Mind Pump: Raw Fitness Truth - 1798: Weighted Dips vs. Bench Press for Chest Development, the Dangers of Diet Soda, Training & Diet Best Practices for Maximizing TRT Benefits & More

Episode Date: April 22, 2022

In this episode of Quah (Q & A), Sal, Adam & Justin answer Pump Head questions about how weighted dips compared to the bench press, whether drinking diet soda is really so unhealthy, the best diet, sleep and workout practices when starting TRT to maximize response, and how social media has changed the health and fitness space for better or worse. Mind Pump Fit Tip: All exercises have value! The key is in how you apply them. (3:40) The value of isometrics for building muscle and strength. (9:45) A high school football training update with Justin Andrews: How the kids are beginning to see transformations, building the foundation, and leader boards. (12:17) The health benefits of whey protein. (17:03) The psychology behind the value of sports. (19:45) How your grip strength is a HUGE indicator of good health. (24:54) What is it about Elon Musk that people don’t like? (28:43) Melatonin’s strong effect on growth hormone. (35:01) When a self-driving car gets pulled over by the police. (38:59) How Justin has been using weed-whacking as a meditative practice. (42:01) #Quah question #1 - How do weighted dips compare to the bench press? (46:58) #Quah question #2 - Is drinking diet soda really so bad for you? (51:55) #Quah question #3 - When starting TRT, what are the best practices to maximize response? Diet, sleep, workout, etc.? (59:02) #Quah question #4 - How has social media changed the health and fitness space? For the better or for worse? (1:04:55) Related Links/Products Mentioned April Promotion: Get MAPS Anywhere, MAPS Prime and Prime Pro all for $99.99! How to Perform a 90/90 Hip Stretch (HIP FLEXOR STRETCH) The Muscle Building Secrets of Isometrics – MAPS Fitness Products Effects of plyometric and isometric training on muscle and tendon stiffness in vivo Visit Magic Spoon for an exclusive offer for Mind Pump listeners! What Sports Fans Know About Friendship - The Atlantic Grip Strength Is Important for More Than Just Squeezing Your Handlebars and Brakes JRE#1804 - Bill Maher - The Joe Rogan Experience Melatonin stimulates growth hormone secretion through pathways other than the growth hormone-releasing hormone - PubMed Visit Felix Gray for an exclusive offer for Mind Pump listeners! Driverless car got pulled over by the police, then bolted. The company said it was by design. Visit Oli Pop for an exclusive offer for Mind Pump listeners! **Promo code MINDPUMP at checkout for 15% off your first order** How To Do Chest Dips For A BIG Chest! - Mind Pump TV Prevalence of Artificial Food Colors in Grocery Store Products Marketed to Children Mind Pump Hormones Facebook Private Forum MP Hormones Mind Pump #1477: Is Social Media Killing Your Gains? Mind Pump #1792: The Secrets Of Happy People With Arthur C. Brooks Mind Pump Podcast – YouTube Mind Pump Free Resources People Mentioned Jordan Shallow D.C (@the_muscle_doc)  Instagram James Smith (@smittydiesel)  Instagram Elon Musk (@elonmusk)  Twitter Bill Maher (@billmaher)  Instagram Arthur Brooks (@arthurcbrooks)  Instagram

If you want to pump your body and expand your mind, there's only one place to go. Mind, hop, mind, hop 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. In today's episode, we answered some fitness and health questions that were asked by our audience. But we opened the episode with an intro portion where we talk about current events,

scientific studies, and we mentioned some of our sponsors. Today's intro was 44 minutes long after that we got to the questions. So here's what went down to today's show. We opened up by the time how all exercises have value. By the way, let us talk about the value of isometrics for building muscle and strength. Right now, if you go to mapsfitinistproducts.com, we have a muscle building secrets of isometrics

ebook that's for sale. It's very inexpensive. It's very valuable. Go check it out. Then Justin gave us a training update for the football team that he is coaching. We talked about the health values of way protein, which let us talk about magic spoon cereal. Magic spoon cereal is grain-free, no sugar, and it's got way protein and high amounts of way protein.

It's actually a protein supplement, and these cereals are the flavors alike, the ones you grew up eating when you were a kid. Really good stuff. It's one of our most popular sponsors. Go check them out. Head over to mindpumppartners.com. Click on magic spoon, use the code Mind Pumping, it $5 off a box of Magic Spoon cereal.

Then we talked about the value of sports. We brought up Elon Musk and why so many people don't like him maybe. I talked about how melatonin is closely connected to growth hormone and why increasing melatonin will give you more growth hormone. One of ways you can do this by wearing blue light blocking glasses a couple hours before bed. One of the ways you can do this by wearing blue light blocking glasses a couple hours before bed and one of our favorite companies for blue light blocking glasses is Felix Gray. They don't change the color of everything so it's a clear lens but they're very effective. They look good, they're comfortable and when you lower your exposure to blue light, when

you go to sleep you get more melatonin thus getting more growth hormone. Go check these guys out and right now they're on sale. Go to mindpumppartners.com, click on Felix Gray Glasses, use the code, birthday 15, so birthday 1.5, at checkout, get 15% off their entire website. And then we talked about self-driving cars and Justin weed whacking the whole backyard to escape the house. Then we got to the questions. Here's the first one. This person wants to know the difference between weighted dips and bench press for muscle

development. The next question is, person wants to know if diet soda is bad for you. The next question, this person wants to know what they should change about their lifestyle wouldn't going on hormone replacement therapies. Anything they should do with diet and exercise to maximize the effects. By the way, if you ever have any questions you want answered on hormone replacement therapy, we've partnered with some of the best doctors in the world and you can get free access to a forum on Facebook, well, they'll answer your questions.

It's mind-pump hormones on Facebook. And if you want an assessment from one of them, go to mphormones.com. The fourth question, this person want to know if social media has affected the health and fitness space for better or for worse. Also, all month long, we're running a promotion. We've bundled three maps programs in discounted the price massively.

So here's what it is, right? You get maps prime, maps Prime Pro, and Maps anywhere. Normally would retail for $361, but right now for the month of April, you can get this bundle for $99.99. That's it. If you're interested, you wanna sign up? Go to mapsaperal.com.

Let's be very clear. All exercises have value. The key is in how you apply them. If you use an exercise wrong, terrible value, no value, or can actually cause problems using the right way, tremendous value. All of them? All. Really? Yeah. You know why I'm bringing this, it's true, right? Think of now, you can invent an exercise, I guess, that would be bad. But I'm talking about all exercises that exist, have been practiced that people do. There's a reason why they exist.

And in the right application for the right person, they're going to have some value. But the values are all very different. And the reason why this is, I want to talk about this is today, this morning, I'm working out. And I'm trying to work, I'm really trying to focus on lower body stability and mobility for myself. And this is an issue because I'll do it for a little while. And then I get carried away with the strength stuff

Which I just love so much So I'm in the gym and I'm sitting on the abductor machine So that's the one where you're you're open your legs, right? And I know we've made fun of that exercise in the past because mainly because people use it for the wrong value Like they think that oh this is gonna you know shape my butt the sides, or this is more valuable than squats or deadlifts for building my butt and shaping my body, which is not the case with my thighs. Yeah, that's why it's, that's when it's,

your big thigh, thigh toner guy, you know? Yeah, exactly. Now, but to increase, master thigh strength and stability with the abductors, especially if you're strength and stability, laterally so bad, that more functional exercises, you tend to have, you tend to have imbalances like me.

Now there's value, so I'm sitting on there doing this and I'm like, man, if there's any mind-pump listeners in here, you're like, you always talk crap about that machine, but it's just like, now be in summer and in all day. Yeah, now be honest though, there's a part of you that has to believe that there's a little bit of just laziness from you to choose that over doing something

that is more functional like a step up to a balance or do something like a... No, so here's why I'm doing that instead of those. Because my lateral stability is so imbalanced between right to left and not good, that even something like that, my tendency is to, I'll still be imbalanced and I end up strengthening the imbalance.

I noticed this when I was doing lateral drags with the sled. You need to isolate a little bit more. I have to isolate first, connect and strengthen, and then once I feel like they're balanced, because right now my left or my right is just not great. Then I'm gonna go to more functional stuff, because right now I'm watching myself.

So if you're not balanced right to left and you're doing the machine, they're independent. Are you doing one at a time then? No, but they're one will move independently from the other. So if I push one faster or more than the other, it shows up. So I'm really, really focused on trying to stay as

balanced as possible. And once I feel more stable, then I'm gonna move to the more functional, because I was doing the functional stuff, and I was like watching myself, and I'm like, this is compensating. It's so hard, like I'm gonna move to the more functional, because I was doing the functional stuff, and I was watching myself, and I'm like, this is, you're compensating. It's so hard, I'm almost the point where I can't not compensate, you know?

Yeah, so there's no justification for a keeping pull up though. I mean, like, gymnastics. I know, that's how I was going. Yeah, the one application for it is a transitionary move, but just that type of stress, in the shoulder joint, supporting cast and rotators, like it demolishes it with like high volume.

And it just, that's why it's so cringe worthy. I know CrossFit people don't like to hear that because it gives them a lot of numbers for pull ups. And yeah, they've taken something competed with it, which is hilarious to me. Yeah, I mean, it's just the, most of the time it's it's a good exercise. It's kind of like turned into a cheat for sport Yeah, I think that's a lot of times where the it loses value because now the intent of it's like completely gone Yeah, but if you were a gymnast, I mean, it's a very valuable. Yeah, hard to learn that

Yeah, look at the Jefferson curl I love using that as an example because nine out of ten people, if you saw someone doing a Jefferson curl, even a lot of fitness people, they would be like, oh my god, what are you doing? You're going to hurt yourself because you're literally with resistance often, totally rounding the back all the way down and then unrounding the back all the way up. That's like a big no-no, right? No, you got to keep your spine, you know,

neutral and stable, that keeps everything safe. But if you have control and stability and you're not moving to the joints and range of motion, rather what the muscles can control, depending on who's doing it and what they're doing it for, a lot of value. I mean, Soviet era wrestlers did that exercise quite a bit. And why?

Because in Greco, you'll see like the Russian bear, Alexander Carolyn used to do this. He would, a guy would flatten out on a stomach. And these are big dudes. He's like 250 pound monsters. And Alexander would scoop them underneath. And while he was on his feet and this rounded position, hug them and literally lift them in the air and flip them over and over again and just scores tons of points. And he was strong in that rounded position. You know, that would look scary for most people. Yeah, so. Well, I think when you position it that way, I think you're right.

Every exercise can have value. Yeah. The problem is I think that when we see people using these types of movements in the gym, there's so many other things that would be more beneficial. That's what I'm trying to do. That's why I asked you, like, you know, there's got to be a part of you that thinks, you know, well, I'm kind of being lazy because there's a body weight or functional movement I can do to get what you're trying to address.

And I'm going to get more value as far as just it being more functional, more calories burned because you're doing your entire body. So because I know, and I'm aware of it when I do it, there's definitely times when I choose to use a machine for a specific knee, but then I also know in the back of my head. There's a better movement. There's a better movement I could be doing with free weights. I'm just being lazy right now, and I'm at least working towards something good.

This is embarrassing to admit, but leg swings. Like, there's no resistance. My left leg will not go up as high as my right without massive compensation. So I have to limit the range of motion on my right leg, and then I feel, it's like almost impossible to not strengthen this imbalance. So I like literally had to regress

to a freaking abduction machine and slow down. And like I'm using the lines of the machine to make sure my body stays in line and do everything as perfect as possible. We got to use some leotards. Yeah, well I have them underneath my work. I get it. Well this is where I think that there's tons of values

in the isometrics and doing things like the 99. Doing the 90, doing the 90, 90, or, I mean, that was, I was so, so different, like my left to right with what you're talking about right now. And I know, my, our good friend, Jordan Schell loves to tease me about how much I promote the 1990, but it was such a game changer for me as far as getting connected on both sides the same,

because there was such a huge discrepancy from left to right that I was like, oh my God, I can't believe I'm doing bilateral stuff like this. Totally, and I'm doing isometric stuff too, and I'll tell you what, and I know I've seen the literature, obviously we have a book, and he book now on isometric stuff too, and I'll tell you what. And I know I've seen the literature, obviously, we have a book, and he book now on isometric. So when I put that together, I did a lot of research. And the research is mind blowing to the point

where I can't believe that it's not one of the most popular forms of training in terms of results, right? So here's an example. Isometric contractions result in about 5% more motor recruitment, motor recruitment, 5% people think, oh, what's 5% that is a lot. That's 5% more muscle fibers,

5% more of your CNS firing to do an isometric contraction. That's a big deal, especially when your goal while you're exercising is to recruit the most, you know, motor, to get the most stronger you feel with that 5%. Yes, yes, and then what happens is because you can activate that 5% It would be compounding too.

Yes, you would get that 5% and then you'd practice with that and then get another 5%. Or just go and strengthen it now with your conventional, you know, eccentric and concentric movements. But without that isometric movement, you lost that 5%, you're not gonna activate it, you know, eccentric and concentric movements. But without that isometric movement, you lost that 5%. You're not going to activate it, you know?

So it's pretty well. Plus, I read another study that showed that it increased tendon stiffness by 40%. This was in a, believe it, 10 week study. Now what is tendon stiffness? The ability of your tendon, right, it's to be on, turned on, and to transfer the power generated from the muscle to the bone or to the joint. So you want, and that's a big increase, 40%. That means that your horsepower is sticking to the ground. It's like a car with a lot of horsepower, and you figured out how to make the tires so that they stick

versus, you know, spin, it's transferred, because your strength means nothing unless you can transfer it. Nothing was grounded. 40% increase in tendons stiffness from, it was 10 weeks. That's crazy. I don't know anything like I can do that. Speaking of increasing strength, Justin, how are your kids doing? This is now, how long have we been following your programming now? Since January. Okay, so we've got a few months here. is now, how long have we been following your programming now?

So since January. Okay. So we've got a few months here. And we're getting into spring ball. So that's the next sort of transition for us. And what's good is, so I took them through a hostability and isometric beginning for the first month and then transition them into like more five by five style. And now we're moving more into hypertrophy. So we're more of the, you know, very similar

to some of the stuff that we've built in symmetry, right? It's very similar. You know, they're having a blast. Yeah. hypertrophy part. Now, or the key, or the key, or the hypertrophy part, that part. Yeah. Hey, man, protein. You know, it happens. But yeah, they, they, they obviously, they're the ones that, you know, initially I had to kind of stop doing the bicep curls and the laterals. Yeah. Like that's all they wanted to do, you know, because they want to look in the beach or whatever. No, at this age, are they, are they in tune enough and are they aware enough at like,

how much what you're doing is impacting or are they? I know, I'm sure they are. I got the trick. Sometimes I feel like at that age, you're just like working out is all working out and like, you know, I just kind of called it, I just trust my coach, yeah, my coach, it sounds like it's my God.

I think you're right. I think, which I take pride in because I know for me, I knew the difference. Once I had a good coach versus like a program that was just totally generic that I followed, especially in sports, it's going to be very evident to them, I think, once they go somewhere else. Yeah, yeah. I hope, right? I'm pretty cocky about that, but hey, but yeah, I think it's been a lot of fun to see them slowly, you know, transform and get strong. And I'm seeing some muscle mass starting to increase.

And we're now in that position where I'm going to go test it. And so I'm actually kind of breaking them off into groups based off of their strength and started a whole leaderboard. So it's it's started to get a little more on the competitive side, but I wanted to wait till they really had the foundation to then like get into this. You know, it'll get them like, I mean, these are teenage boys. The second a girl says something like your arms look good. Oh, wow, you look like you're getting a little butt. I know, I forget. It worked for me.

It worked same here, dude. I went to school and a tank top and some girl goes, you got nice shoulders. Forget it, that's it. I'm working out every day now. So okay, you have this leader board and stuff like that. Now, are they competing with each other? Do you highlight them?

I mean, obviously you're highlighting them on the leader board, but what do you do? Yeah, so there's a little bit of that. For most part. Like, I think I mentioned the other time, there's like some kids that are doing other sports and they'll come in just to make sure they're on the board. Oh, that's great. And so have their names there. It's on the wall. And yeah, it's interesting because there is, there is a little more like eyes on what everybody else is doing, which I I'm glad that's starting to happen because that's kind of like just was innate amongst like the team that I was on. Like when I was like going through

the whole thing, I was just like, it's fun. Yeah, I was about him. I'm like, I want to get in the strongest group. Were you the strongest in your high school football team or were there other kids that were? So for me, it was, I, they already had all this established what I'm trying to recreate. And so I found myself first in the skills group. So we had groups based on kind of positioning,

which was really smart actually, whoever did our programming back then, actually was ahead of their time. But I jumped from the skills group, which was all like the wide receivers and quarterbacks, you know, those kind of like fast players to then the running backs and linebackers. And then I was like looking around and the linemen, I'm like, I want to get in that group. And so I actually ended up moving into that group and competing amongst like the strongest guys in the team. So why were you in the skills because you were a linebacker for most of your football career,

right? So why would you be in the skills group initially? Yeah, I was, they thought, they're going to put me at like safety and like I was going to be more of a DB. Okay. Cause I was a little on the smaller side. Well, yeah, I was like lean, you know, I was like, you know, kind of skinnier and well, you're learning your position, I guess at that age.

That too. Yeah. So I was like a strong safety and then I kind of moved my way to linebacker just cause, you know, the weight gains and everything else with that. But what's been interesting going back to kind of like what I've been having to highlight and address more often now is the nutrition side of it. And really trying so hard to implement ways

of them increasing their protein. Because we talk about it all the time. Like if we can reduce it down to a simple focus, like that would have the most impact. And so I keep reiterating ways for them to get it, to incorporate it throughout the day. And I had mentioned I was gonna do kind of a reward system for the hardest working kid

for that workout, and I was gonna bring like a magic spoon. And so are you doing that now? Are you, I started doing that the past couple weeks. They got to love that, bro. It's a kid's cereal, a time protein. So here's your protein. Well, even more probably, being highlighted in your peers is the guy who won.

I mean, you could probably give them almost anything. I think it's smart that you're using the magic spoon to get your point across with the protein, but I'm sure they enjoy just being highlighted as they do for the work that, right? They don't want to snack on it in class. Like, they love it. They're like, oh man, give me that.

Like, they love the honeycomb kind of flavored one. Yeah. That I recently just got there, they're fighting over that one. So I had a kid stay late, help re-rack everything, do like an excess of pushups and everything. Oh, all right, dude here. Here's your show.

Here's your the guy, too. I know, like you're my guy. I wish, because I have a dairy intolerance, which annoys me because, have you guys ever read the studies on the health benefits of way protein? So it's obviously well known as being one of the best types of proteins,

because you mean, a acid profile is so good, and it's shown, if protein is not at the high limits, then it makes a big difference to have way because it helps build muscle and all that stuff. But there's health benefits, there's tremendous health benefits from well way protein. People with irritable bowel syndrome who don't have a dairy issue,

way protein is beneficial for the gut. It lowers blood pressure, it's been showed a lower blood pressure. It's good for diabetics. It's one of the most satiating proteins. In other words, there's studies on weight loss, show that people when they increase their way protein and take loose weight because it heals appetite.

Is this just protein in general? Is this way compared to other... Oh, wow. Now, we know that if protein's high, then the amount, where it's coming from doesn't make that big of a difference. But most people don't need a gram of protein, per pound of body weight. So when you take the average person and have them supplement with way of protein,

these studies show like all these incredible benefits. But ways high in branching in the last days, high in glutamine, it's got peptides in it that have other like immune boosting effects, which is why you see this with irritable bowel syndrome, which is annoying to me because I can't have way. I wish I could, because it's such a good source of protein. You know, speaking of sports, I've been, I was,

there was an article that I was reading about sports and the right not accident. I didn't look outside of pigs were flying around. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, surrounding why sure that's why humans yeah, because if you think about it the vast majority like if you look at if you think of everybody that plays sports right now everybody 90 something percent don't do it for money or trophy or anything they're just doing it for they're just doing it for themselves right most people Play any sport for what reason and and if you really break it down the human psychology, it's like, we're gonna create these rules that we're all gonna agree upon. We're gonna score points. We're gonna struggle, increase our risk of injury. It's gonna be hard and sweaty and painful.

And we do it because it feels good. And this highlights the human need for struggle and challenge. That's the whole reason why we do this kind of shit. We need to have struggle and challenge in order to feel alive. And sports is such a great example of that. Because again, most people don't do it for anything.

You're not winning anything. In fact, studies show that when you take athletes, that play sports because of the passion and the love of it. And you pay them, they start to lose their desire to play the sport. They actually start to lose. I imagine that would be one of the hardest things as far as being a professional athlete, right?

Because you work most your life to reach that level and then getting that big contract. Well, I mean, we see it. Not the job. By the way, we see this examples all the time in professional sports whenever you, so we used to play a lot of fantasy football and I always would draft a player that was dressed up like your favorite character. No, no. Do you know how fantasy works?

It's like a larp. Yeah. You get in position. You know, I'm Steve Young. Yeah. No, this actually really highlights your point though, but you're making is that, you know, so the I always would draft players that were on contract years because they don't have the money yet. They're trying to get the money and they have, they ball out. It's always like one of their best years they have when they're trying it.

And then they get that contract and many of them just start to decline in their performance. Not all, but a lot of them do. They want to make that pay day. There's an actual, it's a documented psychological phenomenon that when you do something for the sheer joy of it, whether it's writing or playing a spore or working out or anything,

and then you get paid for it, that some of the joy gets reduced. I would disagree with that with us. I mean, we weren't getting paid when we first started. There's tons of joy, but I have more joy today than I did. Yeah. It feels really good to do this

and actually make money doing it than it did in the first year when we were making any money doing it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But I understand. So it doesn't apply to all cases. No, no, no, but generally speaking, like I get it, like, I don't know, is there something that you do on your own now that you really, really love that's not a job for you? Like if I started getting paid to work out, I mean, it would be cool, but I could see

how then it would become more of a job. Well, no, that's how I felt that way about competing. I was doing, I was competing for like VIT, right, to build, help us build this. And then once that was done, like, it made me really like for, I'd say the last year, two years after, after, yeah, I was kind of like, I almost wanted to go to the other, now I would have never gone the complete other stream to stop working out, but I really pulled back. Just like I don't have the same love and passion for training at that level,

because except for to have built what we did. And then once that was done, it was kind of like, yeah, it's interesting, because I've seen like some players that I grew up with and they got scholarships and like full rides. And I think there was an element there of being the best and not really having anyone like super close to that talent level.

And then all of a sudden being the small fish in a huge pond where it's like everybody is just as good if not better than you. And you really have to like, reprove yourself like they fell off. And that was so frustrating to me, because I'm like, give me that, like I want that opportunity to prove myself.

And it was interesting to see how like, there was a clear divide of what type of athlete rose to that new occasion, that new level and one that was like, well, forget it. I just want to stop at being the best. Well, it says, it's called the over justification effect, which reduces intrinsic motivation. It's interesting.

It's very interesting, right? Like people, they, like, you look at like top Olympic athletes. When you're at that level, you probably started because you had this crazy passion for whatever you're doing. So it's not like you started as a kid thinking, I'm gonna do this for the Olympics, you're like, I love swimming or whatever, then you're talented for it

and then because it's coming up combined with your love for it and your competitive and discipline, then you reach that super high level and then it's like they stop, they don't wanna do it anymore. You know, like I don't really have a desire. What's that saying, go the wolf climbing the hill is always hungry than the wolf on top of the hill or whatever. Yeah, but when you want the food, it's the, yeah.

That's for my pulverine. That's it, it's there. That's from up on the hill. That's it. That's it. That's a puppy already said. Pretty funny. He's bringing it back to our goal. He's so much wisdom. All right, I got some interesting studies on grip strength.

So this is an interesting one. So there was a huge study done on 5,000 people on grip strength. Just grip strength. Men with a stronger grip, check this out. They have better cardiovascular health. They score better on intelligence tests. They have better overall mental functioning, generally more athletic, or more socially aggressive and dominant in a positive way, often relating to having more financial success and are more likely to age well, all off of grip. Now, yeah, but couldn't you say that's all connected to working out?

All those roles, fitness. Yeah, of course. Because all those things are improved with working out and most likely the men that have stronger grip are the ones that are working out and not working out. Now, it's a display of health, right? Yeah, your grip strength is an indication of how well things are out. It's a display of health, right? Yeah, your grip strength is an indication of how well things are going.

It's a very easy one, because there's other ways you can indicate strength, but grip is so easy to test, and it's like, this will tell you right away. And then when we hung out with Smitty and Joe DeFranco, I thought when he brought that, the whole grip strength idea for testing your slides, I love that.

I mean, it's been a while since another trainer blew my mind about something, and I'm like, those guys are the best. How did I not think of this to do this for my client? I wish I had thought of that and used that as a tool. You know what it is, it's because they coach and train people all the time. The problem with HRV testing, it's great metrics,

but what a pain the ass. It's such a complicated measure this, measure the variance between your heart rate. You gotta do do this when you wake up, you got to whatever. If you're a trainer and you can find a way to do something and make it easy as hell, it's like that's like a game changer and that was a total game changer. Instead of measuring it, you're just testing your grip. In this particular study too, they found that men with a strong grip are far more likely to marry. And then along those lines, women find strong firm hands and grips to be one of the most attractive traits.

And that's like old wisdom, right? What are they, what are they, what are they, what are they learning from? What's the handshake? The limp wrist. Oh man. I think that goes the other extreme though sometimes too. There's like, I feel like I've shook the hand

of insecure guys that feel they need to eat this. Oh, when it's oblong, like over-convencing. Yeah, there's a difference between like a good firm handshake from someone and you're like, oh, dude, solid versus like, whoa, bro. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Wait, you know, we try to crush me. Yeah, like where you're like trying to do that.

Like you've met people like that, right? Would they kind of, you know, would I rip you intentionally? You know what I do? Cause I tickle them. Yeah. No, you do the weird, the finger drag.

Yeah, the finger drag. The no thumbs, my favorite, because you go, yeah. Oh, it's like they're grabbing a flipper. It's so weird. No thumb, you guy. No, that guy. So grip strength happens to be one of my biggest strengths. So whenever someone used to do that to me,

I would, when they come in, you could tell that like, into the after-hack. I would crush the fuck out of him. So my sister actually, when my sister, my old, not my older, she's the oldest girl in my town. So she's second to me. When she started dating, I'm very overprotective, right? So these guys would come over and they'd be all,

and she'd warn him, my brother is really overprotective. And this one dude, I'll never forget, he comes in and he was a douche, total douche. I forgot his name, because if I knew his name, I'd call him out right now, because I'd show him the douche. he's a he was a douche total douche I forgot his name because if I knew his name I call him out right now Because I don't need the guy, but he shows up total douche bag I could tell right away walks up and he goes and he shakes my hand and he's like he has his elbow up and does the whole like this Oh the elbow up guy. Yeah, yeah, okay, and I pulverized his hand like I literally I held it and I just fucking

Dr. Joe's knee. I mashed it and to the point where he made this of his face. Like, I made him a steak. And my sister was like, Sal! And I let go. He didn't say nothing. I really like just crushed the fingers into the... Oh, I felt his bones shift, you know?

Yeah, like bones just hurt. You feel it knuckle really dig in, you know? Yeah. I'm like, here you go, buddy. Anyway, so I know we're recording this episode a little early. So news may change or whatever, but I want to comment on the stir, we don't have to go into specifics,

but Elon Musk is just created so much stir and buzz around everything. It's exciting. Speech wise, it's exciting to watch. It's so funny because the, just like shaking it out. The people who are afraid of him or opposed to him. I was just gonna ask you, what is it about, you know, and I have

a friend that is too. I sent over a text about some of the stuff he's doing and he just kind of like, well, I don't, you know, whatever about him. I'm like, dude, how does it, how does what he's doing not excite you or how you not intrigued by it and how do you, and why are there, why are there groups of people that don't like him? what is it they don't like about him I haven't been older like because it's politicized it's where because I thought I heard how did he come up with it how did he get his money that he inherited like PayPal was was was was one of the no that's how he got himself but before that like did he comes from money right not really no I think you got a small start by the way what is it people need to realize right now. If I gave you $100 million, you could give me 100,000 people. All of them $100 million. Not one of them would turn it into a billion dollars. That's how hard it is to go from 100 million to a billion. So people who see billions.

Billionaires. Billionaires. People who see billionaires who go, oh, well, you got a million dollar loan from his, like, you know what, it takes to go from a million to a billion. It's harder to go from that than zero to a million. That's 100% fact. So I have to read, I was gonna read this comparison

just from like one publication, it was Business Insider. They, so they did one tweet. And this was 2013. This was, it says billionaire Jeff Bezos, Washington Post by Marx of fascinating cultural transition in America. Best of those by the same exact publication, business insider now with Elon Musk.

Elon Musk attempt to buy Twitter represents a chilling new threat. Billionaire trolls taking over social media. It's so crazy. Like, you can completely just create a called different narrative based on your own opinion. That's the part that I noticed. Bill Margots into that with Rogan,

just talking about that, how crazy slanted. You know, they're just like two decades ago, you know, your late night guys wouldn't even talk politics. Like, you wouldn't even know what Leno or Letterman or what these are. Those are the third rail. Yeah, and they just stayed away from it. They didn't want it freshen, because it's just entertainment. And you didn't want to divide your audience. It was a third rail. Yeah, yeah, and they just stayed away from it. They didn't want it crashing

because it's just entertainment and you didn't want to divide your audience. There was no reason to do that, you know, and leave your political beliefs at home. But now it, it feels like, and this is coming from by the way, Bill Mar, who's like a left leaning guy anyway, saying like it's like you are on,

and that. I think it's gonna go back. I think it's gonna go back. I know why, because- I definitely believe that. Because companies are getting crushed. Yeah. For some- As a shit, well, politics out of definitely believe that. Because companies are getting crushed. Because first off-

As he should, well, politics out of all this stuff. Because if you make a strong position, you better be perfect in your past. And let me tell you something, there's very few companies that are perfect in their application of their opinions or their beliefs. Like for example, people so like,

oh my god, Elon's gonna buy a Twitter, we're so scared or whatever. They don't care that the Saudi kingdom is one of the major shareholders. That BlackRock is one of the major, or was one of the major shareholders or Vanguard, or they don't care that China owns TikTok, which is a much larger, more popular platform than Twitter.

And China does a lot of crazy, a lot of terrible stuff that people here wouldn't stand for. So shut your mouth. They're so, it's so strange, so strange to me. But they don't like Elon, you know why? Because he's become politicized. First of all, he was targeted by Elizabeth Warren, love target, he's the richest man of the world.

So he's already target. She targets him saying billionaires need to pay more taxes, even though the guy's paid more tax than anybody in history. And he's created so much and innovated, but he's been targeted in politicized. So that's why. So people who are on one side now look at him as a politician, not as a guy that does a good job.

So people give him money because they like what he does. You know, so it's, it's very, very, very, very, very, great. I mean, I feel like you can totally disagree with someone's political beliefs at that level, let's, you know, taking abesos and musk as an example, but still also respect what they have done for our, our economy. Right.

What the innovation that those guys have both done, the amount of jobs that they have created for people, you know, how many, you know, well, I just get excited when he does anything because he will do it. He's a man of action. You know, it's like he'll say something and then he'll build it.

Like he knows how to execute, whereas a lot of people say things, politicians say things all day long. Where is it? Where is all of these wonderful things that you've been promising, everybody? No, where it's not anywhere. There's rare, do you find somebody

that can actually build something and see it all the way? Well, when people get confused where wealth comes from, what they think is that wealth, that there's this fixed pie of wealth, and if you have more that means everyone else has less. But the truth is, we create, like America today is more wealthy, even if you were to reduce the population, per person is more wealthy than 100 years ago were to reduce the population, per person is

more wealthy than 100 years ago, 50 years ago, than 20 years ago, because of efficiencies, we're more efficient at what we do. Amazon. That's the same thing where people get scared about AI coming in, replacing everyone's jobs. I was just in a debate with my buddy about that too. Oh man, AI is going to put everybody out of work. It's like, it doesn't work like that.

It's going to change the job. There's so many jobs 50 years ago that don't exist today because of efficiency, right? We've increased efficiency. So if you look at Amazon, the obvious thing is like, well, Amazon employs 100,000 people. Okay, well, yeah, that's obvious. You know, Amazon allows businesses to grow now.

Okay, well, that's maybe not so obvious, but look at all the downstream efficiencies that Amazon has created. It's almost impossible to quantify how much it's added to the quality of life and to the wealth overall. And it's not just the jobs that they create. There's so much more. That's there. For example, like the innovations that Tesla has made is probably done more for climate change than public policy has just his innovations, right? Just like the like zip drive, like you know, trees were saved because of the zip drive more than like these organizations that

try to save trees. It's all paperless. Exactly. Yeah, something that's all stuff to consider. Just kind of interesting. All right, so let's go back to science a little bit. Let's talk about militant for a second. I didn't know this, but melatonin has a strong effect on growth hormone. Do you guys know that?

If your melatonin is low, let's say you have poor sleep, and- And growth hormone shoots up. No, growth hormone is lower. It's blunted. It's blunted, right? And growth hormone is obviously partially responsible

for muscle growth, fat loss, skin, right? Like the youth hormone. That's interesting, I would think the opposite. I think your body would think to go into like fight or flight type of situation and then that would get a natural boost because of that. No, growth hormone. Yeah, growth hormone can go up from when it comes to fasting, but if you do it for too long, it goes right down, right?

But when it comes to melatonin, low melatonin can also mean low growth hormone. So it's inversely related to cortisol. Yeah, yeah. Well, well, directly growth hormone in insulin or inversely when one is high, the other one goes down. So if you spike insulin, growth hormone goes down. If insulin's low, growth hormone tends to go up. But with melatonin, they've done studies where people will supplement with melatonin and you see an increase in growth hormone or, for example, wearing blue light blocking glasses increases the production of melatonin in most people. Which is good because that's a naturally what your body's producing versus exogenously. Yes. Because I know a lot of people that do supplement

with melatonin a lot, but I would always assume it's better to produce it now. Yeah, supplementing with melatonin is like a it's like a second rate. It's a substitute, right? For what you could do naturally. If you get good sleep, you don't expose yourself to too much blue light or you block it with blue light blocking glasses. If you don't eat too close to bed, you know, all the stuff we know to make yourself sleep better. Yeah. You're going to get more melatonin production,

you'll get more REM sleep, you'll dream more. So how, how, how, how, how adverse could it be for somebody who consistently uses melatonin like every single night? I know people that do that. Yeah, they do. Well, your body, there's a, there may be a negative feedback loop

so where your body will stop producing as much of its own melatonin. Now you're replacing. So, yeah, but then how would that affect growth hormones? What I'm saying, with that effect, growth hormone. I don't know. That's a good question. I don't know if replacing melatonin exogenously, if that's a perfect replacement, or if there's

other downstream effects, that's a good question. Because you would think your body would down-regulate how much it's producing, which then I would think would inversely affect the... Yeah, but then you, because you're supplementing with melatonin, your body's still getting the signal and will reproduce, you know, more growth hormone. and then you're supple with a melatonin, your body's still getting the signal and we'll reproduce more growth hormone. So, it's funny with this particular science. What art, sorry, but you just, I wanna learn.

What are some of the things that we can do naturally to boost that? Oh, anything that improves your sleep? Yes, anything that improves your sleep. So get sunlight during the day for the circadian rhythm. Don't eat too close to bedtime, cool room, dark room, blue light blocking glasses, or no electronics a couple hours before bed.

Like all these things, I think I'll make you improve your quality of your sleep, improves melatonin production. And so they're finding there's a lot of melatonin deficiencies going on as a result. By the way, low melatonin, really bad for the brain. Really, really bad for the brain. So, yeah, it's really, really interesting.

So, but like I said, the studies showed in people who had poor sleep, blue light blocking glasses, had a significant increase in melatonin production. And I know when I wear Felix Gray's, I'd sleep deeper and I'll have more dreams when I do it that way. Do we know how long it takes to reverse that?

If someone has really poor sleep and poor production by doing that, is it something that you can do instantly and feel the difference or is it something I need to consistently do for what we see a month? I think you see an instant result. I'm trying to remember, I think you do see an instant result. I'm almost positive you do, but then over time it gets better. You'll have better sleep and then do it again, you get even better sleep, and just like when you're so compound.

Yeah, just like when you're trying to improve the quality of your sleep. So really interesting stuff in regards to blue light blocking glasses and melatonin. And it's an important neuro hormone. Oh, you brought up Tesla. So the self-driving car thing is kind of getting interesting and funny at the same time.

So did you guys see, there's this video circulating, I think it was in New York where a self-driving car that obviously doesn't have anybody at the wheel was pulled over by the cops. What? Yeah. So apparently... How do they pull it over? They just, they can frighten and went behind it. You know, like they would normally in it. I guess it stopped and they went to...

How confusing for the police officers. It's so confusing. Who do I get the ticket to? Well, he went in, looked in and was like, there's nobody in there. And then they were kind of discussing. And then it took off. And so it really ran away from the cops

through the next like intersections. And I don't know, obviously some glitch and they haven't figured all the logistics out, I guess, with the whole like police, like pulling them over and everything. But I thought that was pretty funny, like at least that's, that's something that's now where I have to kind of figure out. Who's self-driving car?

Who's a connected do we know? I don't know. I was trying to figure that out too. It was like a Google one. It was like a mapping one. It looked like to me. One of those. Who's in the lead of this?

Do you guys know who we have? I haven't checked back in on like to see who's leading the way right now in self-driving cars. Well, I know Google's got, you've ever seen them driving around with the, they have like that, like we're, yeah, that's what it looked like. It was easy to that or Apple has those two obviously no Google's got, you ever seen them driving around with the, they have like that weird, that's what it looked like. That's what Google wrote. It was easy to that or Apple has those two obviously

because they have to, you know, maintain their maps or ways I'm sure has it too. So it could have been anyone. Now I thought the law is the way Doug. I have no idea. Yeah. I remember did you watch a super pumped? Yeah, yeah.

The story about Travis Kalenay and Uber. Okay. That's right. Uber has been trying to work on that. So they basically got the tech guys from Google and there was a big lawsuit between them. Yeah. Because of that.

I thought there were laws that said a self-driving car still has to have in it like a human passenger. Yeah. Isn't that a law or am I tripping? Or is that only depending on what state or city? Yeah, it must depend on, yeah. I don't know, but if you guys had to speculate on who you think gets their first, who do you think gets their first?

Tesla's already... I like Uber as Uber being one of the first to get there. Well, I think delivery cars will be first to do it, whatever that is. So I know Domino's has a pizza, which one's the no-aid? Well, okay. Yeah, it's the Domino's. Yeah, I know that you could call Domino's and a van, which one's the no-aid? Okay, yeah, it's the Domino's. Yeah, I know that you could call Domino's and a van, they were testing it like a truck pulls up.

Yeah, I remember. So it depends on what angle you're talking about, right? Because if it's the angle where it drives up and picks you up and takes you somewhere, I say Uber, obviously. That's what I think. The delivery, I would think, you know, I feel like regulations would be easier with delivery

than it would be with human passengers. Of course, of course. Yeah, you'd easily get away with delivering a pizza than a human, but a lot easier, I think. Yeah, there's a lot less risk, you know? Human delivery service, you know? Yeah, yeah. I need a, I need a gardener.

Speaking of which, what's up with this weed whack or thing that you bought? You heard you talking about it on here. Yeah, yeah, so I, I donacker thing that you bought? You heard you talking about it on here? Yeah, so I don't know if you guys have noticed this, but I mean, I hate to say maybe it's inflation, whatever it is, right? But like everything's gone up in seen amount of cost.

I was like, you're trying to get things done around the house. It's like costing an arm and a leg. And I just got frustrated with it. I'm like, dude, forget this. Like, I'm just gonna go get my own weed whacker, you know? And so I was like trying to, I was basically trying to like go through my backyard and realize it got way out of control.

I was like a jungle back there. And there's like, because I'm in like my backyard, it has like a lot further down than I realize. Like I'm not even halfway through yet. I'm just out there whacking leads. Like it's, but I like it. It's it's Zen. It's like some, I don't know. There's some kind of like meditative quality to like manual labor.

It's especially when it's repetitive like that. It almost is my- I don't have to think like, no- It's just like you're out of the house. Yeah, exactly. It's my new thing. Instead of washing dishes, I love it. Like I love like- Are you heckin' with your headphones going on? Are you? Yeah, exactly. It's my new thing instead of washing dishes. I love it. Like I love like are you

Headphones going on are you are you yeah? Yeah, yeah, yeah, headphones like I need to talk to you Drowned out everything it's like white noise. It's like manly. This is like, this is my guy's fiction outside. Yes, I figured it out. I'm like, this is why like, that's funny that you felt that way, because I feel the same way right now, because we just had somebody do our backyard like pulling weeds.

And it's, we are all back yard sand. So like pulling weeds from sand is pretty easy. And the quote we got was ridiculous. And then we just, we just called somebody yesterday, I had Jerry call someone to get the sauna, right? So we have a sauna in the studio and we're getting ready to get the cold plunge brought in. And so we need to rotate it.

It's literally like a, if you have the tools, if you have the dollies to do it, it's literally a five minute job. And someone called us like $500 and was like, $500, it's crazy. Like get outta here with that. We could go buy all the equipment for half that and do it ourselves.

So yeah, so she looked up, but I feel the same way too, Justin, I feel like because of this, everybody is like opportunity to increase my, because like that job, doesn't get any more difficult because of inflation. No, other than maybe the gas, it takes them to a driver,

or it's that money loss that's value. Yeah, that's exactly. Have you seen the inflation charts on like, it takes them to the dry fair. It's that money lost its value. Yeah. Have you seen the inflation charts on like, I know they say it's 8.5%, but when you look at like, this year gas, 49%, use cars, 25%. Like everything is like bacon, chicken, beef, like double digits in price.

That literally, you know what that means? People may not realize this. If you're favorite, if you buy all this stuff and it averages out to let's say 25% more expensive, and you have $100 in the bank, it's now worth 75 bucks. That's it, you'll lost 25 bucks. So you get a raise at work, like yay,

you know, I got 10% raise. Well, that's nice, I'm still down 15% based off of the shit that I buy. Yeah, pretty wild. Oh wow, Doug pulled it up. Weimau, which's nice. I'm still down 15% based off of the shit that I buy. Yeah, pretty wild. Oh wow Doug pulled it up Wama, which is Google right so they Google owns them. Yeah, alphabet is Google right so Google owns them They are the leaders and they're the ones to beat so since 2009 because of all Google Earth stuff sure Yeah, sure that makes sense. Have you what was there was a movie I saw once where they were trying to get in front of the Google car

Because it was passing by their house and they wanted to make sure that they were on Google maps So they like stood in front of the house. Oh, what yeah, yeah, so so if you go on Google Earth and you look up an address You can obviously you can often see the house in the front and there was these guys that They posed with a sign or something in front of their house So so they could get on Google Earth did it work? I I think it did. It just stored them so they're all weirdly. No, they were like there with their sign. You know those panoramic cameras, you ever see that when you're dragging to that?

If you drag it to that. Somebody's right there, and then they look all angular, their face look. Yeah. There was another one too where a husband, I think it was a husband or a wife, went on Google Earth just for fun, looked up their address,

and then saw a strange car in the driveway. Oh, no, you brought this up. You brought this up, the guy or the girl were cheating, right? Yeah. Yeah. Whose car is this, honey? Yeah, that would show. Oh, crap.

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Go to mindpumpotners.com, click on Allie Pop, and then if you use the code MindPump, you'll get a discount. All right, here comes the rest of the show. First question is from VIXD88, how do weighted dips compare to the bench press? That's actually a fair question. Obviously two different exercises.

I would say plainly beneficial. Yeah, super beneficial. On its surface, I would say more probably more tricep activation in dips than maybe in the bench press, probably more chest activation of the bench press than in the deadlift. I'm excuse me, then in the dips. One is open chain and one's closed chain.

So open chain meaning, I'm moving the weight away from my body versus dips where I'm moving my body. But other than that, because there's there're different movement patterns, I think they definitely contribute to each other. But they're also different enough that you would definitely program them in the same workout. I don't see them being trained.

Yeah, both belong in there. But I'll also keep in mind too when you're talking about comparing the dips and bench press to how are they the same or differ in relation to tricep or chest activation, you can manipulate that too. So like if you're doing dips and I want more chest, I flare my elbows out. Lean forward and lean forward. So I let my body kind of lean and fall forward. I flare the elbows out and I get a lot more chest in there. Simply being more upright and bringing my elbows in, now I get a lot more tricep. Same thing goes for a bench press.

If I'm doing a bench press and I want more tricep activation, then I tuck my elbows in and do like a close grip type of bench press. So there's a bit of a spectrum there, even though they're very different exercises, I think they both belong in your training and regimen, but you can also manipulate the mechanics of it to activate more of one muscle than the other. One compliments the other, I really love the deep stretch you get out of a dips. And it's really hard to get that type of range of motion just from the bench press. And so then that complements the bench press

when especially typically at the bottom where a sticking point, a lot of people have a hard time getting back up. Like you really focus in on the strength and summoning the force to be able to take that towards the bench press. Yeah, the range of motion on dips is potentially massive. Now I say potentially because don't just go to your deepest range of motion that you don't control.

You will hurt yourself. So you see a lot of people getting shoulder injuries from doing dips because they just go as low as they can. It has to still be under control, but the range of motion is greater than an bench press. A bench press you're limited by the bar. That's it. It hits your chest and you're down with dips. You can go down very deep. Now, one common I have is that I think that, I think dips are a bit underrated.

I really do. It definitely when you compare them to pull-ups. Like, everybody agrees that pull-ups are so great for the upper body that they build the lats and the biceps and they're excellent. Dips don't get the same, they really don't get the same admiration and they should. It's such a phenomenal exercise.

I think part of it is hard because it's body weight. So you're like, if you can't lift your body weight, I guess you can't do it. But there's a lot of ways to do it. Any compound lift for the upper body should get more credit than it does. I mean, just that in itself, there's not a lot of. But I mean, everybody benches, right?

But not everybody does dips. Yeah, it's the thing that I'm saying. I mean, I think to your point, I think it's challenging for people to do it. So they don't do it. I'm saying. I mean, I think to your point, I think it's challenging for people to say they don't do it. I'll never forget the first time I try to do dip. I couldn't even do one body weight dip. And I remember being like, oh shit, gave you that.

Well, because your shoulders can almost be a little bit more in a locked position. You don't have to have as much mobility and things to consider in terms of the function of the short and be able to pull off, a bench press versus a dip. So there's a lot more involvement there. Even though we don't talk about going to failure that often, doing dips to failure is a lot safer and easier

than doing like a bench press. Oh yeah, you just drop out of it. And so you step one great way to do dips for most people because the body weight dips kind of hard. A real full range of motion dip is pretty, I wouldn't say it's as hard as a pull up, but it's definitely hard. You can use a resistance band between the bars,

put your knees on it or your feet. So now you're doing assisted dips. And I'm gonna tell you something right now, assisted dips are amazing. They really, really are. In fact, I'll do assisted dips sometimes, not because I can't do body weight dips, but because I wanna go light enough

to isolate particular parts of the movement or to really emphasize the range of motion. I'll go deeper on an assisted dip than I'll feel comfortable doing with my body weight. And then of course, you can weight them. I mean, you can get really strong with weighted dips to a point where you've got a hundred or a hundred and fifty pounds strapped around your waist.

And let me tell you, the strength that you get from dips will carry over to almost any press. I notice when my dips go up, my incline goes up, my flat goes up, even my overhead press. Even my overhead press. Bottom line is if you're missing one of these movements, then you've got to get it programmed. Totally. I'm too good to dive. Also a good isometric exercise.

Get at the top of a dip. Parallel dip bars. I get out. With heavy weight, strap between your legs and just hold on for 30 seconds. Or at the bottom. Or at the bottom. Both of those.

Next question is from the next question is from is diet so to act the system. So is somebody who's listening to MindFum for a while. That's good. It's diet soda really so bad for you. I love, you know why I picked this. There's a controversy around. You're calling lane right now.

Artificial sweeteners and stuff. And so, okay, we pretty much unanimously agree here that diet sodas or artificial sweeteners aren't really a good idea for health. But it's not because the artificial sweetener technically is inherently unhealthy. There's lots of studies have been done on artificial sweeteners.

They've been around for a while. Now I'm not saying I'm not gonna say it's conclusive because I know how long-term studies can sometimes show effects later on down the line. So I'm not fully, fully convinced. But if I had to bet money, I would bet money that they're probably inherently safe because the studies are pretty unanimous and they show that. However, diet sodas and diet foods with these artificial sweeteners, they do encourage

behaviors that don't seem to help with health. In fact, when you look at studies on diet sodas, except for the controlled ones where they tell people eat this many calories and then cut out your sugar and replace with artificial sweeteners, in which case we see weight loss. But in other studies where people consume a lot of diet sodas or choose on their own to replace regular sodas with diet sodas, we don't see weight loss. We see that there's no effect.

What is going on? I feel like if you or somebody who consistently tracks your food and calories. Total diet sodas have a great tool in resource. I think if you're someone who does not track and your goal is to do, use weightless, I think, diet sodas are a bad strategy. Mm-hmm. To me, it's that clear.

Because- It's the behavior effect. That's what I mean. Because we know what it does behaviorally for a lot of people that are not really paying attention or counting, that you drink that one diet soda as zero calories, but then you end up eating more of something else because you're not paying attention. But if you were like a competitor or just somebody who tracks their food consistently and

you know how many calories you're consuming and you stick to your macros and you have a diet soda occasionally in there, I think there's nothing wrong with it. I've never had a client, except for the ones that were really meticulous about tracking competitors. I've, exactly. I've never had a client say, you know what I'm gonna do? I'm gonna just have, start having diet foods.

I've never seen it translate into effective fat loss. There's three reasons for this, I believe. And I feel pretty strongly about this. One is foods with calories. There's an inherent obstacle, an inherent block there. I know that if I grab a Coke or a Pepsi that I'm going to have 120 or 200 calories. When I grab a diet soda, that inherent block, that thing that makes me pay attention is gone. And so people just go crazy with them, which leads me to the second point, which is although the artificial sweeteners have no calories and studies seem to show that

they don't have an effect on insulin, maybe an effect or not on the gut microbiome. We're not too sure about this. There's still the sensation of sweet. There's still the perception of sweet. Does that have an effect on you? Of course it does. Otherwise, you wouldn't feel the sensation. What is one of the effects of the sensation or the perception of sweetness?

Other foods start to taste less sweet. Artificial sweeteners are very powerfully sweet, like thousands of times, or hundreds of times more powerful than even sugar. In fact, if you regularly consume diet sodas, you'll stop liking regular sodas. It'll change your relationship with vegetables and fruit. Bottom line. If you drink diet sodas all the time, it will change your relationship. Now, that may not matter. You may still be fine. You may be able to still hit your macros, but I'll tell you right now, if you consistently

drink artificial sweeteners and you have fruit and vegetables, it will taste different. You cut that out and you clean it out, all artificial sweeteners, and then go back to fruit and they will taste different. Yes. I'm still skeptical at the end of the day. I think there is a hierarchy of artificial sweeteners too to consider. And I was just listening to this podcast about,

you know, petroleum being the base of a lot of these artificial sweeteners back in the day, and that was promoted a lot. And it's like, what point are these chemicals inert, that you're putting in your body? And so to me, I would prefer to follow something that derived from a plant as opposed to something. So there would be sort of

I would decipher between that in terms of how we would choose like say an artist, I should say. Okay, and here's the thing that we're just in saying, because I know some people are like, well, the data shows, the double blind please see most control, you know, study show. Here's why air on the side of what Justin is saying, because when we have a lot of time,

when we're analyzing lots and lots and lots of data and anecdotes over years and years and years, what often happens is we go back and go, that thing that we said 70 years ago, ugh, you know, it seems, we might have been off on this. Now, when it comes to natural things, because we co-evolve with our environment,

that tends to not be the case, because our bodies co-evolve with our environment that tends to not be the case because our bodies co-evolve with these things that have existed with us for a long time. Like eating things that may create a sensation of sweetness that doesn't have necessarily a lot of calories like monk fruit or stevia. Like that's from a plant, how long have plants been on earth, how long have we been consuming plants, a lot longer than we've been consuming artificial sweet. So that's why ear air on what you're saying is that. And again, the sensation or the perception of sweetness is not a nerd. You are perceiving something and from a psychological level,

there are effects. Obviously, otherwise you wouldn't consume this particular sweet thing, which leads me to the third point, which is this. When you're developing a trying to develop a good relationship with food, constantly feeding a craving or distracting yourself with the sensation of sweet, doesn't necessarily address the root cause of why you need to do that in the first place. So that's and that's those are the three main reasons why I've never used only competitors or the only people I've ever used it with,

because it's unhealthy to begin with, everything's so tracked and perfect, and whatever, and pre-contest, in which case I'm like, yeah, okay, you can have your diet, so it's not gonna give you any calories. Well, to that point too, I think there's a hierarchy of things

that you should be worried about too. Like if you go through the McDonald's, drive through every day, and you order a number one supersize, and then you have a diet coke, I think that's comical. It's like that. I mean, there's other things that potentially, if you have terrible sleep all of time and you're constantly stressed and then now you're on top of that,

you're stressing out whether I should have a diet soda or not. Like you got it all backwards here. There's much bigger rocks than, you know, should I or should I not drink diet sodas? And I would focus more on those things. And then you can get to the more nuanced things as you start to dial in everything else and go like, hey, you know, maybe I should drink less of this. It's not ideal for me.

But if you're doing so many other things that are so much worse than that, it's not going to be the diet soda that kills you. Next question is from 24 IR maze. When starting TRT, what are best practices to maximize response? Diet, sleep, workouts, etc. Yeah. Did you pick this out? I did. I'm so glad you picked this because I've actually got this in my DMs quite a few times from people. And it's kind of funny to me because I think it's the backwards. I think you should try and optimize all the- Yeah, I had several people like,

hey, I'm gonna start TRT this and that. I was wondering if I should focus on this. And I'm like, you should have focused on all that stuff first to see what you can do naturally to get your body as optimal as possible. Then if you still are having a hard time getting your hormone levels optimal and then you take something like testosterone,

then you should already have been doing all those things and then that's just going to enhance and make it better. Yeah, that was me. I mean, when I got tested and I was low, I had everything, I was dialed in on everything. So at which point I said, okay, well, this might be something I have to do. But really, you know, here's a thing. A lot of people make this mistake. They think because their hormones are now in what would be considered more of an optimal

range, meaning they no longer have symptoms of low testosterone or imbalanced hormones. It's in the upper normal range because hormone therapy isn't going to take you to bodybuilder levels or illegal athlete levels, but rather feel good. Stay within a particular range and they test lots of other things and make sure that your health improves, which in many cases does. If you go from low testosterone to a more optimal level, you'll see improvements in many of your blood markers. But nonetheless, what people tend to do, they think, oh,

now this means I need to double the volume of my training. Oh, now this means I need to eat more because whatever is going to make optimize your health now, well, there's the same stuff that's going to optimize your health when you're on testosterone or any other hormone exogenous hormone to balance them out. That's a fact. So because a lot of people make this mistake, I've seen people DM me too. They've gone to our site, which is mphormones.com, and you can get an assessment, do the whole thing, and work with doctors.

And then we'll tell them, he's going to say, hey, I've been doing maps and a ball. Yeah, sure. Randall the volume. Yeah, it's been working really great for me. Sure. Switch to maps, PD or split. Like, no, it doesn't, it's not, that's not how it works. What you'll do is you'll over train and negate some of the potential health effects that you could be getting from your testosterone. So what you want to do is whatever makes you healthy, naturally is also what's going to make you healthy. Well, when you're on hormone replacement therapy.

And I would recommend that you try and get that stuff all balanced out first before you even get on HRT. I mean, totally. The idea is that maybe there might be one of those things that's causing you to have lower testosterone levels. And if you, I mean, if you haven't addressed that first, why wouldn't you address that before doing it? It's like getting crappy sleep and then being like,

what's the best caffeine to take to make myself feel better? And that's what you're worried about. It's totally like it because it'll keep you going and you'll keep doing the workouts. If you're not addressing all those things, you're not gonna be overall healthy, you know, holistically, you're just gonna, you know,

sort of fix like a part of the problem that just, you know, may not actually be like benefiting you like you think. Yeah, now I do want to also make this comment on this because this is becoming much more common. And we have a lot of listeners now that have gone through our link because we, you know, we've basically picked who we think to be the best doctors for this. But I've gotten questions on, you know, dosing and how do I know what's right or whatever. This is, there's a range that you go off of. And by the way, these ranges are dramatic.

It's like 280 to 1100 sometimes, which is like, well, how do I know where I would fall? And what would be best is always best to be up here or what, it's both the range, but also your subjective feeling. Yes, because some people feel better in the higher range. Other people don't feel better in the higher range. Other people don't feel good in the higher range.

So I've had people say, well, I had to lower my dose because I didn't feel as good or I was holding too much water or, you know, I wasn't noticing, I noticed my mood got a little bit different or whatever, so they dropped the dose down. Then other people feel better when it's higher. And what you do is you wanna go to doctors that are not afraid to adjust dosages

also off of how you feel. Because if you just go off the chart, that doesn't tell the whole story. Well, imagine if I had levels like Doug for most of my 20s, or Doug's like thousand over a thousand, right? And now I'm at, you know, the last time I got tested, I was like, well, let's just say I was much lower than this,

but let's say I was 500, which I wasn't, I was much lower. But I was at 500, but still feel bad. Well, if my body is used to a thousand plus, and it's 50% less now, I'm not gonna feel as good as I did when I was on the most likely not. So, and if you were to go to a general practitioner just five years ago, and they see that I'm at four or 500, though you're in the healthy normal range, and they would just discount any of the side effects or things that I'm complaining about.

So I felt better with it being higher because I've adjusted mine and I feel better up at a certain high range. My blood number, all my metrics improved, my cholesterol numbers improved, which often sometimes testosterone makes cholesterol maybe go a little bit in the wrong direction. Improve for me, although it was great before as even better now, my blood cell count got better, like everything improved. That's how I know, plus my subjective feeling. So pay attention to that, because it's much more nuanced than you might think. Isn't, is it Dr. Todd or who's speaking next? By the way, we have a free form. I had to tell someone the other day that in our other form,

because I know we charge for our private form, the MindPump platform, but we have a MindPump hormones form that is free. And what, and I don't know how long we'll keep it free because it's starting to fill up really fast. And I know that both Dr. Ran and Todd, they come in there twice a month and answer live questions. And then in addition to that,

they're in there throughout the entire month, answering as much as they can in that form. There's tremendous value for anybody who's concerned or curious or want to know about all this stuff. And they're way more qualified to answer your questions than we are. Next question is from Jada Rankin. How has social media changed the health and fitness space for better or for worse? You know, I think worse. Well, so I had to think about it because my initial reaction is that, right? Because you see a lot of crap.

Well, we wouldn't exist if it wasn't for that. That's the same. Well, dude, I tell you what, I tell you guys right now, go to gyms, talk to people. I have seen more women lift weights, lift weights heavy. I've seen more barbell exercises and dumbbell exercises done properly today than ever. And I've seen more people ask better questions

in regards to nutrition and health than I did 20 years ago or when I was training in gyms. I mean, you guys remember that we started in gyms. I mean, and we worked in big box gyms. Do you remember what it looked like in the weight area? It was, first of all, there were nobody was dead lifting or squatting, men or women. And women were rarely ever in there.

Now, I mean, I go to club sport, which is like a, it's like a middle of the road, nice kind of place that nobody builders work out there and like that. And I'm watching people work out and there's always people doing terrible stuff. But it's way better than it was before. Now I agree with that, but then you could also counter that with anxiety, depression, suicide, obesity, all those things.

Well, that's like the health and fitness base. That's in general. I mean, it's still part of that. And eating disorders, there's just as many eating disorders as there were before. If not more, I think so. That's a great part. I think the people that are on the covers of magazines,

most of them have eating disorders. So, yeah, it's hard to say, maybe it's a net zero. You know, maybe it's, has got more people working out. Maybe it's got more women squatting in deadlifting and doing movements they should be doing. I think it's, I think it's parallel to the internet. Like are people smarter from the internet's creation? Because we have more access. You know, the information's there, but I feel like

there's so much now, and the biggest key is like how do you filter it? How do you navigate through it? Where do you find your content? Because they're still massively ridiculous people out there promoting bullshit. It's a fire hose, meaning there's more fire hose meaning there's more of everything. There's more of everything.

There's more good information, more bad information. There's this more of everything. The barriers to enter into the market of information is way lower, which means good people like us could step in and do it. We could never have done this before the internet and podcasting never. But it also means there's a little barrier for other people to enter into the space who suck,

or whatever. I know Arthur Brooks talked about why social media is such a poor replacement for real contact, human contact. And he said, you get the dopamine release that you normally do. So if I meet Justin in person versus online, and we're talking either time, dopamine's the same. But the difference is I only get oxytocin in person.

That's the bonding love, like feel good chemical. You don't get that through social media and what's happened, and he made a good point, is people have substituted real in life interactions with internet and social media interactions because they still get the dopamine, but then they're depressed and anxious, they don't know why. They're lacking the other stuff that follows.

It's like you're breathing something, but it's not oxygen. I mean, it could be an incredible tool, and we've said this before, it's a tool. So it can actually be great for someone who's willing to do the work, filter through all the noise, and find the good content, the good information, it could be life-changing for them.

Somebody who's lazy and doesn't wanna do that and just has got a short attention span and we'll click on the first TikTok video that grabs their attention and then go down the rabbit hole and start following whoever's telling them random advice, it could be more dangerous. So it just, it really depends on the end consumer on how valuable or how dangerous social media

has become to the health and fitness. Yeah, and so on the positive side, I think coaches now that have, have had very limited reach. You know, that the very qualified, awesome, educated coaches, like if they focus on it, they can really expand their reach and be able to get their message

and their education out so much more effectively now, we just, we need to just rally them to be motivated to do that. Yeah, trainers seem to be smarter in general than they were 20 years ago. I think there's a long way to go with the average trainer. That's why I'm always like, don't be paralyzed by the fact that there's competition out there.

We need more, way more than you would think, to be able to combat the poor information. Well, I remember before we started this, that was one of the conversations that we had at my house, and we talked about wanting to highlight other great minds. Because at that time, we would name drop people that have impacted us, that were brilliant minds in space. And most people wouldn't know who that name was. Unless you had read their book, you probably didn't know because they weren't popular on social media.

So I know part of the mission of doing this was get to a place where we have that much pool that we can highlight somebody on here. I mean, so cool, I was just talking to Jordan Shallow two days ago and where was he at? He was somewhere in the other side of the world. There was someone in the Middle East, wasn days ago and where was he at? He was somewhere in the other side of the middle east wasn't he? Yeah, he's somewhere in the middle east and he was just he was sending a really nice text message to me just thanking us and like dude, he goes blows my mind doesn't matter where at what corner of the world I'm in. It's like almost everybody

that knows of me. He's like cute. Yeah, it was so it was crazy, right? He's like, he's like come right enough to me like, oh, I found you on mine pump pump. So, I mean, so I do feel good that we're able to do something like that and get someone like that's presenting such valuable information like him. We wouldn't have been able to do that if it wasn't for social media. Yeah, when I take a, like, when I get myself out of it, because I think sometimes when you're in it,

especially if you're starting to get focused on the negative stuff, you can start. So if I can see it everywhere, we're here. Yeah, why you guys were talking, I'm like, let me try and like go 40,000 feet up in the air and you know, from the outside of it and look down. And I fundamentally believe that if information is available and if speech is free, that ultimately we will eventually the truth and the right and the good information will win out.

Eventually. But with that also, what I also acknowledge is on the way there. truth and the right and the good information will win out eventually. But what I also acknowledge is on the way there, there's a lot of mistakes and a lot of learning and a lot of problems. But I do think ultimately, the way you beat bad information or incorrect information is with truth and good information. You just have to beat it out by, he's put him right next to each other. And then people can finally see it.

Yes, but on the way there, there's a lot of crap. That we get, we get to end up dealing with. Look, if you like our information, head over to mindpumpfree.com and check out our guides. We have guides that can help you with almost any health or fitness goal. You can also find us on social media. Just it is on Instagram at Mind Pump Justin.

Adam is on Instagram at Mind Pump Adam and you can find me on Twitter at Mind Pump Self. Thank you for listening to Mind Pump. If your goal on Instagram at Mind Pump Adam and you can find me on Twitter at Mind Pump South. Thank you for listening to Mind Pump. If your goal is to build and shape your body, dramatically improve your health and energy and maximize your overall performance, check out our discounted RGB Superbundle at MindPumpMedia.com. The RGB Superbundle includes maps and a ball Ebola, MAPS Performance and MAPS aesthetic, 9 months of phased, expert exercise programming designed by Sal Adam and Justin to systematically transform the way

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and until next time, this is Mind Pump.