Mind Pump: Raw Fitness Truth - 1710: The #1 Rule of Fitness

Episode Date: December 20, 2021

In this episode, Sal, Adam & Justin discuss the most important thing to focus on for a successful fitness journey. The one rule to rule them all. (1:42) Why the absence of illness is NOT health. (2:30) How a healthy body adapts well to the many challenges in life. (5:53) Good health means good movement. (9:25) The steps to get your health back on track. (12:08) #1 - LEARN how to listen to your body. (13:09) #2 – Consider the WHOLE PICTURE. (24:35) #3 – DON’T STAY in that extreme lane too long. (28:36) #4 – BE MINDFUL of your tendencies and insecurities. (33:23) Related Links/Products Mentioned December Promotion: MAPS HIIT and MAPS SPLIT 50% off! **Promo code “DECEMBER50” at checkout** Visit Sunday’s Dog Food for an exclusive offer for Mind Pump listeners! **Promo code “MINDPUMP” at checkout for 35% off your first order** Why Mobility Is So Important For Being Healthy – Mind Pump Blog Visit NED for an exclusive offer for Mind Pump listeners! Mind Pump #610: Dr. Andy Galpin Mind Pump #1632: The Truth About German Volume Training Mind Pump Podcast – YouTube Mind Pump Free Resources People Mentioned Andy Galpin (@drandygalpin)  Instagram  

If you want to pump your body and expand your mind, there's only one place to go. MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND with your hosts. Salda Stefano, Adam Schaefer, and Justin Andrews. You just found the world's number one fitness health and entertainment podcast. This is Mind Pump, right? In today's episode, we talk about the number one rule of fitness. This is the first rule you must follow, and then all your other goals are possible.

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This is a hardcore bodybuilding, body sculpting split routine. Again, both programs, 50% off, head over to mapsfitnisproducts.com and then use the code December 50. That's December 5-0 with no space to get that 50% off discount. What would you say is the number one fitness rule? Oh, this is good. This will be a good the golden rule. This will be a good discussion because I think there is

one rule above all. One ring the rule. Regardless of your goal, I want to look pretty. I want to build muscle. I want to lose body fat, I want to jump higher, run faster, longevity, like what's the, is there a single rule that unbrellas? Yeah, we'll all pursue it. It'd be healthy. And I think the be healthy, being healthy is the number one rule because it contributes to all the other goals that people have. And if health is sacrificed, I don't care what your goal is, you're gonna miss out on whatever your goal is. Why do you think this is an overlook so much though?

Because it's not expedient. It's also not, look, here's a deal. It's not a sexy line. It doesn't sell much, right? Like what does that mean? It's also kind of vague. Be healthy, okay. What does that mean? In's also kind of vague. Be healthy, okay. What does that mean?

In fact, you know what a lot of people think health means? Absence of illness. Yeah. If I'm not sick, I'm healthy. I've had clients who go to the doctor, get a physical. Blood markers are all good. Yeah, they're inactive, they don't eat very good. They, you know, they're already taking certain medications,

but they say, oh, you know, a doctor said, I'm perfectly healthy. The absence of illness is not health. That just means you're not sick. It reminds me of the recommendations for certain nutrients that you'll get from, let's say, the FDA, where they'll say, okay, this is how much vitamin C you need, this is how much vitamin D you need.

Those, many of those guidelines are there to prevent illness. Right, right, the bare minimum you should be in taking, right? But they're not the optimal, right? So like for example, it's a very easy one, right? Protein intake, it's very well established that a high protein intake, which is roughly 0.6, 0.8 grams of protein per pound of body weight for most relatively normal body weight

individuals, maximizes satiety and muscle growth, and it's good for fat loss. But that's more than what is required to prevent illness from lack of protein. So you'll get a recommendation that's like half of that for protein intake, but again, it's not optimal, right? It's not for health.

So, I think that's the first thing to focus on is that health is not the absence of illness, or at least not the way we're talking about it. So when we're talking about, you know, health being the number one fitness goal or rule, it's not just not getting sick, it's about going beyond that. You know, along the lines of the protein intake that you're talking about right now, this actually reminds me when this really started to click for me. I remember when I was younger, I was taking, you know, all the over-the-counter pro-hormone andristine, and I was taking creatine cell tech as what it was back then and all these muscle-building

gimmicks, supplements, and I was doing all that stuff and I wasn't really paying attention to diet. I really had never tracked my food, measured, weighed, done that stuff. I was just, I was a young kid who was lifting weights and just assumed that if I wanted the competitive edge, I wanted to build a lot of muscle, then I got to go take all the muscle building supplements and so I was spending

what little money I had on that, and saw little to no results. I remember the first time I began to track, way, measure my food, and saw that I was grossly under-eating protein, and not in an unhealthy manner. I wasn't eating like something that was, you don't get it. You're still getting your essential protein. Right, I was getting essential,

but I wasn't in the optimal range to build muscle. Okay, well, I increased my protein, and instantly I started to pack on muscle faster and better than I ever got from anything that I paid hundreds and hundreds of dollars for over the counter. And to me, what it just highlights the point you're trying to make right now is that,

you know, if my body is optimal as far as would it's being fed or how it's being taken care of, it's gonna respond the way I wanted to respond a hell of a lot more than trying to take all this other shit to try to trigger it to that. A really healthy body adapts well. What I mean by that is building strength, improving your speed, your flexibility,

your ability to handle stress, burn body fat. These are all adaptation processes and your body is better at doing those things when it's healthy. When it's not healthy, oftentimes it can resist certain adaptation processes. For example, if your body's under a lot of stress, then it's goal may be to conserve energy.

And so what it might not wanna do and often won't do is build muscle or strength. It may want to hold on to body fat At all means because you're under too much stress just to give you kind of an example Without health or when your health really starts to decline You lose performance. So you might think to yourself like I just want to be Fast and strong and explosive and those are great goals, nothing wrong with those goals. But if your health starts to slip away,

then you're gonna lose those things as well. You will start to lose strength, you will start to lose speed, you will start to lose explosive ability. Ethetics is a big one, this is a huge one. It's like, I wanna look really good. Well, the way you look is a reflection of your health. And yes, you can get away with sacrificing your health

in the name of aesthetics. We know many fitness influencers do this, but at some point, the bill shows up and you gotta pay the bill, right? At some point, your health starts to decline and then it starts to reflect in your aesthetics. And if you've ever met anybody who's been doing this for a long time, who constantly sacrifices their health for aesthetics, you know, at a certain point, ugh, it's, you

don't look good. This isn't working for you anymore because your health is starting to decline. Quality of life, this is a big one. There's a big difference. Well, okay, obviously, this is a big one. There's a big difference, well, okay, obviously, this is obvious for people watching this right now. If you have poor health, where you have chronic illness and pain, your quality of life just sucks.

I mean, if you've ever just, even if you don't have any chronic health issues, if you've ever injured yourself, you know how much it reduces your quality of life. But there's also a difference in quality life between, like, you know, I'm just not sick and optimal health. Right? Optimal health, you have way more energy,

you have a more positive outlook on things, that makes a huge difference too. I don't wanna just skim over that. When you feel good and optimal, optimally healthy way, you're more positive, negative things don't feel so negative. You feel more motivated, you feel like things aren't stressful. So the difference between, okay health or not sick

and optimal health, there's a big jump in quality of life there as well. Well, I think there's also one factor that's not as visible and you're kind of alluding to that with talking about like how happy and how vibrant people are in terms of like their mental health as well. So that's like, we just don't, we do a bad job of considering the holistic, the body from a holistic perspective, all the systems, all of the things have to work correctly in order for you to be at that optimal level where you actually experience that.

You understand that there's degrees of quality in what that can provide in terms of like how, you know, not just longevity and living longer, but what your abilities are. And also your interactions, your interpersonal relationships with people and how that affects everyone around you as well. Yeah, and being healthy also allows you to continue to train. It keeps that your ability to exercise and work out there and it keeps the catalog of exercises that you have at your disposal very large, right?

If you injure yourself, well, now you've just narrowed the amount of exercises that you can utilize or you've reduced your ability to train and exercise, which really sucks. And I mean, here's an extreme case, but it's like you get older, you're like, man, my favorite activity was hiking, and I can't hike anymore. My ankles hurt or my knees bothering me, right? So that can definitely have a negative effect on your quality of life, because now you can't do one of your favorite things, right? So good health means, in the context of fitness, means you have good movement.

So there's no real glaring issues with your movement. You could do most fundamental exercises and movements without too many issues. You have a low risk of injury. So it's not a guarantee against injury, but when you're healthy, in the way that we're talking about it, the risk of injury. So it's not a guarantee against injury, but when you're healthy in the way that we're talking about it, the risk of injuries quite low, right? So if you've been working out for 15 years and you might have tweaked a muscle here

there a few times, like that's not bad. That's not bad at all. In fact, it's funny. I had this conversation along. I just remember this conversation I held with a client a long time ago where they're like, oh, I like working out, but what about the injuries? And I said, if you compared two groups of people for 10 years, and on one side is people who've exercised for 10 years and done it properly. They've had good mobility, they've exercised appropriately, they're focused on their health. You may have a few tweaks and injuries where, you know, my back, I pulled my back a little bit, my shoulder got a little stiff and sore. If you go with the other side who didn't know exercise in nothing

over 10 years you'll have more injuries you'll have more pain from lack of movement from sitting on the couch or sitting on at a desk all the time. Oh good movement and maintaining a healthy level of strength everywhere. It just it has that that sort of effect where you know where you basically are able to keep up, now I've totally lost track of what I've done. Yeah, I know, well you can keep moving when you have good strength. You're stable. Yeah, and the thing is it affects you mentally so much

because also too, there's moments where you get pain and pain sets in because of lack of movement but also your loss of strength, it creates those signals back to the body, which then my interactions with my kids, if I'm in pain, I'm a lot shorter. And I'm less tolerant of conflict or having certain conversations with people that I know I'm on edge.

I just carry myself completely different when I'm in a state of pain. So, let's pretend we have somebody listening right now who wants to build some muscle, maybe they want to burn some body fat. They know they want to look better, but they hear it. They get the message, they've heard us talk about this stuff before, and they're like,

okay, I get it, I message received, I'm not supposed to focus just on the way I look. A better approach to this is to approach being healthy. How do you go about that? What are you looking for? How do we guide somebody in that direction of like, how do they figure out, am I eating optimally right now? Am I lowering stress like I'm supposed to? How do they go after that?

Because there are so many things that fall under the umbrella of being healthy. We've been talking about for the last 10 or 15 minutes. So then you get a client and you've got them to reframe the way they look at fitness. Now, I want to be healthy. I get it, Sal. One of the steps.

What are the steps and where do I focus and what am I looking at? I think the first, I want to be healthy. I get it, Sal. One of the steps. Yeah, one of the steps and where do I focus and what am I looking at? I think the first thing you want to do is you want to realize that the best coach or trainer or guide that exists in the world is your own body and the signals that your body will send you. There's nothing more accurate and there's nothing more individualized

than being able to read those signals. By the way, that's the key is learning how to listen to your body, because I can say listen to your body. And someone may say, well, my body tells me to sit on the couch and eat donuts. That's what my body's saying right now. My stomach grumbles and I listen to that. Yeah, and that's mainly because we've learned

how to read some signals and we've also learned how to ignore others or not even pay attention to other signals You know, it's it reminds me of I know I've talked about this before. I think it's it's definitely pertinent to this Which is the the four stages of learning that everybody goes through and the first stage is unconscious and competence you're just You're not aware of what you're not aware of right? So it's like the first time It's like the first time you learned anything. Like I remember years ago, I wanted to get an investment license.

I thought I was gonna, for a short stint, work in investments. And I remember the first few days going into learning about investments and realizing how much I didn't know. Like I had no idea that I didn't know as much as I did because I didn't even know what I didn't know, right? So that first few days I was in there

and I was like, oh my gosh, this is way more stuff than I realized, right? So a lot of people are just unconsciously incompetent. And I know this because here's a great example. When I would get a new client, and I learned how to get around this, right? I would get a new client and I learned how to get around this, right? I'll get a new client and I would say, here's one of the questions I would have on an intake form, but be something like, do you have any areas of pain in your body? I swear to God,

eight at a 10 times, people would say, no, I don't have any areas of pain. Then I would do this. I do the checklist from head to toe. Do you have any neck pain? What about shoulder pain? What about my elbow bothers me? Yes, and then one side hit that. Oh yeah, actually, my elbow does kind of bother me a little bit throughout the day. But I never broke it or I never had surgery done. Yeah, oh my back, yeah, I tweak it, you know,

like every other month or so it'll bother me. I'll take it to leave and then I'm okay. Oh yeah, my knee kind of bothers. And we'll go down the checklist and you start to, and I remember the first time this happened as a few times as a trainer, I was like, what, why aren't people aware of this kind of stuff? And then I realized, well, they just,

they've dealt with it for so long that it was just there. It's not something that they even think about. Most people just attribute to be getting old. Yeah. I remember that, in fact, that was like part of my spiel and pitch is like I would tell people, like, listen, all these nagging pains is not because you're old.

It's because you've had these issues that you've been dealing with for years, and they're just catching up to you, and they're letting you know. It's not just a symptom of being old. Like there's many people that are old, that are pain-free and usually you're treated patterns that you haven't changed.

But they justify it because of that, because it's like, oh, wait, and they would say that. Oh, wait till you get by age, you'll see. And by the way, these were people that were like in their late 30s and 40s. We were kind of, so we're saying this. It wasn't like they were 70s and 80s. Yeah, you want to learn how to listen to your body

and pay attention to all the signals. So do you take over the counter medications for things that happen to you all the time? Like, oh yeah, I always have heartburn. I take this, or I have headaches three times a week, so I take ibuprofen. You know, I have to take this stuff for my skin because it does this issue. Or I have to take laxatives, you know, quite frequently or antidearial medicine. Or so that's one place to start. Also consider how you feel when you wake up. Do you wake up and feel like a truck ran you over? Do you go to bed and have trouble sleeping? Do you find dramatic energy shifts

throughout the day? Like it's normal to have energy changes, but do you do this like great energy crash? Oh my god, I can barely keep my eyes open. Like pay attention to all of these things. Now why is this important? Because when you start exercising and you start changing your diet, you wanna be able to pay attention to how certain things are changing. And are they changing for the positive? Let's say you're somebody that has

this kind of low level chronic back pain and you're paying attention to it. Even though you're so used to it now that it's just kind of part of who you are. But then you start working out and you start pushing yourself. And you're're paying attention to it. Even though you're so used to it, you're so used to it now that it's just kind of part of who you are. But then you start working out and you start pushing yourself. And you're not paying attention to the fact that your back hurts a little more than it used to. And you have to take more ibuprofen than you did before, right?

But let's say now you're out paying attention, you go, wait a minute, I was taking a couple ibuprofen every other day, now that's the way I started working out. I'm up to twice as know, twice as much. Maybe I'm not working out the right way. So that would be an example, right? Or maybe you change your diet and you notice that you're digest, I've had people do this before

where they go, oh, you know, I heard, actually I had a client once who went on a, started eating more raw vegetables. And she just like, oh, I read raw vegetables were really healthy. I mean, tons of raw vegetables. And through conversations with her, she just started getting oh, I read Rod Vesch, those were really healthy, I'm eating tons of raw vegetables. And through conversations with her, she just started getting lots of bloating.

But didn't really, she was not paying attention to her body. So for her, she's like, yeah, I'm bloated, but what's the big deal? People get bloated. And I'm like, maybe the raw vegetables aren't something that's working well for your body. So we had to change her nutrition. I think it's important, too, to know that this is like

a lifelong pursuit, too. Oh. Of like looking for these signals and learning. It's not like it just, too, to note this is like a lifelong pursuit, too, of like looking for these signals and learning, it's not like it just to, oh, I figured a few things out that I'm done. I don't, I don't, I mean, I, uh, It's not awareness, right? Yeah, I, I shared the, um, impactly, obviously, if you've heard me talk about Ned

when we have commercials from them, I talk about how mellow has been like, unbelievable from it. It's been now religiously, I take it. And it's not mellow, the supplement is magical or something that Ned did that was so amazing. It's that, oh shit, I was probably magnesium deficient. I was probably not getting enough magnesium

because the impact it's now making on my sleep. And when I get better sleep, I'm better at my job, I'm better on the podcast, my body responds better when it comes to building muscle and burning body fat. And it's like one simple little thing like that by tweaking in either potentially in your diet or taking a supplement to make you healthier. And then it has this cascading effect that plays into all your pursuits. Well, to that point, yeah, it's a constant practice.

And I think that if you look at health like that, and it's not like something that I'm trying to get to a place and then figure out what that place looks like and stay there, it's like you're just continuously evaluating a lot of those signals and feedback that your body's providing it. You just have to be receptive to it. And that does take a lot of insight

and a lot of deliberate practice to figure out what those signals are or where they're coming from and just get the pay attention and be present. Yeah, practice is the best word for it, by the way, because it's something you practice regularly. Why? Because life circumstances change. So if I'm looking to optimize my health and everything's going great in my life. That's gonna look different with my application of exercise and nutrition

and meditation or prayer or sleep. But let's say I have a family member who gets really sick or I lose my job or I just have a baby. So now my sleep isn't so great, right? Now I'm gonna be changing the way I apply certain things to help optimize my health for those circumstances. So in one circumstance, it may be that I work out really hard, in other circumstances, it may be that it will work out really easy, because

other things are more challenging for me. It may be that I need to lower my anxieties. And now going to the gym, it's more like stretching and mobility and I'm just kind of staying in there and being calm. So this is why it's a practice because it's ever changing, ever evolving, but always have that connection to your health. I had somebody close to me a long time ago who had diagnosed with a terminal form of cancer. And once she got diagnosed, she looked back and she's all these signs and symptoms that she ignored for like four months.

And she's like, oh my gosh, that's why this happened. That's why that happened. And just ignoring, ignoring, ignoring until in her case, it was really bad. But how many of us do that, right? How many times have we, how many times has anybody who's maybe watching this had a medical situation arise?

And then you look back and go, oh yeah, I was ignoring all those signs and signals for so long, and it's mainly because we're disconnected, right? In wellness, they'll say that you're not in your body, you're separate from your body. So that's really what that means to listen to your body. Is it, even if you just say that to yourself

and just focus on it throughout the day, a couple of times, that alone makes a huge difference. Well, how common would you guys say that you would see a client who is eating a food that they have like an intolerance to? How common? It's almost always. Right, like everybody's susceptible. I mean, even myself, like I'd say that's something that like I was guilty forever of is

just, you know, you just like a little bit of bloat or water retention. It's like you maybe you don't really notice it, but it's like you eat that three, four times a week and you just, you know, you just chalk it up as a full, oh, eight, too much or a full day, but then you're all inflamed for the next 24 hours and your stool is off and you just chalk it up as normal, you know? I have an uncle, right? When we have a family, you know, big Italian family functions and there's always some kind of a pasta that's being served.

And when I was a kid, he would always do this, right? We'd eat and he'd eat a lot, you know, a lot of people eat a lot in my family. And he'd sit there with his belly and he'd tell us the kids, And he'd sit there with his belly, and he'd tell us the kids, right? Come here, hit my belly. It's so hard.

Oh my God, I ate so much. I hurt so much. And then when I got older and I became a trainer, and he would make that same comment that he always does, and I go, you know, Uncle, maybe you might have an issue with gluten, but what's gluten? And I said, I wonder if it's the pasta and the bread, that's not supposed to happen. So my aunt started serving him gluten free

pasta, which I first complained because, oh, it's not the same or whatever. But then he's like, oh my god, the difference. Like, my stomach doesn't get so hard. This is like decades of him doing this, right? Because you're not in your body and you're just not really, you're not paying attention. And again, if you get really good at listening to your body, it will tell you what you need to do with the direction you need to move. It's not easy, but that awareness is the first one. Well, the problem is that that's the body already

beginning to give you these pretty loud signals, but we're still ignoring it. Oh, they'll get louder. Yeah, we normally wait until you get diagnosed with something, or you got got something really chronically bad. But for the most part, there's a lot of people listening right now that I guarantee your eating foods that make you unhealthy, that you don't realize

that make you feel this way and your body has a response to it but because you've kind of just ignored it for so long and because it's not. And because it's not crippling you, you just justify it. Yeah, here's a common one in our space, right? How about this, right? Like I've been working out, training heavy. Ooh, my elbow bothers me a little bit.

I think I'll wear an elbow sleeve. You know, or, oh, you know, I'm gonna change this shoe or tighten up my belt a little bit and they constantly are adding things to their body to mask some of these little pains and then later they tear something and then you can say, yeah, you know, I should have listened to my elbow

has been hurting me for a while. I just kept taping it up. Rubbing icy hard. I'm not a corrected self. I just kept doing push ups. Yeah, you know, so the next step would be to, this is part of that awareness, is to consider the whole picture, right?

Look at everything. So why is that important? Well, maybe what you're looking at in the only thing you're paying attention to is the scale. So you're like, oh my god, I'm losing weight. This everything's going great, but you're not considering that your sleep has been bad. You haven't been sleeping as good or your skin really isn't looking like it used to, right? Or you're losing weight but you're pale, or you're losing energy. I used to see this all the time in the gym.

I would see people who would lose weight and look less healthy than they did when they were heavier because the way that they were losing weight was either by starving themselves or by over exercising. And because they don't consider the whole picture and because of the first step, which was to be aware, because they lacked awareness and they didn't consider the whole picture and because of the first step, which was to be aware, because they lacked awareness and they didn't consider the whole picture,

they would come into the gym looking less healthy. I'm talking about people lost 30 pounds, looking less healthy and I talked to them and they'd have the dark circles on their eyes. I just shared with you guys the other day, one of our big, famous fitness influencer, friends that we know that decided to compete recently. And I was looking at her pictures of the beginning of her journey and where she's at now.

And she looks so sick and unhealthy. And a lot of that starts because I think the routine, the diet and routine that she's currently in is already not optimal for her body either. She's already banging the shit out of it and overstressing and under-eating over cardio like as it and then decided to, hey, I'm going to compete and take my body to a whole other level. And then you get people that are celebrating because it's leaner, you know, an ad is popping out or you know, body fat percentage dropped out. You're not looking at everything. Right. And I'm looking and I'm like, dude, how does

nobody else see what I'm looking at? I like to dark circles and looks gaunt, and it's like, not healthy, man. And then you got just a million- A million- A million- A million people looking up to you, trying to do what you're doing. It's such a terrible, terrible message. It actually teaches, yeah, influencers

and fitness media like that tends to condition people to not consider the whole picture. Right. You know, because again, I would talk to condition people to not consider the whole picture. Right. You know, because again, I would talk to these people that would lose 30 pounds, it would come in my gym regularly. And you know, I'm a gym manager, so I'm trying to meet people and talk to people. And I would ask, you know, you can't go up to someone,

you can't go up to a member and say to them, hey, it looks like your health isn't as good. It's just, it's not gonna be taken well, it's not gonna be effective, the desired result is to help them, it's not gonna help them, so you don't say that. So what I would try to do is ask them questions to see if I could get that out, right?

So I'd be like, hey, how you been? Oh, I'm great, you know. How do you feel? How do you feel? And I'm looking at them, again, the dark show's like, oh man, I lost 30 pounds, I'm like, I'm so much healthier. Like, do you feel like a healthier?

Well, I mean, I look better and I'm so happy about that. And I'd be like, man, you are ignoring how you feel. Because I can clearly see that your energy is lower than when you first came in and signed up because you're over training yourself and under-eating, but you're not considering the fact that you had, that you're not looking at the whole picture. It's just the scale, right?

Or how about this? You'll see this on the flip side. Just, you know, how strong I am, you know? I had this one guy that worked for me years ago, sales guy. And at the time, let me think, I was a real young manager, so, and he was a lot older than me,

so he's probably in his 30s. And this guy would, you know, he was just eating like crazy, and he was on all kinds of anabolic gear. And, you know, he was just eating like crazy and he was on all kinds of anabolic gear. And, you know, he'd come and he'd get so excited because he added 15 pounds to his squat or whatever. I swear to God, he looked like he was in a heart attack just sitting there.

When I was looking at him, his face was red and, you know, he was getting real bloated, you know, he was so excited that he kept adding weight to his lips. And I remember thinking like, oh man, this, you know, his health isn't doing so good. But again, he's not considering the whole picture. So that's an important piece to all of this, is to look at everything.

And in that context, that'll help, I guess, direct you towards better health. You know, mentioning the power lifter type guy like that that's doing like an extreme sports reminds me of the next point, which is like staying in a like either an extreme modality or extreme goal for too long of a period of time. Like I think there's I think there's lots of value in getting shredded at one point in your life to prove that you can discipline yourself and be consistent like that, but to stay in that and this is really this is why

I was I was so excited to move out of the competitive space. I mean, people always ask me if I would go back and do that and the answer is probably never again. It was fun, white lasted. I thought I got tremendous value from, you know, getting myself to that position, but I would never want to stay there. And not because of that, just because I think it's hard, because actually when you get the momentum in your there, it's actually not that hard to do that. Like, at least for I didn't feel it was that hard. Once I got there, getting there was hard, maintaining it was, hard because actually when you get the momentum in your there, it's actually not that hard to do that Like at least for it I didn't feel it was that hard once I got there getting there was hard

Maintaining it was I mean when you have that much lean mass and you've built that much consistency But I just know it's not healthy for my body to live in that state It's just too extreme and it's better for my to let my body kind of ebb and flow and you see this in Sports a lot when someone is passionate about being a power lifter or a body builder or whatever, you know, cross fitter and they're just, they're so extreme in their sport and they look, they look cool, you know, they look cool maybe afterwards and so they justify that it's healthy and it's not healthy for their body. Well, and I think if you have the ability to pursue some of these more extreme activities

and challenge yourself. There's lots of growth opportunity there. You're gonna learn a whole lot. And like you said, going through your journey of like going up on stage and you're able to now relate to people like on that degree, figuring out a healthier way to kind of approach it mentally and all that.

There's lots of value there. And it reminds me back to our conversation with Dr. Andy Galpin where it's like, there's opportunities to optimize or what was the other version? Yeah, there was optimize or what was the other word adapt? Adapt, adapt and optimize. Because then you want to be able to, too,

though, to find your way back to homeostasis. So what is your healthy state look like? Well, where's your balance? And to grow is great, but now you gotta find your way back to balance and make sure that you have longevity. Otherwise, you're just, you're redlining too long. You're gonna eventually, things are gonna backfire.

Yeah, balance and health is the base. That's your home base. These extreme endeavors where you move away from home base. And I think a lot of the value in the extremes. First of all, anything extreme is away from optimal health. So extreme endurance, extreme strength, extreme leanness, right? Any type of extreme performance or goal moves you away from optimal health. But I think that there's a lot of value in the way, especially when they're done right, in the way that they contribute to the quality of your life.

Like, you know, I know that trying to deadlift 600 pounds is not for me, optimal health, I know that. But I love it, right? I love it, I have so much fun doing it, right? And I think that quality of life and enjoyment is a part of things. So, you know, if we were just gonna try and live as long as possible,

things might get a little boring. So that's okay to do that, but don't stay there for too long, or don't, especially don't always stay there, because when you always stay there, then you really start to run into problems. And then the irony is, those extreme goals that you're so married to slip away.

So if you think you're amazing because you're the strongest person in your gym and you're constantly staying there, never going back to balance and health, never going back to home base, allowing your body to be in that optimal state of health, you'll lose that strength. That strength is going to start to move away from you, either because of injury or because of breakdown, right? This is true for being super lean or being whatever, you know, being a CrossFit athlete.

You push too hard for too long in that extreme, the health starts to decline. And like we said at the beginning of this episode, health is the foundation of the base. When that slips, you can forget about everything else. So there is nothing wrong. And I'll never say you should not pursue extreme goals. There's definitely good ways to do it, and there's better ways to do it,

and less optimal, or not so good ways to do it. But there's quality of life thing. It's fun. I do lots of things that are not healthy, that improve my quality life. I may have a glass of wine every once in a while. I smoke a joint with my partners here, but that's okay, but let's say,

if I do that every single day, now we start to run into some problems. So don't stay in that extreme lane for too long, remember the home base, right? Now the last one, this is a big one. This is a tough one. This is a tough conversation with yourself. And really you're the only one

that can decide this or understand this for yourself, which is to be mindful of your tendencies and your insecurities. Ooh, this is a hard one, right? Like, I'll speak for myself because I can do that best with this particular point. I know that my insecurities around fitness lie around not being muscular enough, right?

Or not being strong enough, right? I grew up as a very skinny kid, or at least that's what I thought. And so that's what drove me to work out. So I have to be aware of that tendency, because very easily can it slip away from me and I push too much in that direction to the point where I start to sacrifice my health. So I have to remind myself, like, I know my tendency is to push in that direction. So what does that mean?

What does that mean for me? Well, it means that, you know, I'm probably moving in that direction more often than I should, but because I'm aware of it, what I'm not going to do is sign up for a contest with my partners here, who can bulk the most? I'm not going to do that. That's a bad idea. That's my own insecurity.

I'm going to throw myself into the fire. It's going to push me in a bad direction. If your insecurity is the opposite, you constantly feel like you're overweight, even though you're not, and you know this is an issue that you've worked on, you probably don't wanna sign up for a stage show. You don't wanna do a bikini competition

or a physique competition if that's your issue, because that's gonna make it really bad for you, right? So be mindful of those insecurities and how they may drive you. It really will help, I think, at least move you away from that, from going too extreme in those directions. The most common example that I see with this is somebody who views themselves as fat,

right? So they're part of their self-talk is I'm fat, right? So they see themselves as fat when in reality, they're carrying body fat on them, so they have extra stored energy that they have, but they view themselves as fat, they're carrying body fat on them. So they have extra stored energy that they have, but they view themselves as fat. They decide to start their weight loss journey, and they're reducing calories, they're doing cardio, they're training, and they get on a scale. Maybe that maybe the first three days, they're seeing great results, and they're celebrating. Yes, I'm kicking my ass in the gym, I'm getting leaner, I'm getting smaller, I'm losing weight,

Yes, I'm kicking my ass in the gym, I'm getting leaner, I'm getting smaller, I'm losing weight. And then they get on the scale on day four or five, let's say, and the scale stayed the same, or it went up maybe. And they now allow their insecurity of being fat to drive their behaviors now based off of that. You can't expect to lose weight in four or five. Right. And not to mention, that's a terrible indicator of what you're weight in four or five. Right. And not to mention that's a terrible indicator of what you're potentially doing right or wrong.

Because like we've talked about on the show before many times is that very easily this person could have had two or three extra glasses of water. Maybe they took in an extra thousand milligrams of sodium. Maybe they had 40 or 60 more grams of carbs. Instead of fat that day, all these things, maybe they had a stressful day or didn't sleep very much the night before, all these things can result in them retaining a couple pounds of water, which will eventually come right out in the next 48 to 72 hours, but most people

don't know this. Then they see the scale and see that they stayed the same or went up. And then that results in them doing more extreme bad behaviors in that direction, which is normally cutting their calories even more, increasing even more activity. And they don't realize how much they shoot themselves. Yeah, they sacrifice in their health for that insecurity that's driving them. We had some of the forum recently make a post. Now, I don't remember the exact details, driving them. We had some of the forum recently make a post. Now I don't remember the exact details, but this woman actually had called and did one of our live Q&As and we had helped her. And so then this was maybe two months later and she did a post in our forum. And

the post was basically like, what's wrong with my body? I'm doing everything you guys told me. So she starts off by saying something along those lines, oh, I called into the show and I did everything that they told me, but it's just not working. And then I go into the, so I'm in the form, I get tagged because she tagged me. So I'm like looking at her post, I'm like, okay, well, how can I help her? And then I look at the details. She went from 1300 calories to 1800 calories. So she bumped her calories by 500 over the course of two months.

She cut her cardio down because she was overdoing cardio. Her strength is going up and the scale went up one or two pounds, I think it was, one or two pounds. Yeah, awesome situation. And I know, but she was like, what's going on? What happened? I'm like, hold on, and then I rephrased it to her. I said, you increase your calories by 500,

you cut your cardio down, you're stronger, and you only gained two pounds. And she's like, oh yeah, I guess, I guess that's pretty good. I'm like, that's excellent. That's awesome. Your metabolism is speeding up, you probably gain muscle. You're probably a little leaner,

but if you're not, my goodness, we're moving in the right direction anyway. We're setting up this wonderful situation where later on when we do a cut, it's gonna be very easy when you get lean, but her insecurities were driving that whole post, right, that whole post, right? That whole post was about her insecurity about, I can't gain any weight.

What's going on? Well, I see some of these insecurities and I, you know, and I think that's probably the most relatable and most common is like just the feeling of being overweight or being fat or, you know, letting that sort of dictate, you know, even your eating habits. And so there are certain foods that sort of have that response where you just wanna punish yourself. I shouldn't eat this. I always eat this.

And then you just get into this vicious cycle of I'm eating it. So now I'm being bad. And it tends to perpetuate more of a binge situation, more of a frequency of bringing it back because you can only sort of fight yourself internally for so long instead of forgiving yourself and being flexible and having a completely different outlook

and looking at it in a healthier light. The other one I see that's common is areas on their body that they're not happy with, right? So I have a little bit of a gut. And so my programming and workout routine is centered around a thousand crunches a day. Or I have, you know, I want to work on my butt. And so every day I'm doing all these silly, you know,

glute kickbacks and dog peas and like, and like so a lot of times these insecurities about an area drives us to do the things that are not going to get you the most results, but they don't realize it. Just like the person I was giving the example of who cuts their calories and runs on the treadmill like crazy, many times what's wrong the worst part about these insecurities is it drives you in the wrong direction. Even though you're desired outcome is to get the better butt or to lose the 10 pounds or whatever it may be, because they're driven from the wrong place, you end up doing something that ends up shooting yourself in the foot. Had you had you come from a better place of health and thinking like how do I become a healthier

person, you'll have a better you'll make better choices when it comes to program design and eating. Yeah, your insecurities really distort your subjective opinion and objective ones as well. You know, how many times have you guys had a client do this where they'll complain about how they look and let's say this client has been with you forever and then they'll look at an old picture of themselves and say, man, I thought I looked really bad back then, but I looked really good. I want to look like that again. I actually caught a client on this once, right?

I had this woman that I trained for like 13 years, and she just always had this negative view of herself. And I get it, by the way, I'm a, I mean, the fitness space because that's what drove me there, like most people in the fitness space. But I remember she brought in a picture once, and it was like a five year old picture and she goes,

I wanna look like this again. And then I took the picture and said, oh yeah, I remember that, you know, because I trained her at that point. And I sat her down and I said, do you remember what you used to say about yourself five years ago when this picture was taken? You hated the way you looked.

And she's like, I did. I'm like, yeah, maybe we need to address the insecurity because your opinion, your opinion so distorted because of this. And for me, again, because I wanted to build muscle and get stronger, this would affect my workouts because let's say I went into a workout and the goal was to improve my form and my technique

or maybe I was gonna do shorter rest periods. God forbid I took weight off the bar. Oh no, I'm not taking weight off. I don't care how the workout changes. When I bench, this is how much I lift. Or when I squat, this is how much I lift. And so my form went out the window, or I didn't do certain training modalities

because I couldn't lift as much as I did when I did my other training modalities. And so back to your point, Adam, it drove my training programming in the wrong direction, and I wasn't doing what was best for myself because my insecurities were driving all of that. So I think it's important to be mindful, by the way, they're going to be there. And by the way, that hangs around for a long time. It sure does.

It wasn't even that long ago when I think I mentioned on the podcast recently, we did the German volume training episode and it made me go, you know, it's been a long time since I've done some GVT. I'm going to do it for chest this day and I actually had to drop the weights down to 35 pounds on each side of the barbell, right? So I was benching under 135. And it's like, I thought right? So I was benching under 135. And it's like, I thought about it while I was doing it, like I didn't care, I'm in my garage by myself, like but I thought, man, you know what?

Had this happened to me just maybe eight years ago or so. In a gym, right? Yeah, in a gym, I was like, fuck that, I'm not doing that today. It was too. I'm not gonna have to, I'm not gonna put the people in the gym. I'm not gonna put the pink weights on right now,

I'm saying that ain't happening. So. And the workout program would have changed. Right, right. So I had this moment of like, wow, that's crazy. Like, you know, you know, long as I've been in this and I know better and stuff like that, like that's something that, you know, when it's a deeply rooted insecurity,

it's constant work and maybe it never fully goes away, it's just that you've at least brought awareness to it and you don't let it drive your decision. Yeah, I think, again, in my experience, being mindful of it, it's like, it's like you have this dangerous dog that you gotta be mindful of. And so it's gonna snap at you, it's gonna bark at you,

but if you don't pay attention, it'll bite you, right? So that's all it is, basically, is these insecurities will move you in other directions, keep take you off track a little bit, but if you're not mindful of them, they're going to take a hold of you and you're gone and that's it. You're moving in that direction and you're spinning. So that's the key right there. So make health the priority overall and all the other goals can be accomplished. If you don't and your health starts to decline, you can forget about any other fitness or health goal

that you have because they just won't have. And by the way, and I don't know if we really said this, but we did around about way, but the simplest way is like, no matter whether your goal is a aesthetics perform, if you get healthy, it will only speed up how fast you get to all those. Totally. I don't know how many times I've assessed somebody

who wants to lose fat or build muscle and tweak to a couple of things in their diet to make them healthier and they end up getting their goal whatever it be performance driven or a look that much faster because we actually focused on health and not so much that goal. Well, again, along those lines, if let's say you're good health, optimal health, and you

want to gain 10 pounds of muscle versus health is not so optimal, and I want to gain 10 pounds of muscle, which one's going to be easier, right? Or I want to lose 15 pounds of body fat, or I want to add 15 pounds to my bench press, or I want to shave a little bit of time off of my mouth, right? If your home base is good health, you just get there so much easier and so much faster in such a more balanced way. And it will cause so much damage on your body. When you do go after those extreme goals, look, if you like our information, head over to mindpumpfree.com and check out our guides. We have guides for all of your fitness needs and goals. You can also find all of us on Instagram. So Justin is at Mind Pump Justin. I'm at

Mind Pump Salon. Adam is 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 overall performance, check out our discounted RGB Superbundle at Mind Pump Media.com. The RGB Superbundle includes maps and a ballac, maps for performance, and maps aesthetic.

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