So, you know, people will still, and here's the thing, if you own it, there's gonna be a lot of that. If you, you know, people will still, here's the thing. If you own a gem, and this is something that I learned oning a personal training studio versus managing Big Box Gems, the more service you provide,

the more close contact you have with individual members, the more you know their name, they know your name, the more loyal they're gonna be. The Big Box GEM model is hard to big box gym model is hard to do that. It's very hard to do that. Now I tried to do that. I was on the workout floor all the time as a general manager trying to know people.

We had so many people that it's impossible for me to be like that with everyone. And many managers in these big box gyms are encouraged not to do that. They're encouraged to stay in their office, look at the paperwork and you know, sales staffs are being dwindled. I mean the fitness, the big box gym industry, we know this,

went from trying to be more service to trying to be as cheap as possible, and that happened over a course of a couple decades. That means you have zero loyalty. You have no loyalty. So when you double the prices, people are like, yeah, whatever. I mean, how telling was it when we talked to Scott, who has a personal training studio here in San Jose,

Red Dot Fitness, right, high service, high dollar, we asked them how many members have you lost? Six, six total members. And that's because he built that loyalty because of the high service. They're bought in. Totally, exactly. So it'll be, I don't know, it'll be really, really,

here look, the regulators are the ones I'm worried about because they pass broad laws and they say, and they just, with one swipe of the pen and they destroy a lot of businesses, what I wish they did is they gave recommendations and they left it to the consumer to go in and decide for themselves, does this feel safe, does it not feel safe, it's still going to get hurt, but the regulations are going to screw people, I'll give you an example of what I mean. So they obviously pass this huge, you know, what they'll call relief stimulus bill, right? So money to people and we need to help people.

Anytime you see politicians on both sides of the aisle, totally agree on something, you know you're about to get something that's going to screw a lot of people. And that's what happened. So they pass a lot of stuff. You want to know what's happening right now? Small businesses are in a very strange conundrum because their employees, some of these small businesses are able to maintain their businesses and pay their employees, but their employees are begging to be laid off because their unemployment is more than they're getting paid.

And so now the employer, and this is actually a big problem right now, a lot of these employers are in a weird situation. Do I lay them off so that they can make more money? This is actually a big problem right now. A lot of these employers are in a weird situation. Do I lay them off so that they can make more money? Because I care about them, but then they're not working for me and I can't maintain what little business I have. And that's because of these big wide regulations where they don't nest, again, for a lot of people they're gonna be detrimental.

Now, you guys still seeing people like hoard toilet paper and do crazy stuff where you guys are at. Oh my God, there's this guy, right? We call him the toilet paper king of our neighborhood. Right, we were on a walk and we've been doing this a lot. Like the our entire community, like we're walking around all these different houses,

these different streets. And we go buy this guy's house and he has the balls to have his garage door all the way open. So you can like, I mean, it's very visible. You see like the stock pile right in your face. There was like 10, 10 if not 12 of the Costco size,

like amounts of toilet paper just stacked in the corner right there as we're walking by. And it's funny, because my kids have no filter. And so they see, like, hey, why'd you bother toilet paper? Like they're yelling at the guy

and I'm like, hey, calm down. Like, obviously this guy is worried. You know that he's not gonna be able to shit comfortably. Shame him. Yeah. That's what I'm saying.

Yeah, they were shaming him the whole time, but yeah, it was just funny. It's like, it's like, dude, okay, first of all, you're gonna go in there, you're gonna take all the toilet paper, but now you're gonna show it off like, you know, like, hey, like this is my status. Instead, yeah. Back in the day, it was, the garage was rolled up

and there was like a Ferrari, right? Exactly. No, it's like, oh my gosh. Yeah, you just flaunting it. Like, you know, it's all flossy. 10 pallets of a, I wonder how much that throws off like the companies that produce it. Like, cause there's not, you're right,

they might be getting so much demand from idiots like him. Right, cause there's not, there's not really, yeah, it's kind of a false signal, right? All of a sudden they're having to produce so much more, but then, then what happens when this all slows down and everybody's like, it wasn't even scarce. It's just that people asked those like that, just started doing that.

There was some guy that tried to return something like 10 of those big packs to Costco, tried to return them, and they told them to fuck off. Oh really? Yeah, because again, he was being a jerk, they tried to return it. I read this in an article, and the employees were super pissed,

like, oh, now you want your money back? You keep all that fucking toilet paper. You fuck. That's all your stuff with it. That's all yours now. I was thinking about that with, because I have a garage with some gym equipment and I was thinking, I wonder if this is now something

I gotta be careful if somebody won't wanna steal, because the value of certain things has changed so much. Somebody was actually selling in our, our form wasn't doing this, but they posted this because they thought it was ridiculous. Somebody posted a gym setup, squat rack, bench, barbell, dumbbells, $8,000. It was on like a Craigslist side or something.

They're like, this guy wins for the biggest balls. I wonder if he would get, I bet he gets it. I don't know, man. There's definitely got gotta be some people that have lots of money and the $8,000 ain't a big deal to them that once, that doesn't have gym access, I would assume. Mike, I know when it's cheap,

there's a lot of flipping going on with equipment right now. That's another way to hustle some money. Mike, my cousin bought two stands, not even a squat rack that just the little, you know, stands that you could put a barbell on. So it's not even a squat rack. A barbell and not even like a legit that just the little, you know, stands that you could put a barbell on. So it's not even a squat rack. A barbell and not even like a legit awesome barbell, just you're running the middle barbell.

Regular weights, they're not the greatest, they're iron or whatever, not a ton, two adjustable dumbbells. That's all she bought. Yeah, thousand bucks. Wow. Thousand bucks. And that was new, it wasn't even used.

That wasn't even on the second market. Pricey. And that's because the demand has gone through the roof or whatever. Yeah, anyway. Speaking of prices and stuff, I get message, I want to say this on the podcast, because I get messages all the time about the Felix Ray,

Blue Blocker glasses and how they never... It's their birthday, you know? Go on sale? Yeah. It's their birthday. That's what I was gonna say, 15% of it. Today? Yeah, all right.

Their stuff never goes on sale. There's such high quality, but right now, it's 15% off because of the big sale that's going on for the birthday. I just had an interview that I did about these guys are interviewing, or the network they're trying to build is around high performing executives, and they were asking about my thoughts

on high performance supplements and things like new tropics, stuff like that. And I said, you know what's funny is that there's so much marketing and stuff that's behind things like that. A lot of that BS has been sold on a lot of these people for a very long time. And I said, you know the irony of that is we all have routines. We all have this morning routine where we get up, we brush our teeth, you have breakfast, you read your Wall Street Journal, whatever it is. And you poop whatever starts today.

I said, how many people, including high performing executives, do you know that have a legitimate, like get ready for bed routine? I don't know any. In fact, most of the people that I trained are the deli, that are considered. Our high performing executives are the ones most guilty of still on their phone

or their laptop and bed and doing things like that. And I was explaining them, instead of getting that person on supplements, they would be far better in spending $200, $300 on supplements every single month. They'd be far better in investing in something that helps them with their night routine and get it together.

And I was explaining some of the things that I do personally that have been game changer and one of the things I brought up is, you know, I said, I would never do it done this in the past. And I thought they were dorky before, but blue blocker glasses. And it's not just doing the glasses. It's also, it's just making a routine that, hey, when the sun goes down, I put my glasses on. I also try and bring down all the light, fluorescent lights in my house.

And just doing that is far more beneficial than spending hundreds of dollars on performance supplements every single month. It's backed by many studies too. They show my latonin production goes up, deep sleep improves. But I mean, it makes perfect sense. Your brain and your body evolved in an environment where the sun set and then went down. So it went from bright light to darker, darker, darker, darker, and then dark. And your brain actually adjusts accordingly. So when you're on your electronics or you're under bright lights and then you just hit the pillow and close your eyes. Carrying special light all day long. Yeah, and then you close your eyes and you expect yourself to get this great sleep. It

takes like an hour or two for your brain and body to even register that. It's time to go to sleep. I was talking to my brother-in-law about a lot of these, these corporations like Apple, Google, Facebook and just about their work environment. And like, I'm like, oh my god. Like, how's this all going to change or a lot of the employees going to stay at home now because of all this stuff that's going on? And they found that they're productive,

but he said that they're productive, but they're not productive in a cohesive way where normally they're in the workspace so that way they can directly communicate with each other so they can keep the projects moving that they're individual working on. So to be able to kind of piece it all together, they still need to be in close proximity. So he's saying that they're individual working on. So, to be able to kind of piece it all together, they still need to be in close proximity.

So, he's saying that they're actually gonna be coming back in a lot more to the workspace, but they're having spread out. And also, there's all these like new parameters where they're gonna have like ionized filtration systems and UV filtration systems to kill the diseases and bacteria within that. And I was like, oh, my God, all that. and UV filtration system to kill the diseases and bacteria within that.

And I was like, oh my God, all that. And then also, you know, I'm like, dude, I tried to tell them about blue blockers and like how that should be like a standard for employees as they come back. And they're on there already. I'm like, surprise they haven't like instituted that yet. Well, that's happening.

You know, it's funny though, you say that is that Facebook is actually the opposite They're looking to actually get rid of some of their their locations because they're having so much success with everybody working at home Yeah, so I have it I guess when I thought but he said the opposite yeah I have a niece and she's it she works for Facebook and she's her her hub is in New York And they're actually talking about just keeping them all home till the rest of the year Doesn't matter what what they legislate or anything like that. Just like they're having so much success with everybody working remotely

anyways. And they're like, why risk it? And then what they might do is actually downsize some of their facilities. It's pretty interesting what you've seen with things like that. I think in many ways life will never be the same again. And I don't mean that in a bad way. In fact, I think what we're going to find is certain industries are going to realize that they could do business in a more efficient effective way. One of them is what you just said, Adam, a lot of companies are starting to realize that, hey, you know what, a large segment of our workforce can work from home or more productive, it saves us money. They prefer it because they like to be at home. Now, that's going to change some

interesting behaviors. Are people going to move further away from work hubs? Not worrying about long commute. How is that gonna change their work life balance? That'll be interesting, but I do think that there'll be some permanent changes there. I think education is gonna change also permanently. I see a lot of colleges are staying closed to the fall

and are only offering online courses. When you're doing everything online, why would you spend $100,000 on your private college tuition when it's all just coming online anyway? And why would I spend so much money on a book when I'm downloading it this way? Anyway, I think it'll open the door for less expensive, efficient,

sources of education, I really do. So I think that's open the door for less expensive, efficient, you know, sources of education, I really do. So I think that's gonna change permanently. And then the home delivery with food. I think you, I don't think it'll be maybe as much as it is now, but it'll be more than it would have been. Have this whole situation. Oh, it increases substantially. Speaking of food, I finally got a grip

on the process, food consumption. So hard when you're stuck at home, you don't want to go grocery shopping. And you have, you know, you buy all of a sudden, the paleo meat sticks are game changer. Like just having them in the house makes it totally better than grabbing something else. And I like it because especially, you know,

even on the kid level, like just having things available around for snacks and stuff that aren't chips and all the regular kind of, like those bars and all these e-bars and all this kind of stuff. Having those around, I just feel better about them eating those. You guys, either one of you guys look up, because I know on the actual beef stick, it doesn't actually have the macro breakdown. Did you guys figure out, I know it's like 70 calories a stick, but what's the protein intake on it? It's six grams per stick, I know it's like 70 calories a stick, but what's the protein intake on it?

It's six, six grams per stick. I think it's how many grams of fat is like two grams of fat? Two grams of fat. Oh, I believe. No carbs or whatever. It's naturally fermented, you know, interesting that is. So they don't use a G.M.O. corn. I think it's called citric acid. I can't remember what it was to ferment. It's a natural fermented process, which means their beef sticks actually have healthy probiotics. Oh nice. Actually, five grams of fat. Five grams of fat, sorry.

So they actually have healthy probiotics in them. So what you may find is, you know, that these meat sticks are feel better on your gut than other types of, you know, long shelf life type of meat or whatever. That's really good though. Only 70 calories of stick, that's not bad at all. And still getting six grams of food. You have three of those, it's life type of meat or whatever. That's really good though. Only 70 calories of stick. That's not bad at all. No. And still getting six grams of protein. You have three of those.

It's not a big deal at all. The 200 something calories and then getting like 20 grams of protein. That's nice. And they taste good, but it's not like the kind of where you eat and then you start to mindlessly, you know what I mean? You end up eating 500 calories of lace potato chips like I did. You get so much satiated that way. Dude, so politics, I know Doug loves it when I bring up politics. But I'm not going to, this is not that squeezing it in here. This is not that controversial, Doug. I, you know, I've commented on how I think it's going to be very difficult, and I don't have a horse on this race, but I don't think it's going to be difficult to be

Trump with what the Democrats had on their side or whatever i did not consider the following strategy which i think is the smartest if they can make this happen this is the smartest uh... political strategy that the democrats could bring and i think it would pose as a park or threat what's that against trump by den having michelle obama as his vice president now i is that? I heard rumors of that and I haven't seen anything confirmed on that. It has not been confirmed, but Biden said he would love it.

They wouldn't announce it until the perfect moment. So even if they did agree, one thing that they tend to do is they say, was it, was it, was it, was it, was it, was it, was it, was it Bernie Sanders that Obama didn't co-sign for? Did he co-sign for Biden? Well, Biden was his VP. Yeah. Okay't cosine for? Did he cosine for Biden? Well, Biden was his VP. Yeah. Okay. So obviously he's pretty sure he cosine.

Yeah. So, but Biden with him, so with Michelle Obama, that would be such a hard ticket to be because she's a powerful force. She's super loved. Her as the VP means her husband is now kind of in the White House. And people loved the Obama Biden administration, which would still be Obama Biden or Biden Obama administration. And as much as Biden, you know, you know, as bubbles and whatever, Michelle is very tight with us.

She gives articulate points a lot better for sure. Yeah, the only person who does better on the stage is her husband. The only thing they'd come at her with is her experience, right, with being a politician. That's why I should be as a VP. It would be perfect. Politic, from the political strategist to me is like, oh my gosh, that would be the best. Now, at what point do we have to hear, like, when will this be announced if it is going to happen?

I don't know when they announce the VP picks, but one thing that they tend to do is they say things like We would love for this to happen or oh, yeah, that might be a good idea and then test To see what the response is to help them make their decision So but we're not going to find that. That's kind of a wild card. I do see that actually is being interesting Oh, it would be very interesting. And I think if that happened, then it would be a 50-50 shot. I think we'd see the election cycle of the, of the major in the idol.

You say that about Trump, but I mean, with what worries me for him, and again, I'm like you, I don't have a dog in this fight, but what about unemployment right now? Is an unemployment just like crazy through the roof right now? Yeah, but that's the thing. It's gonna be blamed on the virus.

Does that matter? Does that matter? Yes, it does. Really? It does. As long as he looks like, statistically speaking, that's not true, because anytime that you've had,

it doesn't matter what the reason is or is not. If unemployment is at record highs, that person never gets really sick. If it does matter, the reason matters big time. If you if they if the reason of the unemployment is blamed on the person in office, it kills them. If it's blamed on something outside of their control and that person looks like they led with confidence during that,

then they'll be trusted and they'll be voted. Yeah, I thought that's untrue. I thought anytime that we've had the highest numbers and unemployment always the president's not, no matter what it is, hasn't been reelected. Well, again, name one time where we had something completely not due to anything that has to do with economics cause unemployment.

I can't think of any time, right? Whether it was the Great Depression or the Great Recession that could very easily get put and blamed on legislators and politicians, coronavirus is a virus. Now, if Trump's approach to the coronavirus gets painted as a terrible one, which is Ben.

Well, they try. That's the thing, but that's a tough one. It's murky. That's a really, really tough one. Yeah, I'm telling you, they're best bet, man. If they get Michelle as Biden's running mate, that'll's a really really tough one. Yeah, I'm telling you they're best bet man If they get Michelle as Biden's running mate, that'll be their best bet by far otherwise I don't see them coming close This quas brought to you by organify

For those days you fall short on getting your organic veggies or whole food nutrition Organify fills the gap with laboratory tested certified organic superfoods to help give your health a performance the added edge. Try Organified Totally Risk-Free for 60 Days by going to Organified.com. That's O-R-G-A-N-I-F-I.com and use a coupon code MindPump for 20% off at checkout. First question is from Haley Phillips 34. If my left bicep and shoulder are bigger than my right bicep and shoulder,

does that mean I should do extra reps on the smaller, less developed arm? So there's two strategies when trying to bring up symmetry. Okay, one is in my experience far better than the other. Now one is to maintain your current level of training and everything for the more developed side and just try to make the underdeveloped side develop faster, even faster than it has been. The other strategy is to use the smaller side and weaker side as a guide, so you slow down the development from the dominant side to allow the smaller

side to catch up. Now, the first option sounds more appealing to people because they don't want to slow any gains down, right? So they know, no, no, no. I want to keep everything growing at the same pace. I just want to make the weaker smaller side grow faster. But the truth is that almost never works. I've almost never seen that balance someone out.

The only strategy I've ever really seen be effective is where you slow down the progress from the bigger side by using the smaller side as a guide. So one way to do that would be, let's say one shoulder stronger than the other, I do my sets with my weaker side first. And however many reps I could do with that, I do that with the stronger side,

even if I could do more, even if I could do more with the stronger side. I agree with that, but there's part of this, there's a question that's missing from this question, and that's why, right? So, and I think that's the mistake that a lot of people make in this situation.

There's normally a really good reason why there's that much discrepancy. So, and this was a mistake that I think I made as a young trainer early on was just trying to solve the, oh, this is bigger. So, and what's outside I think is, is the answer. I think that going unilateral type of movements, focus on the weaker side first, as soon as your form starts to break down, you stop it right there, and then you mirror that with a dominant side, even if you can do two or three more sets, and eventually it'll catch

up. But there normally is a reason why you have you have that. And this one in particular, like when you have the shoulder and the bicep dominant, I had this and I can't help but think that this person is, that's their dominant side is that way. And it's rolled forward, right? So if you have, like I had where my, my left shoulder was rolled forward just and it's like just barely the average I wouldn't be able to tell this. But it was just enough rolled forward more than the other side. So then every time that I did these curls, my my front dealt and my bicep was or my front

dealt was taking over the load and then it's already a dominant strong side because it's my dominant side that I used to play sports and everything else. And so and then you go to do, you know, barbell exercises where both arms are working at the same time, and the dominant side just takes over the movement. You've got to address the breakdown in the mechanics and the posture, right? So, and that's, that was really the motivation behind Maps Prime is you have that assessment test that's in there to see how your mechanics are and how your movement is, and then if it's broken down anywhere, what

exercises you should do to prime and address that. And so, to me, you also need to do whatever is necessary before the workout to fix your posture. And a good video to reference is the Bicep curl one that I did on our YouTube channel. And this is part of the reason why I talked about the pulling the shoulders back and doing the split stance thing is because it is. It's very common with people that are learning and this is not talking about advanced people,

everybody else general population. When they do a bicep curl with both arms like doing a camber curl or a straight bar curl, they end up cheating one side more than the other. And so addressing the breakdown and the form and technique and using something like the prime or the prime pro compasses and tests in there, that in my opinion, has to be done first before any of this. And then you take the advice that you just gave sound

go that way. Yeah, I think it's interesting to think about. I definitely agree with, you know, focusing on, you know, bringing it up, but also like doing as many reps as you can and then kind of stopping with your dominant arm. But what about, you know, the lifestyle implications in terms of like then prioritizing certain movements that aren't super skilled movements, but they're just everyday things that you're constantly focused on, like using more of your left arm,

like just picking things up, constantly opening things, like grabbing things, just doing, just being a lot more mindful of like using your left arm to then kind of like reconnect and get that portion of it, because you know, a lot of it is just a loss of connection, a loss of function that may prohibit you from, you know, using it within a workout. Now, I think that's good advice, but the truth is nobody fucking does that. Nobody's gonna do it, but it'd be interesting if they did like an experiment.

Oh, it is. It's good advice. It's good advice, because if you were to do that, I think that in itself would already help and make a difference. The reality of it is nobody's gonna do that. Nobody's gonna start brushing their teeth of the opposite hand, eating with the opposite hand, combing their hair with the opposite hand, picking groceries up with the less dominant.

Unfortunately, we're not that aware. We have so many other things that we need to be more aware of before we even get to that level where we're being that aware of what we're doing. So, to me, more unilateral work is in hand. But addressing it, this is why those programs were designed was to help people try and troubleshoot and figure out, why am I not moving properly? Why is one side developing more than other?

There's a root cause of this. I'm, we're speculating right now because we're on a podcast and I can't see the person, but if they were in front of me, that would be my job as a coach is to figure out, why is there an imbalance here? Where is the breakdown and communication in their body and then help them address that? And they're also highlights like,

how much do you want it to change, right? So if you're not willing to do that, like for me, like I broke my arm twice the same year, my right arm, I had to learn everything with my left arm. And that's something that like totally transformed like the way that I do things, you know, in terms of like being able to activate and like, like actively use both arms, like I just do that all the time. Yeah, one of the most, uh, imbalanced, you know, from right to left, because there's everybody, most people are going to have a little bit of a discrepancy, uh, between the right to left. Because everybody, most people are gonna have a little bit

of a discrepancy between the right and left side. But man, I trained one kid who was a pitcher for most of his life in baseball, like as a kid, growing up, this kid was just, and he could throw heat. I mean, in high school, he was hitting almost 90 miles an hour. I mean, just incredible. But when I trained him, his body was morphed and twisted into this picture. His right arm was way more developed, his strength and his right, it was like two, it was

like you took two separate people and cut them in half and then glued them together. And that was all because of what Justin's talking about, just using one side over and over and over again. It's pretty crazy. Next question is from Donovan Kirkpatrick. Do I have to hit abs directly for every full body workout? Or can I rely on compound lifts like dead lifts and squats to work the core? And just work out my abs directly once a week.

Well, you're an adult, you can do whatever you want. That's it. Can I please? You can literally do whatever you want. But you know, okay, please? Yeah, you can literally, you can do whatever you want. But you know, okay, look, here's the thing with deadlifts and squats. This is where the confusion comes from when people are like, it works your core and then they have studies that show that when you squat and deadlift, that there's all this, you know, muscle activation in the core.

Okay, that's true. Your core is very active when you're doing a heavy exercise that's standing because your core has to Stabilize your body, but there's also specificity and how muscles Activate and work and how their strength is expressed. Okay, so if your core gets really really good at stabilizing you for deadlifts and squats That's probably going to come from deadlifts and squats, but your core might not be strong moving through full ranges of motion, like a full sit up or a crunch.

It's totally different. Now there's some carryover, so you'll be better than somebody who does nothing at all, but you're not developing the muscle through. You're just highlighting one function. Isometrics. Yeah, that's it. It's just like,

imagine if you only did isometrics for your biceps. Right. Only did isometrics for your chest. Like, what's great and why there's studies and why people, why this is even a conversation is because there is a lot to support. There's a lot of value in that.

That's one of the great benefits of heavy deadlifting and heavy squatting is it's incredible for isometrics for your abs. To stabilize your core with two, three, four hundred pounds on your back takes a lot of isolation strength. But there's two other parts there. There's the concentric and eccentric portion of the exercise that's completely being neglected.

So it would be like only doing isometrics for all the other parts of your body and neglecting the centric and concentric portion of every other size. It's not that it's bad. It's not that it doesn't get some work. Your abs are getting some work. And I tell you what, it's better than nothing. The guy who you're the guy or girl who squats heavy

and deadlifts heavy is better off than someone who does no exercise for their abs, right? So that person is better off than that, but you are missing out on two other parts that are extremely beneficial. Yeah, this myth, or I don't want to say myth, but this idea really came from the the power lifter segment of the the lifting community because they didn't want to do it. They don't want to do it. They don't care. Typically, they don't have abs anyway, or they're not supposed to have abs. You know, when you're a power lifter, you're not getting judged on how you look. It's about how

much weight you can lift. So a lot of them don't give a shit about looking really great in the midsection, it's like how much can I lift. So then it became, well why do I need to work my abs anyway? Who cares? I'm squatting, I'm just stabilizing, I'm good at it, it's all good. Why work my abs to begin with? You also hear power to say things like why do I need to work my calves? Why do I need to work biceps? Sometimes you'll hear strength athletes say, you know, if you train

muscles fully, it's better than if you don't. That's all. So it's a little bit, it's going to be better if you train it fully than if you don't. But is it, are you going to be okay if you only hit your abs? You know, you know, once a week, yeah, you'll probably be fine. It's not a big deal. There's just not going to be as developed or you're not going to have as full development of the strength curve and all the strength, you'll probably be fine. It's not a big deal. They're just not going to be as developed or you're not going to have as full development of the strength curve and all the strength factors with your abs. Just not going to be as good, that's all.

Next question is from the grumpy Yeti. The front squat is now often regarded as more functional than the back squat. It doesn't allow for as great of overload, but allows for a greater range of motion and is more quad-focused and core and upper back demanding. Plus, if you deadlift, the hamstring and glute emphasis is already there.

Should the front squat take the pedal stall from the back squat? I, you know, no, no, I don't think so. I mean, could it for someone, I guess, sure, but I don't think so. I don't think so. I mean, could it for someone, I guess, sure, but I don't think so. The idea that this exercise works those muscles, therefore, we don't need to do this other exercise. I can see the rationale there. But again, when you build strength, there's a lot of specificity to how that strength is

applied. So if I deadlift the law, yeah, I'm working my glutes and hamstrings quite a bit. Am I developing squat strength by doing that? You're developing some squat strength, but not a lot of back squat strength. Yeah, well, I would argue that we're already very much anterior driven. Like, there's like in excess,

like everything is anterior driven. And so the opportunity to present more exercises that address the posterior chain are invaluable. Because we just don't focus on that. And a back squat is essential for that. Yes, the deadlift covers that as well. You want more exercises to specifically cover, you know, that portion.

You need that support system to be in balance. So that way, you're not overly dominant with your quads, which most clients I've had, especially athletes are quad dominant. Well, this is just another thing that highlights why I get annoyed by our space so much too. It's like, the truth is, they both belong there. And there's nothing wrong with maybe for a while,

you're focused heavily on the front squat. And there is no back squats. You know, there's many times in my training where I go months and I don't back squat because I'm focusing on my front squat for a while or I'm doing something or I'm lunging, doing a lot of what's out. I just came off of this recently, I believe, right?

You eliminated that. I didn't squat for almost three months. Right. So there's nothing wrong with that. But when camps try and make cases for this is more functional and this is better and there's no need to do this or it's like the truth is why would you not do both? They both have tremendous benefits and you can probably have one in each camp, argue why one's more, the truth is,

have them both, like why, why subject yourself to saying that, oh, I'm only gonna do this, or it should take the front stage opposed to another movement. It's like, no, they're both, I mean, if you look at our programming, there's always front squats and back squats

incorporated movement, because we see the tremendous value in both of them. And Justin's right, I think we are extremely anterior driven, but this person's very right too. You get deeper in the squat, you have to have better shoulder mobility to do it. So there are some great benefits to becoming a good friend. That's a great exercise.

Right, but like to your point, we don't do enough post-tier chain work. So, you know, why not have both included in there because they both are so functional. Yeah. Now, now the whole functional argument, sometimes a noise is shit at me too, because people become very narrow with their focus. So, front squat, maybe it's more functional from this standpoint. If you're likely to squat with weight in the real world, it's probably

going to be something you're holding in front of you. Yes, a lot of people can go lower in a front squat. In fact, I would more often than not be able to get a everyday client to be able to do a good front squat before I could get them to do a back squat. So oftentimes when I'm training someone and we're in the beginning stages of training, they're front squatting way more than they're more often than they're back squatting. Just to just your form is it's easier to get somebody in a better position. Okay. That being said, there's also this,

the amount of strength that you gain sometimes washes out some of these factors. So, if I take a back squat, I can squat more with the back squat than I can with the front squat. And my gains in the back squat, once I do it right, tend to go up really fast, faster than a front squat,

a little bit faster than a front squat. So, if I'm able to squat, back squat, 400 pounds, but only able to front squat, 250 pounds, the front squat might edge it in functionality in terms of movement, but because of the overall strength gains I get from the back squat, it still wins. Now I'm not saying, I'm not making the argument

that one is better than the other, it really depends on the individual, but my argument is you gotta look at the whole thing. You can't just look at, oh, the function. Because then you get into the craziness, like, well, you know, we should do everything split stance since we walk that way. And let's do everything on the whole.

Well, that's the truth, though, if you're gonna make the functional argument, then I would argue back to you that, well, okay, well, God but, a split squat. A God but squat or a walking lunges more function. Right. Or even a surger squat is more functional. When are you ever going to rack something

on the front of your shoulders with your elbows? I don't ever carry anything like that. I carry it more like a surger squat or like a goblet squat if I carry something. So yeah, the default to this is more functional than that. All that does is it appeases all of us nerds that are really into fitness and it loses all the general population

that really need the good advice and the fucking advice for 99% of the population, you need both in your life. Next question is from Noah Wilmot 97. What were the hardest obstacles for you to overcome during your fitness journey? Ooh, hardest obstacle. Ooh, mine is what we, I mean, not just,

it's been a while now the the back-to-back of the Low test osher and so coming off of test osher and after being on Higher doses like when I was competing right so coming off of that to none and obviously I worked my way down But once I got to a place where I was taking none That coupled with tearing my hekeleys right after that double-weep Obviously, I worked my way down, but once I got to a place where I was taking none, that coupled with tearing my Achilles right after that. Double wing. Oh man, it was already hard, right?

And I knew it was gonna be hard. I knew it was gonna be difficult. I knew I was gonna have low testosterone levels. I knew I was gonna lose my strength. I was gonna lose lots of muscle. I was gonna lose the drive to even get to the gym. And so I was already thinking about that going, okay Adam, you just need to stay active,

think of the things that you love to do, like basketball, integrate that into your fitness so that it keeps you consistent with working out and exercise, and then you'll get back to feeling stronger as your hormone levels come up, and then sure shit, I'm like two weeks into playing basketball, and I tear my Achilles. So now I'm dealing with hormone level,

testosterone levels being extremely low. And then on top of that, having a torn Achilles, that had to been the worst storm that I ever had to weather. I mean, that's the closest I've probably been to depression since probably back in my house days, we've like in 2012 or whatever that was. Yeah, there's no doubt that if you're really into working out and fitness, making the transition from,

I love this because I'm getting strong, I love this because I'm able to lift more weight, I look better, I'm chiseled, this is great like that too. If you work out long enough at some point, you're gonna encounter something like what Adam did or what I did where at one point, I had severe digestive issues thought I had an autoimmune disease.

I turned out, I did it, but I thought I did. And you have to make the transition from training for strength, training for aesthetics to, I exercise now is just to maintain my health. That is a hard, that is a very hard transition that all of you listening are gonna have to go through if you stay consistent long enough. You stay consistent with your fitness long enough.

If you're young right now, you're probably, you know, you're getting stronger, you're faster. I feel good, everything works good. This is great. At some point, whether it's a family issue, job issue, health issue, injury, something is gonna, there's gonna be a wrench that's gonna be thrown into that machinery, and you're gonna have to develop

a brand new relationship with exercise or stop all together. Some people never go back. Some people get injured, get off testosterone, like Adam did, and I know guys like this, they were all juiced up in their 20s, had to go off and just stop lifting weights because they just, their relationship with exercise was purely to build muscle and look amazing and once they had no testosterone, well, you ain't going to train the same, you ain't going to get the same benefits and results.

So they just like, screw it. I don't want to do it anymore. That's a very hard obstacle. I had to do it myself. I had to completely shift from training for aesthetics and performance to training for health. It was extremely difficult. I was almost forced to make that transition. It took me a year to really start to develop that relationship. But at the other end, I had a much more complete lifelong relationship

with exercise. But it's a, but it's a hard transition. Yeah, for me, it was more that transition from being a working out to then produce a better version of myself to perform on the field and see, you know, what all my work transpired to become. And also along with that, you're working out with people all the time next to you. And so I was like working in a team environment. I would work out. I was like the typical guy that would work out with like a workout partner.

You know, and like we would plan and organize our workouts like based off each other's schedules. And you know, and then once the last game I played like I went through this whole cycle of depression And then once the last game I played, I went through this whole cycle of depression of just like, well, what am I even gonna work out for? What am I doing this for? I just didn't have a clear vision of what that looked like anymore.

It was always for something. It took me a good year and a half, maybe even two years of just scrambling to find a motivating factor for me to push myself. And then later on, as I got a little more mature in the process, realized, I don't need to hammer myself to produce the results that I want and to be healthy and to do all these things.

I can actually feel really good, you know, coming out of these workouts. And so anyway, it's just, that was a really, really tough transition for me, because it just wasn't clear. I didn't have a vision of what that looked like. Many times it's, we need to just change the goal, right? So, you know, word, it's really common that when you get into working out, you're heavily focused on the way you look or you know, losing pounds on the scale, you know, or getting bigger muscles. And so there we tend to have these very

superficial type of goals. It's just it's just how we all operate. We're driven by insecurities, we're visual creatures. And so a lot of times that's what gets us initially motivated to come in the gym. And eventually that does like Sal said, you will be faced with that one day. And when you do, if you're still hung up on that goal, like if I was still hung up on, how do I still build as much muscles as I was

when I was doing steroids, or can I get at least close to that, or I still wanna look awesome, if I was so hung up on that goal during that time, I definitely would have fell in a depression and then never came back to working out, but I just had to reframe what my new goal is. And give the spiritual side of me, right?

So I know anybody who's non-spiritual, this will bug them or whatever. So reverse or take out God and put universe for whatever reason, you know, crystal crystal. Yeah, Chris, yeah, whatever, whatever makes you feel better. But for me, I always felt like, I always, I always, I always feel like when I, I feel so strongly about something that I want, God always has this funny way of slapping me in the face and being like, this isn't your plan, this is my plan. And I'm always reminded of that when I have things like this. Like, and for me, I said that when that happened to me

testosterone-wise, I shifted over like, okay, this is how I'm gonna handle it. And then also, I tear my Achilles. That to me is that wake-up call. It's like, okay, Adam, you're looking in the wrong areas of your life. This isn't where you're supposed to be focused. And so, whatever you want to believe in,

I think that we get revealed things like this all the time in our life. And if you're struggling right now and you constantly keep trying to force towards a certain direction, maybe you're going the wrong direction. And maybe there's something else that you should be focusing on and reframing and changing your goal. You know what's interesting about this, right? You have three guys who have made fitness their life,

who've all been working out for decades, right? Relatively or extremely consistently. And all of our answers, there was a common theme. Although different circumstances, the theme was developing a new relationship with exercise from the one I started with. That was the hardest obstacle. It's not the injury that was the hard obstacle for Adam. It's not the, I got sick, the hard obstacle, or that, that just-and-stop-playing sports. It's that what is exercise, what is fitness mean to me now?

And it's funny, it reminds me of, there's a certain type of client that is the most likely to hire a personal trainer, but also simultaneously the most likely to stop after a short period of time. That's the client that comes in and wants to get in shape for a specific date or an event. If somebody comes in to hire you and says,

I wanna get in shape for Vegas, I wanna get in shape you and says, I wanna get in shape for Vegas, I wanna get in shape for my wedding, I wanna get in shape for whatever. As a trainer, I knew the odds are gonna hire me are very high. This is like a, they're gonna definitely buy some training for me. The challenge was keeping them going

when they after they were done with that date because their relationship to exercise had a time frame, had a time limit on a specific one whether it be you know March 37 You know 27th not 37 does exist March 27th. I'm getting married or whatever. Okay, now after March COVID days are really blending together. Yeah, yeah. Oh, you know, I got married on that day I'm done now my relationship to exercise either needs to change or I'm done with it, right? So if you want long-term success, your relationship to exercise is, if you want long-term success, you're better off tying it to, you know, making myself be a better person, working with my health,

working with my life circumstances. That exercise to me is a way to improve myself in all aspects, not just something specific like strength because I can be taken from you or my body, hey circumstances may change or you know I'm gonna do the specific exercises that's all I do because you may get injured or it's to do great in a race because in the race ends is really to tie it something that's bigger than that, which is general growth, general overall health. If you do that, you're much more likely to have long-term success. And with that, go to mindpumpfree.com and download all of our guides and resources. You can also find the three of us on Instagram. You can find Justin at Mind Pump Justin. You can find me at Mind

Pumpsal and Adam at Mind Pump Atom. Thank you for listening to Mind Pump. If your goal is to build and shape your body, dramatically improve your health and energy, and maximize your overall performance, check out our discounted RGB Superbundle at MindPump Media dot com. The RGB Superbundle includes maps and a ballad, maps for performance and Obolic, Maths Performance and Maths Esthetic. 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,

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