Mind Pump: Raw Fitness Truth - 2380: Six Huge TRT Mistakes

Episode Date: July 15, 2024

The scary/disturbing decline of males’ testosterone levels. (1:09) 6 Huge TRT Mistakes #1 - No change in lifestyle. (6:02) #2 - Adding training volume. (10:40) #3 - No focus on mobility training. (13:55) #4 - Masking poor health signals. (18:42) #5 - Inconsistent dosing. (22:17) #6 - More is not better. (25:44) Related Links/Products Mentioned Get your free Sample Pack with any “drink mix” purchase! Also, try the new LMNT Sparkling — a bold, 16-ounce can of sparkling electrolyte water: Visit DrinkLMNT.com/MindPump July Promotion: MAPS Split | Sexy Athlete Bundle 50% off! ** Code JULY50 at checkout ** Mind Pump #1230: Surviving & Thriving In A Toxic World With Max Lugavere Mind Pump #2245: Fix Your Sleep & Balance Your Hormones With Dr. Kirk Parsley Mind Pump #1547: The Hidden Benefits Of Lifting Weights The Importance of Incorporating Mobility Training to Avoid Injury TRANSCEND your goals! Telehealth Provider • Physician Directed GET YOUR PERSONALIZED TREATMENT PLAN! Hormone Replacement Therapy, Cognitive Function, Sleep & Fatigue, Athletic Performance and MORE. Their online process and medical experts make it simple to find out what’s right for you. Mind Pump Podcast – YouTube Mind Pump Free Resources  

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. Today's episode, the six huge mistakes people make when they get on testosterone replacement therapy. Now this episode is brought to you by a sponsor, Element. Elemente. This is an electrolyte powder you add to your water. No artificial sweeteners, no sugar, but it's high in sodium. It's the right amount of sodium to fuel you through your workouts. If you don't need a heavily processed diet, a low carb diet, you'll

work out a lot. You got to use this. It makes a huge difference in your performance. It also tastes good. Go check them out. Go to www.drinkelementt.com forward slash mind pump and on that link you'll get a free sample pack with any drink mix purchase. Also this month's special, MAPS split 50% off and the sexy athlete bundle of workout programs is also 50% off. If you're interested go to MAPSfitnessproducts.com and then use the code JULY50 for the discount. Alright, here comes the show. You might have heard the bad news. Testosterone levels are dropping across the world. It's true.

Since about the year 2000, testosterone levels have generally dropped by about 25%. Some estimates show as much as maybe even closer to 50%. It's no wonder that testosterone replacement therapy is now an exploding business. So in today's episode we're talking about testosterone replacement therapy and some of the huge mistakes people make when they get on testosterone. It's a good one. Yeah. Yeah. No, it's, when you look at the data on this, it's really, it's crazy. It's actually crazy. A 27 year old today will have the testosterone

level of an average 60 year old in the 1980s is what they're showing on the data. By the way, this is not new news. We've been observing a drop in testosterone now for longer than just the year 2000 for, I think since the 80s, we've kind of seen this start to happen, but it hasn't slowed down. and they're not sure what the heck is going on. Uh, there's a lot of speculations in terms of lifestyle, diet, obesity's up.

People don't. Environmental factors. Yeah. Maybe toxins, you know, estrogens and stuff like that. But there's a definite need for it based off of our current situation environment. I think what's interesting about it, you know, that you brought this up too, is like even like growing up, I had all kinds of misconceptions about what steroids or anabolic or testosterone would do. It was sort of this thought that it was like the magical serum that just all of a sudden

got you to look like Arnold. Do you think there is a single biggest offender or do you think it's really just the culmination of all those things that we're talking about? Pete Slauson It's got to be a combination because like if you try to connect it to other studies like grip strength test, grip strength in young men has declined significantly. College-aged males, their grip strength today is so much weaker than it was three or four decades ago.

So it could be lack of activity and muscle mass. We know strength training in many cases will raise testosterone. Could be obesity. Obviously obesity has exploded ever since then. Could be vitamin deficiency, vitamin D deficiencies are higher now than they were before. And then of course the addition of chemical exposure. We are now exposed to hundreds of chemicals that generations past weren't exposed to. Maybe on their own won't have a huge effect, but when you add them all up, they might have an effect. Nonetheless, you can greatly impact

your natural testosterone levels, but what many men are finding, especially as they get into their 40s, is that even changing their lifestyles, their testosterone levels don't change much, or it's so low that if, even if they double their testosterone, they would still be considered low, which is what happens with a lot

of them, right? They'll go in and get tested and they're so low, they're way below range. It's like you could double it and you're still kind of in the low range. So, you know, testosterone replacement therapies become big business. I mean, I remember, I mean, just when we started

the podcast, I never saw ads for. Oh yeah. Testosterone replacement. Now you see, you see it all over the place. You hear it on podcasts. You see it all over social media. And so more and more men are using it because when you have low testosterone, you feel like garbage. It's a feel good hormone.

So when you don't have it, your motivation is low, your confidence low. Of course, libido, that's the biggest sign is low. You tend to store more body fat. You don't have as much muscle. You have less energy. It can be connected to depression and anxiety. So if it's something that needs medical intervention, it could definitely, I mean, it makes a huge difference.

You get someone with low testosterone, you put them on testosterone, they're going to feel on many cases a lot better. Well, I, no, I think it's, it's life changing, both men and women, you know, both cases. Uh, and I think this is true for any of your major hormones. Uh, like if you're, your hormone hormones are out of balance or you are abnormally low in almost any of them, I think it's got major, you know, impact on how you feel. And, and a lot of those things are compounding.

Like, I mean, coming from somebody who had, uh, you know, very low testosterone, that your motivation to train, uh, to get up, to work, to work, to like, and then that's like snowballs. So it's like you're already feel weak and tired and then you lack the motivation to want to do any of these things and it's just like, it just gets worse and worse and worse and worse. And sometimes, and I think going over, I know you want to go over the six biggest mistakes and stuff like that, the first one with no change in lifestyle, I think that's the first major problem is that it can mask a lot of things that are going on.

And what a lot of people don't do is exhaust all the potential natural lifestyle changes they can make first, because it can make such an impact of going straight into TRT, but then you could have had a huge opportunity to potentially fix your sleep or increase protein intake or do something else that could have naturally done it. And then you just mask this, this problem by. I just think it's a big mistake because, so if you don't do any lifestyle changes while going on testosterone,

in my opinion you're missing a good opportunity. There's a couple reasons. One, behaviorally speaking, when you start on a new regimen or a medical intervention, it tends to serve as an impetus for change. And just my experience with clients, right? Anytime a client needed, figured out that their thyroid was low,

or that they needed to take testosterone, or some other medical intervention, it was a wonderful, it was almost like you're walking through a new door into a new life. So let's start doing some lifestyle changes. And it's a great opportunity, especially with testosterone, right?

If your testosterone is low, harder to burn fat, harder to burn fat, harder to build muscle, less energy. Well, now that you're taking it, let's also clean up your diet a little bit and you're probably more motivated to do so, right? Let's do a little bit more activity. Maybe you're more motivated to do so and

you'll get better results, right? Maybe you were experiencing in the past with your workouts, maybe you were trying to work out, but you just weren't recovering very well. And you just couldn't figure out what was going on. And it wasn't, you know, you just, and you thought maybe it's because I'm older, you know, maybe I'm 43 now. It's not like when I was younger, maybe that's what's going on. But then you go get tested and you're like, oh, your testosterone's on the floor. You get on testosterone. It's like, okay, now let's use this. Let's use this and maximize all of the potential.

Right. It's an intervention to be a catalyst. Totally. Yeah. You want to use it like that so it steers you more into a healthier lifestyle path. You can make better decisions with your nutrition. You can train a little bit more effectively and

more consistently. But yeah, I did, and that was one thing I didn't notice was some of my friends who were in that predicament where it was like their testosterone was in the floor, but they get this intervention and then they feel good for that amount of time, but then they don't maximize and capitalize upon that. And dude, that feeling only lasts for so long. And then what? Do you end up wanting to up your dose or you get sort of in that sort of dependency cycle? Now, no change in lifestyle is a bit of a broad statement. And so when you think

about all the major lifestyle changes that somebody should be making while on or off TRT, what are the common offenders that you would see where somebody would just they would hop on and where somebody would just, they would hop on and then they would like, I think right away, sleep has to be one of the main. Totally. One, it's one of the biggest things that can impact your testosterone levels. If you're getting really bad sleep and like high levels of stress, which normally go inside, that's one of the quickest ways to crush testosterone levels in men. And a lot of times when you

take this exogenous testosterone, you raise those levels up, you feel significantly better, but still are getting really poor sleep, which plays such a huge role in still how much muscle you build. And yeah, the other one is, you know, not adding appropriate strength training, you know, strength training. So now you're on testosterone. When you send a signal to build muscle, you also increase the amount of

androgen receptors that you have in your body. It's androgen receptor density. This has been shown quite reliably. So you strength train and what happens is testosterone, think of testosterone as a signaler in the body, but it needs to attach to receptors. That's how it tells the body what to do. Well, not only can you take testosterone, but now you can actually increase the amount of receptors that it can attach to.

So you're going to make this medical intervention much more effective. Now make it appropriate strength training, but not adding any strength training while going on testosterone to me is a huge, it's like, Oh my God, you could make whatever benefits you're feeling from going from testosterone to me is a huge, it's like, Oh my God, you can make whatever benefits you're feeling from going from low to normal testosterone, which you will notice, you'll feel so much better when you add a little bit of strength training and you optimize your sleep. Now it's like, okay, now we're putting everything together and it's making a really big difference. Now what about the mistake in regards to adding training volume on the like say training,

you know, fanatics that get on testosterone? That's the number two. Cause that was a, this was a mistake I made, is a young kid who dabbled with steroids early on was thinking that I was invincible and that the more I trained. Now I won't over train. Yeah, and so, and because you get away

with a little bit of that and you see some results still, even with that over training, you don't realize how much you're actually holding yourself back by not having the appropriate amount of training. Yeah, two ends of the spectrum, right? The person who does nothing, and then the person who goes,

oh, now I'm on testosterone, Yeah. I haven't been working out. I'm going to the gym five days a week. I would get that as well as, you know, managing gyms. You would see that like, Oh, I'm getting a new membership. I just went on testosterone. Yeah. I'm going to be here six days a week. Take it all on at once. It's like, Whoa, Whoa, Whoa, Whoa. You're, you're, you still need to train yourself appropriately. Your, you could have the most testosterone in the world,

but if you over train your body, you're going to feel testosterone in the world, but if you over train your body, you're gonna feel like garbage and you hurt yourself. So yeah, for someone listening right now who's like, okay, I'm about to go on testosterone, I have been working out this whole time, what should I change about my workout? Nothing. You change nothing about your workout. If you've been working out and you go on testosterone, here's what'll happen to you. The volume will naturally increase. And what I mean by that is-

Because you get stronger. That's right. So people think volume meaning I need to add sets and I need to add exercises. No, no, no. When you add weight to the bar, that is increased volume. So the testosterone that you're now taking is going to take your normal workout, whatever the weights you're using, and it's going to increase them. So your volume will naturally go up. You don't have to think to yourself,

I'm going to add a bunch more volume or add extra days in the gym. You don't have to do that. Not to mention you want to use that as your litmus test anyway. So you want to make sure that you train at the same kind of pace, the same type of protocol that you were doing before. So you could see whether or not there's like a substantial difference in energy and strength and keep paying attention to those type of metrics. But yeah, like Sal said, it's going to naturally increase it. And so you're going to want to be motivated to add a little bit more intensity to the exercise by adding load or

down the road we'll adjust volume as we go. Such great advice assuming that the person has the appropriate dose of training already. Yes right. Because that that could also be an issue too is somebody already over training over training like crazy get on TRT oh no this masks their symptoms right before. Also they see a little bit of a bump and strength and more like that oh great more and keep piling on. So assuming that you, you know, and like, let's just, let's assume that you are listening to this podcast and so hopefully you follow a MAPS program.

So you're, you're following something that has got, that keeps you in check with your, your volume. Uh, hopefully that you're on something like that. And then you just allow the strength gains to add the volume naturally through getting stronger. Uh, and you're on something like that. And then you just allow the strength gains to add the volume naturally through getting stronger. Uh, and you're not somebody who's training six, seven days a week, double days, and then you slap on the testosterone. You see a little bit of gains muscle and you think you're heading down the right

path. Now next, this one is a, is a mistake that you would see, you see with a high level athletes quite a bit, but you even see this with everyday people who go on a testosterone. Now with athletes, they use them as performance enhancing drugs. The mistake is to put no focus on mobility training. So if you suddenly start to get stronger,

your, so your muscles will build faster than your ligaments and your tendons do. That's what happens when you go from low to high testosterone. This is what happens to you go from low to high testosterone. This is what happens to athletes when they go on anabolic steroids as well. A lot of injuries you see as a result. Yes.

So it's like, it's like you have a car, you, you increase the horsepower, but you don't strengthen the frame because it takes longer to strengthen. Don't go hitting the, hitting the gas as hard as you can, you'll twist the frame, right? This is what happens to your body as well. Not to mention testosterone also

is to some extent in central nervous system stimulant. Some of the strength gains you get from testosterone have nothing to do with stronger muscles, that's part of it, or should I say bigger muscle fibers, that's part of it, but rather the central nervous system's ability to fire with more force. A central nervous system that fires with more force requires better organization of using that force to reduce risk of injury. This is why the higher, this is why you see this kind of injury curve or inverted curve with people when they work out. Like if you're super detrained, deconditioned, high risk of injury,

you start working out appropriately, your risk of injury goes down. You start really pushing the training and get real strong. Injury risk time starts to go up because you can generate so much force. So mobility needs to be a place in your training, especially if now you're about to go through, and this is what happens when you go on testosterone. When you go from low to high testosterone, that initial six to go through, and this is what happens when you go on testosterone, when you go from low to high testosterone, that initial six to twelve months, you'll see some, if you do everything right and you train yourself properly, don't over train, eat right and all that stuff, you'll see some really nice significant gains in comparison to how you were before.

Not adding mobility to that can increase your risk of injury, stiffness, and just overall lack of movement quality. Yeah, I think this point highlights the muscle-bound meathead misconception, right? This idea. That's where it comes from. Yeah, this is where this comes from, this idea of, oh, if you build a bunch of muscle, you're not flexible, and you lose range of motion,

and that's because of somebody who abuses stuff like this, and trains in this lose range of motion. And, and that's because of somebody who abuses stuff like this and, you know, trains in this shortened range of motion and is just getting muscle bound, muscle bound, muscle bound in one direction and doesn't take the joint through its full range of motion. And then you get this misconception that, oh, big buff, strong guys, uh, that ends up losing

their mobility because of the muscle. And it's like, well, no, that has to do with their programming and their training and the lack of attention to mobility and taking the joint through full range of motion. Not because they're on TRT or not because they lifted weights. It's because how they lifted weights, how they use the TRT. So just adding more reinforcement to strengthen those specific ranges of motion you're focusing on. And so it's like you were getting strong just by doing those before, but now that's, you

know, you're enhancing just that process and not, you know, reinforcing, which too, if you look at mobility, and this is always something I have to bring up, you know, even if you're not an athlete or you're an athlete, it's going to enhance your overall strength. It's going to enhance your overall physique. The more you get into full range of motion training, to be able to have that kind of strength, stability and control squeezes out so much more potential for your body. I'm glad you said that because people sometimes think it's a trade.

More gains or more mobility. So I've got to work on mobility. It's going trade. Okay, more gains or more mobility. So, oh, I gotta work on mobility, it's gonna take away from my gains. No, no, no, more mobility is a factor that will contribute to better gains. And again, to be clear, tightness, immobility issues, stiffness, it comes from your central nervous system,

feeling like or assessing that you cannot move a particular way without some kind of instability. In other words, it feels like it's not safe to allow you to move a particular way. This is why you see that stiffness. If I train always like this and no other way, and I get really strong that way, and my body's like, okay, we got a hundred percent power moving forward and back. We got 15% power moving left and right. Let's limit left the right.

Let's keep this person stiff and have them move a particular way. And you see it, like you said, Adam, you see the guy who moves around the gym, like, you know, he's made out of wood. And it's because the central nervous system is controlling everything, trying to keep him in ranges of motion that it deems a safe. The next one is that, you know, because testosterone is a feel good hormone, it can often mask other signs of poor health.

So to give, to kind of illustrate this, natural testosterone fluctuates. Okay. So if you have good healthy testosterone naturally, you'll see it go up in the morning when it peaks, it kind of starts to drop. It'll go up when you're rested well and you're fed well, when you're depressed and you lose sleep at 10,000 pounds, you'll see it go up in the morning, when it peaks, it kind of starts to drop. It'll go up when you're rested well and you're fed well. When you're depressed and you lose sleep,

it tends to go down. When you win a, you know, at a sporting event, they've shown spikes in it, right? When you're, when you're with someone you're attracted to, you tend to have spikes. When you get your ass kicked in something, it tends to drop down. The point is testosterone fluctuates, okay? When you're on testosterone down. The point is testosterone fluctuates. Okay. Um, when you're on testosterone replacement therapy, there's no fluctuation, it's high, that's it. Like you take your testosterone, it gets up high. It starts to level out towards the end of the week when you take your next dose

and then it's up regardless of sleep, regardless of diet, regardless of lifestyle. You have high testosterone. What that does is it tends to mask certain symptoms and it can actually drive you to continue to engage in behaviors that aren't so healthy. So in other words, if you know, before your lack of sleep was lowering your testosterone and you could feel it, well, not your lack of sleep.

You feel like you're okay. You're not. You feel the testosterone is masking it. You're still getting the damaging effects of lack of sleep. So you need to pay attention to all the other aspects of your health because now you have this artificial high signal of testosterone

that's masking a lot of things. I've found this one really interesting in my experience with coaching competitors. So I used to get a lot of female competitors related to the diet stuff, right? So a lot of these coaches put them on extreme diets and then they would come to me to help them fix that. A lot of the guys would come to me because they found out how low of a dose of testosterone that I was taking and all the copious amounts of drugs they were taking and not seeing

the results they would want to see. I can't tell you guys how many times I took on a client and then they would lay out like, this is what I'm taking. It was just like so much stuff. And then when I'm like, they have the crazy acne, they're having these crazy sweats tonight. They're having like, they're having all these bad symptoms of like, dude, this is not healthy. You like, you're not realizing that your body's trying

to give you all these signs that this is not right. You're not realizing that your body's trying to give you all these signs that this is not right, this is too much. And you thinking that more of this stuff is going to be a better route. It was really surprising to me how many people ignore some of these signs that you would think are just so obvious. So when you put this up here, it brought me back to some of these conversations that I'd have with some of these guys that like you don't, first of all, we're men's physique guys. So the amount of testosterone needed to build a men's

physique body is not like a, you know, Mr. Olympia bodybuilding physique. And so you're already way overdoing it. Then in addition to that, you're listing off all these things that are going on. Like that's your body trying to tell you like this is not, this is not good for you, it's too much. You got to pay attention to all the other things in your life and health signs because the

testosterone can sometimes mask those things. Again, because it's this kind of feel good thing. Like depression, for example, you know, low testosterone caused depression, but so can shitty lifestyle and things in your life. Well, it's this kind of feel good thing. Like depression, for example, you know, low testosterone can cause depression, but so can shitty lifestyle and things in your life. Well, if you want testosterone

or officially start to feel better, you may ignore problems in your life that maybe you would have paid attention to. It's another example. Next is inconsistent dosing. This one's interesting to me. And I, you know, this is one that my doctor clients would tell me about, uh, when the ones that I had that worked on hormones, because with

testosterone, the most common dosing. This too, there's either creams, uh, where you rub them on or injection. And you know, most, you know, I guess forward thinking doctors or ones that talk about performance recommend injection because I guess the creams have a tough time sometimes getting people's levels up high. Maybe not for everybody. But the problem with the injections was people would time it weird throughout the week. Oh, I forgot to do it today.

I'll just do it tomorrow or the next day. You need to be very consistent because of the spike and drop in testosterone. And if you wait too many days or you take it too soon, you could cause too high of a spike or you could cause it to get too low and then get symptoms of these kind of low testosterone. You gotta be really consistent with your dosing, same day, same time, every week, or if you use the creams, same time, every single day.

So I was guilty of this. I was totally guilty and exactly what you just described was, oh, shoot, I forgot today. Or, oh, I normally do it at seven a.m. I gotta shower, I forgot to, I'll take it tonight at eight p.m. or what that. Not realizing the effects of that. And another point you didn't make on that too

is the cascading effects with the other hormones of that. Because your testosterone drops or spikes and your estrogen moves with that also. Some of it gets converted to estrogen. Yeah. And so that was one of my big problems was I was struggling keeping that from converting over to estrogen. One of the major reasons for that was because I

was really bad with it consisting around that, not realizing what it was doing to me with converting over to estrogen. So this is, and the more I train people that were on TRT, the more common I realized this was, was people having a hard time being very consistent. So if you are using this or doing this and you find out, and by the way too, like for example, like when you work with Transcend, one of the things that we would do is, uh, cause everybody's different, right?

So first of all, the testosterone has a half life. Uh, some people are major responders. So as soon as they take a shot, they have a huge spike and then a steep crash afterwards. Some people have a nice rise and climb and then kind of steady. Uh, and some have this kind of like, you know, a lot doesn't do hardly anything and it kind of

plateau. And so you have a lot of people that respond differently to the shots and that will need it at different days. And so we would test, uh, uh, you know, three days after a shot, four days after a shot, five days, like to, to watch and see where I'm at. So crucially, you go through this process. Yes. And I never, until my experience with them and getting that granular about it,

did I ever really get my dosing up and it's the best I've ever felt in all the years that I've either did myself doing testosterone or actually went through a clinic. This was the best I've ever felt and a lot of it had to do with my dosages and timing. It can greatly impact. Even splitting it sometimes throughout the week is like a massive difference for a lot of people because of what you're describing in those highs and lows. So yeah, it's really important to kind of go through it because too, you want to avoid all of the side effects as much as possible. And so there's a totally a way to do that, but it takes a lot of conversations about how everything's going.

Mentioning side effects, and you mentioned this earlier too, Adam, more is not better. So there's totally a way to do that, but it takes a lot of conversations about how everything's going. You know, mentioning side effects, and you mentioned this earlier too, Adam, more is not better. Yep. A lot of people have the idea that more is better, but that's not true. More can cause more side effects. It can cause more conversion to estrogen, requiring the addition of other pharmaceuticals with their own risk profiles.

A lot of men, if they go too high, they have to take medication that prevents the conversion to estrogen and those medications have, in many cases, many people would say, are worse for the testosterone itself. More is not better. Now the belief is more is better because we get this like high testosterone is great and so more must be better and then you got like the bodybuilding world,

the athletic world who pushes more of the limits because