Mind Pump: Raw Fitness Truth - 2534: The Top 5 Ways to Break Through a Training Plateau & More (Listener Live Coaching)

Episode Date: February 15, 2025

In this episode of Quah (Q & A), Sal, Adam & Justin coach four Pump Heads via Zoom. Mind Pump Fit Tip: The top 5 plateau busters! (1:48) Cheat vs. strict curls. Which are better for progress? (20:11) Omega-3s can slow the aging process. (27:39) Real vs lab-created shilajit. (30:29) Creatine and head trauma. (34:54) Cannabis legalization/rehab increase. (36:56) Scary smartphone statistics. (48:56) #ListenerLive question #1 – Is it bad to lift a Rate of Perceived Exertion (RPE) of 8 or 9 every time I workout? (52:53) #ListenerLive question #2 – I’ve hit my protein target easily at 1600-1700 calories. However, I am not reaching the 2633 caloric target. Am I okay to continue or should I try to hit the 2633 target too? (1:06:04) #ListenerLive question #3 – As an “athlete,” would I be good to just run Performance/Performance 15 forever? (1:12:20) #ListenerLive question #4 – Do you think autoimmunity, Hashimoto's in particular, makes it difficult to build muscle? (1:20:40) Related Links/Products Mentioned Ask a question to Mind Pump, live! Email: [e-mail] Visit Organifi for the exclusive offer for Mind Pump listeners! ** Code MINDPUMP at checkout for 20% off. ** Visit Rock Recovery Center for the exclusive offer for Mind Pump listeners! ** They’re offering a free consultation call to discuss your situation. Whether you’re personally battling addiction or have a loved one in need of help, they’re here to guide you toward the support you need. By filling out the form and scheduling your call, you’ll also be entered for a chance to win a free 60-day scholarship at Rock Recovery Center, their premier treatment center in West Palm Beach, Florida ** Train the Trainer Webinar Series February Promotion: MAPS Anabolic & No B.S. 6-Pack ** We are offering them both for the low price of $59.99, which is a savings of $114! ** Muscle memory: A long break from exercise has little impact on strength 7-Day Overtraining Rescue Guide | Free by Mind Pump Media Mind Pump #1932: Lifting Heavy Vs. Lifting Light Are Cheat Reps Actually Cheating? - BarBend Omega-3s can slow down aging process | ScienceDaily How & Why to Take Creatine for Brain Injury & Recovery Cannabis/Marijuana Use Disorder > Fact Sheets - Yale Medicine How Much Time Does the Average Person Spend on Their Phone in 2025 ?  Visit MASSZYMES by biOptimizers for an exclusive offer for Mind Pump listeners! **Promo code MINDPUMP10 at checkout** Mind Pump #2312: Five Steps to Bounce Back From Overtraining Mind Pump #2490: Improve Your Muscle, Strength & Athleticism in Only 15 Minutes a Day Building Muscle with Adam Schafer – Mind Pump TV Mind Pump Podcast – YouTube Mind Pump Free Resources People Mentioned Jeff Nippard (@jeffnippard) Instagram Andy Galpin (@drandygalpin) Instagram Adam | Relationship Psychology (@attachmentadam) Instagram  

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Try the Y free for 7 days at TryTheY.ca 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 Schafer, and Justin Andrews. You just found the most downloaded fitness, health, and entertainment podcast. This is Mind Pup. Right in today's episode, we answered live callers. People called in and we coached them live on air, but this was after the intro portion. Today's intro was 50 minutes long. In the intro we talk about fitness, studies, nutrition, personal training. It's a great time. By the way if you want to be on an episode like this, email us your question at

live at mindpumpmedia.com. This episode is brought to you by some sponsors. Today's episode was brought to you by Organifi. Organifi, in today's episode we talked about their Shilajit gummies. Shilajit is an Ayurvedic compound and it's been shown to have some pretty cool health benefits. They put it in gummy form. Go check them out. Go to organifi.com. That's O-R-G-A-N-I-F-I.com forward slash mind pump. Use the code mind pump get 20% off. This episode is also brought to you by Rock Recovery Center. If you go to rockrecoverycenter.com forward slash mind pump, you can register for a free

scholarship. So four months, $60,000 scholarship for you or a loved one who's struggling with substance abuse. We know the owners of this place. We know the people who run the place. We trust them. Go check them out. We also have a webinar coming up. Adam and I are gonna be teaching coaches and trainers how to leverage social media. It's totally free. Go to trainerwebinar.com.

Finally, we have a program sale. Maps Antibolic is combined with an OBS six-pack formula. You can get both of them together for $59.99. If you're interested, go to mapsfebruary.com. Alright, here comes the show. You haven't gotten any stronger, you haven't lost any more body fat, you haven't built any more muscle over the last four weeks. It's a plateau. Let's start seeing results again. We have five plateau busters. Five of them and they're effective. The first one might surprise you. Take a week off and then start back up again

with a different approach. Let's start there. I like that. I think there's a good chance that a majority of people listening to this podcast, I'd say a high percentage of them, would consider themselves fitness people. Yeah, especially if you're plateaued.

Especially if you've been working out for a while. Yeah, that's my point. So that's who I'm talking to. Because there's obviously, this advice is specific to that group of people, right? Yet, we have our average clients that we train, which were nobody, the client who couldn't string 30 days together of training.

Yeah, it's not a plateau if you're not working out. It's right, it's right. So if you can't be consistent for 30 days, this probably. Yeah, it's not a plateau if you're not working out. It's right. It's right. So if you can't be consistent for 30 days, this probably doesn't fit you. Now, we do have a lot of people that are very, very consistent and are always looking for the next competitive edge, the next supplement, the next program. They never take time off or rarely ever take time off. And this is like one of the huge hacks.

And I think all of us have shared stories of our personal journey of when we realize this, you know, what's the minimum effective dose and that most of us tend to overdo it being fitness fanatics because we take a week off expecting to come back, oh God, I'm going to be so much weaker and so far behind, and you were stronger. Stronger, so when you look at the best, most scientifically planned strength training programs in the world, they tend to be,

or they're almost all relegated to strength sports, like Olympic lifting, power lifting, mainly because they're objective, right? You have to objectively measure your performance. Olympic lifting in particular was funded by countries competing against each other in the Olympics. So they're very scientifically done and they all include what will be commonly called in the fitness space a deload week or deload periods of time. Deload simply means you're reducing your volume, your intensity, your workout

significantly for a certain period of time to come back and to continue progressing. And the data shows that this works exceptionally well. In fact, there was a study, we've talked about this many times, which is a short study. So these people, I don't think even needed a deload week, but what they did is they showed that

when you compare two groups of people, one group working out every week, another group taking a week off after every three weeks, over a 12 week period, so over the 12 week period, one group took off three weeks, right? Three weeks. This is, that study was so crazy when this came out, like the fact that you could in a,

12 weeks is short, we already talked about how that's a short study. To think that the group who took off three weeks out of the 12 weeks, a third. Got the same results. Got the same results. Got the same results as the people that went every week. That's crazy. From a muscle development standpoint, right?

So we're not talking about stamina and endurance, that might be a little different, but like from building muscle, they were the same. So what does this tell us? Well, I think when you have with a fitness fanatic, what tends to happen is we naturally start to veer towards away from what is ideal and we start to move towards what is tolerable or what our bodies can tolerate. In other

words, what's the upper limit of what I can handle? You get away with this for a little while until the cumulative stress on your body starts to compound. This is what happens. You go from week one, week two, week three, week four, week five and so on. This stress starts to compound, and then what happens is you're just breaking yourself down and healing and coming back to baseline. Breaking yourself down, healing, back to baseline. So you don't improve at all, and so taking a week off,

just that alone oftentimes gets people through plateaus. I have a theory on why that's so common. What do you guys think? Why do you think that's so common? I think it's common for two reasons. I think one, fitness fanatics like to work out, so we like to see how much we get away with. But two, I think that adding more works for a while

until it stops working. So I actually, I think it's something different than both of us. I think that, because I think we all would agree and say that there was a period of time where we thought this or did this and you chased soreness as an indicator of a good workout. And as you start off it's really easy to get sore because everything is new right all the movements are new you see all this new progression and then you then you get a little strong and you add a little more

weight and then eventually you start to slow up and adapt and then the soreness really starts to diminish because the body is adapted to become and you keep chasing the soreness and Your way of doing that is adding levers There's the volume or there's intensity and you're gonna crank You know one or the other or both try and get there to get to that in pursuit of that soreness And I'm very much so guilty of this, even as a trainer, should know better, of like, oh, I didn't get sore enough, so next workout, I'm applying more.

And so I think most of these people end up here relatively quick within six. Chasing the pain. Yeah, chasing the pain of thinking that is an indicator of a good workout, and it sets you up for this. And then let me tell you, some of the people who chase that soreness are some of the fitness fanatics that keep on going and that they end up in this place for a long period until they have that moment where they accidentally take a week off or somehow it ends up happening where they take a week off and then they come back.

And then a lot of times they don't even make the connection still if they really would be honest. There's this fear that they're really going to set themselves back if they stop this progression that they've created in this environment and this type of habit that they worked so hard to achieve this habit and consistency is like everything that's been working so now you know if that formula doesn't apply then I'm just going to bring myself all the way back to the beginning. And it's by the way, this can sneak up on you too. Yes. Even if you think you're being smart about your training. I'll give you a great example.

You've been training for a while and you're getting relatively consistently stronger. So either week in, week out, or every other week or so, you're progressing on every lift. Well here's what's happening that you don't realize. You haven't added sets, you haven't added new exercises, it's the same routine. How come all of a sudden it's too much for me? Because you've added weight to the bar or you've added

reps, you've added volume. So every time you get stronger or every time you do a couple more reps, you've actually added volume to your routine. So over time of progressing, you're actually progressively adding volume until it becomes something your body can no longer tolerate. And the first sign of it is a plateau, where you see no progress. And I did say over four weeks, because I think that's a fair measurement of plateauing,

at least a month for most people, maybe a little longer, but definitely not a week, right? You can't expect yourself to progress every week. Yeah, I mean, another reason why this sneaks up on the people is I feel like they just, they misunderstand what is the right dose for the body and what they can tolerate. And so they end up getting to this place where it's hard to read this because they're like, oh, I'm fine, or I feel good after my workout.

And you don't understand just how resilient the body is and how well it adapts and you're right you probably are fine the body can handle the punishment that you're giving it all time and how to handle it so well you're not getting sore anymore but it's definitely got to a point where it's like ah you ain't getting adapting you're not getting any more results because so much of our energy and effort is put towards being able to just handle it and handle all the intensity and volume and putting towards it, that you're not giving enough resources to go build, adapt, and add strength and muscle.

Now the second part to this is you come back with a different approach. So it could be as different as changing your split, routine, it could be changing the exercises, the rep range, the tempo, or the focus, but if you come back with the same routine as before, you're gonna quickly run into a plateau again. By the way, the most challenging part about this

is the week off, people are always like, well what do I do? Now, the easy answer is nothing, but I know fitness fanatics don't wanna do nothing. Doug, give me the link for the guide, we have a seven day overtraining rescue guide, it's free. But I know fitness fanatics don't want to do nothing. Doug, give me the link for the guide. We have a seven day overtraining rescue guide. It's free.

You go to mindpumpfree.com and it's a seven day guide that tells you what to do every single day that accelerates recovery and gets you ready to work out again. It includes diet strategies and stuff like that along with it, which is pretty cool. Which takes me to the second one, which for a lot of people, the reason why they're plateauing is they're simply not eating enough. Yeah. And so I like to make this very simple. Add a 2 to 500 calorie meal or make it easy shake and I see this with clients all the time the ones that I knew struggled with going in a calorie surplus because they

were so worried about getting fatter they always wanted to be lean. All my female clients this was very difficult to convey. Totally and so what I would do is I would come up with a shake for them, because when it was prescriptive, sometimes I was more effective, and the shake would consist of protein powder, some kind of a healthy fat, in a kind of a milk, whether it be a nut milk because they can't have dairy or dairy, throwing some fruit, and they'd have two to 500 calorie extra shake that they would add to their food. And for those clients, this would get things moving again.

Yeah, this is so true that there's a saying in the bodybuilding world that has been permeating for years that there's no such thing as over training, just under eating. Right, that's because there's some truth to this. It's not 100% true. Well, where the truth comes from is that most of these people that started that

were on anabolic steroids. And when you're taking all kinds of steroids that keep your anabolic signal at peak levels 24-7, seven days a week, and you're also taking stacks of hormones and things that help recovery and do things like that, boy, you can really push those levers of intensity and volume as long as you're feeding the body and giving it more calories and more nutrients to keep building and get away with so much more than the average person.

And so that's become a popular saying in the space. There is some truth for even the natural person though, for the person who's afraid of eating more calories, who's afraid of, you know, and it is more often women than men that you see, they're just, like, they got lean, they look, they're fit, they wanna get stronger, they don't know why, you look at their diet okay you're eating

1700 calories a day you add 300 calories to that and boom strength you know right away I'm straight back and so just if that's you add a 2 to 500 calorie shake with a decent amount of protein in it just add that every single day and you'll probably see yourself progressing within a few days next up is to put a focus on sleep what What I mean by that is make sure you sleep eight hours every night, go to bed at the same time every night, and wake up at the same time every day. So it's the same every single day. Quality sleep. And that's it. And then do it, give it 14 days. Now the

people who I see get crazy results from this are younger individuals. Typically 20 year olds, when they do this consistently, because they all have crappy sleep and they stay up late. It's not even a consideration otherwise. When they do this it's almost like, you know, there was one kid, I'm thinking of a kid right now, who was in his early 20s, who I worked with when I was in my 30s, early 30s, and I had him do this for 14 days. He gained five pounds of lean body mass. He was already muscular and strong, did nothing else. Five pounds of lean body mass in two weeks and he was tripping out and of course

it was one of my favorite I told you so moments in my entire career. That's interesting that you say that group. I would actually make the argument and maybe this is just an example of the difference in our clientele. I saw this a lot with my high performing CEO type of clients because they.

Yeah, for sure that too. And a lot of times what it is is that- It's a sacrifice. They have the, and this would happen while I was training them and while I was managing volume and intensity. And so I know that, oh, we're not applying, or I think we're not applying too much. But what I don't, what I'm not taking into consideration is this high performing, high stress individual that works six days

a week, 12 hour days, has got all this pressure on them at work. Even though I think my training is relatively moderate for the average person, I'm not taking into consideration how poorly this person is sleeping and their stress. This is actually when that started to come together for me as a coach and a trainer was starting to recognize this and go like, oh wow, I really have to learn how to modify my training volume intensity because this what I'm applying should be fine yet we're at a hard plateau right now and I'm monitoring all these things. What I'm not monitoring or I wasn't monitoring at that time was those clients sleep patterns and their stress

levels and those clients that were like that, they were, oh Adam I only need four hours of sleep, you know I I'm saying? We're just killers in business. And because of that, getting that person, convincing them that, listen, just trust me, prioritize your sleep for a couple of weeks and let's see what happens. And then boom, they would see you. I had a very similar experience with that, especially with one of my most difficult clients in terms of what, what is that thing that's going to move the progress?

It was always like this, we're hitting a wall. And I knew it was because of stress and work and demand and like waking up in the middle of the night. The only time we had like crazy progress is when she wanted a vacation for a week in a tropical place, got a ton of sun and a lot of sleep. I came back and like lost, and then everything was stronger, and it was like an immediate thing, and still didn't really, I tried really hard to convey,

that was a huge component that we're lacking, and look what happened. But yeah, that was the most difficult thing, is when it comes to sleep, it's like, how do you convince somebody that's high performing and is just a killer to slow down? It's a 14 day challenge. Try it out and see what happens.

Next up, and you'll know if this is you, lift with lighter weight and much better form. And you know this is you if you're the one that likes to push the weight a lot. You like to go heavier, you don't wanna go lighter, you sacrifice form a little bit, or at least you know you could go deeper in your squat or your lift or whatever if you went lighter.

If that's you, this is a crazy plateau buster. This is one of my favorite ones with these individuals. I would make them go lighter and I'd have a fuller range of motion, slow down the reps and boom, muscle would grow all over them. This actually happened to me in my late teens, early 20s, because that was me up until I started figuring out

form was really important and I went a little lighter, had a deeper range of motion and my body just developed. Well, I imagine in the same category, that type of person has a workout partner. I would say fire them and start doing it by yourself and start really getting into the nitty-gritty of your form and you know what you can actually lift without momentum. These were my clients that were like my ex athletic or really strong dudes that were in their 40s and 50s, and they still could lift heavy, but they had to use all the wraps and the straps

and everything to do it. And they were constantly talking about their knees and their hips and their back and all stuff like that, because they just didn't wanna let go of, because they could bench press 315, or because they could still squat 400 pounds that they needed to or wanted to. And it was all ego driving them

to do that when it was like, listen, let me strip the weight in half and show you just as good if not better results and getting them to trust me to do that was always really difficult. That was the client that I was most challenged with getting this point across, but it was always amazing when you did because all those things would be better. A lot of the joint pain would go away. All of a sudden they weren't waking up like that. They could move better. They felt better and then they actually saw gains. And then when we came back to test our strength and they'd hit PRs and so it was

like they were training in that heavy mode for so long that they haven't allowed themselves to do that and many times it was ego driven because they didn't want to lie. Now you should see now I go to a commercial gym now and where I go in the morning a lot of the the guys in there working out or in their 20s and this is very true for them they like to go heavy cut their reps short especially on things like overhead press and you know bench press and stuff like that and if they just went lighter full range of motion they'd be blown away now the next one is the opposite lift heavier this you know if this is you because you're afraid to go heavier or

you use the same weights all the time. My female clients. And this female clients it was more, whereas the you know go lighter was more you know advantageous or more viable. My egomaniac dudes lift lighter. My girls safe, precautious, don't want to push. Yeah, lift go heavier, and challenge yourself a little bit with how much you can lift, and if that's you, this could be huge. Now this was one of my favorite buttons with female clients. They'd hire me, I'd see what they were doing,

and I could see right away, like, you can add 20 pounds to the bar. No, I can't, yeah you can, I'll show you, and then they add it, and though and behold, perfectly fine, and then we start progressing again. When we talk about this, it always reminds me of kind of how we all got together because this was when you first sent me over maps and a ball, and I tell the story all the time that like, what was it that made me get on the phone with you and go like, oh, this is

brilliant. And it was at that time, first of all, so the audience understands 60, 70%, maybe more of our clientele are female, middle-aged female clients wanting to get in shape. Most common client. Most common client. And one of the most common things is they didn't lift heavy, getting them to lift heavy, to squat, to deadlift, to lift these big lifts, five by five type training. And, you know, as a trainer trainer, realizing how valuable it was and what a hack it was to get those clients to do that. I would blow my female clients' minds by just simply,

their first phase I had trained them would be heavy lifting because it was so foreign and so new. The muscle would pile on, they'd lean out, their metabolism and appetite would go. It was just, and it took me 10 years of my career to get to that point where I realized, oh, this is how I start all my clients now. And that was the same time that Sal and I had met virtually.

And he had sent over maps anabolic and I looked at it. I'm like, yes, like this is literally what I'm like. And so it was phase one. Yeah. And it was phase one. And I knew that that had to been why the thought process behind behind it. And I was like, okay, we're on the same wavelength. And so whenever we give this tip,

it reminds me of kind of the inception of mind pump and how it all started. Speaking of working out and progress and stuff, there was a study that was just published. Jeff Nippert actually was one of the people that conducted the study. So people don't know he's a fitness influencer, smart guy, scientist.

And he, say what? Justin loves him. I don't know a lot about the guy. No you don't. But he, they did a study where they compared loose form to strict form on a single joint exercise, the bicep curl. So they only picked one exercise. I like the way they did it.

One arm did a cheek curl with more weight. The other arm in the same body didicep curl. So they only picked one exercise. I liked the way they did it. One arm did a cheat curl with more weight. The other arm in the same body did a strict curl with lighter weight. Okay. And they did this study, which I liked that. I think that was, that's performed really well. And how long? Give me the stuff. I got to pull it up.

It was, it was relative. It was long enough to see if there was progress. I'll pull it up for you. But what they found in the study was there was no difference in progress, which just goes to show the cheat reps, you're just adding risk for no reason. By the way, this is a single joint exercise too. Single joint exercises, cheating on a single joint exercise like a curl, not that big of a deal from a risk perspective. You still have a higher risk of injury, not that big. Double, you know, compound lifts. Oh yeah. You cheat on those, your risk of injury goes to the roof. Like you do a squat perfectly, very

safe. You do a cheat squat, whatever that looks like, and you've got yourself some I love this study and I love this point because this reminds me of being a trainer and one of the things I love to do, especially when I was in like crazy shredded shape, is I would be in my little tank top stringer cutoff, like looking shredded, and I would go next to somebody and I would be lifting like the lightest weight with like just strict, perfect form.

And I knew when you look like that, when you stand out as like the 1% in the gym fit wise You know that it grabs the attention of the people inside there Especially when you're a trainer in the facility and they see you there all the time and I always got people to ask me questions I always see you lifting super lightweight like but you look amazing And then I would I would be able to explain this to them That yeah this idea that you need to put all this weight on, you can build a lot of muscle through strict good form and lightweight and it doesn't take lip loading so much. This has always been my criticism of structuring workouts in a competitive environment like

a CrossFit or a Orange Theory class or like these class settings that really reward people for this, being able to cheat their way through or add more weight, but it's bragging rights in terms of what they're able to do. But now we just take a lot of the quality out of the actual movement and the value of it drops substantially. So it was an eight-week study, so two months, which I think is long enough to show if there's a bit of a difference. But the reason why I like the results is it confirms just what I've seen training people. But I will say this, just to defend the bodybuilders, because bodybuilders will sometimes be the ones to argue for cheat reps. In fact, the term cheat reps was created

by bodybuilders. Arnold, the first- Ten is encyclopedia. The first strength training book I ever bought and read was this encyclopedia and there is a, you know, there was pictures and advice for a cheat curl that's in there. Here's why I think sometimes experienced lifters, especially in single joint exercises, I think cheat compound lifts is you're playing with fire and it's dumb, but some single joint exercises, a lateral, a curl, a tricep press down, fine. I think sometimes why experienced lifters

will notice better progress is not because they're cheating or it's more weight, but rather they've changed the exercise. It's a different lift now. So if you look at a cheat curl versus a strict curl or a cheat press down versus a regular press down or a lateral strict versus one that's not a strict, they a cheap press down versus a regular press down or a lateral strict versus one that's not a strict, they're actually different exercises. They're different techniques.

In fact, you could get really good at one and you'll have some carry over to the other one, but not as much as if you practiced the other one. So like a cheat curl, for example, it's kind of its own lift. It's very close to a strict curl or related. So I think it's just different, which is why experience allows the momentum. I mean, I love this point too, because inevitably I would get someone that would ask this and challenge that, especially because that was, and that's how I know it's in that book. Because people would be like, well, I read that Arnold said cheat reps. And I would tell my clients that you have to earn the right to do that. Like we're gonna train in such strict form that you are so connected to everything we're trying to activate and you can master every exercise we're doing with strict perfect form.

And then we earn the right to put some English on it and to cheat and to create a new exercise in a sense. It's like until then we're gonna stick to incredibly strict form and the basic movements. We're gonna master the basics with perfect form and technique. And then we can start playing with these unique movements and exercises and stuff that we create. Otherwise, you lose the benefits because you can't even perform the exercise with perfect strict form and now you're cheating it. So now you're losing out on it.

I mean, the way I would even just counter what I said earlier is there's better ways to add novelty. There's a better way to add novelty to your exercise than doing a cheat loose version of the same exercise that you've been doing. And why is that better? You have an increase, you know, one thing with exercise, especially strength training, is if you're going to increase

your risk of injury, you better have a far better return in terms of progress. Once the risk of injury outweighs the return, it makes no sense whatsoever. It's just frivolous. It's just dumb. And in that, I mean, because if you look at people who've been doing this for long, long periods of time, the thing that gets in the way is injury. Always. It's almost, it's the worst thing that gets in the way is injury, always. It's almost, it's the worst thing that gets in the way.

It's not family stuff, it's not whatever. I'm talking about people who've been doing this for decades. When you look at their careers of training or whatever, and you see, oh, you stopped doing this exercise, why? Or you had to change the way you trained, what happened? Or wow, over here you took six months off. That's the ultimate deterrent to your entire program is getting injured.

I also, I guess this is, I also this is I guess this is um I don't know what side this is of me or how weird this is right? I don't know if you guys are agree with this, but I mean I love Biomechanics and human physiology so much that there is there's art and beauty in it It's a skill for and so just like when when somebody and I'm not a fan of this sport But a lot of people are and the people that maybe that are fans of sport understand this, when you watch something like ice skating, it's the way they move so flawlessly on the ice is what it's not that they just stay up and then they jump. It's like how flawless it is in the

movement and the technique is what makes the score so high and what makes it so beautiful to watch. I feel the same way about exercise. It's, I mean, one of the most attractive qualities that I've ever thought in a female is when I come in and I can see a woman performing a squat or deadlift. Oh, and it's like flawless. That's so attractive to me. I think that's like watching the body move so perfectly

the way it's supposed to on an exercise like that. And so bastardizing that to me is just like, I just, I don't know, it's like nails it. I was just thinking of Sal doing a deadlift and I'm like, that's very Brian Boitano-esque. So beautiful. I forgot about that. That ice skater. That's hilarious. Nice.

Magical. Yeah, nice. All right, so I have a cool study, another study to bring up. This is on omega-3 fatty acids. This has just been published, so which actually led me to finding a couple other studies on omega-3 fatty acids. So in this particular study,

they found that omega-3 fatty acids reduced aging in individuals or slowed down the aging process in individuals who consume and regulate as measured by You know biologist biological measures that we look at that can signify biological aging And it was a large study people who ate a gram of omega-3 fatty acids a day Aged slower they slow also They also found in another study that people who ate higher levels of omega-3 fatty acids had higher average scores on tests of abstract reasoning and they had larger average volumes in the hippocampus area of their brains. So omega-3 fatty acids

they're there it's probably a good idea necessary to supplement with them but even better would be to consume foods that are high in them. Yeah when I I hear, when I hear stuff that, you know, that makes me always curious about, and you're probably the person to ask this because I have no idea how they, like something like this would measure up. But say for example, like a product like Sheila Jeet from Organifi, like the, the, the, one of the benefits in there is skins, wrinkle health, like there's like, it hits so many things. How does something like Omega threes measure up to a product like that? Are they equal? Are they different? Are they the same like,

no, let's be clear, Omega threes are essential fatty acids. There is no essential Shilajit. Like you have to take you have to have a certain amount of Omega three fatty acids, just to thrive. Now is that it for so for like you said for the skin, right? For that exact the thing that the things that are inside She legit that have benefits towards the skin is it the same or different and are are they are they are they something that you? Would be synergistic you can take them both yeah, yeah, they're deaf

There's nothing competing there the omega-3 fatty acids are really interesting in terms of longevity health aging inflammation I think in these studies are looking at people that eat them. By the way, for the average person, if you ate sardines, which people confuse sardines with anchovies, sardines taste great, especially if you had salt, lemon, whatever, you ate a can of sardines every other day, you'd get plenty of omega-3 fatty acids. Shilajit is far different, a little bit more mysterious, even though it's been used for a long time.

Shilajit is an erythritic compound. It's actually, if you go in the Himalayan Mountains, you'll really find it. It's this black tarry substance that comes from the decomposition of plants over centuries. So it's like centuries old decomposed plant material that they've used in aerovetic medicine. So does it make it rare because it takes that long in order to... So here's what's crazy about that. You just said that. So Shilajit, I knew about it for a long time, right?

I know you did because I remember when Organifi did it and I didn't know what the hell it was and you're like, oh my god. Psych. Psych. Okay because I didn't know what the hell it was and you're like, oh my god, I have no idea. Sight, okay, because I didn't know any really good providers or I should say, it wasn't popular but it should be because if you look at the studies on it, it's pretty interesting. It's good for brain health, raises testosterone, good for fertility. It's got all these pretty cool benefits,

been used for a long time. Organifi went with a company called PrimaVe which uses real Shilajit. Here's why that's important. So the real stuff, the real, like it's decomposed plant matter hundreds of years old or whatever. There's a lot of companies now,

because it's so popular, that are making fake shilajit. They're making it in a lab. They're taking fulvic acid, they're adding it to other things. Yes, and they're trying to, and they're creating its lab Created Shilajit. It's not the same stuff that they use An Ayurvedic medicine so organify sources theirs from prima V, which is real That's real Shilajit other companies. You got to be careful where you get it from because it's

So hard for the consumer man. You wouldn't know that. How would you know this? Well, it reminds me of the same challenge we have with our other partner with Juve, Red Light. Yeah. You know, like, it's like, just because it's Red Light doesn't mean you get the same benefits as like the... No, it's like a stoplight. That's red.

Yeah. So I know, but the average person, they're not making that connection. They just, what they constantly hear is that red light, red light therapy, red light, red, red light. And then all of a sudden it gets popular. And then all of a sudden all these brands pop up and then you order one and you have no idea the difference. And there's even a little bit, and I'm sure that that's what these Sheila's Geek companies are doing is you, you pixie dust a little bit of the real stuff in there.

Then you have more of the fake synthetic stuff. So you could still kind of claim that it's partially real. Here's what happens with Ayurvedic or Chinese medicine sometimes. People will take something and what they expect, they don't expect to feel great results. They think like, oh, I think it's feeling better. I think it's helping. It's supposed to help me. And we sometimes expect that from those kinds of compounds.

I'm going to tell you straight up. If you take real Shilajit, you'll feel it within 30 days. You'll know you're taking real, so if you're taking a product that says Shilajit, and you've been taking it for two months, and you notice nothing, you notice no difference whatsoever, probably fake, probably fake. Because one of those things that you,

a lot of people will notice. I feel the same thing about the red light. Like if you stand in front of that red light consistently three times a week for 10 12 minutes. I mean I That should be that the the case for anything right do or take So but back to the the omega fatty acids like I was actually wondering about this because I was like, oh man I'm so like mad at myself half the time because I'm not into fish and I would go through these These cycles where I'm like trying to reintroduce it. I'm like, well, I can handle salmon. I can handle some of these things.

And then it's like, I'm getting all this conflict and information now that basically all the fish we're getting now have these heavy metals in them and super toxic. – This is why I said sardines. Sardines are very low. So the fish that eat lots of fish, so you guys swordfish, that's like a big predator fish, because of the amount of fish it consumes, high levels. Sardines, very low, very, very low in heavy metals. One of the safest, cleanest types of fish that you can see. Really?

You want the prey, you don't want the predator. Yeah, oh yeah, swordfish, if I'm not mistaken, the amount of mercury in swordfish, I think you shouldn't be like. It's alarming, right? I think it's like once a month. I think yeah assume it at most or something like that I don't know Doug. Maybe you could look this up. Yeah, look it cuz it I keep about that not to mention like the red tide and like some things we get this this this bacteria algae that like stays in Your system and so anyway, well dude if you just bought

high EPA You know mega three fatty acids and took... That's what I mean. Supplementing is the move for me. ...took those every day, you're totally fine. Swordfish is considered a high mercury fish. How often do they say you're supposed to... They say consuming it could lead to mercury poisoning.

Yeah. They won't let, like pregnant women are not supposed to eat swordfish, which sucks. Swordfish is delicious. It's great. Yeah, I've had it before. It's actually, like, it's the meatiest. It's the most meat-like fish. Like a steak. That's what I great. Yeah, it's actually like it's the it's the meaty. It's the most meat like fish Like that like fish sticks Yeah, you know

Speaking of like the brain and health and stuff like that Justin you shared that interesting data on creatine and head trauma Yeah, which is yeah, I got that from Dr. Andy Galpin and because of concussions, I'm always like pretty interested in latest science for treatments and things like that. And, you know, preventatively, I guess there's this, what do you call it, secondary impact syndrome or something like that. So after, I guess a lot of the damage comes not just the first concussion, but it's the head trauma afterwards. If you get it second or third, it's far more damage. It's compounding, right? So apparently they studied whether or not they were deficient or they had a good amount of creatine. And It was substantially different like the amount of damage you got a lot more damage if you didn't have creatine

Protective it's very protective if you play a sport that Involves some risk of head trauma or you're an athlete You you have you should have to take rating. I wish I wish I had that I would have taken a lot more I mean consistently an athlete I kind of feel like that's every sport. The name of sport, it comes to mind where you, I mean, every sport that has a ball, you could potentially get hit in the head with the ball. So it makes sense there.

Any sport where you're running, I mean, you trip, hit your head, I mean. Really, it's just providing. It's like a no-brainer for any athlete. It's just providing more energy for your cells, which includes your brain. And when you have lots of available ATP and you have trauma, the healing process is going to be much better. If your energy depleted and then you have an injury, you're screwed.

So I think that's what it's. I'm assuming that's why the football protocol is right after they get, they have this protocol of concussion where they can't play for at least another day or week or like that, depending on it. Because the preceding one more than really what has happened is damage is done, it's just that it has compounding effects later on. Yep, yep, speaking of compounding effects,

I gotta tell you man, talk about eating your previous words. When they were talking back in the day here in California over cannabis legalization, I was this huge proponent and I said, it's not going to cause more problems and it's not going to get more people to smoke it and being illegal makes it more attractive and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And it turns out it's completely wrong. Really? It's super wrong. The cannabis use has skyrocketed in places, in states where it's legalized, skyrocketed.

And now there's data showing, I mean, not great stuff at all. So before you go, let me poke holes in that. Because it's like, who, when it's illegal, okay, who is raising their hand and going like, I'm smoking the illegal drug. Like, like right now we could not, I don't care what anybody says, we could not get a good gauge of how many people do cocaine. Yeah. Just fact. Why? Cause it's illegal. We're not, we're not

measuring transactions. We have no systems. Ain't nobody raising their hand, you know, nobody's measuring pinky nail length. Yeah. yeah, we're not doing any of that. So then if all of a sudden cocaine was legalized tomorrow and the regular cocaine user could go down to a pharmacy and it's now being tracked because it's being taxed and we say, you would show massive increase. Now that's not, now that's logical, but that's not how they're measuring it.

How they're measuring it is people admitting themselves to rehab. So people used to admit themselves to rehab for cannabis, what they call marijuana abuse syndrome. Okay. That never made the top 10 with rehab facilities. Okay, so that's interesting. As it's become legalized, okay, over the years.

Are these people dabbing or like what? Oh, bro, do you wanna, so, okay, I'll trip you out. Yeah. So marijuana use disorder is what they call it. People are addicted. People are actually going to rehab. They are themselves saying, I need help with this. Yeah.

On the list of drugs or substances that send people to rehab, where do you think marijuana falls? I mean, before this or now? Now. Well, now you're saying it you're told us It's already high. I would have guessed it way low in the first place. It's third third. It's the third most common What's one and two? Oh? And then nicotine believe or not, but nicotine the people check themselves in a rehab rehab

But they count people who say I'm addicted and I need help. Okay, so wait a second salary They counting the marijuana well, so too. No, this is, this is, if you look at the, so if you look at the amount of people that are now going to, and we can actually ask our friends at Rock Recovery about this. I would love to ask them. We are definitely gonna ask. Like, have you seen a rise in people who come to you for- Because how does this study show one, but not the other, I don't understand how you're saying that, they put cigarettes as two because- I think because cigarettes have always been legal

that they can see how many, how addicted people are. Alcohol, they're using people who are reporting, self-reporting as an alcohol. So these are just legal drugs. Yes. No, no, they have opiates on here too. And halence are number five, heroin's not so bad. I would've thought opiates would've been higher.

I would've thought, I would've been, alcohol. I would have thought that. I would have been... Alcohol one, opiates two. There's fentanyl, yeah. I wouldn't have guessed cigarettes are in there, and I wouldn't have guessed that cigarettes is just self-reported I'm addicted. Because of course that's high. And I also think, by the way, if they're measuring this by people

reporting that I'm addicted to marijuana, that, like, for example, they do surveys that say do you use marijuana? more than five times a week and If you do you're considered addicted to marijuana and a bunch of people would say I use marijuana five more than five times a week Yeah, and now that's where this is coming. Well, I use it like every day. Yeah, that won't think they have an ad yes 100% so I mean Wow, I'm your studies flawed. Yeah, that won't think they have an addiction. Yes, 100%. So, I mean, your study's flawed. Well, so here's the deal.

So I did look it up. Not to burst your bubble. I did look it up and I did. We know it's not good for memory. I did see. I highlighted that. I forgot to study. No, I did read a lot of articles

about rehab facility centers saying it is growing quite a bit. To me, that is the best gauge for this. Because if people are checking into rehab centers to help them out, that's a big sign. Because I don't think anyone's checking themselves into rehab centers for cigarettes. No. No. No. In fact, if you smoke cigarettes, you're healthy.

And I don't think there's a lot of people checking themselves in for marijuana either, but I could be wrong. And so hearing from Rock Recovery, from those guys or them and they tell me like yeah, Adam We've seen you know a huge rise then I'd be surprised I would be very shocked and then that would carry weight to this conversation But if they don't then I think self reporting are you addicted and then of course You know smoking marijuana on a three to five times a day or more, if that's what they categorize as addicted. So Yale Medicine, so this is based off of Yale Medicine,

they did a study and they said that 10% people who begin smoking cannabis will form an addiction or cannabis use disorder. 30% of current users meet the criteria for cannabis addiction. Yeah, I would probably meet that. So I mean, that's pretty. I would probably meet that. So the CDC reports that approximately three to 10.

Anyway, my point with it isn't necessarily that, although I do think it's interesting. I would love to hear the guys from rock recovery. I'd like to because they, they, they do this like, okay, how often do you see this? Yeah. And has it increased? Right. But here's the crazy part. They're we're seeing, we're now having studies on schizophrenia.

So you know, they used to say how there might be a connection between cannabis use and schizophrenia? Schizophrenia, since the legalization of cannabis has tripled and they think they're making the connection to cannabis abuse. Is there like an epigenetic sort of factor to that? Just the way it affects the brain over time, it can induce mental illness.

What else increases schizophrenia? Do things like Adderall and ADD type medications? I think psychedelics too. They've found certain ones. That's a good question and I think cannabis is listed as a psychedelic if I'm not mistaken. I don't know about Adderall but methadone, sure. Well, because I know DMT, a personal story. Well, the reason why I say that is what has been the rise in the last decade with your

kids are getting medication like that like crazy compared to just where it was 10 years. Yes. There are, but the data on it's... So Doug, if you type in marijuana and schizophrenia, we have pretty good studies now that show that it's a risk. Again, not saying that there's not situations where it're, but again, a broad study like that, when we have things like Adderall being prescribed at much higher rates than we ever had in previous decades. Yeah, I don't think that's good either. Of course, no. I think that's way more likely to cause schizophrenia than marijuana use also.

I don't know if there's a connection between the two, to be honest with you. I don't know if there's a connection between the two to be honest with you I don't know if there's a connection between Adderall and schizophrenia that they've made I could see where you're going with that because I think the strong forms like people use meth that's a that's a common shit. The regular I'll never forget the first time I tried an Adderall pill as an adult it was schizophrenia. No but I mean maybe maybe a little bit you know say like that it is strong you're talking to Adam What did I say there Doug? According this young man at the highest risk for schizophrenia linked with cannabis use. Yeah. Yeah, it's pretty it's pretty it's pretty wild

the Yeah, and I'd love to hear from by the way, they they're just, we gotta say this, Rock Recovery does a scholarship, I think they're doing it this month, where if you go to their site, maybe Doug, you can get me their link here so I can read it off properly. If you go to their site, you can enter in to win a free scholarship.

It's a $50,000, if I'm not mistaken, scholarship to go and get rehab, and I think it's like four months, if I'm not mistaken. Yes. Is that it? Okay. No, it's actually longer than that. It's longer than that. it's like four months, if I'm not mistaken. Yes. Is that it? No, it's actually longer than that. It's longer than that. Pretty awesome.

And by the way, everybody gets help. So they don't, somebody went to self-care. Four months, is that what you said? Yeah, I did. Four months, okay. What's the link for them, Doug? Yeah, it's rockrecoverycenter.com forward slash mind pump. Yeah, there you go.

Okay, so back to this debate. Yeah, so right there. So it says it doesn't directly cause schizophrenia But it can exacerbate the symptoms of the disorder leading to misdiagnosis or worsening of symptoms. What is we doing? It's actually directly. Yeah direct is we directly affecting schizophrenia. That's inducing it. So people who didn't have it Mechanism there like well, okay Let me ask you this. Okay. Have you ever had so much weed that you went crazy? Yes, everybody in here paranoia. Yes, you have a story of schizophrenia

Means close. I mean it'll induce insanity. I mean, I you know, I told I have a story Well, I also just I literally felt like I was going crazy I mean Justin also brought something up that that that is I think also important to note is that also brought something up that that that is I think also important to note is that since the legalization the popularity so back in the days okay 70s 80s when marijuana was also rampant and popular even when it was quote unquote became illegal it was pretty much weed between five and 11 percent thc levels and concentration mash and hashish would maybe break 20%. We now have your basic strain of marijuana carries 20 to 30% THC, which is stronger than hashish back then,

and now you've got kids that are dabbing at levels at 90%. I mean, you have to wonder. That's a problem. Yeah, that is absolutely a problem. and what happens when you legalize something like Marijuana you have your you get a market you get irresponsible kids that start smoking and more and more and more Vaping yes, right and then the next thing you know you were dabbing and you're taking in 90% and then and then they're all connected It's all derivative of marijuana, and I'm sure it would absolutely, now that, I bet your ass.

That's what they're saying. Yeah. That's one of the reasons they're saying is that the strength and the potency's gone up in the amount that people are using. But what you get with that decriminalization and legalization is you get the market competing for these consumers now.

And the best way to compete is to make a strong decision. No, you're right. And I look, I tell you what. Yeah, yeah, well it's in the demand in there. Yeah, I mean look, over 10 years years ago I had a family member with cancer and this is when I got into learning about cannabis because I was trying to help her through her chemo and all that stuff and I would go to these dispensaries and the highest this was god this was like 13 years ago maybe the highest the strains that were

high in THC were like 17%. That was the highest strain. 20% was like, oh my God. Now I think that's, like you said, the average is in the 20s. And some of it's high as 30%. They're just breeding them to be ridiculously strong. And you're right. And the consumers have demanded that.

Why? Because there's a very small percentage of the consumer that are doing it for medical purposes or for some mild reason. 80 to 90% are recreational users that are doing it for medical purposes or for some mild reason. 80 to 90% are recreational users that are using it. When you ran clubs like I did, you were obviously in order for the business to operate, you need consumers, you need people coming through. And I remember this because I was one of the few clubs at the time that was really trying

to do everything above board and be real professional and be like a medical office. And we were really trying to change the industry. And it made it really difficult when 80% of your customers that are coming in, like which one is going to fuck me up? Which one's 10, which one is a 10 doser? They, and they didn't care. Questions. They didn't care.

They didn't care. No, I'm serious. And they didn't care if it was saran wrapped and baked in someone's kitchen. So long as it was so powerful, versus the one that I could tell them was organically made, and it was dosed properly, and it was medical, it was like, no, but if I but if I had one that was saran wrapped in and someone made their kitchen and made it, you know, 10 times as strong, and it was

half the price, it was like, that's where that would sell out. And that's what everybody wanted. And so then you have these clubs that are competing because they're for profit, you know, that are competing against each other, like that drives the market. And then you have this, and this is the outcome of that as it starts to extend out over time.

Well, I saw a different topic. I have some stats on people's smartphone usage, which I think are interesting. And the reason what sparked me to look this up. I think that's far more dangerous. I think that's fair. Well, what sparked me to go in this direction was. The combo of the two is really good.

My wife and I have been talking about getting off our phones more, and my four-year-old pointed this out the other day. You're distracted on your phone, which, oh God, when you hear that from your kid, like tears your heart out. So her and I are trying to make these strategies and how do you come off of them and be more present.

And it just pulls you and they're engineered to do so. The smartest scientists in the world right now are figuring out how to make these so addictive. It's like the processed food market. It's just insane. But the stats on this are- Well that's why TikTok did really well. Well isn't that what happened?

The best of the best were in cigarettes. Then they went to processed foods, and now they've moved to tech. Yep. That's right. They've learned everything from gambling, from casinos. So the average person in the US is on their phones for four hours and 43 minutes.

I think that's so low. That's the average. I think it's so low. Check this out. In 2019, it was three hours and 45 minutes. Today, it's so low. Check this out. In 2019 it was three hours and 45 minutes. Today it's four hours. It went up an hour. So it's going up. It continues to go up and it's pretty wild. The average, ready for this, the average smartphone user checks their phone 58 times a day. So yeah this is

something we need to be careful with and I don't think you can manage it just by thinking about it. I think you have to create boundaries. You know, a good generic, we're always talking about simple hacks to test things or measure things because how many people are really tracking that? Your cell phone, the way they've made iPhone batteries

that should not die in a day. I was gonna make that point. Same thing, if your battery dies on your phone, you've got an addiction. Yes. Wow. It should not be on the phone. If thing, if your battery dies on your phone, you got an addiction. Yes. Wow. It should not be on the phone. If you have to put your phone on the charger

before you go to bed, you are using your phone way too much in my opinion. Wow. And I'm saying that from experience. Like I've had times where I know that I was just working on my phone all day, texting, email, whatever, even scroll like all day long. When I'm on that, it'll die before five, six o'clock. Like I'll have to put auto look at, Oh shit, my battery's almost dead.

So if you were using almost an entire battery on your phone, like that is a lot of, I had just had that discussion with my son. That's funny. You bring that up. Yeah. It's like a good gauge, right? It's like, you should not have to like use it. His battery died and it was like, Oh, it didn't charge fully or whatever, like excuse he had, but I'm like, it's dead now. You don't use it. His battery died and it was like, Oh, well, it didn't charge fully or whatever like excuse he had, but I'm like, it's dead now. You don't use it. You don't need to use it. If you're, if you're at a point where you're using your phone that much throughout the day, you know, and you're trying to justify it, like it's, that's way too much, you know, you're,

you're consuming way too much. Yeah. What we did is we're, what we're trying is she's literally turning off all notifications and everything from 7 a.m. Till till the evening and And we'll see if that works the way that I do it when I'm home is I'll take my phone and put it in a drawer close the door and That just creates a little barrier if I don't do that It just you they hang it up when they get in the house. It pulls to you, man. It pulls to you. It's tough. Digestive enzymes, the right ones, can help break down your protein into usable amino acids, break down your

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Use the code mind pump 10, get 10% off. All right, back to the show. This segment is brought to you by TrainerWebinar.com. Adam and I get on every other month and we teach coaches and trainers how to build a more successful business. It's totally free. Sign up at TrainerWebinar.com. Our first caller is Bonnie from South Carolina. Bonnie, what's happening? Hey. Hey guys, thanks for having me on. This is such an honor and thank you for your time. So my question is essentially, is it bad to lift with an RPE of eight or nine every time I work out?

I've been consistently lifting weights for the last four to five to six years and I love to challenge myself every time I repeat a workout by either increasing the weight or the RPE. I usually have an RPE of eight or nine every time I lift. Some days I will feel sore after a workout, but not always. On the workouts where I don't increase weights, it's usually because I can't maintain proper form for the entire set. So I do think that I am really pushing myself.

I work out at home in the mornings before work, and I have completed MAPS Aesthetic, Anabolic Performance 15, and Anabolic Advanced. I'm currently in week one of muscle mommy and really enjoying that. My favorite program so far has been Aesthetic, and I did not feel like it was too much volume for me. Over the last year, I have been in a slight cut for three months, and then I stayed at

or slightly above maintenance for the last nine months. My body fat started at 33% last January, and then I went down to 30% after my cut, but it recently crept back up to 33% after I felt like I was overtraining. My sleep and my stress have been terrible this year, which also has kept me from meeting my goal, which was 25% body fat.

In my cut, I was at 1,709 calories with protein at 120 grams, fat was less than 55 grams and carbs at 200 grams. I went up to 2,000 calories during maintenance with about 250 grams being at carbs. My waist size started to increase and I also increased my body fat during that time. I'm really frustrated because I'm doing what I think I should be doing in the gym and my nutrition goals are set by a trainer that I check in with each month. I'm tempted to go back into a cut to see the results that I'm after. My goals are 25% body fat or have more defined

abs with a waist circumference of 31 inches or less. I'm not really concerned about my weight on the scale, but I average about 150 pounds. At 30% body fat, I was 145. So again my steps are eight to ten eight to ten thousand per day. I'm 42 years old and a former CrossFit addict. So just wanted to know if I'm right on the right track. My current macros right now are 1670 calories, protein 110 grams, carbs 184 grams, and fat 55 grams. Okay yeah so everything you'd be doing X CrossFit addicts. Yeah, also based off of what you're telling me about sleep and stress

and the fact that you said also maps active person loves aesthetic. I mean all the maps aesthetic is you know didn't feel like overtraining. I also see you in uniform and because I've been doing this for so long, I can pretty accurately guess that you tend to over train and you're probably over trained. You're probably overdoing everything. That's probably your tendency. Simultaneously, okay, you have to understand too that what you're doing isn't sound horribly low, bad, over training, but the combination of stress, not good sleep, that low of fat you're eating nutritionally, and I already know you're an active person. You're not a sedentary, lazy person without you even giving me your details of all day long. So in that context, you are over-trained. So understand that,

because I think sometimes somebody will be like, man I used to do CrossFit, I did all this crazy shit, now I'm following your math programs and I'm not crazy extreme, yeah but in the context of where you're currently at in your life with sleep, stress, activity and in with that low calorie, it's cause it's over training. Less is gonna be more for you as far as results. Why is your sleep bad? Explain, give us a little bit of detail on that. I have a four-year-old son who likes to wake up every night and it's difficult just getting into a routine with him. It's erratic. He'll wake up sometimes at one, sometimes at two, sometimes at 12. It just depends on how he's sleeping. I travel quite a

bit for work so that's hard for me to get into a good sleep routine as well because I've got four states that I'm in charge of so I'm constantly... somewhere I'm going, somewhere every week usually. The best advice I can give you for sleep in that sense would be to go to bed an hour and a half or two hours earlier than you normally do to give yourself the buffer of kid waking me up and the travel. So most people it's like, okay, go to bed about eight and a half hours before you want to wake up. That's, that's pretty standard for most people, sometimes a little less.

But if you're going to get woken up in the middle of the night and you travel a lot, you probably want to go to bed about nine and a half hours before bed. And if you can, even 10 hours before, because you'll get that wake up in the middle and it's not going to harm you as much. The sleep, the lack of sleep, the cumulative effects of a little bit of lack of sleep, completely derail your ability to recover, build muscle, burn body. Your body wants to hold on to body fat. It makes workouts just too much damage on the body.

So that'd be the first place I would go. The second place is I would bump your fat. Yes. Yes. Very rarely do I have a woman go as low as 50 grams or 55 grams of body fat. Most of the women I've ever worked with, 65 to 70, would be the lowest that would go. And they just seem to get better results.

Fat's essential, especially for hormones and your nervous system. So I'd bump your fat a little bit. I wouldn't go into deficit. Muscle mommy, the volume is not bad. So you could try that, but you probably are better off backing off and going like maps 15, improving your sleep. Once you start to feel great, then go up

back up to back to muscle mommy. And what you'll see in that is not a ton of results initially. You'll just start to feel better. And then you'll start to feel better, feel better, feel better. And then you'll start to notice, oh wow, my body's starting to respond again. and then that's when you know you're really moving in the right direction. The hardest part for you, Bonnie, is going to be doing the right thing for long enough to let your body completely recover and then respond the way you want it to and being patient. That's going to be the hardest thing.

Your body has adapted to your level of intensity and it's very resilient and it's been able to survive through this. And so feeding it, reducing the volume and intensity for a while, like Sal saying, you're not going to see this initial like, oh, guys told me to just bump my calories and go to mass 15. And I should, well, no, you're not going to see it right away. You'll just start feeling better sleeping better and then you need to hang there for a little bit before we go and try and ramp up the intensity. I would love to see if you were my client I would put you on maps 15 I'd bump your calories slightly and I do it through fat and we would do that for at least a month or two in that direction before I let you go back the other direction. And the goal really would be, can we not put on any more body fat, but slowly increase your calories

and get you to a place more like 26, 2,800 plus calories and maintaining your sleeping well, feeling good, maintaining your body fat percentage and weight right around there while also increasing calories. That would get you in a good place to go back and cut and then pick up a little bit of volume or intensity. Yeah, by the way, some of the signs of overtraining are poor sleep, but it can also look like this. Your kid wakes you up, you get them back down, maybe they lie in bed with you,

and then it takes you forever to go back to sleep. Or sometimes you can't go back to sleep That's also a sign of over training So what it should be like unless of course your kids actually actively keeping you awake But what it should be like is your kid walks in your room wakes you up 15 minutes get him settled. Maybe go back in his bed Maybe lays in bed with you and then you're able to fall back asleep But if you find yourself kind of like amped first like you can't get back to sleep sleep, and I'm tossing and turning, that's a sign that your body's overstressed. Yeah, I usually don't have an issue falling back to sleep.

Good. Well, that's good. Good. That's good. Good. But everything else, I think we still follow exactly what we're saying. And I think what you'll see is you'll start to feel stronger, starting to feel better. Definitely the direction is not to do more and cut for sure. If you do more and cut you're gonna set yourself up in a pretty bad way. But just kind of back off, let everything heal a little bit, see if we can get the sleep to get better. And then after like Adam said four weeks, eight weeks, then we'll go maps muscle mommy, maybe start cutting the calories down a little bit. And then you should see your body responding pretty well and feel good.

Okay. Now I've done mass 15 before I did the advanced version. Um, as far as like the, going back to my question, the RPE, should I, should I be like taking the weights back down a little bit, just focusing on a moderate intensity instead of trying to really push the weight. Cause I really like to maintain what I've done in the past or challenge myself even more. You'll be, you're not going to lose.

You won't lose it. Increasing your calories and giving yourself more healthy fats and, uh, following mass 15 advanced, uh, without training a failure or trying to push, create, you'll, you'll maintain every bit of muscle you have. You're not gonna lose. You're definitely not gonna lose reverse dieting and training that program. And hopefully if we do this right,

you organically get stronger and the weights go up over weeks, right? Like you shouldn't have to train to failure and struggle every workout as hard as you can to just to see the weight slowly increase. Hopefully you stop two reps from failure and just feel good after your workouts but you notice after weeks two or three, oh wow the weights on the bar is going up. That's what I'd want to see.

Not you pushing to get the more weight on the bar. The body just going like, oh this is getting easier for me because you've taken care of it that way. So don't fear the reduction in intensity. Your body won't lose that muscle, not in a calorie surplus and taking care of yourself, rest. You're going to maintain at the bare minimum if not gain. Yeah, I think that's the experiment we'd love to see you go through because giving your body more of that space and the adequate time to recover, you're going to notice that you're

going to increase strength just from that alone. Pressing yourself is one method, right? But until it doesn't work for you. That's part of the formula. But if you're not recovering, we're not going to advance. We're not going to progress. And so to progress, we really need to focus on the ability to get that recovery. Yeah.

And just to make you feel better, I mean, the data on this is pretty clear. Like keeping muscle requires very little. It requires very little to keep muscle. So I wouldn't worry about it at all. And even if you did lose a little strength, it would come back and then some so fast after getting your body back on track. But the other side of this coin is if you stay on the path you are now, you're going to start to lose strength and muscle. Yeah. so it's really not like a you know my pants a

no-brainer Bonnie are you I've already noticed a little bit of decreases my strength from a deadlift perspective so yeah yeah yeah yeah don't Bonnie are you in our private forum I don't believe I am no I'm gonna have Facebook yeah yeah I'm gonna have I'm gonna have Doug send that to you So you're in there with us and then as you go through this process because I know the part that will be hard for you It's not you're not the type of person. It's hard to follow Instruction and go through it's the mental part of being patient going hard. Yeah, not going hard So I'm gonna put you in there and I want you to use it like that to check in with us

hard. So I'm going to put you in there and I want you to use it like that to check in with us. Even if you're frustrated as you're going through this process or you you know you have the temptation to want to do more, just check in with us. Let us know how you're feeling, what's going on and then hopefully we'll help you get through this. Okay thanks guys I appreciate it. You got it. All right Bonnie, thank you. Yeah it's so hard. This is, I'd say, one of the hardest types of clients to help because, you know, someone like that, you know she's disciplined. Go get her. Yeah, you know she's disciplined. Her concept and tolerance of over training, over stress is different. So for her to be like, I didn't feel like I was over training, you have a strong tolerance. You can push through.

She's pressed further than most people. That's right. That's right. So, and look, especially, I've trained quite a few women who also served in the military and light clockwork, they all go towards beating the crap out of themselves. They all skew in that direction. So it's very difficult to bring them back. Our next caller is Elijah from Arkansas. What's up man? How you doing? Good. How are you? Good. How can we help you? So my protein intake is 200 grams. My calories is at 26,000. Sometimes I find myself hitting my protein target like very easy, but I'll only eat like 1700

grams or 1700 calories or like 1800 calories. So I leave a lot on the table. So I was wondering, am I okay with continue doing that or should I try to hit that 26,000 2633 calories? Yeah, what's the goal? What's your goal and how tall and how much you weigh? I'm 5'9. I weigh I Think I weigh 223 right now. Oh my goal was to build muscle So I just took it in home like two two weeks ago. I'm at 100 I'm at a hundred skeletal muscle and 26 6% body fat So I was looking to cut after this, but I wanted to see what,

I was gonna wait and see what I should do first. Protein's important, but so are calories. First of all, how are you hitting 16, 1700 calories, 200 grams of protein? What are you eating, like tilapia and chicken breast? Basically, yeah, and then like vegetables. No, no, no, you need fat too. So the calories calories are important just like protein is you can have enough protein, but your calories are so low That your body's gonna use that protein for energy not for repair and you need fat and carbohydrates, but fats especially

As well, so and 1700 calories really low very for a guy your size I think sticking around 25 2600 calories is fine. You should be able to get a nice re-comp with that, little muscle, some fat loss at the same time. But the way I would do it is I would just introduce fattier cuts of meat. Get some more fats in there, stay away from the, yeah you're doing like the pre-contest bodybuilder

sources of protein which is weird. Like most people would do that on purpose, you know what I'm saying? But I would go with like, you know, fattier like fattier cuts of meat and chicken and fish and throwing some nuts in there, some olive oil on the vegetables, add some more rice or whatever your carb sources are. Keep it around 2,500. Be consistent with that.

Elijah, how, uh, what, what maps program are you following right now? I'm doing that strong. And then, uh, okay, how you liking it? How's the consistency for you on it? Is it your first maps program are you following right now? I'm doing Map Strong. And then, OK, how you liking it? How's the consistency for you on it? Is it your first maps program? You ran other ones? I've done anabolic, anabolic advanced bands, aesthetic. Strong, by far, is my favorite, just because it resembles

a lot of what I used to do back in high school and college and playing, like like doing football and stuff So it gives it keeps me very consistent and I like that that five days a week and those two days off Yeah If you're if you're consistent with that We need to feed you like you you need to get those calories up and I'm with Sal the easiest way to do that to not Overcomplicated is just give yourself fattier cuts You know try to rib eye like enjoy some meat. Those healthy fats are only

going to serve you. And the focus really would be right now on reverse dieting, getting strong. That would be the goal before we even consider cutting. Because I'd like to see you, a cut is more like 22, 2300 calories. That would be a cut. And in order for that to be a cut we need to get you up over 2,600 calories consistently in order for 20 22 to be a cut and so That would be the main focus is getting those calories up focus on and getting strong in the gym for a while You're obviously doing good with the protein and again the the the easy advice would be just enjoy some fattier meats Yeah, instead of like chicken breasts, you know, I would go chicken thighs with the skin, fattier cuts of meat instead of egg whites eat the whole egg. You know, instead of tilapia, you could go to salmon, you know, throwing some nuts, some avocado, I'm assuming you're pretty low carb to on that that low calories to are you low carb, you're not you're getting carbs in? you not you're getting carbs in? Um here and there yeah it's I mainly just eat rice I don't eat as much bread because bread like really sticks to my body so

yeah that's a good choice I like that rice sweet potato yams quinoa potatoes all great so yes so you know steak to carbs like that and yeah honestly just continue to eat whole foods but enjoy f fattier meats and keep those pro that pro or that calorie intake up. It's gonna be real hard for you to build. Even if you're hitting your grams of protein, hard to build a guy your size on only 16, 1700 calories, you know, hard. Yeah. Okay. Okay. That makes sense. I just thought maybe I was good because I still was building muscle. I felt me building strength with me hitting that protein intake. So I thought I was good because I still was building muscle. I felt me building strength with me hitting that protein intake So I thought I was good about wanted to check in to make sure you'll feel even better

And you I mean the fact that you're still responding is a good sign. Yeah, that's a real so if you stay consistent $2,500 gonna help. Yeah, I can respond even better Okay, cool. Cool. Cool. Elijah. Are you in our private forum? No, I'm not I'm gonna have Doug hook you up with that so we can keep an eye on you and you just check in with us as this goes. Okay, I appreciate that. All right, brother. You got it, man. All right.

Take it easy. You guys have a good one. You too. You too. That's not as common just for people watching, but sometimes you'll see that. That was more common back when I was a trainer when people are afraid of taking and eating fat because most people don't voluntarily eat boiled skinless chicken breasts and tilapia but that's that's I mean that's what I saw what he wrote 200 grams of protein very bodybuilders 1700 calories I'm like you're eating like

just protein yeah that's really hard to do chicken breasts and fish like you said yeah unpleasant and it doesn't need to be that difficult you know you know we were obviously we we constantly talk about how men if you just eat whole foods, right? Like the guy like this Literally like just don't over complicate this continue eating the whole foods like because you're you stay that low and that high protein You're eating whole foods, right? Yeah, so he's eating whole foods Stick to that but enjoy the fattier meats. It'll naturally bring the calories up He's they bring the fat up to low fat too on a like you, we may be able to do it for a small

short period of time, but it'll make a difference. And he'll, he'll feel the difference. Messes up your hormones. Oh yeah. Strength wise. So the fact that he actually had positive in that is just, he's going to see a huge difference, I think. So our next caller is Danny from Nevada. Danny, what's up, man? How can I help you? Hey guys. Good to see you guys again. Um, hey So I am back for a second time calling in here. I called it about nine months ago Because I was looking for some advice on how to balance Time in the gym while also I was getting into the throes of training for my first ever half Ironman And I was doing all that while also finishing up a PhD in mechanical engineering. So you guys kind of pointed me

towards Maps performance. And I really appreciated that because the low volume there kind of really helped get that manage all those lifestyle stressors that I had going on. So in following what you suggested, I was able to obviously finish up the PhD, which is great. And I also finished my Ironman 40 minutes faster than I had intended to. So anyways, all that's to say is it worked out like a charm. So my new question here, fast forward nine months later, now that we're kind of in the winter months, I am still a very dedicated hobbyist athlete. I consider myself like almost a weekday warrior is what I wrote in my email because I'm basically skiing every day. I do some jujitsu, you know some combat sports. I'm also getting into a little bit of tactical training so I

was doing my PhD in Austin and I actually relocated to Reno, the Reno Tahoe area to do a bunch of skiing so I'm just across the mountains from you guys now which is really exciting but But my question is, basically, in short, I really enjoyed training and kind of that like, athlete style training, you know, some of those explosive movements, some sprints, some kettlebell ballistic, some of those isometric holds, the eccentric focus, stuff like that, that comes with performance. And I think the volume is really well moderate for some of my other pursuits, like the skiing and the combat sports and that, this, that, and the other. So my question is basically as a quote unquote athlete, even if I'm not necessarily

professional, it's just more hobbyist. I really like that style of training. Can someone like me, or I guess anyone who has some athletic goals, just kind of run that type of training indefinitely? Or should I go ahead and mix in like a symmetry or something every 12 weeks? Or is that performance really just geared to kind of be run forever? You're good, you're good with that program. You'd be fine with symmetry too,

but performance is so well balanced. And it's so perfect for the amount of stuff he's doing right now. Because he's talking about, he's talking stuff he's doing right now. Yeah. Because he's talking about, just so the audience, 15 performance. So that program is perfect for somebody who's moving as much as you are already. Symmetry actually has a little bit more volume than that. Yeah, symmetry would be too much volume.

Yeah, so you don't even need that. I think it's a perfect program for you to run. And here's the reason, we always tell people tell people to every year to run at least one one cycle of symmetry or performance And the reason for that is to address Multi-planar movements unilateral work stuff like that that program addresses all of that in there and Because you're also doing a bunch of other in real life anyway. Yeah. So you're doing all those movements. It's a perfect balance for you. Really, the only- it's you, if you were my client,

the way I would be adjusting you is kind of more on a week-to-week basis off of the volume of other stuff you're doing. So let's say it's like a just, you know, I'm sure you've had these crazy weeks where every day you're doing something crazy intense. I'm like, hey, let's scale back a little bit on the days this week of training and just do one day or whatever. And then days where you're not as crazy intense out there, we might do more. That's how I would play with the amount of MAP-15 you're doing

per week, but that type of training you could do indefinitely with what you've got going on. The only piece of advice I would have for you is if you ever go through a period where you're doing a lot less of the outdoor athletic pursuits and you're going to spend more time in the gym for whatever reason, but you like that style of training. You could go with our traditional maps for performance, which is not the 15 version, but the more volume one,

or you could try fun programs like Strong or Old Timey Strength, which someone like you would love. Yeah, I just actually picked up Old Time Strength probably like three or four months ago and I haven't really investigated it yet, but it just seemed really cool. So, you know, maybe come the late spring, pre summer, you know, and there's still some snow on the ground, but not enough to ski it. Um, I'll look into doing something like that. That'd probably be fun. Wait till your activity levels kind of come down a bit and then devote a little bit more time. And you're going to notice it's very involved, but it's like, it's going to challenge your body in so many new ways. You're going to love it.

You'll get a kick out of it. Well, hey, what mountain are you riding up there? Oh God, I go, I kind of go all over the place right now. I'm actually at, I'm in the lodge of Mount Rose, which is kind of a tiny little private mountain up near Incline kind of, um, and then, you know, I'll go down to heavenly. I'll do some of the South Lake stuff. I also ride, um, Olympic Valley, like Palisades, Alpine pretty frequently. And this season specifically, I've been getting into more back country. So like hiking up, you know, where there's not actually a resort and then skiing down and wearing all my avalanche gear, of course. Um, so I'm not dying out there, but, uh, that's been really fun.

I, I kind of go all over. I just very cool wherever there's the best snow. Yeah, that's awesome. So you got 40 minutes better than you thought. That's, that's remarkable. Yeah. So my goal is six hours. I finished in five 25. Wow.

So it was great. It was, it was, I trained really well and I credit at least part of that to you guys. Awesome. Good job, man. Well, I was able to love hearing it. Yep. Yeah, definitely. Well, thanks for credit at least part of that to you guys. Good job, man. Well, love hearing it. Yup. Yeah, definitely.

Well, thanks for your time today. Um, I do want to, if you don't mind, I want to share like just a quick little anecdote on how you guys have, obviously you helped me out with iron man, but I realized kind of in hindsight that you guys helped me out with a, um, I knew you guys here all the time. Oh, you've helped change my life for the better, but I have kind of a unique example of that, uh, just in listening to some of your guys's, I guess, ways of approaching training. Growing up and like throughout my whole life, like a lot of people, I have kind of dealt with like,

you know, some anxiety, self-confidence issues, nothing new, like everybody goes through that. And so last summer, I decided, okay, I'm going to start working with a therapist and try to figure some of this stuff out where it comes from and so we were I was talking with my first therapist about this notion of like self-confidence and how to build it and He told me one day he was like, hey Here's how we're gonna help your self-confidence what we're gonna do first is strip away all of your self-limiting beliefs and then work on the action of building that self confidence, taking action on it. And then he made this analogy and he was like, um,

picture it as if you're obese and trying to get in shape. The first thing we're going to do is not build the muscle. We're going to do a bunch of cardio and try to strip all that weight off and put you in a calorie deficit. And my jaw literally dropped. I was like, Oh shit, you in a calorie deficit and my jaw literally dropped. I was like, Oh shit, maybe this guy's got it totally backwards. So I ended up swapping therapists and working with a guy whose mantra is more like feelings follow action. So like building the muscle of

confidence to get those feelings working for you, having the evidence base that you can act confidently and the feelings follow. And it's been like completely life changing. So I thought immediately of you guys when that guy brought it up. What a great story. What a great story. What a great story. That's been my last six months and it's been incredibly helpful.

So you guys are making waves in more ways than you realize probably. So anyways, yeah, that all sounds great. I just wanted to throw that in and share it and I will go ahead and stay the course with performance, at least through ski season and then maybe look into some of that old time stuff. Awesome. Awesome, Dan. I just wanted to throw that in and share it and I will go ahead and and stay the course with performance at least through ski Season and then maybe you know look into some of that old-time stuff

Thank you great story, bro, appreciate that yeah, of course guys Let me know I know I'm just across the mountains if you guys are skiing yourselves up at the Tahoe place or want to catch A pump and Reno or something hit me up. I'd love to definitely link up and get some snowboard turns in Thank you. All right guys. See you in. Right on, Danny. Sure. Thank you. All right, guys. Catch you later. Have a good one. I only sled.

I'm only just sledding. What a great story, Hal. Yeah, it's so funny that he made that connection. He's like, oh, shoot. This might be the best guy for me. Yeah, I'm going to go with someone else. I love that. You know what's funny about that with therapy?

I've been listening to Adam Lane Smith. We've been on the show a couple times. He says so much therapy is directed towards female psychology that'll apply to men. I remember when he said that on the show. And it messes them up. He says in the whole act, like feelings follow action, that really resonates with men quite a bit in particular.

Adam talks about that, so cool. Our next caller is Brittany from Texas. Hi Brittany. Hello. Hi, How are you? Good. How can we help you? Good. Um, so, uh, a little bit of background on me is, um, I'm 40 years old. I'm a hairstylist. I run two salons in Texas and I started strength training about 10 years ago. I was introduced to it through CrossFit. But that was also around the time I discovered I had Hashimoto's. I'm sure you guys have heard of that autoimmune disease that attacks

your thyroid. After kind of working with traditional doctors and not really getting anywhere, I found a functional medicine doctor and she was awesome. She got me to quit the CrossFit, focus on more low impact workouts and change my diet and we got my Hashimoto's under control. Fast forward to COVID, a lot of stress happened in my life then. Didn't really get to work out as much. Then had some major life event happen probably two and a half years ago. Got back into strength training but was probably vastly under eating. I did a DEXA scan a couple of months ago just to see where I was kind of at.

I didn't really know even though I've been strength training probably consistently for three years and my body fat percentage was pretty high. It was like 30 percent. So then I started to really try to dial in my nutrition. I started my calories at about 2200, retested about a month after that first DEXA and my weight had gone down a little bit, but my body fat percentage and my muscle mass had gone down. Fast forward to now, a little bit of an update since I emailed you guys,

I'm now eating about 2,500 calories. I'm following MAPS 15. So I really dialed back the intensity, but I'm just really trying to focus on gaining strength and not so much aesthetics. What I'm noticing is my strength is not really where I feel like it should be for someone that's been training as long as I have. So my question to you guys was do you think autoimmunity, Hashimoto specifically, can play a role in not being able to put on as much muscles the average person? Yes, but Hashimoto's in particular responds very strongly to over-stress. All autoimmune does. But I'm gonna tell you this from my experience, Brittany.

I've never met a salon owner who wasn't under a ton of stress. It's a very, very stressful business to own, and you own two of them? Yeah. You're a mom too? No, no, I'm single. Okay. So yeah. Okay. And you had something tough,

you went through something tough recently, you said a couple years ago? It was a divorce. You're on the right path with Math 15 and moving your calories up. You gotta give it time. Yeah, how do you feel since you bumped the calories to that? I feel good, definitely.

Just, I'm not just not, I'm just not seeing my strength progress, especially because like I watched your journey, Adam, and I know men are totally different and somebody who doesn't have Hashimoto's is way different and someone who's been training like you is way different. But I thought with the little bit of experience I've had training in the last few years that like some sort of muscle memory or maybe I accidentally built some muscle back then, but when I did my scan and just based on the strength now, I'm just, I feel good to answer your question, but I

just, I don't know if my strength is where it should be. It just feels like I'm not making strength gains like I want to. The health has to, it comes before the strength. So if you're noticing improvements in health, like energy, sleeps a little better, feel a little bit more calm, less stressed, my hot cold tolerance is better, hair and nails start to feel better, digestion starts to improve, then the strength tends to follow. But you went through something very difficult, you have a tendency towards Hashimoto's, you own two businesses, so being a business owner is already a lot of work. There's salons

which are just filled with drama and work. So I yeah and you laugh because I know you know exactly what I'm talking about. You're on the right path. Stay on the path and use your health as a guide and then what will happen is the strength will follow and then the muscle and the fat loss will follow. But health has to come first. Okay. Yeah. Trust me. I knew you were never gonna say that. Yeah. Trust the process. You're doing good. You're doing really good. You look good. You sound healthy. It sounds like you're in a good place right now. Just give it some give it some time. Yeah. You know it's not an overnight thing for sure. But keep keep falling. And how far into the program are you and it's been for you right now? Was it a month or two would you say? Yeah, it's been about a month. Oh, you're so on the right path. You gotta give it at least another two months.

You gotta give it a good 90 days and then you'll start to see things turning around. What positive effects are you noticing? I know, forget strength, but you said you feel better. What do you mean by that? Yeah, I feel better just, I don't have brain fog like I used to. Um, I was just running on like major stress before and just really that,

cause I was following a bodybuilder split before I got, I found you guys. Um, and I, I couldn't tell, it's hard to know like what was, um, what was low energy cause I was going through a divorce. So like my stress was just really high. So I think I just felt like, I was like, Oh yeah, I have high energy. Like I'm good. And then I kind of crashed out. I also had surgery a year ago. Um, I kind of crashed out after the surgery cause my body told me I had to, I had to heal

And I just started putting on weight, but I was like trying to be nice to myself too. I was like well I just had surgery. I just had I do went through a divorce like I'm gonna just chill for a little bit and I still trained But I really dialed back the intensity. I just wasn't following like a set program But I do notice a difference from post-divorce, post-surgery. I definitely feel much better. Sleep is good, energy is good, clarity is there. All the feelings are there, which is good. Yeah, you're on the right path.

You've got to give it at least another two months, if not more. But I'd give it another two. And then what will happen is your body will start to respond and it's gonna feel like, weird, what's going on? I'm not even doing anything else and my body's starting to look and feel different. But what you're noticing with energy and all that, that's such a positive thing, but you just started, you're healing from a pretty,

it was a pretty bad place as it sounds like, and you're coming out of that and that takes a little while, doesn't just happen. What do you want her to run after 15? I think 15 for a while. And then if you go to a higher volume program, anabolic or muscle mommy would be the two programs I think would be appropriate volume.

But I would go for at least another 60 days with mass. You're not doing anything else, right? No cardio, anything like that? No, my steps I get in at work. So I feel like I don't need to do anything else. No, you're good. And then by the way, what you noticed after, with that, during that stressful period

where you were kind of hyper, that is a very common stress response. The cortisol. Very damaging to the body as well. And then eventually what people do notice is that crash. And so yeah, very normal what you experienced, but you're healing. What you're feeling right now is your body's,

you're coming out of the hole. You're not out yet,, you're coming out of the hole, you're not out yet, but you're coming out of the hole, so you're moving in the right direction for sure. Brittany, are you taking a day a week or so, do you have a day that you just kind of completely relax, shut down, go for a nice long walk and stroll, or do any sort of yoga, do you have anything, any practices like that?

I'm trying, like yeah, I try to dedicate at least one day a week to doing nothing or something I want to do. I've taken up photography, so I go take pictures and drive around and stuff. But yeah, it is hard. You're probably going to say it's probably hard for me to do that, which it is. I think I'm addicted to the, the, the cortisol or the

adrenaline sometimes. That's why, that's why I bring that up. I think that that would also serve you is to just be conscious of that and trying to make an effort, at least on a weekly basis to have a day like that, that is, you know, more working inward, you know, doing stuff. But don't turn it into work. Right, right. Yeah. Don't turn it into work, turn it into doing stuff like that. But don't turn it into work. Right, right, yeah, no. Don't turn it into work, turn it into relax. Yeah, I love the idea of walking and hiking to spots

to take photography, I think that's great. Stuff like things that's passion and fills your bucket in other ways, so, but that practice will serve you also. Just for some perspective, give us accurate hours that you work on a weekly basis. Like, how many, what do your hours look like during the week? Well, I work 11 to seven. I was working five days a week. Um, but now I dialed that back,

like two months ago I decided, my doctor suggested I dial that back. So now I'm working four days a week and I know it's not, it doesn't equal 40 hours, but when you're standing all day, it's a lot. Plus you're managing other people. Well yes, there is a little bit of that. Thankfully I've outsourced a lot of that. But it's mostly, like the client interaction I'm learning, like I've been doing here for 15 years and probably in the last like five years

I'm finally learning that that interaction is like a major energy exchange. Yeah, you pick up all their energy. It's very similar to personal training. Yeah, I bet. Yeah, if you work with five people in a row, there's no break. It's five, yeah, you're on.

You know, since you recognize that, you know that there's a lot of value too, and just at the end of your day, doing something that really allows you to decompress. Nice walk, nice warm baths, things that'll help you kind of detach from all that energy you've picked up from clients all day. I know that sounds kind of woo woo, but I'm a big believer.

So yeah, you know, if doing practices like that, that's all going to serve you. And I think I think you'll see the strength and those things are to come the better you are at taking care of yourself in that direction. Totally. Yeah, okay, cool. Well, thank you guys so much, I appreciate you. You got it, you're doing good. Thank you. Thanks, Pete.

I've never met a salon owner or a restaurant owner that wasn't just... Well, it takes a special person to do those things. Bro, you're dealing with so many people, so much drama, so many personalities. Oh, just constant. Well, and I didn't want to dig too much, but I know there's a lot of alcohol

being passed around in salons. Oh yeah. My wife has Hashimoto's, and it's such a not a good combo. No, big trigger. Just to be, yeah, cognizant of that is a big thing. Alcohol and gluten are the big ones for a living, we really didn't dive into her diet that much to ask her questions about that, because I could also, you're right.

She said she's bumping her calories. Well, she also said she's working with a specialist, right, so hopefully they've got her on the right path nutritionally. Sounds like they got it turned around. Good. Look, if you like our show, come find us on Instagram. Justin is at Mind Pump.

Justin, I'm at Mind Pump to Stefano. Adam, is that Mind Pump? Adam. Thank you for listening to Mind Pump. If your goal is to build and shape your body, dramatically improve your health and energy, and maximize your overall performance, check out our discounted RGB Super Bundle at mindpumpmedia.com. 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

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