Mind Pump: Raw Fitness Truth - 2333: Walking Vs. Running When Your Goal is Building Muscle, the Benefit of Pre-Exhausting Muscles Prior to Compound Lifts, the Best Certifications for New Personal Trainers & More

Episode Date: May 10, 2024

In this episode of Quah (Q & A), Sal, Adam & Justin answer four Pump Head questions drawn from last Sunday’s Quah post on the @mindpumpmedia Instagram page.  Mind Pump Fit Tip: Understand yourself first to move forward. (1:57) A big win for Justin and Sal. (22:12) As you get older, it gets easier. (24:32) The most difficult body parts to overtrain. (33:03) Red light therapy and psoriasis. (35:57) Fun Facts with Justin: Lactobacillus Reuteri. (39:51) The easiest-to-digest protein powder, EVER! (42:50) In-person ‘trainer’ events vs. live events with fans. (44:47) Is legalizing drugs better or worse for society? (48:05) Shout out to Mind Pump Live! (1:00:16) #Quah question #1 - Whenever I travel, I end up losing weight because I am so scared of perfectly tracking food that I end up restricting. How do you balance staying active and choosing healthy meals while away without being overly restrictive? (1:01:12) #Quah question #2 - What are the most useful certifications for a new aspiring personal trainer going into the industry? What should I start with to get my foot in the door? (1:04:31) #Quah question #3 - If steps are controlled, does it matter if you get them from long-distance running or walking and would it affect your muscle building? (1:07:05) #Quah question #4 - Any benefit to "pre-exhausting" large muscles before compound lifts? That way you can use lighter weight and still reach close to failure with less risk. (1:10:09) Related Links/Products Mentioned Visit Joovv for an exclusive offer for Mind Pump listeners! ** Code MINDPUMP to get $50 off your first purchase. ** Visit Paleovalley for an exclusive offer for Mind Pump listeners! ** Discount is now automatically applied at checkout 15% off your first order! ** May Promotion: MAPS Strong | MAPS Powerlift 50% off! ** Code MAY50 at checkout ** Mind Pump # 1995: Seven Reasons Your Favorite Fitness Influencer Is Unhealthy Lactobacillus Reuteri Benefits and Side Effects — Probiotics.org See and hang out with Mind Pump, LIVE! Saturday, June 15 · 1pm PDT Bellagio Las Vegas. Click the link here for more details. DOJ plans to reschedule marijuana as a lower-risk drug - CNN Why Oregon is recriminalizing even small amounts of illicit drugs Visit Brain.fm for an exclusive offer for Mind Pump listeners. ** Get 30 days of free access to science-backed music. ** Exclusively for Mind Pump Listeners, NASM is offering their CPT (Certified Personal Trainer) Premium for the Price of Self-Study ($899) usually $1,249. Get All Inclusive for the Price of Premium ($1179) $1899 $151/mo. 3 Day Mind Pump Personal Trainer Webinar Mind Pump Fitness Coaching Course What is NEAT and Why Should You Care About it? – Mind Pump Blog Mind Pump Podcast – YouTube Mind Pump Free Resources People Mentioned Ben Pakulski (@bpakfitness) Instagram  

If you want to pump your body and expand your mind, there's only one place to go. Mind pump with your hosts Sal DeStefano, Adam Schaefer and Justin Andrews. You just found the most downloaded fitness health and entertainment podcast. This is mind pump. Right in today's episode we answered listeners questions, but this was after an intro portion. Today was 58 minutes long. That's where we talk about current events, family life, studies. We have a lot of fun and much more. By the way, if you want to check the show notes for time stamps, you can find them. Find your favorite part. Click on it. Boom. It takes you right there. Also, if you want to ask us a question that we might pick for an episode like this one, go to Instagram.

Post your question at Mindpump Media right on that page. Now this episode is brought to you by some sponsors. The first one is Juv. They make red light therapy for your home. This is the kind you find in studies. The kind that's been shown to regrow hair, improve the health and rejuvenation of your skin, heal your muscles faster, raise testosterone. These are all backed by studies.

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both 50% off. If you are interested go to mapsfitnessproducts.com and then use the code May50 for that discount. All right, here comes the show. The root of long-term success with health and fitness lies in behavior change. Look if you've've listened to podcasts for any longer than 10 minutes, you know that we communicate this all the time. But what's the best way to change behavior? Well, I'll tell you one way that is not a good way. Look at your behavior, declare it as irrational or bad or dumb, and then try to attack it. That actually doesn't work as well as the following. Look at your behavior and try to make it make sense.

What is coherent about the behavior? Why am I engaging in this behavior? Once you understand it and it makes sense, now you can have compassion for yourself and moving forward is a lot easier. So understand yourself first, then move forward. You know, that's to me, so obvious when communicating with another person or like thinking that way.

That's part of what makes a great partnership or relationship and good communication with your partner is like, they say they do something that seems irrational and instead of getting angry at them for being irrational, trying to understand them is like one of the greatest steps towards having a better relationship and communication, right? Yet, I think people probably struggle to do this with themselves though. It is a relationship with yourself too. What do you think about that? Yeah, yeah.

That's what I mean. So I think, again, if you have a healthy partnership and relationship, this is very obvious to me. You have to learn this skill. If you've made it 10 years in a marriage or longer or whatever, you had to figure this out. You had to, because within that decade, you're going to encounter irrational behavior on both parties. I'm going to act irrational at one point, Katrina is going to act irrational. What makes it work is that we have this compassion and empathy for each other and understanding of childhood trauma and being raised different that like the reaction is not, oh my God,

you're being crazy. It's, oh man, I wonder what happened to my wife that that's how she feels with that. Or I wonder what, and so, but then being able to do that back on yourself, say like with, you know, eating disorders or body dysmorphia or certain things that we do to hurt ourselves or to cope with feelings that we don't want to feel, I bet it's much more challenging. It is. We talk to ourselves in ways we wouldn't dare speak to other people. But really, a good example of this would be like, gosh, I just, I can't believe how much I overeat. I overeat all the time.

I can't stop it. What's wrong with me? It's so irrational. I need to lose 50 pounds. The doctor said my blood lipids are looking bad. I just need to stop this. This is not good. That versus, okay, let's think about this.

How is this behavior, how does this make sense? Why do I have this ingrained behavior where I overeat? And then you look deeper and you say, wow, it's typically when I'm anxious, and I'm anxious a lot. So what does this say about me? How does this make sense? And you go, okay, the pain of the anxiety,

the fear of the anxiety, the feeling of the anxiety is unbearable, but I can make it bearable when I eat food. When I eat food, it numbs the pain of the anxiety. Wow, that does make sense. In that context, it makes sense to overeat because it does get rid of some of the pain of the anxiety. But now you can approach it from a compassionate standpoint. Okay, I can see how that behavior makes sense, but now we need to change because the

context has changed. Life has changed. I can see how that behavior makes sense, but now we need to change because the context has changed, life has changed. I might've developed that coping mechanism as a child, but now my life is very different, so now I can tackle this from a different perspective. Because without that compassion, what ends up happening is you just battle. You're trying to create a new way of being with an old way of being that's so deeply ingrained and it becomes a fight. And the problem is the harder that fight becomes, the more the ingrained behavior comes out because it probably became a behavior during stressful

times or something like that. So, and the more you put, it's like a movement pattern, the harder you push a bad movement pattern, the worse it's going to get because that's what your body defaults to. So have it make sense for yourself first and in a way. Like okay, I overeat when I'm anxious because it helps me deal with the pain. Actually the pain of anxiety is so high that I can't bear it, but when I eat I can actually bear it. So that's why it makes sense. Yeah, it just seems like the root of all of these behaviors, undesirable behaviors is usually like

pain or fear. Totally. And that's really like, and that's a hard thing to dive into that. Um, and that's why too, I think, you know, along us talking and discussing, especially with fat loss and people that have had issues with that, you know, a lot of times we've always been more like, you know, go seek counsels, therapy, somebody to talk to, uh,

to get a little further past like that initial response of like, well, this is a coping mechanism or this is something that makes me feel good in the moment. And so I got to just cut this off and you know, like there's more there to really explore to, um, yeah, be able to understand it better. Do you know, this makes me think of, um, one of the things that we've been asked a lot and I think we've tried to explain it pretty well. I think this is like an even better explanation for it. Um, like why we're not like bid the biggest fans of like the 75 hard approach.

Yeah. And I think this is, this is why, and it's not because I don't think proving that you can do something hard for 75 days and be disciplined and create all these habits. And I totally get that. And I get where people can rationalize why that is so good. But what I think we all have come to realize in our experience of coaching so many people is most people that suffer from obesity or even just chron you know, chronically losing weight, gaining weight, losing weight, gaining weight. They struggle with this.

They struggle with this. And many times there's something much deeper than just this surface. You don't have the discipline to do this every single day. And even if I can get that person because they have the mental fortitude to muscle through it for X amount of days, I didn't solve the problem.

And I know because I've been doing this so long that even if they prove that to themselves for X amount of days, that that's going to resurface until they decide to, to work inward and figure out what is it that has caused me to utilize. It'll be in a different form or, you know, it'll just re-emerge. That's right. It'll manifest in some other addiction or other

than behavior, but most likely it'll come right back in the same one. Yeah. You'll just do it. Most likely you'll just, in a year or two years later, you'll go right back to using that as a coping mechanism or not caring. If it was all about being rational, logical, and making sense, we wouldn't have a problem. We would have no health, chronic health issues. They just wouldn't exist because everybody would just do what makes sense. But it's far more complex than that.

And also if you look at health and really consider its entirety, right? Is it healthy to hate on yourself, to criticize yourself, to constantly get into shame spirals? No, I don't think anybody would argue that that's healthy, right? In other words, to put it differently, you can't hate yourself into better health. It doesn't work that way. You can hate yourself to changing some behaviors for a short period of time, but it doesn't work long term. It just doesn't because you can't hate yourself into better health.

The only way to get yourself into better health in a sustainable way, in a long term, in a true way, is through self-care. That starts with understanding why the behaviors you have exist in the first place. Not by looking at them and saying that's dumb, irrational, stupid, why don't you just stop doing that, or even ignoring altogether that it might make sense for some particular reason and just trying to change it. If you understand yourself, think about it this way. There's a type of therapy that utilizes this technique where you're supposed to envision a part of you.

Maybe there's a part of you that when you get any kind of criticism, you fire back, you get real defensive. You might picture, who is that part of me? What does that look like? Then you picture this person or a creature or maybe yourself at a particular age, what ends up happening is it becomes easier for your mind to understand what's going on because these parts of you are very complex and our brains are very good at understanding people, but not

abstract things. So people have personalities, they have triggers, they have belief systems. And so do these parts of you. So when you view this person, so think of a relationship, right? You have a relationship with yourself, separate yourself for a second. What would be a more successful relationship? Hammering that person, telling that person they're an idiot, that makes no sense, that's dumb, you're fat, you're obviously sick, you're gonna get a heart attack, why don't you just whatever, versus like,, look, I understand why you do this. It actually makes sense based on why you

developed this in the first place. I understand that we're in a different place though now, so let's see if we can change how we view things and how we care for ourselves. It's a very different approach and it's much more likely to result in a cohesive, integrated individual who's able to move forward without hating themselves into oblivion.

Because I know what that looks like even when people think it's successful. And I know this from our space, right? You got all these fitness influencers who on the outside look like they're successful. Look at them, they're so fit and lean. And they've hated themselves into that. No, you see what they actually do.

So it's how they treat themselves. They're not healthy. They're not healthy. They're not healthy. It's not a, even if they are able to stick with it, it's not a good way to go. I mean, it just reminds me of like unresolved issues and like to your point of the 75 hard and all that, it's like these unresolved issues.

We're just gonna motor right past it. Or bury them. Just bury it back down. But then how's that make you feel inside? It erodes you from the inside. Right. You know, and it's so it's like, we're just gonna like move, yes you can, you can move past it, but it's not like you've resolved it, it's still there.

It also robs you of the joy of feeling like this is something that you wanted to do. Look, look, if somebody came in right now and held a gun to your head and said, Justin, you're going to run 50 miles. At the end of that 50 miles, you would not be like, wow, I accomplished it. You know what I mean?

It would be a very different feeling than if you said, I'm gonna go see if I can run 50 miles. I'm gonna see if I can do it. And then you accomplish it. It's a very different feeling. You rob yourself of that feeling, which is very important, very important for long-term success.

You rob yourself of that feeling that, wow, this is something I really wanted to do. Instead of, I hated myself to get here. This sucked. Like, that's totally different. I'm glad that's over. Yeah, totally different. This is why people stop exercising

and get off their quote unquote diet because they just want to enjoy their life. That's the quote. That's what a lot of people say. So you brought this up today. Obviously, you've been reading or listening to this. How is this applying to you? Oh, it's, so I think this is gonna be very valuable.

Things that I find valuable for myself, I can often communicate well on the podcast. And I found this woman, I'm not gonna say her name yet, because I still have to watch more of her content and see if I wanna have her come on the show, but I really like her. And she communicates. Make sure she's not a cultist or anything.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, you never know. Maybe run those by me. Make sure she's not a cultist or anything. Yeah, yeah. You never know. Maybe run those by me. I could watch one video and be like, oh. But I've already seen a couple, and I like this field because it applies so much to how we communicate on the show and what we do.

Like we could communicate. I love this field. We could communicate Xs and Os all day long. Like best way to work out, foods, what they do for your body, etc. But the real value is in communicating like the mindset, the psychology, how we approach

things, why two people could follow the exact same program and diet, but one of them finds long-term success and finds joy in it, the other one hates it and ends up stopping. Like what's the difference between the two? And so finding these people, listen, and you won't find these in health and fitness spaces. These are all like cognitive therapy, parts therapy,

that's another term for it. That's where you'll find some of this information. I have my own, everybody has these, right? We all have our different parts, but there's things that I do that I afterwards step outside of. I go, God, why do I react that way? And it's a different part of me that for whatever

reason surfaces and that reacts a particular way. And then you look back and I mean, how many times have you done something, you look back and go, why would it, that didn't make any sense. Why would I react that way? Why would I say that? Or why would I, you know, why would that trigger me in that particular way?

That's a part of you that at some point made sense. At some point you developed it. Yeah, I was kind of hoping you would share what that is. I love this stuff and I definitely 100% practice this. I mean, a long time ago I talked about how this started for me at night. I'd lay in bed and I would reflect on the day, the highs, the lows, if I emotionally reacted to something, and then I would do these deep dives on the why,

and that's part of this kind of empathy path that you're talking about. Oh, you want me to, I'll get specific for you. Yeah, I'd like to hear where it's, because I'm sure it'll be useful for, so maybe me or somebody else. No, I feel you. No, no, I'll get specific.

So for me, I always, I feel most comfortable and secure when I'm valuable to other people. And this is, I've identified this now for a while. So if I'm helping someone or teaching someone or giving people things, I feel more comfortable and secure than when I'm asking for things or needing things or you guys know me, I don't talk about problems or whatever. You have to pull it out of me or I will when it's like things are going to explode. That probably for me developed, well I know why it developed, it made sense for how I grew up. I grew up as the oldest of four and I was immediately parentified. Immediately I was given the power and responsibility

of a parent. So literally as a kid, eight, nine years old, I could ground my siblings. I could give them things, take them away. They would ask for things from me. So I had all this ability and I found and I saw that that was valuable. At the same time, I had no place to ask for things for my parents or how do you help me or whatever. It was like, I right away saw this is my value and any other issue that I, and any issue I have

is a burden because already I have to help take care of all these different types of things. And it became, it's a part of me that I have to work with for sure. It's very hard for me to ask for help. You guys know that? Yeah, no, very much so. So two things on that.

One, now that you're there, because you understand it, you've unpacked it, are there things that you actively are doing to challenge that? For example, knowing that like, hey, this is an area where I wouldn't ask for help, but I'm gonna do it because I need to work on this muscle. I need to develop this.

Oh, so uncomfortable, but yeah, exactly that. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, exactly that. Yeah, and then also the second part, typically what we do in situations like this too is we tend to attract people and things in our life that feed that bad side of you. And so have you recognized that in relationships

and things that you have sought out? Like, oh wow, I tend to attract that type of person or relationship because their insecurity fuels this issue. It's actually deeper than that. It's more like I'll create that. So if I have a friend, let's say that I have a friend and there was no, that wasn't the case, they're normal person, whatever, we're friends. And then we develop a relationship where I'm always offering for help,

buying for things or taking care of them. And then they don't know, they just think like, oh, this is how Sal is and this is how the relationship develops. And without realizing that it's, it's perpetuating. So that's what tends to happen is I tend to build that.

And then let's say they offer me like, you know, how many times I've done something and someone says, oh, let me help you out. I can, I can, no, no, no, I'm fine. Or let me get lunch. No, I'm good. And so I'll end up perpetuating it because it makes me uncomfortable. Yeah.

So it's even deeper. Yeah. Yeah. It's good stuff. I think this is very important things, maybe not my specific issue, but just how we, you guys, I mean, I don't have to make the case for this.

You guys know this, like how our minds work, how our minds change and how behaviors change. If you can't tackle that, you could follow all the instructions you want. This is gonna suck and it's not gonna work as evidenced by just how the fail rate is so high. Do you know how many people fail at accomplishing these long-term fitness and health behaviors

who are otherwise successful in other parts of their life that require lots of discipline? It's not a discipline issue. These are successful people that do successful in other parts of life that require lots of discipline. It's not a discipline issue. Successful people that do great in other areas. Why this? It's very much so a self-awareness, self-care situation. If you don't have the self-awareness or the willingness to try and learn that skill set, that emotional intelligence, then do the work in the self care. This is going to be a hamster wheel for you.

Because you have to solve, otherwise you just keep hopping from diet to workout program to thing to next to next, thinking that that's the answer when there's something else that's causing all these behaviors are going back to it until you decide to work on that part. Like, yeah. And it's so funny because, you know, obviously the stuff that we get into battles on Instagram and bullshit about is like the,

is the fucking science debates and the X's and O's it's like, you know, it's so crazy like 0.8 grams of protein. Yeah. I mean, I'm just, I just have my DM and so it was just like, you know, I really like you guys and I really like James Smith and here's an area where you guys see, he seems to be. Got the same DM. You know, did you? Yeah. It's like, it's so like, you guys have no idea how like you're not focusing on the right

thing. It's so surface. Like, yeah, it is so surface. It's so stupid. It's like, take his advice or take it our advice. Doesn't matter because there's other things that matter way more in that situation. And it's this type of stuff.

It's that getting to a place where you're willing to put the work in to figure those things out, to then get to the root causes, to then understand yourself better and to know, and then also to have empathy for yourself on why you act that way and then be, and then knowing how to exercise that muscle too and challenge yourself, right? Like, which is now the hard part.

It's like you did the first hard part, which is identify, which is a lot of work in itself, I'm sure you know. And then now the next thing is like, fuck, now I got to put this shit in it. Cause it's just like, that's the thing. It's all about like, go apply it. Yes. Cause I'm okay. And this is my little bit of a knock with, with, uh, you know, there, there's two sides

to this because I do see like, you know, there's this push from all the people out there in the gym that are, well, we'll just work on it, work your way through it. And then there's the other side of the coin where you get the wellness people that are just like, let's talk about this forever. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's like a psycho analytical bullshit. Let's do shrooms together and like, we're just gonna get stuck in this like constant chatter in our minds. We're not applying any of these concepts. For sure. For sure.

Yeah, for me it's like, oh wow, that resonates. That's a very good point and I need to reflect on that. Now I gotta do work. Now I gotta take action. Yes, now I gotta do work. And what a great point, Justin, and I love you. Yeah, cause you get the ruminators. We really, I mean, I don't want to turn

to a Psycho Babble podcast either. I like to think that that was one of the things that drew all of us together to communicate in this space is because we recognize the benefits of that woo woo shit you're talking about. We recognize the benefits of the like, you just need to put the work in. Go in and do the work.

But really, it's somewhere in the middle of that. You know what I'm saying? And there's something to take from both of those mentalities. Just like all the different methodologies out there for training. And unfortunately, the way society works though, is we tend to gravitate to the most extreme versions of each. We tend to like want the, the hardest hardcore mentality person, 75 hard, go kill it, fucking ignore this, go get this mentality, brilliant person here.

Or we wanna go to the other person who's just like, it's all inside and we just have to think it through and it'll work and it's like, let's, yeah, feel our feelings and then let's talk more about it. Like, it's so funny that we really live more in this kind of gray area and there's something to be said about both these camps. That's why both resonate, because they're both true.

Yeah, totally. But they're not all true by themselves. That's why, that's the big, that's the nuance. I think that's the challenge. Anyway, I gotta tell a story, Adam, that you, I don't know if you'll appreciate this. You don't know about it. I know we appreciated it.

So Justin, myself, and Doug went on a walk yesterday. Yeah, so I'm so glad you brought this up. So we've been trying to go on a walk. We try to do this in the middle of the day sometimes because we get locked in this box and it's just, ugh. You just feel it physically, right? So yesterday, I don't remember what you were doing.

I think you might've taken off and- He had a business call, remember? That's right. That's right. So the three of us went for a walk. It was sunny outside and we're going around. It's a nice neighborhood to go walk. And we're walking and a car drives by and slows down

and it's this woman, she's got her kid in the car and she looks out the window and she goes, I just wanna let you guys know you are some handsome, handyman. You are some of the most handsome gentlemen I've seen. Yes. And then she drives off and you weren't even there, bro. I do appreciate it.

I was like, I wonder if this would happen more if it was just this one. Yeah. I'm bringing the average down this whole time. No, no, I expected to happen when you're there. When you're there, I expected it. You weren't even there. So I was like, wait a minute.

No, because it's the opposite. Because that one time we were in Campbell and then Adam literally had like every lady like come out of the restaurant like, oh my God. Yeah. We was competing. So this was great. Like, yes. This is a win for us. lady come out of the restaurant like, oh my God, we was competing. So this was great. Like, yes, this is a win for us.

Did you pay someone? No, I didn't. I didn't. But I tell you, since you bring that up, and we're talking about psychology and behaviors, it's so, it's intoxicating to reach that level. So I so understand the addiction to that. What, getting attention?

Yeah. Oh, sure. Like that, from getting your body to look a certain way to where people just, you now become the 1% of the 1% and everybody looks, whether it's, I mean, maybe some people think they're grossed out by it, but most people are like. But this was a great compliment because she wasn't hitting on us, obviously.

She had her kid in the car. She had a three-year-old in the car. She kind of was. No, I think she would, maybe, I don't know. she wasn't hitting on us. Obviously she had her kid in the car. She had like a three year old in the car. No, I think she would, maybe, I don't know. It didn't seem that way. It seemed like a genuine, you know, like a really nice compliment. She drives off, we all look at each other like, what? And then Justin's like, Adam's not even here.

And then my mind's like, I know. Maybe this whole time he's just for your average dad. I'm like, oh wow, this is crazy. You know, I also think this though. She might've actually got out of the car if Adam was there. No, stop, stop, stop is crazy. You know, I also think this though. She might have actually got out of the car if Anna was there. No, stop, stop, stop, stop. Probably. No, I think everybody is very handsome here.

Appreciate it. I think too, we're also not to be the turd in the punch bowl here, but I think that. Oh, what are you saying? Well, I think she was crazy. No, no, I think like, hey, it's the gray hairs, the balding. It's pretty obvious we're not young anymore. You know what I'm saying? So there's not this like, look at those young, good looking guys. It's kind of

like great for your age. Yes. It's kind of like, I kind of come on. I kind of feel like I just ruined it. Like the sympathy. Those three guys, they just came out of the retirement home. They look great. If we saw like a, like a really fit, healthy, 75 year old, you know what, you're a beautiful woman. Is that what we're getting? Yeah, that's, like you know how that is when you guys see like somebody who we know,

we know they're older and they're like. You just made us feel like crap. I didn't mean to be. You guys, wow. I'm growing myself in this category. Look how you're walking without a walker. You guys are doing phenomenal. We are now at a place where there is, there's no.

The age is there. It wasn't that long, maybe just when we first started this podcast 10 years ago, there would be times, especially early on when I was like super jacked and young and still had hair, I mean people would be like, are you like 25, 24? Like, oh yeah, like that ain't happening. No, no.

There's no, there's nobody going. Always carding out here. Yeah, there's nobody carding, there's nobody going like, are you in your 20s? I got carded. Or 30s, there's like, yeah, are you in your 20s or 30s? There's like, yeah, you're 40 something for sure. I got carted at a restaurant and the person who asked me for the card actually chuckled. Like, I gotta see your ID.

Oh, it's like a mandatory thing. You know what I mean? You're not gonna let me have this one? But I mean, Justin brought up the other day, like just being around some old friends and everything like that. And he made the comment, it's just like, man, it's crazy.

Like how out of shape our friends are getting. Oh yeah, hanging around your peers. Yeah. And you'll feel really. And I really feel like, you know, this 45 to 55 range where we're at, we're all at right now is, boy, that's really the turning point.

I really feel like. It we, you notice it happening. I saw it happen. As you see it happening in the, you start to see it happening in thirties, but not like dramatic and even 40s, but then 40 first, hard, this 45, this 45 to 50 is like, oh yeah, this is when you're like, oh John, you know, he's on five medications.

Yeah. You see the actual health ramifications and it's not just like a surface thing. You know, it's not just like, oh man, you put on some pounds or to like, you know, have the F extra emphasis on like, I gotta keep myself going on this healthy path, man. It's like, this is not like the it's, it's, it accelerates. It's tough, man. I mean, I've said this so many times on the show, but, uh, you have to break all the quote unquote rules to be fit and healthy. I don't mean actual rules, but like,

you know, if you do what you're supposed to, then you're not gonna be healthy. If you live the way everybody else lives, you have to literally be better. You can't be normal, you can't be normal. You gotta be different. You gotta be okay with it. You gotta be comfortable with it.

You know what though, I do wanna, it's tough, but it's not tough. I want the young audience that we have, the people that are under 30 years old that listen to us. The really cool thing that I've really enjoyed about getting older is that I actually think it's easier. Because of all the years of- You're working.

Yes, of putting on. And I'm experiencing it right now. Even with this kind of dramatic cut that I'm doing, I would just, I really would lose a lot of muscle on that, on that. But you know what? It's like, I, you know, this was, I've never cut down like this since a, I ran a four year period of putting on muscle. I mean, I was on a mission to build it.

I was well over 205 pounds of lean body mass on my body. And then I've held onto that for all the way into my forties. And so now to come back down, it's just like, oh wow. The fact that I'm like eating as low as I am, training volume is as low as I am. And I'm still, I kind of understand, although I don't even want to put myself in that same category as a Ben Paculski, but I kind of get now where- I know, remember that? Remember, we're like, come on. I'm trying to lose a hundred pounds of muscle. It's hard. Yeah, but you know, I get it. I have a small understanding of that, of like, boy,

you put that many years and decades of being just consistent with this and hey, you know, what's kind of cool is as you get older, the amount of intensity, volume that you have to have to maintain that is significantly easier. And of course, what comes with that too, is wisdom and understanding your body and like, knowing what- You know that just like- have to have to maintain that is significantly easier. And of course, what comes with that too, is wisdom and understanding your body and like,

knowing what, knowing what level, yes. You know, yeah. So you don't have to put quite as much of like all at once effort. And this is also again, back to some of the things that we continually say on the show all the time, why I'm, where we're all huge advocates of this, like, you know, baby steps and adding one behavior than another behavior and behavior stacking

and habit stacking, because then you, you really start to grasp and understand like really what moves the needle for you specifically, like, because everybody has their own bad behaviors, bad habits, things that they don't do well, things they do better than other things. And that's where we're also unique. Everybody's baby step also looks different. Yeah. Right. Like, also looks different. Yeah, right.

Like somebody might be the thing that unlocks them being healthier and way fitter is just simply always focusing on sleep because that's such a big movement. But maybe you're not. Maybe you're somebody who always gets pretty good sleep. And so you just hitting your protein intake every single day is like unlocks. So it's like when you habit stack

and you build these like small consistencies over time, you learn that about yourself. And then that compounds of like, oh, now, and which is, I'm always trying to explain this even to Katrina, we've been together for so long and she's always like, how does it? And I'm like, honey, for so long, I know, you know, this is lever one, then that's lever two. And everybody's going to ask, what is that? It doesn't matter. That's mine. You know what I'm saying? And I figured that out over years of consistently playing with all these variables and then once you've figured that out, you're like, man, you can really make a change fast.

It actually gets, I know, it's not funny, it's like as you get older, it gets easier. It does. It gets a lot easier. And that's true with even the older members that you would have in the gym. You would see them, you'd talk to them. But don't you think there's a misconception around that?

100%. Because we say, because all the research, it's harder, muscle falls off one pound a year, and it's harder as you age. If you don't exercise. Did you know that, you guys remember this? I don't think people say this anymore, but I remember back in the day,

someone would be like, oh, you're gonna build a bunch of muscle, and then what, you're gonna get old, it's gonna turn to fat. Remember that? Never heard that before? Yes, I do remember that. You hear that?

I do remember that. Yeah. Maybe way long ago. I remember my, you know, it's funny. One of the people, say your muscles, you know, one of the people that used to say crazy shit to me, ironically is my uncle who works for us. That you said like asked me when I was a trainer in my twenties, like, what are you going to do when you get in your forties? You really think you're gonna be training people at a gym still? Yeah, come on. You're gonna be training people, lifting weights like that.

Like you're young right now, wait till you get my age. You know what I'm saying? She like- You should text him right now. Of a picture of yourself. Ironically, you work for me now, huh? Yeah, yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. I'm in my mid 40s now, right? It's a good thing he doesn't listen to the show. Yeah, he doesn't listen to the show. It's just- The people of your age bracket and all that need the most help and are my best clientele.

Yeah, I mean, for me, it was the best decision I ever made in my life by going into this profession. 100%. Forget where we're at now and all that, of course, right? But I mean, just, that was one of the, I don't know about you guys, did you guys, were you guys like this? Part of what drove me to do this was

I knew it would be this massive accountability piece. Oh, did you really? Yeah, I knew that. I knew that if I, if I chose this as a career, like I gotta be consistent doing this if I'm going to go out and sell it or be it and be about it. And so I liked that additional pressure. It kind of reminded me of when, um, when I announced I was going to get shredded and I put it on Instagram. Like I remember really my favorite part about social media was like the accountability piece was like man I'm talking you know back then it was only like maybe a couple thousand people at

most and I'm talking to these people it's like I gotta I gotta do what I say. I mean I got a little bit of that when we first started and I had to do that challenge yeah through anabolic and all that that was definitely like a consideration every morning it's like well, I gotta put this out there. It's like, look, you know, sorry. I was like, I was just playing into the drama of it a bit, but at the same time, I'm like, I gotta put myself out there.

Well, it's a testament to your integrity too, right? You're a man of your word, and you feel like my word is my bond. If I'm gonna say, I'm gonna go do something, I'm gonna do it, you know? So I like that. Speaking of training, I actually have a question for you guys.

Somebody had posted this question, I thought this was an interesting one. Do you guys have, because genetics are interesting, right? You have body parts that develop faster than others, and some seem to be more fast Twitch, others seem to be more slow Twitch, even though those are kind of a general genetic profile. Do you guys have a body part

that just can handle so much volume? Like, it's hard for you to over train versus other body parts. Is it your arms? Yeah. You just beat the shadow. For sure. For sure. I, for a while, like I used to get really frustrated. You know, for I went years, I couldn't get them sore. Of course, that was back when I used, that's all I used to chase was being sore. And I remember I was doing like every like crazy magazine workout to just, and I would have to do the craziest things just to get them sore.

For me it's back and delts. I could, I could train my back and delts for five hours and it just won't, it'll be no problem for whatever reason, for whatever reason. Legs? Very low volume. I could do like a million push-ups and you know, I don't really get, yeah, I'd say shoulders on you too. You could do a lot of like shoulder work all together. And of course that's why I do it all the time. Because you can have fun. I mean we tend to do that. It's fun and strong. That's what I mean.

We've always said that. Now what about the opposite? You have body parts that are more easily trained? Fucking calves, bro. Caps. Come on, Jesus. I went through it. I can't tell you how much.

Like you know, that's why I get when people like tease and make shit. I'm like, bro, I've trained calves more than you've ever had kids. Don't talk some shit to me. Don't talk some shit to me if I know I lifted my calves way more than you lifted. All I ever had was a tibia.

Now I got muscles. Shut up. I told Jessica, they might be 11s, but they were 6s when I started. I wore shorts the other day, and I was kind of feeling myself. I'm like, are my calves small? She's like, they're not small.

And then, but in the context of the rest of your body a little bit, I'm like, oh, come on, honey. Why'd you have to say that in the second part? Oh, god. Katrina did something like that again to me. I was like, you remember I told you she's not, she doesn't like the lighter version of me. And I was telling her like how happy I am.

Then I'm like, man, I'm holding right now at 210. She goes, you don't look 210. Oh, what the fuck does that mean? I don't look 210. You're like, brutal, bro. I know she is. Your wife is brutal bro. She is brutal too. I'm like, I look good right now. What are you talking about? I feel good, I look good.

Do you yell like that too? I do yell like that. I get all frustrated with her. I'm just like, come on man, I look good right now. No, she's just like, she likes me thick dude. Is she heavy? I don't know. I think that's like a trick. That's what I think. It is. Yeah, I think it's a much less attractive idea. I think it's like a keep me less attractive trick.

That's what I think. That's hilarious. Because yeah, I'm holding strong at 210 right now. And I'm lean. I'm definitely really good. That's a good body weight for you. Huh? That's a good body weight for you, I think, right?

I do. 205 was what I thought I would kind of, what I wanted to kind of land on. And maybe I will over the next couple weeks slowly do, because what I'm noticing now is I had like a hard stop right around 211, 213, and then I just recently hit a new low at 210, but that's taken like. You know what I was gonna ask you now,

now that you were talking about this, your psoriasis, you showed me yesterday, your psoriasis. It's the best it's ever been. It's the best it's ever been. Ever been. Part of it is, you think diet, you did some stem cell stuff, using peptides. Have you thrown, because it's not completely gone, right?

No. It's okay. Have you tried adding the red light therapy to it? No. Because now would be the time. So funny you said that because I'm gonna not only do that, not only gonna do my red light. Weather's better now too.

I'm gonna get back to tanning too because tanning helps a lot. Bro, now is the time because you've got everything working for you. No, I know. I, because you've got everything working for you. I wonder if you would be able to completely eradicate it. Literally right now, when we go home today, I'm training today, and when I go train, I was already thinking, at the gym,

they have red light there too. And they have the tanning bed, so over at the Fitness 19. Oh really? Yeah, so it already in my head, before you even brought this up, I was like today I'm gonna lift. When do you do the Juv otherwise? Do you do it same thing post-workout? No, no, no I do it right after shower. Just it makes the most sense. Yeah, I'm already naked

It's it's in my bedroom And so I just turn it on there kind of dry off. I mean, I mean now's the time dude because you got all these things Working for you with the psoriasis. It's the best, how long has it been since it's been this good? Two months. No, no, no, no, what I mean is when was the last time it looked this good in your life? Oh, God. More than 10 years ago?

No, oh yeah, no, right when I was competing. Okay. When my diet was so dialed. So like now's the time, throw the red light therapy, get under juvian, let's see if we can make it disappear. Cause I wonder if it's gone, if that's makes it less likely to come back versus if it's still a little there. You know what I'm saying?

I, what I do notice like, so tanning, I know it makes a huge difference. The red light will be interesting right now because where it's at, like I'll be able to measure, cause I've also, that's improved to a point. It doesn't seem to be getting much better because now it's kind of like if you're familiar with psoriasis and kind of like the look of it, obviously people that have it probably really understand this. So it's so awesome is like it almost feels as good as it's going to get because you have especially someone like me who's used creams for a really long time, it like bleaches your skin. Oh, And so what you see is this kind of big pink spot still,

but that's like, that's healed. Because when it's bad, it's scabby. It's dry and it's scabby. And that's almost completely gone away. I have a little, little bit of that here and there. But it's really just now the big pink spot. But a lot of that is because you almost bleach your skin using those steroid creams for so long.

They stopped working after a while, right? Yes, everything. You know, after a while, right? Yes. Everything. Do you know, there was somebody, who was it? Uh, somebody we know, I can't remember what it was, but they had constantly for years had to use steroid creams and they stopped, they'd have to use more and more and more. And they went through a period where they're like, I'm just

going to stop using these, try to reset my body. It got bad. Bro, so bad. It took like months, like two or three months, like the full scabbing, full like took two or three months for the skin to come back. And then they were able to get this. Dude, that's the worst part about those things is that- Cause your body adapts, adapts, adapts.

Yes, you get used to it. And then, then all of a sudden you stop it and it like gets worse. And then what do you do? You go, Oh my God. I get, and then you go right back. You throw more on top of it. Yeah. Let's go right back at it.

I wish I understood that because I'm sure that, obviously where I'm at today, understanding like what's happening with like taking care of my gut, I think in really lowering like the digestive stress with how many low calories and doing this the all natural way. Had I done that instead of the steroids and the creams early on, I, I, I feel like it would have been a lot better than what I am right now. I think I've exacerbated it for so many years of attempting to shoot it up and do creams and do all these like band-aids while also eating like a gorilla and not trying to go the more natural way. And I didn't know though, my, you know, what pisses me off is my dermatology.

And I asked nutrition questions and stuff and they were just like, my, you know, what pisses me off is my dermatology. And I asked nutrition questions and stuff and they were just like, Oh, that doesn't matter. I'm like, Oh, okay. Well, speaking of, you know, the gut and also like bacteria and stuff, like I, I was wondering, I was actually curious because in sourdough, they have this bacteria, it's called lactobacillus. Lactobacillus ruderi.

It's similar to one found in the colon, one that actually is transmitted from the mom up and actually shuttles it through the cells up to their nipple up to like when they breastfeed too to pass it on to the baby, which also has this like anti-cancer effect of breast cancer. So of the breads, okay, typically, this isn't true for all of them,

but sourdough, especially sprouted grain sourdough is the easiest to digest and probably has the most health benefits. It's fermented, it's fermented bread. Yeah, it's a fermenting process. And it breaks down a lot of the gluten that people have issues with, where gluten for a lot of people has digestive

or inflammatory aspects. I feel it immediately. I'll know if it's like a legit sourdough or if it's just yes and there's also yes there's also real sourdough and then sourdough tastes like that. I totally know the difference. Courtney's got really into it and you guys have probably tasted some and brought some to work but so good I mean it's funny I'm like it's a point where I know now like my threshold too I can only have so much you know like but it's it's so much better my stomach man it's like night and day yeah comparison what's the worst bread for you is it just plain old white bread yeah oh yeah even no actually even I would say like French bread or green

oh great what we boys me yeah we oh Rex yeah yeah it's actually a good point I Oh, actually, even I would say like. The French bread or some. Whole grain. Oh, whole grain. Like wheat? Like brown wheat? Wheat is. Oh, Rex. Yeah, same. That's actually a good point, I wonder that. I haven't had that in a long time. Yeah, Rex.

Yeah, I left bread a long time ago, and if I do, it's sourdough. Yeah. That's just the go-to if I have it. I noticed that a long time ago if I have any sort of. For some weird reason though, I can handle like tortillas and things like that. I can handle like flour tortillas,

especially if it's like a homemade version of it that doesn't seem to bother me. Are they flour? Oh really, yeah. Both. Yeah, yeah, both seem to be fine. I don't seem to have any issues with that. I love corn tortillas.

Only problem is you can't buy ones that are made at the grocery store already, because then they're gross. They're like plastic. If you make them fresh, oh, so good. Do you guys, so you guys make them homemade? Not me, I don't. Well not you, but your family. Yeah, we have family that have done that. So you guys make them homemade? Not me, I don't. Well not you, but your family.

Yeah, we have family that have done that. Do you guys do the, what is it called, masa? I don't do it. Is that what it's called? Masa, yeah, I don't do any of it, I just consume it. You've never made tortillas? No, no, I haven't. Really? No, remember, I'm like fake Mexican. No.

Yes. Masa, is that the cassava kind of flour? No, that's the corn meal. It's like corn flour. Corn flour. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then you see the way, when I went to Mexico, cassava is a tuber, right? Yes.

It's a root. Yeah, it's a root. It's a starchy root. And so you can make like tortillas and tortilla chips and stuff out of it. But I remember I went to Mexico long time ago, long time ago, and we went to the small village and there were these women that were

like making it by hand and then throwing them on a fire. They cook them, it was so good. Oh dude, yeah. Oh, they were so good. You know, I'm gonna tell you because you harped on us for so long and it was late to the party,

but now it's become a staple for me. I've almost, although I still do whenever it's convenient or whatever, I'll still have way, but I consistently now have done the bone broth, that protein powder. It's the easiest to digest protein powder ever. I feel like I notice that more than ever right now. Well, you're super sensitive to eating that right now,

so that makes sense. Yes, and I feel like I can really boost it. So I do three scoops, which I think ends up being like 50 something grams of protein. So I can have like a really boost it. Like, so I do three scoops, which I think ends up being like 50 something grams of protein. So I can have like a 50 gram shot of protein, which is, I need stuff like that right now. It's hard for me to get even close to my numbers.

And it's light, it's not thick and all cream. It's like really, I can shake it up. So Paley Valley has chocolate and vanilla, which are both. I actually haven't even had the vanilla. Delicious. You said the chocolate and I just have stuck with it. They're so good. Is the vanilla one all right just have stuck with it. They're so good.

Is the vanilla one all right? Vanilla's amazing. It tastes really good. See, college or bone broth or collagen doesn't have a lot of flavor. So it's really easy to make it taste really good. But I can push it up to 70 grams in a shake. I could never do that.

I don't think I've tried that. With something else. But I can make it like. It's like four scoops. It's like all powder. It's all sludge. No, it's still thin. Yeah. Yeah, it's like all powder. It's all sludge. It's still thin. It's a little like granular or whatever.

Yeah, a little bit. Yeah, but not bad. I mean, I imagine four scoops might be a little bit more. I mean, that's literally it. Cause three scoops feels like it's quite a bit. Oh bro, it's like this much water. It's like all powder. Powder.

You're gonna trigger. My kids love it too. My toddler, he runs around, buh-bye, make a protein shake, I want some protein. Oh really? Yeah, I give him just a little bit, he sucks it down. And also because the amino acid profile, of course this doesn't matter if your protein intake is super high, but if it's not, then there are

higher concentrations of amino acids that benefit things like the skin, hair, nails, and the gut. So for gut health, it's like the protein when you combine, especially with the digestive. Hey, how many trainers we have coming tomorrow? I think around 75 or 80, yeah. Oh, it's gonna be a good time. I know.

This'll be a good time. I'm excited. Are you more excited about being and hanging out with all the trainers or the big live event that we're doing in Vegas? That's a tough one. Different appeals, yeah. It's different, yeah. I appeals. Yeah. It's different.

Yeah. I mean, trainers are on the front lines. Yeah. And I know what they go through, what they do. It's more of like a rally. Like, yeah, let's go change lives. Yeah. How is it like, yeah, what's the, what's the feel and takeaway between those two types of groups? Like is one of them more exhausting than the other?

Is one's more fulfilling for you? Like, what do you get from each, each? They're both fulfilling in different ways, I think. Like trainers, it's like, I know what they're going through. I know what they do, what they deal with. I know their passion. I identify with them. So usually questions around training clients, building business.

And then we talked to just listeners. It's a lot. It's like, then I become the trainer, like, you know, where they're like my client and I'm helping them out, you know, type of deal, or they're just talking about how much they enjoy the show. Very different, both, both very different in terms of, cause I managed trainers and I'm helping them out, you know, type of deal, or they're just talking about how much they enjoy the show. Very different, both, both very different in terms of, cause I, I manage trainers and I had clients and I, you guys did the same thing.

So how do you feel? Yeah, I feel like the listeners, the general audience, like I'm more humbled, I think a lot of times with their stories, you know, and their impacts, um, you know, and it's just because it feels a little more personal, uh, versus like, I'm trying to actually troubleshoot and help a lot with the coaches and, but I feel, I feel personally like it, I don't know. It's like, it's, you feel like that's going to translate to helping even more people because it's then you're impacting somebody like who has the tools to go out and build, you know, somebody's life for the better. So I don't know. Yeah, it's a different, two different avatars. But I think sometimes when I meet just somebody that listens to the show, they just rock me. You know, I'm just like, whoa, dude, I had no idea.

Like we had that kind of impact. Yeah. What about you, Adam? Very different. To Justin's point, meeting like fans of the show, uh, very humbling, a bit awkward for me still. I think I've gotten way more comfortable as we've done this for so long now, but still weird, still just different, you know?

Um, but in a good way, like, cause you said, like you said, very humbling and like, Oh my God, I hear the stories. Trainers, like I feel like I'm in my element. It's like old hat. Yeah. Yeah. And it reminds me of how much I love to do that. Like I hear the stories. Trainers, I feel like I'm in my element. It's like old hat. Yeah. Yeah. And it reminds me of how much I love to do that. I love that career. That was a very fun time of my life was managing trainers. And I took a lot of pride in being good at it. And I forget that sometimes until we get in those moments. And then I'm like, oh shit. That old feeling?

Yeah. I do have the answer for you. Yeah, exactly. I go, oh man. yeah, no, I could really help this person be better at their craft. And a lot of that stuff is buried because we've done so many other things and moved on. And so I don't think about it. And they pull that back out of me. And I'm like, oh, yeah, yeah.

That lights a old fire that I really like. So very, very different feeling. One is rewarding and humbling and awkward and unique, and makes me every time we leave, it's like, oh, this is crazy, this thing that we did, that feeling. And then the other one is like, fuck yeah, like rally the troops, like I'm gonna make some badass trainers.

Like, oh, yeah, totally different feelings, each cool, but different for me. Totally. Hey, I gotta let you guys, did you hear about the news on cannabis with the scheduling that just came out? Did you hear about this? No. They're going to, I think they just announced,

I'm gonna bring up the article. I think they just announced that they're going to reschedule. Grocery stores now? Same way. Federally reschedule. No, the DEA to reclassify marijuana. So they're probably gonna move it from schedule one, which is, you know, like heroin, LSD, stuff like that, to schedule three.

This will be the first time the U S government would acknowledge its potential medical benefits and begin studying them in earnest. So this will open up federal studies and federal stuff like that. So they're probably going to, going to reschedule it, reclassify it. It's the first time ever. What does this feel like? What took you so long? What's your prediction?

Like schedule it as what and then. I think it'll be schedule three. And then what is the, what's reading between the lines here? I think it'll be schedule three, I think eventually. Give me what else is in schedule three, I don't know, my total class. Schedule three, maybe Doug, you can look up schedule three. These are.

Is that like tobacco? No, that's a good question, no. I don't think. Schedule three, maybe Doug, you can look up schedule three. These are- Is that like tobacco? No, that's a good question. No, I don't think, I think that means that there's medicinal benefit. There's not a high, super high level of potential for abuse, if I'm not mistaken. Although the scheduling, for people who don't know, this is the truth, when they came up with scheduling

of drugs, there wasn't a lot of logic thrown in there. It was really merely used as a way to- Like the hippies, right? It was a way, it was a political tool. Drugs with a moderate to low potential for physical and psychological examples of schedule two drugs or products containing less than 90 milligrams of codeine per dosage and testosterone Testosterone schedule three. Okay, and Tylenol?

No, Tylenol with codeine. Oh with codeine, ketamine. Okay, got it. Ketamine's up there. No, this is good. This is good. They'll loosen it up. Is it going to become like a regulated substance, like it is in a lot of, like what I mean by that is, like, available to people 21 and older,

like you have here in California? Will that happen federally? If it does, you're going to explode them. I mean, that market will blow up so fast. That's why I think this, that's why I was asking you to read between the lines and what is this, I think it's setting the table for, you know, the Philip Morris and stuff.

Like, here it comes. They've been, I mean, they've had fields that they've been ready to go for a long time. And we've got, and I've always said this when we were in the space, that all this, you know, political posturing back and forth, really what it's all about is so the government can get a really good idea and estimation on what they should get from it tax-wise. And now we've had a decade of tracking these clubs and ideas to know like, okay,

we should, we should be getting at least this much per state, per whatever. It's interesting. Cause my positions have changed a little bit based off of what some of the experiments other states have done, uh, like, uh, Oregon decriminalized, I think it was all drugs for personal use. They're going to reverse that. They're going to reverse that. Cause the people there are like, this is not working. There's a lot of drug use happening.

There's a lot of bad. Really? Yeah. Maybe you could look that up, Doug. I didn't know any of that. People were like migrating there, uh, just to do drugs. The drugs. Yeah.

Really? From my understanding. It's a, from a moral standpoint, my position is the same, which is if you're going to hurt nobody but yourself, then, you know, throwing you in a cage. Cause this flies right in the face of your libertarian views. Well, uh, I was never an, uh, anarcho-capitalist. I was never that far, but I still think- This would still fall libertarian though.

Uh, yes, but liber- try classifying libertarians, like together. It's like that far, but I still think. This would still fall libertarian though. Yes, but try classifying libertarians together. It's like trying to put her cap. You can't put a box around us. Yeah, that's not. Yeah, so they're gonna reverse course. That's what I thought. Yeah, I think we should definitely reexamine all drugs. I think we've gone too far, but look at them

and maybe figure out a better, because here's what's gonna happen. I'd like to see why, I mean, aside from what you're just saying. Rampant public drug use and... Can we see something? Can we see reasons why? I'd like to see what they're measuring. Because here's the thing too, Sal. I don't take like articles like this at face value anymore. It's like, what's the agenda behind this? Like why decriminalize it? Why criminalize it? Why? I mean, Oregon is, is it super, it's a very hyper liberal state when it comes to stuff like this. So the fact that the reversing course is kind

of interesting. That's why I'm asking. That's why I think there's got to be more. Yeah. See what the reasoning is. Let us know. Cause I'm looking for it from what I read. It's like the crime and it's the, it's the drug use. Oh, you know what? We also had this huge explosion recently with fentanyl. And, and, and because everybody is like free for all there, I bet there's getting at like a high level of fentanyl deaths and stuff like that. 13 time increase in overdose. There you go.

Yeah. There you go. Yeah. And now here's the deal. If we, here's the deal. If we legalize, if we decriminalize and legalize marijuana, we now know this through the states that have done so, use will go up.

So I used to think, not necessarily, but it'll probably go up. You'll probably see. Yeah, but you know what's not fair about that, Sal? And this is why this is not a realistic social experiment here. I guess it will. And I believe, though, it would need to hit this

before it come back down. Like, that's just how we are as humans. Like we need to go out and see people fall off the cliff. It's still novel enough. Yes, it's only three years. Three and that's only, I mean, you weren't aware, I wasn't aware of what's going on exactly over there or deaths, like you're barely becoming aware of it

and they're already reversing. It's like, you would need that to be like a conversation around everybody. Yeah, but I also think you need to look at drugs differently. I don't think fentanyl and marijuana, right, are in the same category. I think you're talking about two completely different potentials for abuse and destruction. But my point with the marijuana is if it gets legalized, you will see generally speaking more use across the board.

Now that's not necessarily a good thing. However, you have to balance things out. This is a very nuanced conversation. Is legalization going to, is it better from a incarceration standpoint? Is it better from a black market standpoint? Is it, you know, now that we can regulate it, is it gonna be harder for young people to get it? Like alcohol.

How does Europe compare to us from a usage and abuse of alcohol? Because they have different alcohol laws than we do. So they have the lower age, and so do they have a higher usage but a lower abuse? You know what's tough about that, bro? What? You know what's tough about that is we do more

of everything in America. Everything we do more of. It's true, it's true. And it's because of our- Just look at our portions of eating. Yeah, and I don't think it's a law thing. I think it's a culture thing. Because don't you think this would happen?

Okay, so this is my prediction with something like marijuana is like, if it were to go full legal and then the use cases would go up because of the novelty of, oh, we can do this now, everybody's trying it, doing it. And then I feel like the novelty, the newness wears off and enough stories of like, hey, you're gonna become a loser if you do that every day, son, or you know that, right?

Like you don't wanna be, and I think enough of those stories come out and then all of a sudden you see it come back down. So obviously huge spike originally, or when it happens, but then I would think it would peak and then I think it would come down. Do you not think that? I don't know, I think it would be ebbs and flows because the culture of marijuana has been there for a long time.

Um, so I don't know. That's a, that's an interesting question. I don't know what that would look like, but I think generally speaking, I don't think it'll, I don't, I think it'll go up, even if it goes down, it will go down lower than when it was strictly regulated just cause it's more, um, it's more accepted. Is that a good thing or a bad thing? I don't know. I mean, I think you can make your argument.

It's a bad thing, but like alcohol, for example, that's a culture thing. I don't think that's a law thing. Like what is the culture around alcohol in America? If I were to ask you guys, what is the alcohol culture in America? It's bars, partying, get fucked up. Yeah. And college, right? Go get smashed. There's an old alcohol culture in Europe that drink with dinner, alcohol culture in Europe that drink with dinner, family, celebration, wine. It's way less intense. And I really think it's the intensity around a lot of these things that gets people to kind of tip

towards. What do you think, Doug? According to this, binge drinking is actually higher in Europe than the US. Yeah, but if you take out the UK, does that still happen? Because then over there they're just going to go. So that's interesting. The colder countries, dude, I mean it's. Yeah. take out like the UK, does that still happen? So that's the colder countries, dude. I mean, it's, yeah, I don't know. I don't ramp it. I don't know. Plus this, uh, we do everything more here. It seems like if there's like a drug problem here,

we're going to have it like twice as bad. If there's like overeating here, it's gonna be twice. Yeah. I wondered about that too because I've met like one of our relatives like from Denmark, uh, this kid was like 12, right? And came out and was like sort of talking to me, my brother, and you know, cause had access to alcohol wasn't a big deal, but like he went like in crazy excess with it.

Did he? Yeah, and so it's like, yeah, I was always wondering about that thought, cause that was like something that people would say all the time is like, you know, you grow up with it's your, your less, you know, to like, do you guys really, do you guys really think too, that like binge drinking overdoses all this is caused by the legal or

illegal vert reason? I think it plays a role, but that's not the root. Like, I mean, just play this game with me here. Uh, like what if we had a law that or a law or a rule that before you have a child, you have to pass this test? Imagine you had an education or a course that all parents have to go. I think improving parenting skills with children

would have a greater impact on drug abuse and usage than making a drug legal or illegal. That's what I think. Think about that. I think the problem with that... You agree with that or no? Well, I think, I mean, who's making the test? Who's determining? Oh stop, don't go that way. Well that's what you have to do.

That's not the exercise. The exercise is like... It's a perfect test. No, no, it's not even that. It's not even that. The exercise here is that, is making better parents in our society, would that make a greater impact on drug abuse and alcohol? I think you're saying that. Yes, it's in the home. That's what I mean. That was what they asked us.

Like, of course, I don't want to empower the fucking government on who can have kids and not have kids. The point is, if we put together a course that just, in our society, became a normal, or maybe it becomes in high school. Now in high school, you have to take this course on how to be a better parent well before you become a parent. The government will never be a better parent than the parent.

Right. And so that I think things like that. That's why I think we look at how to improve our society in such weird obtuse ways. Like this does not make sense to me. Like that does not, the guy who's going to go get high or overdose on a drug, isn't going oh this is illegal or this is legal that's why I'm doing it it's like you're gonna do it no matter what the thing the thing that might have saved his life was maybe had two parents in the home that stay together and parented him better or what I don't know if and by the way there's exceptions to

the yeah I know I was just gonna say as you people you know, yeah Of course that I get those abusive, you know parents or wherever right but but yeah for good a parent that cares You know, I mean if we're trying to move the needle as far in the positive direction of society about culture It's about your culture people. Yes. It's not about making more laws or loosening up laws Oh the more laws you make the more that's right It's shifting shifting our culture and the way we respect these things like drugs, not by fear mongering people, not by outlawing them. And then the things that we, I think,

that make the greatest difference in society is the way we're raised in our homes by our parents, and or if they even stay together, like that stuff matters more. People abuse substances because they're numbing, distracting, or looking for something that they can't get from the substance. And so it becomes abuse.

This is why people abuse those things. But like alcohol, for example, would we have less alcoholics if alcohol was illegal? I don't know. I think the argument might be probably not, maybe not. I don't know. But would there be less people drinking overall? Probably.

Sure. So, so it's like one of those things, but then again, it's like, we know what happened with alcohol prohibition and what that caused. Unfortunately, sometimes market demands are so high that the best thing you can do is try to manage it. You can't block it, even though it's bad. It's like the market demand is so big for this that if we block it, people are

going to kill each other to get this anyway. So the best we could do is try to kind of like manage it, you know, type of deal. But yeah, definitely they think they should revisit the scheduling of substances and how we treat them. Don't do drugs kids. Don't do drugs. Yeah.

So the shout out, we talked about it earlier. We're going to be in Vegas for a live event. We're going to be talking and meeting fans and listeners in Las Vegas. You can get tickets at mindpumplive.com. This is happening June 15th at the Bellagio. Go sign up. Check it out. There's a company called Brain FM that makes music that literally changes the state of your brain. This is real stuff. If you want to put your brain

into brainwave patterns that induce focus or meditation or sleep, this company actually does it. Nobody around can do what they do. This is all patent pending stuff. Go check them out. Go to brain.fm forward slash mind pump. Get 30 days for free. Try it out. Try the focus. Listen to it. If you don't feel like you are extremely focused after five minutes of playing this in your ears, just cancel it. But you won't because it actually works. Again it's brain.fm forward slash mind pump. Alright, back to the show. First question is from Hayley Valene. Whenever I travel I end up losing weight

because I'm so scared of perfectly tracking food that I end up restricting. How do you balance staying active and choosing healthy meals while away with not being overly restrictive? You, you have to reclassify in your mind, the value of the vacation in the first place. What is the value of this vacation? Usually it's take a break, de-stress, enjoy the people I'm around, view the sites, absorb the culture, or taste the culture, or experience the culture that I'm in. Those are the values of vacation.

And vacations are very good for your health. These experiences are very good for health. The data is quite clear on this. What the value of a vacation is not is workouts, eating strict, making sure I stay active, keep my body fat percentage down. So you have to, this is just like when people ask us about fasting for Ramadan, right? Like how do I keep my protein or whatever?

It's like this religious practice, the value of it is not your fitness, the value is spiritual health. Vacation, the value of it is so you can go over there, enjoy yourself, relax, be with the people around you. It is not for you to- Take all the stress with you. That, you just ruined your vacations.

Haley, I have one rule. One rule that I live by in this is just don't eat like an asshole. That's it. Like I literally enjoy the food, enjoy the drinks, enjoy the scenery. Who cares if I hit protein intake, not in protein intake? Who cares if I get a lift in or not?

None of that matters. It's literally just be mindful that you could also just get out of control and be binge drinking. That's not, at that point, you're not enjoying the culture. You're not enjoying the people that are with, you're just overdoing it. But I mean, yes, have a great meal and choose something off the dessert menu and enjoy it

and have a nice glass of wine with that steak. I'm gonna add to that, because if you find yourself doing that, but then going overboard, right? Oh my God, I drank so much, I ate so much, my stomach hurt. That happened because of how you treat yourself before you go on vacation. If you restrict so hard that this is not relaxing, this is escaping, well now you're in the opposite. It's the escape and it's like fully going into the impulses, right? That's not healthy. Uh, it's, and that's not really vacation anyway. That's, that's, that's a totally different thing. Totally. And so, and by the way, you could literally, okay,

every meal, uh, you know, that you have on vacation, uh, enjoy, uh, either a glass of wine or a dessert in there and you can't, you're not possibly going to put on 10, 15 pounds a glass of wine or a dessert in there, and you can't, you're not possibly going to put on 10, 15 pounds of body fat in a week. You're just not. No, in fact, her problem is the opposite. She loses weight because she restricts. Right. Like, like. Which is, what she's doing is she's countering from going the opposite way, right?

Yes. Instead of enjoying the glass of wine and the dessert, some of that she's like, I'm going to have nothing because I'm going to be fearful of the weight. I'm going to put, listen, just having a glass of wine or having a dessert, a dinner here and she's like, I'm going to have nothing. Cause I'll be fearful of the weight. I'm going to put, listen, just having a glass of wine or having a dessert, a dinner here and there, like is not going to put on so much body fat that it's going to be so tough. Like, and I want to communicate this. If you do this and you go on vacation, you kind of let go a little bit and you

just go to be present and enjoy yourself, enjoy the people around you. We're going to experience a completely different vacation. You're going to be like, wow, I wish I'd come back refreshed instead of, you know, still like anticipating the stress. Next question is from Abby Buffkin. What are the most useful cert cert certifications for a new aspiring personal trainer going into the industry? What should I start with to get my foot in the door?

Mind pump coaching. Yeah. So typically if you're going to work. Step one. Yeah, so typically, especially if you're going to work in a big box gym, if you're a new trainer, which is probably where you want to start, you're going to need a national certification.

NESM is the best in the business. Foundational. It's the best in the business. They've been around for a long time. They're really, really good at what they do. Their information is constantly updated. Very broad, too. Very broad. They're the best in the business, they've been around for a long time, they're really, really good at what they do, their information is constantly updated. Very broad too. Very broad.

They're the best in the industry. Now beyond that, after you get your national certification, which again, you're going to be required to get that if you work in a big box gym, and you want to just further your ability to build your business and be successful, our certification course was designed specifically for that. We specifically in our course are teaching coaches and trainers that would be more effective, how to build their business. So we have that one. And then NCI has got great certifications for online coaches as well. I think if you had those three, you would be so set up. You'd be set up

very, very well. Yes. I agree. I have nothing to add to that. Those are the three that I would probably... If I was going to do them, I'd do them in that exact order. And only for the reason that you said, I'll probably do ours first if you were considering doing private or by yourself and you don't need a national cert. But if you're going to a big box gym, which we tend to recommend to most people, then you have to go the national cert first. I think NASM's, their intro course is one of the best broad courses as far as general information for most of the clients you're going to have. And then ours for specifically being successful at what you're doing. And then NCI nutritionally, because I think they do such a good job of going very deep on nutrition, but very applicable to your clients and easy to digest, which there's other nutrition courses out there that I think

are also good, but I think NCI does the best job. Just like I like to think that what we did was the best job at helping you scale your business. So I think those three are excellent. Yeah, that covers it for, I think, because it's a new aspiring personal trainer. The only thing I would have added to that if it was somebody that's been doing it a while is to just keep getting educated with your FRCs

and these other specialized educational certifications that will help you to problem solve a bit more effectively. Yeah, totally. The NASM Correctional Exercise Specialist Cert, I have to say, was one of the most valuable ones ever. That's the next level. In terms of just how to train people and apply.

We talk about that in our course, though, don't we? Yeah, we talk about how valuable that was. So yeah, I agree. All right. Next question is from notnota. If steps are controlled, does it matter if you get them from long distance running or walking and would it affect your muscle building?

Well, yeah, it matters. Yeah, big difference. There's a big difference. Like long distance running, I mean you're pushing stamina and endurance and you're stressing your body far more than. Using energy differently. Than with walking, yeah. So if you want endurance and you're stressing your body far more than- You're using energy differently. Than with walking.

Yeah. So if you want endurance and stamina, then you would train with the running. If you just want the activity and you want to preserve muscle from your strength training, walking. Walking is exceptional for that. It's not stressful in the body like running is. It doesn't, it's not like the super hard activity. It doesn't push endurance like running does for the same period of time.

So it doesn't send a potential, you know, potentially conflicting signal to the body than your strength training. I would say if your goal is to maintain, to build good muscle strength, be lean, just have good longevity, fitness and health, um, walking is a great compliment to strength training. How do you guys simplify and communicate this? Right? Cause you have, you have a cardio threshold, right?

So everybody has an individual cardio threshold. And I just heard Justin tell, or say real quick, that like you're using different energy, you're doing it using a different energy source. When you are just walking, your body is just, it's not being pushed. And so it doesn't have a huge demand. You start running and then you get your heart

rate up to a certain level and everybody's is a little bit different and you can mathematically figure out where your cardio threshold. Once you tip over to that cardio threshold, now your body is utilizing energy different and that's where you get at risk of your body starting to pare down muscle because it doesn't have enough fuel and access right away from glycogen that is looking for other sources and it's trying to become as fission as possible. So is there a better way to communicate that than like I've always like, it's never been like a good, a good.

I know it's a, yeah, it's a complicated. I always like to think of just adaptations. Like if your body wants to get really good at long distance running, what it's going to do is get good with, and with energy efficiency, it's going to lighten your body, which includes muscle loss, because it's going to make, you don't need big muscles to have a lot of endurance.

In fact, you can have a tremendous amount of endurance with a little bit of muscle. So what your body does is it's always trying to get better at what you're asking it to do. So it's going to turn you into this calorie efficient, like small engine type of person. Because you're signaling it to that degree. Right.

Right. Now walking a lot, uh, is far, far less of signaling it to that degree. Right, now walking a lot is far, it's far far less of a signal in that direction. Yeah. Walking a lot doesn't tell your body, unless you're walking a lot a lot, like you'd have to walk crazy amounts, but otherwise it's just activity.

Even walking, cause a lot of it has to do with where the heart rate tips over once you hit that cardio threshold. Once you hit that cardio threshold and the heart's beating like that, it sends a louder signal to the body like, Oh, we're not just walking. We're like, yeah, this is a big stress.

We're pushing usher more of our energy, you know, over in this direction. No good point. Cause in fact, for a lot of people walking is not only not a stress, it's actually a rejuvenating type of movement, a healing type of movement. Whereas running in very rare cases is like that. You don't have to be such an extreme athlete to like rejuvenate from, you know, long distance running. Average person, that's a big stress.

Next question is from Jasper Morrow, 3165. Any benefit to pre-exhausting large muscles before compound lifts? That way you can use a lighter weight and still reach close to failure with less risk. There are benefits, but not for what they're asking. I know, this is a mistake that people think that getting to failure is, this is again, when we communicate about failure training, right? You have all these trainers that are on the,

especially the bodybuilding community that are like so into the failure study. So like, take that muscle to complete exhaustion and failure and that sends a loudest signal to build more muscle. And so people start coming up with ideas like this, like, oh, if it's just taking the muscle to complete exhaustion and failure. And that sends a loudest signal to build more muscle. And so people start coming up with ideas like this, like, oh, if it's just taking the muscle to failure, like, well, I could pre-exhaust it and I could do this thing first.

And then that will all go to failure. No, so the benefits for pre-exhausting large muscles, so a compound lift is one that uses like two joints, right? Isolation one joint, so barbell squat, compound lift, four, and let's say quads, but works more than the quads, obviously. Leg extension would be an isolation lift. So the question is, what if I did leg extensions first and then went to squats? And now I use lighter weight on the squats because my quads are already tired.

Doesn't that make it safer and is the effectiveness the same? The value in pre-exhausting is if you have trouble connecting to a muscle in a compound lift. So it's a narrow muscular connection. Yeah. So if I'm doing squats and I can't, I'm on glute squatting and I'm not getting you in pre-exhausting is if you have trouble connecting to a muscle in a compound. So, a narrow muscular connection. Yeah, so if I'm doing squats and I can't, I'm on glute squatting and I'm not getting very much quad, which is never the case, but let's just say that is, pre-exhausting may

help me identify how to change my form so I could feel it more in my quad. You should have used the other one because it's never that. Yeah, glutes is probably the best. I think I've had like one or five flights. Never, it's always butt, right? It's the other one. So, that would be the benefit. Now, if that's not an issue for you, then pre-exhausting with an isolation

will actually reduce the overall muscle building effect. Uh, just because you go, now you fail going lighter, doesn't mean it's as effective because you can do the same thing with not resting between sets. Uh, the, the sets that you're strongest in are the most effective sets in your workout. So let me say that again, or differently. When you look at your workout and you look at all the exercises from beginning to end, your freshest and strongest in the beginning, those are the exercises you're going to get the largest adaptation.

The ones at the bottom are the ones you're going to get the least adaptation. That's a huge difference, but it's a difference. That's why when you want to develop a body part that's lagging, you move it to the top of the list and you find you get better results. So a bench press with good technique activating the chest doing great you'll build more muscle with the bench press than you will with the fly unless you don't feel in your chest when you bench press you feel on your shoulders so then you do flies first and then because you already feel the chest

it's already got some blood in it and it's a little fatigued you can adjust your technique and boom you can make the compound lift hit the chest a little more Look if you like our show we have a squat like a pro guide This is free by the way teaches you how to squat like a pro mobility strength workouts. It's in the guide It's free you can find out mind pump free calm you can also find us on social media Justin is on Instagram at mind pump Justin you can find me at find me at mindpumpdestephano and Adam is at mindpumpadam. The RGB Super Bundle includes maps anabolic, 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 and over 200 videos, the RGB Super Bundle is like having Sal, Adam, and Justin as your own personal trainers, but at a fraction of the price. The RGB Super Bundle has a full 30 day money back guarantee and you can get it now plus other valuable free resources at mindpumpmedia.com. If you enjoy this show, please share the love

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