Mind Pump: Raw Fitness Truth - 2235: Ten Tips for a Leaner, Fitter Body After Age 40

Episode Date: December 25, 2023

Ten Tips for a Leaner Fitter Body After Age 40. (1:38) #1 - Use effective but less risky exercises (box squats, sled work, trap bar, unilateral work). (6:01) #2 - Go to bed and wake at the same time. (12:39) #3 - Cold rinse in the morning. (15:48) #4 – Eat high protein. (19:07) #5 – Drink 1/2 to 1 gallon of water. (22:07) #6 - No social media or news for the first 90 mins upon waking. (24:18) #7 - Gratitude before bed. (27:19) #8 - Box breathing before bed. (29:26) #9 – 5-minute movement every hour that you sit. (32:10) #10 - Eat easily digestible foods. (35:27) Related Links/Products Mentioned Special Launch: MAPS 40+ ** Code 40LAUNCH at checkout ** Promotion ends December 24th, act now for $80 off + 2 FREE eBooks! Limited time offer exclusively for Mind Pump Listeners get a FREE at-home Vitamin D Test (just pay shipping & handling) + Health Coaching Call – Reserve yours today here December Promotion: MAPS Old Time Strength | MAPS OCR 50% off! ** Code DECEMBER50 at checkout ** How to Box Squat to Improve Your Squat Form – Mind Pump TV How To Do The Sled Push The RIGHT Way! (AVOID MISTAKES!) – Mind Pump TV How to Trap Bar Deadlift – MP TV Mind Pump Unilateral Training Workout Mod The Myth of Optimal Protein Intake – Mind Pump Blog Mind Pump #1477: Is Social Media Killing Your Gains? MAPS Prime Pro Webinar Mind Pump Podcast – YouTube Mind Pump Free Resources People Mentioned Stan “Rhino” Efferding (@stanefferding) Instagram Kirk Parsley (@kirkparsley) Instagram Andrew Huberman, Ph.D. (@hubermanlab) Instagram Joe Rogan (@joerogan) Instagram Jordan Syatt (@syattfitness) Instagram

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If you wanna pump your body and expand your mind, there's only one place to go. Mind, pop, pop, with your hosts. Salta Stefano, Adam Schaefer, and Justin Andrews. You just found the most downloaded fitness health and entertainment podcast. This is Mind Puprine. Today's episode we talk about the over 40 crowd. What are the things you can do to dramatically improve your fat loss efforts, your muscle-building

efforts, make you feel better, healthier, and just look more fit. That's what we're talking about in today's episode. By the way, we have a brand new program we just launched for this crowd. It's called Maps 40 Plus. It's a full workout, dietary strategies, lifestyle factor strategies, sleep strategies, supplement recommendations. It's everything in this program. If you're watching or listening to this podcast, when it drops, you still have some time to

take advantage of the launch special. It's going to be $80 off with two free ebooks. Now, in order to take advantage of that, it's what you got to do. You got to go to maps40plus.com, use the code for zero launch to get the 80 hours off plus the two free ebooks. Now, this episode is also brought to you by one of our sponsors, Dr. Stephen Cabral and his team, or some of the best functional medicine practitioners will find anywhere. And right now, they're offering our listeners a free at home vitamin D test. Literally, you can test to see where your vitamin D levels are and see if they're optimal.

And all you have to do is pay for shipping and handling. If you're interested, go to stevencobrawl.com. That's STEPH, ENCABRAL.com, forward slash vitamin-D, dash test. All right, here comes the show. In today's episode, we're going to talk about 10 actionable tips for a leaner, fitter, stronger, more muscular body when you're 40 years old or older. Oh, I know.

It's not this day. It's going to come. Oh, you thought you were going to die earlier? Oh, once. You know, it's interesting because, you know, this is, you know, beginner tips apply across the board, right? So whenever we talk about just getting started or it's the same regardless of your age and there's always an individual variance, right?

And considerations. Today's episode really is about people who are active who start to notice different things, right? There's special considerations generally speaking for people 40 and over who still work out that if you take these considerations seriously, then you're going to continue to feel good, progress, not meet the fate of a lot of people that once they start to get over 40 when they keep working out, which is like injury and burnout and that kind

of stuff. And so that's really the focus of this. Yeah, but I also think it's important that we talk about on the podcast all the time is that there's always going to be an individual variance no matter what. So, you know, we do our best to put episodes, to put programs, to put content together that is, you know, all the information and data and experience that we've gathered in two decades of things that are most common. Right. So it doesn't mean that, you know, just because we're labeling this as 40 plus, these are things.

It doesn't mean that somebody whose 30 couldn't extremely benefit from all these same exact tips. And it doesn't mean somebody whose 40 something can't train like maybe a 20 year old. There's always going to be these anomalies. And so before everybody gets all, oh, that's ridiculous. So it has to be for, no, it's not like that. It's that we've tried a lot of people and a lot of people in advanced age and over 40 years old. And there seems to be a lot of things that they have in common on areas that tend to benefit them the most. Right. So the main ones are, you know, if you've

been working out for a little while, a few years, 10 years, 20 years longer, and you, once you start to get into this age group, the cumulative potential for injury, right? So the poor movement patterns over time, slight deviations in form and technique with your exercise, or when you're running, or when you're cycling, or whatever, you know, you're not gonna notice them

right out the gates, right? So we're not talking about like injury. That's a totally different conversation. This is like, oh, I've been barbell squatting for five years. Now I'm certain to notice certain issues, right? And what it was was, over time, your form was off just enough to where over time you have this cumulative issue that starts to build up. And the older you get, the more the potential, that this can happen. It's a lot like your analogy with the sliding glass door in the track, and it's just that micro,

that millimeter off, eventually turns into, it just gets gradually separates itself over time, even greater, and so at that point, it becomes even more of a problem that's very noticeable. But a lot of these little things, like we're just thinking about how to then progress or keep you gaining and garnering the benefits

of training longer in your journey. Yes, and there's also, you know, you're more likely to have more responsibilities and more stress in your life when you're more likely to have more responsibilities and more stress in your life when you're over 40. I think this is generally true, right? 20-year-olds tend to not have mortgages and kids and, you know, really stressful careers or people who they're responsible for.

So they have to, you know, consider that. And then, of course, with that comes less time to waste, right? So I can't go to the gym and just do a bunch of superfluous movements and exercises like I have to go in there and it has to be effective because I don't have so much time. And then hormone changes, right? Hormone changes don't have to happen. Of course, there's metapause, which is a part of natural aging with women.

But the big, your body essentially becomes more sensitive to stresses over time to where, for example, young man's testosterone will be affected by certain things lifestyle factors than like a versus an older man, right? So hormones are also a special consideration. So that's kind of the context here. And you go ahead. Now do you think there's some benefits to this also? Like, for example, the very first one is to use effective but less risky exercises. Right? So, and I think of things like box squads, sled work, trap bar, movements like that. Do you think that there is some advantage of being 40 plus and having trained 20 years

to that? I've done decades of deadlifting barbell back back squats, maybe some of the explosive movements, more things that are considered more risky, and therefore I can get even more out of these movements than maybe say like a beginner who's never lifted up. I mean, there's always value in all those movements. So when you name some of the best movements, you could possibly do, but here's the problem. Whenever people try to pick a less risky exercise for a particular area, what they end up trading is results. Yeah, and effectiveness, right? So people will say, oh, I can't squat anymore.

So now let me go do leg extensions and leg curls, right? Because it's super safe. I'm not going to hurt myself. But you've traded a lot of results, a lot of muscle building potential and fat loss and functional strength because you've picked the wrong exercise. So what's important is to know what exercises you can use instead of others where you're not trading, you're not making that trade or if you do, it's very minimal, right? So like you mentioned the box squats. Box squats and traditional barbell squats are almost identical in terms of what they'll produce for the body.

The difference is the box stops you at the bottom, you pause and you don't have to do that change or direction where the weight on your bar on the bar temporarily becomes heavier because of the change of momentum. And that's where the deviations of form 10 happened. So instead of doing a traditional barbell squat where you go up and down, you slowly sit down in a box, you wait, and then you come back up.

Both of them are squats. Both of them you have weight on your back. Both of them develop the lower body, exception. Well, in fact, strength athletes use box squats quite a bit because it's such a powerful exercise. Sled work is another one. Sled work is extremely valuable for high level athletes. It's also extremely valuable for beginners. It's also extremely valuable for people with a lot of experience. It connects the foot all the way up to the hip. It requires not as much technique and skill

as other exercises and eliminates the negative portion of the rep, which is where a lot of muscle damage tends to happen, which means you can perform it more frequently. Sled work is super valuable for everybody. Almost no impact on your joints. Yes. All muscular. And that's the beauty of it.

It's just like, at any time you have control over how much effort or force you want to output with it. Have you seen the actual numbers or measurement of the stress and impact on the joint on the change of direction. Do you know it? I know it's a lot. It depends on the speed of what you lower. If you lower, if you want to, if you're doing an Olympic, there's a formula which I don't know what it is, right? But if you go down, if you have a hundred pounds and you go down on a certain speed, that change of direction, right? You, it was like a millisecond where that weight went from 100 to 120 because you have to change the momentum.

Yeah, I actually think it's significantly more than that. Probably. Yeah, no, I think it's, I think it's like, I mean, it may not feel like it's 500 pounds, but the pressure that it puts on the joints and the ligaments by changing directions like that is just way higher, which is also part of what can have some benefit to it, but then when you look way out the risk versus reward as we get older, that's where that comes from. Well, think about it like when you're going down

and like a barbell squat and then you're about to change directions, like you may be like perfect form, perfect form, perfect form, but then that temporary change of direction because you just literally increase the weight by 10%, 15%. Now if you were on the edge of maybe your technique being a little off, now that's what ends up happening because the load is a bit much.

So, you either have to use way less load, which is one option, or you could use a box, and a box look, look, I know, like, stand efforting is a good example. He's like one of the strongest, he was at one point the strongest bodybuilder that there was, very strong power lifter as well. He uses the box quite a bit now

as he's gotten into his 40s. Can he bring that up when we last time he was here? Off-air, we were talking about that. He said like he mostly does that. Yeah, that's where I started, that's where I started really playing with it. And I said, well, and when I go back to my traditional squats, there's no, no loss, no loss and strength.

Yeah, I told my friend this exact, we had this exact conversation because he got it, he trained a lot with me in college and then I've been helping him kind of get back in through some of our programming and was like, you know, I love this, I feel stronger, everything's going great. I do have a lot of joint pain and, you know, and I'm kind of working my way through all these things and so I was telling him these exact things of like, let's include the boxquile, let's include the trap bar dead less because there is that point too,

where it's like you need to have the most effective, like best mechanically sound left when you're doing a dead less. And so there's just like a little bit less margin of error there versus like the trap bar itself we're distributing that load a little bit more anteriorly. So now we can include a little bit less margin of error there versus like the trap bar itself. We're distributing that load a little bit more anteriorly. So now it can include a little bit more muscles to help. It's a little bit more of feeling more of a squat.

So it's just you're still getting a lot of tremendous benefit. You're building muscle, but at the same time, the risk goes down a bit. Yeah, trap bar is a good one. And then you know lateral work is another one that everybody hits value from, but the longer you've been working out or the longer that you might have been training a not perfect recruitment pattern, the more valuable unilateral work becomes, right? So when I'm lifting a barbell overhead, I may not notice a 2% difference in strength or stability between my right and left.

You're probably not going to notice it all, in fact, it'll look really good. Now, remember, consider over years and years of doing that, you may start to develop some issues, not really know what's going on. You switch to dumbbells where you go in one at a time, not both at the same time, but one at a time, and you watch your technique, it'll become much more apparent, which side needs a little bit more work. Then you use the weak side as your guide, and then they start to catch up. And this is like, this is like, how to avoid or prevent injury when I want.

Well, even I actually think even just dumbbell work in general has its benefits, right? Even, I mean, unilateral for sure, but even just doing dumbbell work in replace of some barbell movements, I think, can have tremendous value too. A lot of times when I would be, you know, hammering the way it's really hard and my joints start talking to me, one of the easiest transitions would be like, you know what, I think, have tremendous value to. A lot of times when I would be hammering the weights really hard and my joints start talking to me, one of the easiest transitions would be like, you know what, I'm going to sub out the, you know, barbell bench press is going to go to dumbbell bench press. And instead of the, you know, barbell bent over rows, I'm going to do dumbbell row. And those things always tend to help me out. Totally. Now, this next one focuses on sleep. Now, sleep, there's almost nothing that will

negatively impact your health as quickly as poor sleep. Now sleep, there's almost nothing that will negatively impact your health as quickly as poor sleep. In fact, you can make a good chunk of people literally become clinically insane by taking sleep away for less than a week, okay? It has profound impacts on your hormones. It has profound impacts on cravings, on attitude depression anxiety

It's a big one. Now there's a lot of things you could do to improve your sleep but one particular factor one particular action has a huge huge impact So and I like that I like like single steps that have a big Carrier versus a lot of steps that have a little carryover and that one the one I'm referring to is to go to bed At the same time every night and to bed at the same time every night and wake up at the same time every morning. Now why is that so important?

Well, most people pick a bedtime that they're consistent with Monday through Thursday because they work Monday through Friday. But then Friday comes around, they're like they stay up late because they get to sleep in Saturday morning. And then they do it again Saturday night because they get to sleep in Sunday morning.

Well, what you've essentially done over two days is you've shifted your circadian rhythm. So then come Monday when you need to wake up at the normal time, you're now jet lagged. Look at the data on jet lag. Look at the data on shift work and you'll find profound negative impacts on health. So this one's simple. It's really simple. Forget everything else. Like, you know, I go to bed at 9.30, I wake up at 5.00 am, I go to bed at 930, I wake up at 5am Or I go to bed at 10 and I wake up at 6 or whatever set those times. Keep him as consistent as possible that alone We'll have a huge impact, you know, we we recently had Dr. Parsley in the the studio and he said something and we were talking about sleep with something that he talks a lot about right working with Navy

Seals and stuff. This is an area that he's always drilling home to them. And something that I don't think I've ever given his advice before to a client or even said on this podcast. And I don't know why. But we do talk about the importance of treating the night the same way you treat your morning with like a routine, right? And I never thought about like the value of actually potentially having to alarm, alarm clocks. And that you have one that's like set for the evening. And really what that is about is just because we all know how it can get where you're caught up, but you know, having a conversation with your wife or doing some of the kids or maybe you're into a movie or you're, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're a benge in something or whatever. Read an article or you're, whatever. And, and you,

and you lose track of the time, just simply having a clock that you hear go off in your room. It's like, ain't ain't ain't like, oh shit, it's like, I haven't had it before. Yeah, we'll trigger that. Oh, this is where I now, okay, now go over to the lights, then the lights or shut them off, or throw the blue blockers on or where.

I think that's a really smart strategy for someone who's trying to create that consistency on, because we all are pretty consistent with time we get up, most people have jobs, so you don't have a choice. You gotta be at your job by seven or eight in the morning, so that's real easy, that's consistent. It's the going to bed park that everybody tends to fail at being consistent with, and so the idea of actually having

an alarm that goes off as a reminder of, oh, this triggers me to now set all these things up that I want to do for my time. The next one is in the morning when you take your shower to finish the shower with a cold rinse. And you can, this is very individual with how long you would do it, but typically you would start with like 15 seconds, cold, cold water, move your way up to maybe doing a minute or two minutes over time.

What's the benefit of this? Well, it's been shown to boost immune system. It's been shown to have anti-inflammatory effects, but really the main value of a cold rinse is it does energize you and set the stage for the rest of the day. Cold water, boosts catacolamine production, noripinephrine, epinephrine, these kind of get going type of chemicals.

It'll probably or could potentially reduce your dependence on caffeine and just put you in that better mood. In fact, your studies on cold water immersion show them to be quite effective as anti-anxiety antidepressants. So starting your day off every morning with a little cold rinse at the end of your shower, sounds silly, but it has a lot of impacts on the rest of your day, really.

So a lot of times people look at this one thing and say, well, what does that one thing do? But really, it's how it affects everything else. It's like having your coffee in the morning. How does that caffeine affect you for the rest of the day versus not having it? Same thing with the cold rinse in the morning. Very simple.

Most people now, if you have been paying attention and to the fitness space at all, have seen all the information. The Huberman talks about it, Rogan talks about it, it's all over. Every fitness person's Instagram is coal plunge, coal plunge, coal plunge is everywhere. This is just an easy way to reap a big part of those benefits without buying a $7,000 tub or getting a bunch of ice every time and making this into a whole ordeal. Sure, it's gonna be more beneficial to sit

for three to five minutes inside a tub and immerse yourself, but there's a ton of benefits just simply from starting. Especially if you do a daily... Plus, introduce it. You know, like that's the other thing, too, is because you can really just kind of gradually taper that. Like, I remember going through that process with the shower, it was a lot easier and controlled,

because you can start warm and kind of like, slowly bring yourself into the world, but then, you know, intentionally start turning that temperature down, down, down, and you can kind of fuel all that feels and go all the way to the point where I started to do that, and it would be like a 10 minutes and rinse off at the end. And it was like, you're just alive and alert. One of the things I love about this one too is it's one of those things that I've never taught somebody this or introduced it to somebody who's done it for just a few days and not instantly seen the benefit. Like the first time you do it,

it may feel miserable or awkward or uncomfortable to do it the first time, but the feeling that you have afterwards is undeniable. Like you instantly, you feel, I mean, I feel, and I've told you as this, when I get consistent with the plunge, like there's no amount of caffeine I can take that even equates to the same type of feeling. Totally different experience.

It gives me all that handsome. Like so, once you get somebody to actually implement this, and just so you guys said, you start off with, you know, 15 seconds for a week, then you go to 30 seconds, then you go to 45 seconds, then you go to a minute, and then before you know it, you can sit in there for five or 10 minutes within culture, or get to a point where you don't even.

I know some clients that have, like, seen the benefits, loved it so much, got adapted so much to it that they no longer even have to use hot water. That's right. Next is to eat a high protein diet. All right, so what's high protein? About a gram of protein per pound of target body weight. So if your goal is to weigh 150 pounds, aim for 150 grams of protein.

Now, this one's really interesting because across the board, it's got benefits whether you want to build muscle or burn body fat or control your appetite or control your blood sugar. It benefits all of those things. So when they have studies where people eat the same calories, one of them being the high protein category, like I said, the other one being in a lower protein category, even the calories are the same, the high protein group loses more body fat, builds more muscle, which is wild. Then satiety is a big one also. It controls your appetite.

And then blood sugar is another one. You eat especially a high protein breakfast, regardless of what you eat later on in the day, if you didn't have the high protein breakfast, you would see more wild ups and downs with blood sugar versus when you do have the protein breakfast or a high protein breakfast, where things seem lot flat.

And that has big impacts on your mood and how you feel. High protein for most part, for most people, let's digestive issues become an issue, which is not super common with protein sources. This one's a big one when it comes to just being more fit, stronger and healthier. The reason why I think this is such a powerful tip for 40 plus, because it's a good tip for any age.

But why I think it's so powerful at 40 is one of the things that I notice with clients that, and these are people that are more health conscious, right? People that are trying to stay fit, exercise, make good food choices. They're not 100 plus pounds overweight. What they've done over time, my dad's an example of this, my mom's example of this, Katrina's mom is an example of this, my sister-in-law is an example of

this, my brother-in-law is an example of this. These are all 40, 50, 60-year-olds. They have over time moved less and less and eight less and less and less. And so they've actually got adapted to eating one or two meals a day. And they're so grossly under eating protein that when you start to get them into exercise, them eating two or three meals a day doesn't even get them close remotely close to what the RDA is for protein, much less the optimal level for them to build muscle. And those benefits of speeding the metabolism of burning body fat, building more muscle, sculpting your physique, they're compounding when you're coupling the

training and all these other things we're talking with hitting your protein targets. And I found that the older my clients are, the less likely they are to even get close to their protein it takes. So even though this is a tip that I'd give to somebody no matter what their age is, I find it's even even more crucial for my clients that are for you. In fact, average personal listening right now, if you just hit one gram of protein per pound of target body weight and prioritize that, you wouldn't have to even try and cut your calories. Most people lose weight just doing that alone because it makes you eat less.

And because like we said, there seems to be a fat burning effect from the metabolism boost that comes from it The next one is to aim for about a half a gallon to a gallon of water Every single day. Okay, so people are like well, that's too much water. There is An amount of water that you need in order to not get sick or suffer certain consequences But then there's an amount of water that's considered optimal And it's more than what they typically recommend and it's also more than what you probably drink. So aiming for this in my experience with clients, I mean, it's like this is like clockwork. If I get a client to drink this much water, they typically have less inflammation, they feel better, have more energy, burn more body fat.

Overall, all of that stream effects that are beneficial. That's it. Just from doing this right here. Now, you want to make sure it's spring water or you have some electrolytes because you can drink too much water and throw off your electrolyte balance. But that's it. And it's not a hard one. And so I recommend people do is get themselves

a big bottle or thermos that, you know, where you could easily count. So, okay, I drink three of these. That lets me hit my target. It's also kind of like the protein tip. By having them focus on something, on adding something, it naturally gets rid of something that's not ideal for them. I'm gonna say something else.

Yeah, it always, this tip, if I never, if I have my clients, again, my older clients that have been training with me, and I go, I'm not gonna tell them they can't have their wine. I'm not gonna tell them not to have that soda dinner ever once in a while. I'm not gonna tell them that they can't have that, you know, that coffee, frappuccino, that what I'm gonna say instead is you gotta hit this gal in a water every day.

And if I just drill that home, what ends up happening is they're so focused on hitting that amount of water that it just naturally weens all that stuff off. And it's such a, and again, we've talked about this a lot with the importance of the psychology around telling yourself that you can't, how it naturally your body wants to rebel. And so instead of saying, oh, I can't have this wine

or I can't ever have that soda, I can't do these things. It's like, no, my goal is I'm gonna hit a gallon of water every single day, and then you just focused on that. And what you start to find out is like, man, when you allow that frappuccino in there that glass of wine in that soda in there It makes it almost impossible for you to hit the the water target and so instead you're like you're so focused on getting the water That it just kind of naturally sounds silly, but it's a hundred percent. Yeah, I mean a hundred percent. All right the next one No social media or news for the first 90 minutes after you wake up.

Okay, so what does this have to do with getting more fit or whatever? Yeah. The way you start your day frames the rest of your day, the studies that show this. Okay. Social media and news is designed to get your attention as effectively as possible. What has been shown to get your attention are things that scare you, are things that make you stressed out, that shock you, are things that make you stressed out, that shock you, and then of course sex sells, right?

So those are the four big things. If you start your day off that way, let's just start with the first three of the big ones, right? Which you'll find all over social media, right? The fear, anxiety, worry, how do you think that's going to affect your eating habits? How do you think that's going to affect your, how you feel about the workout you're going to do later in the day or your job or the people you interact with? This actually leads to better eating habits.

People not starting their day off with stress and worry. Look, this is not controversial. Being anxious and worried and stressed out, your body perceives this as, uh oh, famine, ramp up appetite, store calories, and we know this, when people are stressed out, at first they may eat less, but then eventually they start to eat more, as they start to medicate. So, social media, and I don't need to make this argument anymore, I think people know that social media can largely be toxic. You just avoided for the first 90 minutes, and you know what people are, well, what would I do instead? Either nothing

or replace it with something positive, affirmations or, you know what people are well what I do instead either nothing or replace it with something positive affirmations or you know philosophy or something that starts the day off in the right way and it does have effects that last. So mindset and then you create that in that first the opportunity when you wake up and I mean I've been living by this for quite some time now I'm made a humongous difference. I mean, the other part to this that we don't really describe is, you know, not having it near the bed anymore for me too. And that was a big game changer. But that's really overall, like, that sleep ritual that you're going to create to improve on the deep sleep. I think it was our friend, Jordan Siet, that did a really cool, like 30-day test where he was measuring his blood pressure every single day

and I think you the think that what what started the 30 day challenge if I recall I have to go back and look at His stuff, but it was a really cool thing he did and I think it was related to sugar right like he was saying that like Sugar doesn't make us fat like I'm gonna show you how I'm gonna eat something Sugar or sweet every single day and still lose, lose weight. And I'm going to measure my blood pressure also. And I'll just look at that. And actually what he had found during that process was that the social media in taking the social media had like a larger impact on his, his blood pressure than almost anything else. And so that just shows you how powerful something like that is. And I can't imagine starting that off in the daytime has to be one of the worst times that you could possibly do that aside from just setting

the tone for the day. Plus you just went from sleeping to awake and now fear, fear, fear, anxiety, anger, anger, anger, anger. The first thing you're driven towards. It sounds silly, but it makes a big difference. The next one is practicing gratitude before you go to bed. All right, why is this so so important? When you think about the day you just had and you focus on what you're grateful for,

you actually refrained what just happened. You actually can look back and paint a little bit of a different picture. Now this is gonna feel hard at first because you might have had a tough day and you might look back and be like, what am I grateful for? But you'll find something and maybe just,

you know what, that was a tough day, but I got through it. You know what I just did with something silly like that? I just refrained the tough day as something that I survived and made it through. Now I feel good about that type of deal. It's a silly sounding practice, but this is why every spiritual practice probably has people pray before they go to sleep.

It literally has those profound effects because it reframes What just happened? So I love this idea of combining Number two the one you just listed and then the next one number eight, which is the box breathing before sleep and Combining all those with the alarm idea that Dr. Parsley was talking about. I think this would be such a great and I again This is not something I've had the opportunity to actually implement with my clients. And I wish I had thought of the alarm thing first

because this is how I would have them do it. I would literally find out what we can agree upon, what's a reasonable time that they can consistently go to bed. Let's say that's 9.30 or 10 p.m. for somebody. And I say, okay, an hour before that is when we're gonna set your alarm, when that alarm goes off, these are the things I want you to do.

You turn down the lights, you're going to do the gratitude, and then you're going to do some box breathing. And I think just the combination of setting the alarm, you have this intention of what you're going to, these steps that you're going to do. Even if you don't lay, get right in bed and fall right to sleep right there, just doing those things. We'll start to prepare your mind, prepare your body to actually get a better night's rest. I would think that that would be one of the more powerful things you do. And again,

I think it's good tips or ideas for any age, but man, as we get older with more stuff, more stress, and I think we're more sensitive to a lot of that stress, it becomes even more important to nail this part down. You mentioned box breathing. So box breathing is where you breathe in slowly, you hold your breath, you breathe out slowly, you hold your breath and repeat it. Typically five seconds, right? So it's five second breath in, real deep, five second hold, five second breath out,

five second hold and repeat. Okay, so what's so meditative? Yeah, what's so big about this? What you're doing is you're actually forcing a parasympathetic state in the body. You, if your body is sympathetic, it means fight or flight, parasympathetic is rest and digest or relax. And when you box breathe, and especially if you do this, you just lay in bed and you just do this over and over again. Here's what I end up finding.

You'll do this and then you'll fall asleep. You'll actually do this and then I realize that, oh, I'm asleep. This is a strategy for people with anxiety attacks, panic attacks, stressful events. You're gonna go speak in public, whatever. It literally forces, it tells your body, because your body may feel anxious because of something.

But then when you breathe this way, your body's getting the signal like, well, there's no reason to be stressed out. And all those nice, relaxing chemicals start to get released, and the stressful ones start to go down. And then you start to feel it. You start to feel how it works. Heart rate slows way down. You just get in just an overall feeling of relaxation.

It comes on a lot more effectively that way. I do this quite a bit too, just and then breathing in through my nose and trying to get as big a breath as possible and get my everything to expand, you know, and slowly exhale out through my mouth. But it's just like, it's so effective because a lot of times you're just, you just bring all of the days of events and all the conversations and just like anything that's going to times you're just, you just bring all of the days events and all the conversations and just like anything that's gonna, you're gonna be anxious about for the next day. You're just focusing on what you're doing breath-wise. It sort of alleviates all that.

Well, this is why I love to pair these two, too. One of them is addressing the physiological things going on with your body with the box breath. The other one's doing the psychological and the mental side with the gratitude, right? We've talked about this before, like if you're anxious and you have a lot of anxiety and if that's going on and then you switch over to gratitude, the brain can't focus on both of them at the same time. No, you can't be grateful and stressed out at the same time. That's right. So what you do is you

address the psychological part by switching over, forcing the brain to move in another direction. That'll relieve the psychological part. Then the breathing part, well, well, address the physical actual, the combination of two of those. Very, very powerful for relaxed to somebody before. By the way, all these ones that we're talking about are skills. So you have to practice them.

That's right. You might suck at the beginning. Yes. Yeah, because I know, because people were trying to be like, a lot of sucked. Like I wasn't bit to, you know, you got to practice it and you'll have to practice them. It's right. You might suck at the beginning. Yes. Yeah, because I know because people were trying to be like, a lot of sucked. Like I wasn't that didn't, you know, you got to practice it. And you'll get better at them over time. Um, next. Okay. So one of the most unhealthy things that people do is sit a lot. Um, they, we now have data that shows that, that sitting for hours a day, like most people do, has more negative effects on us than even diet and smoking things like cigarettes.

Okay, that's how bad it is for you. We also have data though that shows that if you got up and moved for five minutes for every hour that you sat, that's it. Literally five minutes for every hour, you erase a lot of that damage. So if you work at a desk in front of a computer, you're sitting all day, you could literally have a little timer that goes off,

or just at the hour every hour is what I would do, and I'd look up at the clock. Oh, it's two o'clock. Get up. And it's a five minute walk. You can walk to the bathroom, you can walk to get some water, you can stand up and work while you're working, whatever. And those little five minute walk, think about it this way, you're at work for seven hours, okay? You get up and walk for five minutes every hour. You've just done a 35 minute walk, 35 minutes worth of exercise and movement

while you were there, and you didn't need to change into your gym clothes, you didn't need to go to the gym, you probably just walked around your office and maybe even greeted some of your coworkers or whatever, but this has profound effects, and it's super, super easy to do. I have an alternative to that that I like even more

and you can toggle between the two or you can choose what is more beneficial for you, but I really adopted this in the last 10 years and that was when I really started to focus on the mobility. And so because you're already trying to practice this movement every hour or at least after a meal and you're trying to incorporate that in this very sedentary day, and almost all

of us have some sort of imbalance going on, whether it be poor ankle mobility, poor hip mobility, poor shoulder mobility, like my favorite thing to do was would be to get down into that that squatted position and work on my ankle mobility. So I would spend that five minutes doing combat stretch or get down and do the 90, 90 real quick. So I get the benefits of moving the calorie burn like that, the blood, the circumcision, and it's more intentional. Now I'm not just aimlessly walking,

now I'm actually working on correcting something that I have issues that's causing chronic pain. And that's one of the harder things for people to do is to discipline themselves to habitually work on those mobility drills every single day. And so if I pair it with this idea of, oh, I'm also trying to work on digestion and move more and just be more active because I'm sedentary, I'm not going to just get up and walk aimlessly. I'm actually going to get up, maybe I'm going to walk for a little bit aimlessly, I'm actually gonna get up. Maybe I'm gonna walk for a little bit,

but then I'm gonna get down and do my combat structural clear curve, and get down and do 90, 90 on both sides, and then get back to my work and go back. Like that's been extremely beneficial. I know when I was going through that, people would kind of tease me and say that, oh, Adam's like flexing his newfound mobility. Like, remember that, I'd be always squatting down

in that position, and like, it wasn't that, I'd be always squatting down in that position. It wasn't that. I wasn't showing off that I had this new range of motion. I was trying to create that and turn that into a habit. And it has become a habit now where it's second nature now. When I'm just, sometimes you'll catch me do it. I'm standing in line or I'm waiting somewhere. And I'll just pop down in that squatted position.

And while I'm down there, I'm driving my knees forward. I'm getting connected with my feet to the ground. And I'm working on mobility stuffposition, and while I'm down there, I'm driving my knees forward, I'm getting connected with my feet to the ground, and I'm working on mobility stuff. Yeah, that's great. The last one has to do with diet, but it's one thing that people never consider when they're looking at their diet, right? People consider things like calories,

maybe if they're a little bit more sophisticated macros, but the next thing I'm gonna say is probably the number one thing you should consider, and that is to pick foods that you can digest easily. Poor foods with poor digestibility, which there's a large individual variance, right? So some foods are going to bother you and other foods might not. And then your friend might have the complete opposite issue. Foods that cause digestive issues cause inflammation.

They can cause systemic inflammation. They can cause stress hormones to go up. They can affect anabolic hormones and make them go down. They can affect systemic inflammation. They can cause stress hormones to go up. They can affect anabolic hormones and make them go down. They can affect cravings. They can affect your mood. Okay, this is all backed by lots of data. You can over time cause something called leaky gut syndrome, where, and a lot of people have this by the way,

it's not rare, where you've chronically eaten things that have caused inflammation to the point where now your gut leaks, nutrients or proteins when it's not supposed to your body then develops an immune response to those foods. So now the foods that you ate before that didn't bother you now of a sudden you can't digest anymore. So if that's resonating if that's you if you're listening and saying you know I see the eggs every morning now and I eat eggs I get terrible bloat or digestive issues probably the result of leaky gut syndrome and probably which is probably the result of you ignoring morning, now when I eat eggs, I get terrible bloat or digestive issues. Probably the result of leaky gut syndrome, which is probably the result of you ignoring

some of the bloat and digestive issues that certain foods gave you and you just continue to eat them. So, when you're choosing your list of foods to eat, calories and macros are important, proteins, fats, and carbs are important, at the top should be, what foods do I dead just the best? In fact, that's the first list I would make, because I would have a list, one of the foods that I can eat and just feel like I just died just super easily.

And then from there, I would pick my carbs, my proteins, and my fats. That's a big one that people simply don't pay attention to. Yeah, I think that's, again, this is where these new tests, and I think going through that process of figuring out which foods are actually benefiting you and your digestion and which ones may be a bit of an offender.

It's just good data points of that way too. It might just mean you need to lower the overall volume and amount that you're eating per day just to give your body a chance to really effectively digest it. Also too, with the timing of it for me, it was, I had to stop eating around seven o'clock or it was gonna be a problem because it was gonna interrupt my sleep.

And so just, those considerations, once you kind of really get better insight into how your body's reacting to the way that your eating habits tend to go, you can alter just little things and make a massive difference. I've always felt like the adherence for my 40 plus on this stuff is much easier than it was with my class that we're 20. Of course. Because if when you're 20 something you're almost we ignore it. Yeah and I think that's what Because if, when you're 20, something you're supposed to know, blissfully ignore it.

Yeah. And I think that's what it is, right? When you're 20, something you're as old. No, so it's more wise. No. You think that nothing is affecting your gut. You think that's just normal. It's normal stool behavior.

And you just don't think about any of that. You don't recognize blow. You're like, whatever. Well, I think it, when you're, when you're 45, you've had enough of those times. Yes. Where you're like, you've connected an issue. You've connected the dots.

Like as much as I love pizza pizza every time I do. It just wrecks me. It's not worth it. Yeah. But those are the extreme cases. You know, it's important to notice the ones that aren't extremely well. I also so why I think I've always had good adherence with my 40 pluses. I think by that time most of them have connected a lot of the dots on the the foods that are these offenders. When I don't think they realize is how much it can be stalling their progress. And then when I educate them on that and inform them on huge roadblocks. Yeah, that how much that man, you are prioritizing your gut, and your digestive system trying to recover from that.

It's not being prioritized over into burning fat or building muscle like you would like. And so, man, if we could just eliminate some of these choices and really focus on foods that are more digestible, you would also accelerate your results. That normally gets buy-in from them. They're like, okay, I got you now. Here's where a lot of people don't understand, right? The gut is a barrier between you and the outside world. Now, you think, what do you mean?

It's inside my body. You know, imagine your body is like a tube. The inside of the tube is not inside the tube, but it's still outside the tube, right? You have to go inside what actually makes up the tube. Well, when you put something in your mouth, it's still not in your body until it goes through the gut and gets absorbed. Now, because we can't see it, we can just feel it. We tend to like, ah, you know, yeah, get bloating, yeah, get digestion, yeah, get constipation, yeah, I got diarrhea, yeah, I get, you know,

heartburn or whatever. If it was on the outside of our body, like our skin, we would know right away. Like, imagine if you walked around with big soars on your body constantly. Imagine what would happen when you would touch dirt or bacteria or anything else outside. All of a sudden, those things can go through those sores

and can affect you quite easily versus when you have good healthy skin, you've got this nice, healthy barrier. That's what happens to your gut as well. So the inside of your gut, as it becomes inflamed over time, everything you put in your mouth, now can permeate and penetrate where it's not supposed to,

because although the gut is the outside of the body still, it's a very intelligent membrane that allows things in when they're supposed to and doesn't allow things in when they're not supposed to go through, but when it's inflamed, that's all haywire. Yeah, look at that guy's back up, you know. I told you, 100% growth spot.

Now look, if you're looking for something designed specifically for you because you're over 40, that includes a workout program, okay? That includes sets, reps, and exercises, and how to implement them that has lifestyle hacks, that has sleep hacks, that has dietary and supplement strategies. We've put out a new program called Maps 40 Plus. And if you're listening to this episode when we drop it,

you're in luck because you're still in the launch phase, which means it's on sale. So you can go to maps40plus.com. So maps40plus.com, use the code 40 launch and get $80 off the retail price. Plus, we throw in two free ebooks, the guide to balancing hormones and the four phase histamine reset plan. So go check it out. You can also find all of us on social media. Justin is on Instagram at Mind Pump Justin. I'm on Instagram at Mind Pump to Stefano. And Adam is on Instagram 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 dot com. The RGB Superbundle at MindPumpMedia.com. The RGB Superbundle includes maps and a ballac, maps performance and maps aesthetic. Nine months of phased, expert exercise programming designed by Sal Adam and Justin to systematically transform the way your body looks, feels and performs. With detailed workout blueprints in over 200 videos, the RGB

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