Mind Pump: Raw Fitness Truth - 2275: The 8 People Most Likely to Overtrain

Episode Date: February 19, 2024

What is happening on a hormonal level that makes these avatars believe this is healthy? (4:15) Defining overtraining. (7:30) Clear signs you may be overtraining. (8:59) The 8 People Most Likely to Overtrain #1 - Competitors. (12:32)  #2 - Type-A people. (16:52) #3 - People who use exercise as a drug. (21:23)  #4 - Post-partum moms. (24:26) #5 - Just divorced. (27:52)  #6 - Ex-high level athletes. (29:47) #7 - New Year’s resolution people. (35:31) #8 - Fitness professionals. (37:30) Related Links/Products Mentioned Visit Entera Skincare for an exclusive offer for Mind Pump listeners! ** Promo code MPM at checkout for 10% off their order or 10% off their first month of a subscribe-and-save. ** February Promotion: MAPS Performance | Extreme Fitness Bundle 50% off! ** Code FEB50 at checkout ** Mind Pump #2010: Seven Reasons Your Workout Isn’t Working Mind Pump Podcast – YouTube Mind Pump Free Resources

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Here are the eight people who are most likely to overtrain. Let's talk about this. Our goal today is to Let's talk about this. Our goal today is to piss off everybody watching this. That's how you should over this. Not me. Hey, listen, one of the benefits of working in gyms for as long as we did is you start to see patterns, right?

You start to see avatars, if you will. And I know I wrote this list out and sent it to you guys, and you guys are all on board. I mean, when we get into the list but i mean wasn't it like as soon as you saw these were like oh yeah these are totally these avatars are the ones that tend to yeah and i think the i think the idea is to shed light one on the average person who probably uh you know uh aspires to be like one of these people or put these put these people on the pedestal or help somebody who, uh, maybe just doesn't have great self-awareness,

maybe look at themselves a little bit and their training diet. But in every category that you have listed here, there's also exceptions to the rule that do it in a very healthy way. Of course. I don't think that's the point of the conversation. I think the point of the conversation is that these types of people tend to be the most likely. So if I have a client I'm sitting down, right? And I think that's the point of this episode or what you wanted to do is, and I'm asking the, you know, I'm going through the park you and finding out about them and they're, they fall in one of these categories.

Yeah. Right away. It's like right away. There's, it's a flag for me and it's a, Oh, I need to inquire more about their behaviors around exercise and nutrition because there's a away there's it's a flag for me and it's oh i need to inquire more about their behaviors around exercise and nutrition because there's a there's a more likely chance that they abuse nutrition or they abuse exercise whether they realize it or not and obviously if i'm if they're hiring me my job is to help them and help them work through that and so it gives you some insight yeah here's the thing with with exercise it's the stress on the body essentially the reason why your health improves and you get stronger and all that stuff through exercise is because of what's known as a hormetic effect it's like it's a it's a dose of poison that your body then bolsters and strengthens again against uh for future potential

insults okay but that also means that you could give yourself too much of the poison. You could give yourself too much of the stress. And there's data, by the way, very clear on this. You look at longevity when it comes to exercise, and there's this interesting bell curve. It's like people who don't work out, they die early. People who work out the right amount, they live a long time and are real healthy. People that overwork out, they die early too. So overtraining isn't just a term you hear when it comes to athletes and all that stuff. Literally overdoing it is not just not good for you, it's terrible for you. I feel like the message of recovery just isn't really a popular message in general. It's always about the work.

And so people's perception of when when their training and fitness in general is like how much can i accomplish and then it's like bragging rights and so it's like you know it they they forget the fact that all the real magic actually happens after the insult when you're recovering and so you have to like factor both of those in together in order to have a successful result i think there's there's actually a common theme amongst all eight of these people. And they fall in the category that we've talked about before the show, which is a cortisol junkie. Yeah. And I think before we get into the people, I think it's super important. I think you

articulate this better than I do on what is going on inside their body that makes them believe what they're doing is actually really good because it feels good and it seems healthy and so that to me was always the biggest hurdle is try convincing somebody who did one of these workouts or trained in this manner and can recall adam i know i felt good i feel good one of my favorite feelings is after I accomplish said workout. So I don't care how knowledgeable and experienced you are. You're not going to convince me that this isn't good for me. So I think it's first important that you explain what is happening on a hormonal level inside of their body that's giving them this response that makes them believe that this

is healthy. Yeah. So, and this is eventually eventually this stops working as well, but a spike in stress chemicals and hormones gives you energy. Okay. Cortisol is an energy producing hormone. It releases energy. It breaks down tissue in order to release energy. Now, over time, this can be really bad. And I don't think I need to go into that too much.

I think everybody knows now by now that, you know, too much cortisol over long periods of time breaks down the body. It encourages fat storage around the midsection. It degrades muscle can break down bone and ligaments and all that stuff. But in the short term, if you're feeling like tired or depressed or whatever, and someone was able to make your cortisol spike, you'd all of a sudden feel hype. Energized. So what happens is people, they overwork themselves or overtrained.

Then they go take this crazy workout class and they temporarily feel like, oh, hyped and I feel good. And then they add caffeine on top of it, which makes it even stronger. And so let's say that I feel good, but they're not counting the times in between when they're starting to feel bad and how much caffeine they have to use. And now they have to use

sedatives to go to sleep type of deal. So, and that, and now, by the way, here's some characteristics of a cortisol junkie. They over intense workouts, over restrictive with diet. They tend to be late for appointments often, by the way, this is a subconscious way to produce stress in their body. They tend to have stressful relationships. So the people interactive tend to be stressful. And it's literally their body is addicted to this constant spike in cortisol. Over time, by the way, this can turn real bad. Well, and many of these people are completely unaware of all these behaviors.

Like you just listed off a bunch of things that over time I started to piece together. It's like, oh, that's interesting that this client of mine that is this falls in this cortisol junkie is also the one who is always rushing in the door one minute after their appointment started. I also know that they're in a very toxic relationship. They hang around a bunch of friends that love to gossip and talk shit about other people. Stressful work. Yeah. And so the type of job that they have is super high pressure and they don't even realize it subconsciously. They're attracted to that cortisol spike all the time. And so they

subconsciously put themselves in all these situations, constantly chasing that natural high. That's right. So overtraining essentially is defined as doing more than is necessary to accomplish your health and fitness goals. So that means you're overdoing it, right? So you send the stress, your body's adapting to it, but now you're adding more stress on top of this. And all you're doing is compromising your body's ability to recover and adapt. By the way, recovery and adaptation are separate. Recovery is healing. Adaptation is above and beyond healing.

So it's like if I scratch my skin, my skin will heal so that it's back to normal. But then if I do that enough times, I'll start to develop callus. That would be the adaptation, right? Doing more than is necessary is considered overtraining. Now, over time, now this compromises your progress, okay? So if you send the right signal, everything's perfect, maybe you build, I'm going to use a fake number, but let's say you gain a pound of muscle in three weeks if you do everything right. If I add more to that, all I'm going to do is reduce the amount of muscle that I could build

because now I'm dipping into my resources for more and more recovery. So it compromises progress, but over time, it actually starts to result in worsening performance and then degrading health. Over time, you start to dig a hole and a deeper hole and a deeper hole. So not only are you coming back to the gym with no performance improvements, but now you start to notice you're coming back to the gym and you're performing worse.

It's like, I'm working so hard, but why do I have less stamina? Why do I have less strength? This is weird. Before, I wasn't improving, so I added more to my would, that's what I needed. Now I'm going backwards. Some signs, some really clear signs of overtraining. The first one is poor sleep. That'll be the first thing that's affected. You're just broken sleep throughout the night. Lower libido, very strong food cravings. This is an interesting one. You'll find that you'll either have no appetite or you'll have these crazy cravings

for hyperpalatable foods, right? So processed foods, sugars, those types of things. Hot and cold intolerance is another big one. This is one I noticed for myself. Inflammation, just stiffness. And then a high rate of fatigue and injury. Overtraining is a very, very fast, easy path towards injury. And the data on this is pretty clear. I would also add putting in tons of work,

get seeing no results. Super common, right? So this category of people, all of these people fall in this like, I can't figure this out. I'm four five six seven days a week i'm sore i'm possibly do more yeah i'm pushing my i know i'm working harder than the next guy or girl and i'm eating good i'm not making any bad food choices yet i'm not seeing the progress that that is a common uh theme that you see amongst all these people that are suffering. Now, here's the good news is that if this is you and you're putting like ridiculous amounts of work, you're burning yourself out, you're cutting your calories real low, your body is stalled, there's no progress, you can't figure out what's going on. The answer is literally to do less and your body will progress.

And I used to, this was both my favorite and least favorite type of client. Least favorite because it was so hard to convince them that this would work. Favorite because when I would convince them, it would blow their mind so much that it was almost, oftentimes they're in disbelief. Like I remember one specific woman that I trained who was like this and I cut out two of her cardio days and replaced them with a yin yoga class. And she's like, should I adjust my calories? I'm burning less calories. I said, no, let's keep your calories the same. Let's see what happens. And she lost body fat. And I remember her coming in and she was tracking everything. She was like super meticulous. And she was almost in

tears. She's like, I didn't believe you when you told me this. She goes, but it's really weird. I'm doing yin yoga, which was like sitting on the floor holding a stretch, whereas before I was doing these crazy hit cardio workouts for an hour, and I'm getting leaner? This doesn't make any sense. So they were my favorite because I blow their mind, but least favorite because we're convincing these people. These are my favorite clients.

As we go through the list, I mean, you talk about how you train so many advanced age clients. As we go through this list, I mean, this was my how you train so many advanced age clients. As we go through this list, I mean, this was my clientele list. Yeah. Like literally like- All these people. Yeah, all these people were my clients. But what I liked about, what I found was that most of them have a very high level of discipline

and consistency. Yeah, yeah. They just were going about it the wrong- It's just misplaced. Exactly. And so if I could do what you said, which was convince them that less is more or there's a better way for us to do this and it's not beating ourselves up or pushing more or dieting harder, if I could get them to buy in. Once I got them to buy in, these were some of the best clients because they already showed the crazy discipline and sacrifice and all the other things that take to be very consistent at training and nutrition stuff. Boy, once I got them to switch that, these were some of the best results I ever gave people.

So although they can be hard to break from these habits or get them to believe or trust in you, once I did, I felt like these were the people that I did the best with. Yeah. Okay. So number one has to be competitors. Now, this category is both stage presentation competitors, bodybuilders, physique competitors, bikini competitors, but also people who enter and sign up for competitions. It's rare for somebody to sign up for a competition

who's already working out. Okay, so let's just paint the context. They already work out. I'm already running. I already run four days a week, or I already work out. Okay. So let's just, let's just paint the context. They already work out. I'm already running. I already run, you know, four days a week, or I already work out or whatever. Then they sign up for a competition. They almost always dramatically increase the workload on their body to a, to a ridiculous level. So it's like, I run, you know, four days a week now, you know, total of, you know, 30 miles a week or whatever. Oh, I sent it for a marathon. I guess I got to run 80 miles a week now. I'm going to double my double my efforts yes and i would see this all the time it's like signing up for a competition

almost always meant over training and this was always a struggle that i have with clients that would sign up for competitions well any type bodybuilding competitors in particular i i was so fascinated by this and obviously if you've heard the podcast for a long time you've heard me probably talk about this ad nauseum because it was so mind blowing to me to see the common theme that I found. And what I found in the competitor space was the thing that was most common in all of them, they just had this ability to suffer longer than the average person. That's like a skill that they had that most people just cannot punish themselves and suffer for that long of a period of time.

And these individuals that could get up on stage and present and actually win had that ability. And they, and they ended up getting good physiques in spite of their approach at it. And I, this was, again, I built a, a side business. This was my first entry into the online digital coaching space. It was unintentional. I did not mean to build this or start this. I just was into competing. I was building a following for the app that Justin and I were building.

But I found so many of these people training improperly and dieting improperly. And I remember being backstage and trying to convince them all like, listen, it doesn't have to be, it does not have to be this hard. Granted. I know that the, the final weeks going into the show are tough.

I don't care how healthy you are, how healthy you do it. There is a sport side of it. That's a bit extreme, but it doesn't need to be eight or 10 or 12 or 16 weeks of suffering like this. There's a much more methodical approach to this. Let me help you. Let me show you. And then that's how I got all these clients because of how bad they were abusing

training. Well, I mean, yeah, you see that a lot because they also do that with nutrition and their training as well. But even with just regular athletes that I would train just to convince them that they don't need to go after our workout to go do cardio and keep sprinting and maintain this kind of level of cardiovascular endurance to really shift and adapt, you know, and solely focus on just strength training. That was always a hard sell for me because they'd feel like they were just going to lose it. And like, there was always that fear of like what I've built and put into this, like I'm going to lose this at some point. Yeah. I experienced this personally. Um, when I competed as an adult in Brazilian jujitsu, my first tournament, I did jujitsu four days a week and I lifted three days a week. Okay. So

seven days a week I was working out. And I remember in that tournament, I got so gassed out. Uh, I just, and I was training so much and it was so frustrating. Like, why did I gas out? Why did I have no stamina or whatever? The next tournament I did, I did four days a week of jujitsu and I did one day a week of strength training. And the one day a week of strength training

I did was 30 minutes. And the fitness level that I brought to that competition was vastly different. So I did way less work and felt so much better. And it was like, Oh God, it was so obvious to me. I also experienced this with,

um, triathletes. I, at one point I had a few triathletes that I was training and they were, they were competing at a pretty good level. One of them in fact, went on to compete in an Ironman. And I remember we,

we kept backing off on his training and seeing improvements. And I said, let's see how far we can go to see improvements because I have a suspicion that we're still overtraining. And it got to the point where he was doing like three strength training exercises a week. That was it. And we got the best performance that we'd ever seen from that particular individual doing so little.

So the competitors got to be up there. The next one are the type a individuals these people are very difficult to convince otherwise because they found success in every other aspect of their life yeah with just grinding their mastering their everyday lifestyle like with that same formula yeah but doesn't work here yeah it's like if if i if it doesn't work work harder if it oh and still not working work harder And that seems to work for these people with business and may, you know, say what you will about their work life balance and all that. I'm talking about just what they may deem as successful. It came from them being able to outwork everybody, being able to be super

disciplined 12 hours a day, work, work, work, work. Then they decide they want to work out and they take that same approach. And I know they would hire me and it was like, okay, so five days a week, right? Five days a week. And then what do I do on the days off? I'm like, no, you're not working out at all now. That's way too much. These are for sure the clients that would go do things even after your session. Yes. You see them. And it is purely what you said. It's that they have over, you know, depending on how old they are, decades of their life applied this philosophy of the more I put in, the more I get. The harder I work, the more return there is. And that is everything from their education to their work life, their work,

to a sport they might have played, to everything that they've done in their life. It has always served them to outwork the next guy or girl. And for the first time in their life, they're running into this challenge because nutrition and exercise doesn't work that way. Yet everything else in their life is proven to them that it does. So getting them to shift their paradigm

is extremely difficult to overcome. And this one always does take time to get them to understand. But once again, when you get this person to turn, they have created such good disciplines and habits. But these clients, it always blew their mind how little effort they had to put forward towards this in order to see those results, especially if they could dial in the nutrition side with it. Because if you were super regimented about the diet and then I just got you training a couple times a week,

we would see tremendous change in your physique. We didn't have to train six days a week and be doing all these biohacking things. You had to be careful, in fact, with these people because if you presented it as, and I'm thinking specifically of some people that I work with, if I presented it as, you don't need to do that much to get great results, they would interpret it as, no, no, no, I can do all that

work. You don't need to give me the easy way to do it. Give me the more and I'll get there faster. So I had to learn how to present it as, no, doing that much will actually not get you progress versus you don't have to do that much. Because we're here in Silicon Valley, the people that would fall in this category for me were these tech executives. I get these high-level VPs or whatever, presidents of tech companies, and they'd come in and I'd ask them what they did for a living

and they'd say, oh, I do this for Apple or whatever. And I'd be like, okay, we're going to have to have the conversation of, I only need to see you twice a week and that's it. I don't need you to do anything else. I actually had one person, no joke, I had this executive's it. I don't need you to do anything else. I actually had one person, no joke. I had this executive come in. I don't want to say the company because they'll know I'm talking about them.

But they came to see me. I talked to them and I told them, no, I'm not going to train you five days a week. You're not doing anything now. It's way too much or whatever. They went and hired another trainer because the other trainer said, yeah, I will do that for you. And guess what happened? A year later, they came back and hired me because they said you were right. Everything you said was right. And I got sick and my body broke down and now I'm ready. Yeah, see, I had do that for you. And guess what happened? A year later, they came back and hired me because they said, you were right. Everything you said was right.

And I got sick and my body broke down and now I'm ready. Yeah. See, I had the same experience except I took them on five to six days. And those off days, we did like the yin yoga, the mobility sessions, the recovery. That's a good approach. But yeah, you really had to like, you know, keep them actively doing something something in order for them to feel like they're productive. And so that was just the mentality that they brought. These are also the ones that are drawn to, this was something we were just talking about off air.

These ones are drawn to all the biohacking tools, yet they don't. Yeah, they work a 16-hour day. Read all the latest supplements. They only sleep four hours. know i'm saying trying to convince them to get better sleep and then they're like you know what's the latest red light therapy thing i could do or i was thinking i heard this cold plunge thing does this or like and it's just like how about we get better sleep and we pull back on some of the stuff that we're doing and watch how much you're better how much better your body responds so this personality not only wants

to overdo it they also also tend to be attracted to all the hacks and gimmicks versus rest and the simplicity of focusing on sleep. Okay. This next category makes me sad because you can, and oftentimes we get callers that fall into this category where they'll call in and they'll start talking to us about how they're working out. And I'll ask them a little bit about their history because I know that I have a, like a, you know, a hunch that they may fall in this category. And then oftentimes they do. And it makes me sad, uh, because, um, people who use exercise as a drug are typically dealing with some kind of trauma and the exercise and the workouts are, is a literal way to distract themselves. And you can

see this, like, you'll see, this is the, this is the girl that lifts weights, does cardio, walks 15,000 steps. Like just, she just won't sit still. Or this is the guy that maybe he just quit drinking alcohol, but now he's turned in, he's turned exercise into drugs. So now it's like he is doing, working out two times a day, three times a day. I remember managing gyms, and there were some members I would see that would come in several times a day that were doing this, and it was hard because it's like breaking an addiction to a drug. And because also exercise is not in a category like drugs.

People think exercise is always healthy. So trying to convince this person, like, what you're doing is not good for you, really challenging, really, really challenging. The easy thing on this is, like, this person almost always suffered from addiction somewhere else. They were an ex-sex addict. They were an ex-gambling addict.

They were an ex-drug addict. They were already, they had that addicted personality, and at some point in their life, they gave up whatever that other unhealthy drug or addiction was. And they traded it for what they thought was a better, healthier version. And at first maybe it did. And at first it probably served them a lot. And if you had to say,

Oh man, is it better for you to be addicted to exercise and training than probably doing cocaine? Probably. Yeah. But it still doesn't mean that it's healthy and ideal. It just means it's one, one more step in the, in the better direction. still doesn't mean that it's healthy and ideal. It just means it's one more step in the better direction. It doesn't mean that we've solved the root issue.

And so this is super common in somebody who has an addictive personality and is already – another one is food addiction. That's the one I was just going to say. So you have people that – They get gastric bypass and now they can't eat like they used to. Right. They were addicted to eating food and they were hundreds of pounds overweight. They finally snipped that in the butt, but then they became obsessive.

A lot of times the people that have these great transformation stories, that's what has happened is they've gone from their addictive personality and the addiction that they had around food to now being addicted to the exercise like that. And then they have this, I need to do the outer of cardio every single day. I need to train seven days a week. I need to be in the, and when they say things like that, you know, they're still suffering from the same thing that caused the addiction with the food. It's just, they've now transferred over to the exercise. And many people that are listening to this right now are probably, well, so what? Isn't that a healthier, better way? It's like,

man, that can- Healthier doesn't mean healthy. That's right. And it can definitely lead to a lot of bad things by going that direction also and and or eventually they break that's right they go back to that to their other drug yeah to another drug or other their old addiction that's right that's right all right next up uh this one's also a tough one uh but i would often see this with postpartum moms who would hire me after having a baby and who just had such a tough time with the fact that their body changed. They maybe had a tough pregnancy. And they don't just want to improve their fitness.

They want to get- Jump right back. Like, I want to bounce back. That's it. I don't care. Let's do whatever it takes. I got a nanny. I got whatever.

I'm going to hire you. Train me. And this one's tough because it takes. I got a nanny. I got whatever. I'm going to hire you, train me. And this one's tough because it doesn't take much. Because remember, overtraining is just doing more than is necessary. And the context here, it depends on the individual. Like you take a postpartum mom who just had a baby, wasn't able to exercise. Overtraining them is not hard. So you may think to yourself, I just had a baby like three days a week. Like I used to work out. It's not overtraining. It is for you.

So this person may not look like they're overtraining in comparison to like the competitors or the type. But they often overdo it. And what ends up happening is injury or hormone imbalance as a result of this, which is really hard. They're dealing with different physiology at that point. And that's the thing. different physiology at that point they're they're you know and that's the thing is it's they'll think back when they could do um x amount of reps and they could do a longer workout and like what they used to do uh versus like what their current state is in terms of their physicality what they're able to to take on like stress wise and so like a lot of times it's it's way less than they anticipated which is really hard uh for a lot of for a lot of ladies to cope with in terms of getting back on track.

So I found this most common with a type of mom, um, trained a lot of clients like this. And it seemed to be this common theme around the, my moms that really like identified with their the sexy young version of themselves right where before they were a mother they were a model or they they had they just super hot body was tight and then all of a sudden they have a baby and they went through this time of not training gaining all this weight maybe we got some stretch marks so you have things like this and they have a real hard time accepting that their their body is different than what it was or that accepting that it may take some time yeah right and so and they want to get back to that so bad because that's what they were impatient they were celebrated for

a lot of their life for being so gorgeous and beautiful and fit and thin and all these things that they have attached themselves to and they're struggling with this transition into motherhood and it's like they want to race to get back to. And it's not that you can't get this amazing body. I've had plenty of moms that look better post-child than they did. I think my wife is an example. I think Katrina looks better after she's had a child than before she had a child. So it's not that you can't have the best body of your life afterwards. It's that they were so attached to that and identified so much with that that they struggle with the patience that it takes to build that physique back afterwards.

Well, remember, overtraining is a spectrum. So you just had a baby. You couldn't work out like you used to, or maybe you didn't work out. Maybe it was a tough pregnancy. You had the baby, so you're told you can't work out. Now you're ready to work out, and you got lack of sleep on top of it. Your body, your hormones are. The dose is totally different now. And so, yeah, the dose is totally different. You may even think of the workout you did before you had the baby. So I'm just going to jump right back into that.

That's overtraining. So that's why this is such a common category is precisely because your body's different. It takes a little bit of time. Now you will get back, but you got to give it some time. This next category was an interesting one because when these people would go to hire me, first off, I knew it was a done deal. They're going to hire me. This person almost always was going to say yes to hire me. But then the struggle was then convincing them, sorry, there's a right way to do this. And these are the just divorced clients. You ever, you guys ever get that? They just got back on the market.

I'm looking to hire a trainer and you know, like they're going to hire you for 40 sessions. Like they're just, they're down. Right. But then they're like, yeah, I wasn't working out. Um, you know, let's, are you open five days a week? Can I come in here five days a week? Is that what we can do? And it's like, no, no, no. Take it all on at once. Let's just make this happen as fast as possible. And I had, I, you know, I, I always had to convince them them, there's not a fast or slow way. There's a right way and a wrong way. And there's one way that works and one way that doesn't. And the way that doesn't work is overdoing it.

So we have to do this the right way. This one's also closely related to the person who uses exercise as a drug too, because a lot of times this is, aside from the, I'm newly on the market, I want to put myself in the best shape. I'm also probably mourning from a divorce. And there's a part of me exercising that's making me disconnect from my body and from what's going on and distract me from what's hurting inside. And so there's a couple things

that are happening here, right? It's like, one, I'm super motivated to get out there and build this body because I'm now newly on the market again. Then there's also this, I'm broken inside because my marriage failed and I don't want to deal with that. And so one of the best ways to distract me from that is keeping myself moving, busy, sweating, and beating myself up in the gym. It's therapeutic too. So that's a hard thing to refute because the motivation is there. What do they call it? The revenge body yeah they come in and it's like this this total hustle to try and yeah just feel better but also too like you know they have this like drive to to make themselves reflect like this this awesome uh package that they're presenting out yeah yeah a tough one uh next is are the x high level athletes so these are people who probably in

my opinion very hard they competed at a high level in high school these are people who probably in my opinion, very hard. They competed at a high level in high school or college. Um, they haven't worked out for a while. Maybe they had some kids and now they're ready to start working out. So, you know, the kids are going back to school, you know, in college I played basketball or I swam or I played water polo or I was football, whatever, you know, now I'm, I want to hire you. The reason why these people almost always overtrain is because their conception of appropriate intensity, appropriate levels of frequency and volume is based off of their peak training,

which no longer applies. Even their diet is so hard to scale in because they had to eat a particular way to perform at a high level. Like you take a water polo player in college who's now 30 and hasn't trained forever. You tell them to work out two days a week. They're going to look at you like, well, you don't want me to work out. Like this doesn't make any sense. I was doing five hours a day. Like this doesn't make any sense. Very hard to convince these people otherwise. Oh, I have people come in. It's just muscle memory,

right? Like your muscle, your body has amnesia. That's's that's way far back you know like you're a whole different person like it's just it's just funny to me because you know and that's a tough thing because like we all kind of have those glory days that we remember in our head and like to like even if it's not an athlete it was just like me at this point in my life i want to be like that person again and it's like you know, to just take inventory of where you're at now and be methodical and be smart about like your training approach is, you know, that's, that's a tough thing. So yeah, it's, we all have this like fantasy that we could like do all these like moves still and then really get after it like we used to. But, uh, you know, that's, that's something we definitely have to overcome, uh, to, to be smart.

These are the hardest, in my opinion, by far. I always had a hard time with this client. And I think there's a few things that are happening here. One, like all the other people have other things in their life that have made them want to drive in the gym. These people, these ex-athletes actually drove in the gym for decades many times, right? They all through high school, all through college, they trained a certain way.

So they've already been conditioned to know what it's like to push, to know what it feels like to train the gym. They go way too hard. And then also they've attached how they felt, how they looked back then to where they're at now. And they're like, I know what I was doing back then. I've done it before. I've done it before. I know what it feels like. I've accomplished before. was doing back then. I've done it before. I've done it before. I know what it feels like. I've, I've accomplished before.

I felt it. I've seen it. I like, and so getting that. And then, and then if you talk about someone who's trained anyway for years, they've created habits around that. So you as a trainer, not only are you trying to convince them that it's not the best approach, but you also have to break habits around their training for a long time. This is a really, really tough client

to break through to because there's so many things that they're attached to that way of training. Well, it's difficult too because I was just helping out some of my friends that played football and you tell them to just squat and deadlift and overhead press

and all these things and the loading of that will be like what they did when they were training for football. And it's like, it's just, and then all of a sudden now it's like, I,

well, my shoulders hurt when I'm, when I've been doing your workout and my knees are starting to talk to me. And I was like, you have to like progressively scale yourself back up. You can't just jump right back to this intensity. There's also the pain tolerance. I mean,

when you exercise, you do hard and you do it for years you develop a relationship with pain from the workouts that can be quite beneficial but if you train and compete at a high level you ignore pain quite a bit i mean you find me an athlete that competes at a high level who isn't competing with an injury it's almost always something is always hurt so they have that in their head they go to the gym you know 15 years through it after they stopped and their knee starts to bother them or the they just don't know how to not push through it it's like i gotta push through it there's also this massive misconception around training to be an athlete versus body composition yeah and health this yeah and health this ex-athlete they have two decades of training like an athlete,

and they're long retired now and haven't exercised for 10 years, and they're way overweight. When they hire you, they don't come back and go, Adam, I want to get ready for the NFL. They go, I just want to be healthy. I want to get rid of this gut. I just want to feel good. I want this pain to go away.

I want to be in. So they're thinking body fat percentage, body composition, right? Build muscle, lose body fat, be healthy. They're not trying to be the ex-athlete, but yet they still think that that's the way to train. So there is this misconception of like, just because I was an athlete and I trained that way. High performance is not health.

It's high performance. Right. Or longevity. Exactly. And so there's a lot to have. To me, this is the hardest of all the ones that we listed. They also, not to keep more on this, but they tend to have the hardest time with diet.

Like I'm remembering one particular. Right, because they can get away with a bunch of chips. Oh, bro, I remember specifically this woman that I trained. She was in her 30s. She just had some kids that were old enough now to go to preschool or whatever. So she came to hire me, and she was a high-level water polo competitor.

And she's like, I don't know why I'm not losing weight, Sal. I'm all I'm eating is, I know, preschool or whatever. So she came to hire me and she was a high level water polo competitor. And she's like, I don't know why I'm not losing weight. So I'm, I'm all I'm eating is, I mean, I mean, chicken and rice and Turkey and broccoli. I'm eating really healthy. And I said, well, can you bring one of these meals and let me see what you're eating? So she brought me one of the meals and I'm like, that's, that's like 14 ounces of chicken. She's like, it is? I said, yeah. I said, six ounces is your serving. And she's like, oh. She's like, I thought this was, you know. I said, that's what you used to eat when you played water polo because you had to. You needed the calories.

You needed the calories. But you don't need 14 ounces of chicken with every meal. You know what I mean? We're not trying to eat that much anymore. All right. Next up are the New Year's resolution people. These people all overdo it and then disappear, typically by March or April. And that's because New Year's resolutionists

tend to come in under this umbrella of hyper-motivation. It's the beginning of the year. I'm ready to start. I'm ready to take things seriously. And so they make promises to themselves and they create habits or they try to create habits based off of being motivated. And when you're promises to themselves and they, and they, they create habits or they try to create habits based off of being motivated. And when you're hyper motivated, you will always overestimate your ability. Always. You ask anybody in a hyper motivated state of mind,

what they think they can do in a week or a year or whatever. And it's always going to be way more than what they say they can do when they're not in that hyper motivated state of mind. So these people come to sign up and they start start and this is why the gyms are packed from january till march so you get all these people come in and all the time and then they all fall off yeah i feel like these ones are are easier of the group they just have a total misconception around what what's realistic how they should set goals they They were drunk on December 31st and told themselves this is what they're going to do tomorrow. And so I think they just don't have an idea.

It's like asking a kid when he gets older how much money he wants to make, and he just throws some random, I want to be a billionaire, I want to be a billionaire. How about we start with learning how to make money or building a business or getting a job? I want to be a hundredaire first. Yeah, how about getting a job first?

We'll figure that out. It's like the same thing. It's like these people just throw these pie in the sky things that they want to do. I want to compete for the first time. I want to lose a hundred pounds or whatever it's like, but yet you haven't even proven to yourself you can go to a gym for 30 days. Let's first start there. So these clients, if I can get ahold of these people sometime in that first month and help them out. You can get them to stick. Yeah. I feel like I can get them to stick yeah i feel like i get them to stick i think it's just reframing uh their goal and actually setting more realistic expectations and then small steps small goals small wins but uh absolutely if left to their own devices these are the people that will go in balls to the wall and they'll be out within three to four weeks yeah

totally and then lastly a little self-reflection here, but people who work in the fitness space, fitness professionals, they almost always overtrain. There's a few different reasons. I'd say the first one is you love working out. Well, you love it so much. You would rather do more than do less, even if you got the same results. And by the way, what I just said to the person who's not a fitness professional probably doesn't make sense, but to fitness professionals, it makes a lot of sense. If I said to you, if you're a fitness professional probably doesn't make sense but to fitness professionals it makes a lot of sense if i said to you if you're a fitness pro and i said hey what if you had a option to work out seven days a week and get the same results you would get working out three days a week both of them ideal what would you choose a lot of them be like i'll choose

a seven day a week one because they love working out so much i just love being in the gym that's part of it the other part of it is the is just the body image issue. To me, that's it. To me, it's one common theme that causes all of this. Almost all of us got involved in this space because we were insecure about something. We had some sort or some form of body dysmorphia, whether you want to label it as that, or you just think you're insecure about your calves, you're insecure about your flat butt, you're insecure about your small shoulders, you're insecure about your waist. Whatever it was, there was something about your physique or your body that you were insecure, you were teased about, that you wanted to change. And you went after figuring it out. And you figured it out.

And it changed your life. Made you confident. Made you feel good. Then you got the things. And it changed your life. Made you confident. Made you feel good. Then you got the things that you were insecure about. You got compliments about. And now it has just fed into this thing. And now I'm in this place to teach others and help them to get through their insecurities also. And then you make a career out of it.

And you never work past that. And you get stuck in that. And it's tough because, especially in today's time with social media and we get praised for the way we look how are you going to inspire people if you're resting yeah like it's just not uh it's not something you would think about like uh they get in this conundrum of like i always have to kind of show people like all the work and i just have to show them that i'm constantly doing things and improving my body and it just you know it can be a beast where it's like you you're continually

trying to feed this beast and it's not benefiting you anymore well you're you i get these results and i get and i build this physique and then i get celebrated by my peers and outs all these other people and yet i never really solved the insecurity. Like I've got this deep-rooted insecurity that made me go after this thing. I accomplished it because now I'm getting compliments on that body part or that thing that I was insecure about, which gives me this temporary bit of confidence and feels good. And the more I put it out there and the more I share it with everybody else and the more i teach others the more i get confirmed back how great i am how good i look and how and it's like you never really worked on the the thing that caused that and it just manifests in all these

different ways which ironically if you did you'd be a better trainer on top of it it would actually make you far more because i think sometimes they feel like well if i don't do this much am i going to be a good trainer am i really the the leader representative? You know, I, I mean, uh, you know, speaking personally, I mean, I dealt with all those things, but then as I got through some of them, uh, just, I loved working out. So like one of the best things I ever did was not work in a gym. Cause if I'm around equipment and I'm working in a gym, I kind of want to go work out all the time. I like it so much. I have a addictive attachment to it. And that's another part of it. Like the, the, the, the feel of exercise, the feeling of movements that, you know,

trying different things out, like you can get carried away, but I'll, I'll, I'll say this right here. You'd be hard pressed to find a fitness professional that didn't overdo it. I'd say a majority of them do this because a majority of them are there because the insecurity thing, listen, we talk about this on the show all the time, that health is this massive sphere of all kinds of things, relationships and sleep and all these other things aside from just lifting weights. Lifting weights is only one piece of the pie,

yet we don't ever take a day off from the gym? Yeah. What does that say? Yeah, you're sacrificing all these other things. Yes. So one of the best things I ever did was to actually lay off training the weights all the time. Yeah.

That was like one of the best things because, and then go focus on other things. Like where, how's my relationship with my wife? How's my relationship with my kid, my partners, my business, myself,

my self love, my diet, how I eat, like all, there's so many things that encompass health and lifting weights and building muscle and looking awesome which again ironically would make you a better coach yes to understand those and some of them have made it through that but most of us are still stuck in that and that is what drives a lot of us to be these great fitness professionals and we live in

a time where we were social media glorifies these bodies and so it glorifies the dysfunction yes which is really and so then you get trapped there because you're now known for this incredible physique or these physical pursuit pursuits well look hopefully this episode if it's you uh this helps you with some self-awareness and if it's not you and you have some friends that fall in this category, send them this episode. Also, if you love the podcast, do this. Go to mindpumpfree.com.

We have a bunch of free fitness guides on there that can help you with health and fitness. You can also find us on Instagram. Justin is at mindpumpjustin. I'm at mindpumpdestefano. And Adam is at mindpumpadam. Thank you for listening to Mind Pump.

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