Mind Pump: Raw Fitness Truth - 2539: Four Critical Things to Consider Before Getting Surgery & More (Listener Live Coaching)

Episode Date: February 22, 2025

Mind Pump Fit Tip: Don’t get that surgery!!! You could be making a huge mistake! Consider and listen to these 4 factors to make a better decision. (1:51) Static stretching combined with Brain.fm. (23:57) TVs look A LOT different these days. (28:30) The importance and value of maintaining exercise as you age. (29:16) Life expectancy trends of different countries. (31:35) Addressing the viral GLP-1 fear tactics. (33:46) The powerful tool of having coaches in your corner. (43:19) What’s more interesting than people? (44:32) The evolution of gyms. (48:16) Justin’s a workhorse. (51:02) #ListenerLive question #1 – I’m stuck in this 4-day split routine and not seeing the results I want. Any advice on how to bust out of this rut? (57:12) #ListenerLive question #2 – I am not seeing the physical results I’d like to after turning 40. Any advice on how to get out of this dad bod? (1:18:45) #ListenerLive question #3 – Any wisdom you guys can offer on the next steps in my own training and coaching business? (1:31:19) #ListenerLive question #4 – I got the gastric sleeve last year. Any recommendations on how to get more protein in? (1:40:55) Related Links/Products Mentioned Ask a question to Mind Pump, live! Email: [e-mail] Visit Brain.fm for an exclusive offer for Mind Pump listeners. ** Get 30 days of free access to science-backed music. ** Mind Pump Group Coaching 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! ** Displace TV Regular Exercise May Keep Your Body 30 Years 'Younger' The Impact of GLP1 Agonists on Bone Metabolism New Gym In Santa Cruz, Ca! Rise Above Fitness Get your free Sample Pack with any “drink mix” purchase! Also try the new LMNT Sparkling — a bold, 16-ounce can of sparkling electrolyte water: Visit DrinkLMNT.com/MindPump Train the Trainer Webinar Series Building Muscle with Adam Schafer – Mind Pump TV Visit Transcend for this month’s exclusive Mind Pump offer!  Online Personal Training Course | Mind Pump Fitness Coaching Mind Pump Podcast – YouTube Mind Pump Free Resources People Mentioned Paul Chek (@paul.chek) Instagram Max Lugavere (@maxlugavere) Instagram Justin Brink DC (@dr.justinbrink) Instagram Dr. William Seeds (@williamseedsmd) Instagram Brandan Schieppati (@brandanschieppati) Instagram  

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Mind pump, mind pump, with your hosts, Sal DeStefano, Adam Schaefer, and Justin Andrews. You just found the most downloaded fitness, health, and entertainment podcast. This is MindPump. Right in today's episode, we answered live callers questions. People called in and we got to help them out on air, but this was after our intro. Today's intro is 55 minutes long.

In the intro, we talk about fitness, studies, science, nutrition. It's a great time. By the way, if you want to be on an episode like this, where you call in and we can help you out, we can coach you, email us your question at live at mindpumpmedia.com. This episode is brought to you by some sponsors. The first one is brain.fm. Play sounds and music that changes the state of your mind proven by science.

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You have pain, you were injured. Should you get that surgery? No, stop. Before getting that surgery, because you could be making a huge mistake, consider and listen to these four factors that will help you make a better decision. I'll start with the first one. Is there a structural mechanical problem that can't heal on its own? That's a very strong consideration. Okay, you have to explain that because people don't understand sometimes the difference between like an acute injury versus chronic pain So you described that it was such a good topic by the way. Yes, I can't tell you how many clients

That I trained that Were recommended surgery when there was things that we could have done first total absolutely and their situations were just have to you have to write And so when you if you have a structural mechanical problem that can't heal on its own, that's essentially like you have a torn ACL, it's torn. It's not gonna heal back together. It's not gonna reattach itself. Right, you have a torn pec completely, it's gone.

You have a ligament that's severed completely. Your muscle, your supraspinatus is mostly or all torn and it's just not gonna heal on its own. You have to have surgery, right? Your body's not gonna grow those ligaments back together. It's not gonna fix, it's limited to what it can fix on its own and in that case, surgery is absolutely essential. You need external help with that. Yeah, the rehab and correctional exercise can only go so far when it comes to helping

a structural mechanical break. You can definitely rehab yourself with an ACL tear so that you feel better, but you don't have an ACL. So that stability is gone. In fact, I know people like this. I know people who had a torn ACL or PCL, and they never got it fixed, because they stopped playing sports,

and they could literally sit down and shift their lower leg forward or back. You ever seen that? Oh yeah, especially you got nothing in there, it just keeps going, there's no kind of limitation to that. But yeah, but then there's the case where it's like it's just strained or it's stretched out. That's different. It was different, which I'm sure we'll get to that. But yeah, but then there's the case where it's like it's just strained or it's stretched out. It was different, which you know, I'm sure we'll get into that.

Yeah, there's also the case too, like, because you didn't mention MCL because an MCL is less important. And I mean, I lost mine and never, never did anything about it. So it's like certain ligaments and certain things are more necessary than other things. So you could also I'm glad you said that because the other consideration that's part of this is how do you plan on living the rest of your life? Right. With no MCL, if you were to go and continue to play

high level basketball or something like that, you might consider having it surgically. Risk analysis with that. Yeah, like I had AC joint resection, and mine was completely separated and it was gone. So resection was probably a better option for me. But in some cases, this isn't the case. In some cases, there's tendonitis or,

that's the next one, is the pain just due to inflammation? Like how many times do people go to a doctor, they have joint pain, the doctor images it and they're like, oh yeah, there's inflammation. We how many times do people go to a doctor, they have joint pain, the doctor images it and they're like, oh yeah, there's inflammation. We know it's inflammation. Yeah. Yeah. And then what they do from there, and this is sometimes correct, sometimes maybe not,

from maybe just my opinion, they'll say, oh, there's inflammation and we think what's causing it is this thing right here that we can surgically repair. Sometimes that's not the case. Sometimes you have inflammation, oftentimes in my experience, the inflammation is due to just dysfunction, just weakness, instability. And correcting those things makes it. Yeah, you know what's a big one.

What's a big one for us here in Silicon Valley. How many times did you guys work with a client who was gonna get carpal tunnel surgery and then through working with you, didn't need to get anymore? Oh yeah, there's a lot you can do with mobilizing these joints and trying to regain function. But yeah, that's, again, they'll get to the doctor

and get recommendations and this is where that confusion kind of sits in because the doctor holds the highest cards usually. Shoulders another common one I had a lot of clients that had shoulder stuff going on and a lot of it was just a lot of inflammation caused the chronic pain and they go in and then they're you know recommended surgery when it's like do we haven't we let's try and fix the position of your shoulder girdle first so the shoulder is moving optimally and see if we can alleviate some of that before we just go right under the scalp. Yeah so for somebody who's not familiar with like

anatomy right like if you think of a joint you can think of like think of any any moving part mechanical moving part like in your car or like a hinge on a door think of a hinge on a door okay if the hinge is misaligned a little bit and I keep opening and closing the door, damage is going to start to occur on that hinge because the metal is rubbing too hard on one side. It's not fully balanced. They're properly balanced. You'll look at the hinge and go, oh my god, this is all messed up. In the body, what you would do is you would fix the hinge or fix the way that the door moves in the hinge and then the body heals the hinge. Now with the body, what you would do is you would fix the hinge or fix the way that the door moves in the hinge and then the body heals the hinge.

Now with the door, you'd have to replace the hinge because it doesn't heal itself. But this is what happens in joints oftentimes. If you look at the knee, for example, you have the lower leg flexing and extending with the upper leg and then you have a knee cap that slides and floats above that. If it's not moving the way it's supposed to, then you start to get wear and tear that over, that overcomes your body's ability to heal. And so you start to develop a chronic inflammation and pain and you start to see things

like, you know, chondromalacia under the kneecap or whatever. Same thing with the joint. The joint is very complex. Excuse me. The shoulder joint is very complex joint. So you have like the humerus moving, but then you have the scapula moving along with it.

And if it doesn't move the way it's supposed to, complex, excuse me, the shoulder joint is a very complex joint. So you have like the humerus moving, but then you have the scapula moving along with it. And if it doesn't move the way it's supposed to, you get wear and tear that occurs and fixing it with surgery doesn't fix the problem. The problem is the joint isn't moving the way it's supposed to. What makes joints move? Muscle. So what we can do is we can change how the muscles work, we can strengthen them in appropriate ways,

change what's, for lack of a better term, recruitment patterns, how the muscles work together. Try and balance it out so it maintains that good tracking. That's right, so like frozen shoulders are very common one. Frozen shoulder gets really nasty where you literally can't lift your arm much. Well physical therapy solves that problem many times. Rotator cuff inflammation.

Lots and lots and lots of rotator cuff surgeries happen and many, many times good correctional exercise can solve the issue and allow the shoulder to move. Bursitis in the hips. Bursitis in the hips is another one or cyst in the knee, Baker's cyst with knee function. I've worked with carpal tunnel and shoulder, like rotator cuff based inflammation.

Those two right there were so common, especially around here in Silicon Valley. People would come in with this pain, and it got to the point where, after 20 years of training people, I felt very confident that we would positively affect the pain. Carpal tunnel, tennis elbow,

like you mentioned earlier, yeah. Those were big common ones. So is the pain just due to inflammation, and then what you gotta do is back up and say, okay, what's causing the inflammation? In many cases, the correctional exercise can solve the root issue, and then the body kind of heals itself.

And then here's another point. Uh, does it feel better or worse after massage or correctional exercise or stretching? Here's a good hint that maybe you don't need surgery. It's not a hundred percent, but this is, this points in the direction of maybe you don't need surgery. You do some massage or some correctional exercise or some stretching and immediately you feel a relief immediately you feel some pain relief. Then that's probably an issue that can be solved

with those things, right? If you do any movement at all and it gets far worse, okay, well maybe we have a much more, much bigger problem. This used to be a massive selling point for me as a trainer if I had a client who came in and I was assessing them on the first day and they'd tell me things like,

oh yeah, I've got this really bad shoulder and you're asking what it is. And they can point to a single thing that happens just over time. Oh, I'm thinking about surgery, this and that. Oh, you know, let me get on the floor. Let's do some assessing and let me see if I can help you out.

And then you take them through some mobility drills and start to sometimes completely eliminate other times, just alleviate somewhat. And they'd be like, Oh my God, that feels a lot better. And it's like, listen, there's hope for us before you just decide to go get surgery. Why don't we work on some of the, and so man, that was such a, and that's such a great point of like, then there's other things where those things just exacerbate it, right? So that's when you, a lot of times you know that you're most likely are going to have to get surgeries when you try and do mobility or massage and it

Actually makes the situation even worse than cinnamon better But if it starts to alleviate it even in the slightest bit, that's normally a clue that okay Something could be done about this movement wise to alleviate some well that pain signals interesting because a lot of times it prevents people from Even attempting the movement after and so to take them through that range of motion and then really squeeze and I'll do like isometrics where we just squeeze and hold this tension in place for a few seconds and then all of a sudden if they do feel like relief it's like okay yeah there's there's we could definitely work with this muscularly. Yeah it's interesting I had I remember once training a general surgeon very very smart, and when she first hired me,

she said, I can't do anything, I can't squat or do anything, I can't even go down to 90 degrees, and I've talked to my osteopath or whatever, it's like my knees are bad or whatever. Three months later, we're doing full squats and lunges, and she was like, what happened? I said, it's just function, it was just function. There was nothing torn.

There was nothing permanent. It was just your body wasn't moving well. And if your body doesn't move well, um, then it's going to start to hurt. And when you start to move better, you start to feel better. And again, one of the clues to this is, you know, you get a massage and it's like, wow, my

pain's gone, or you do a little bit of's like, wow, my pain's gone. Or you do a little bit of correctional exercise or some stretching. Like how many times people have hip pain, then they do a basic seated stretch and they, oh, the pain is gone. Unlocks it or just creates stability again and it sends that signal to your body.

It's stable, oh, we don't need that pain signal. A common one, by the way, along these lines is like, this isn't true for all of them, okay, but many times in my experience, sciatica pain. People will them okay but but many times in my experience sciatica pain people will come in and have terrible sciatica pain I've had it my whole life or whatever and we do some some stretching and some work on their piriformis and some hip mobility and that session that session significantly reduces their sciatica pain and then they practice it and it disappears and these are people that have dealt with it

and they're taking painkillers, cortisone shots, like just a bunch of stuff. That one's probably one of the most common because I mean that nerve runs right through there and you have a couple muscles that could easily be Press on it, right? Yeah, pressing on it and then it makes them feel that. So yeah, what happens is when you do have an injury

or pain, your CNS starts to limit your motion, your movement to try to protect it. But then that limited movement actually starts to become a problem as well because then the pain comes up and the movement gets even more limited and more limited. And so you get this downward spiral effect of worse and worse and worse movement

and the pain goes up and up and up. This is why, oh, your shoulder hurts, don't move it anymore, okay, but once it's healed, you should move it. And if you don't, then things can sometimes get a lot worse. This is also why too, when you notice these things like this, that getting on top of the mobility work early

and not letting it progress, because the longer you let it progress, the longer it's gonna take for you to get it back to where you were, versus like you start noticing. How harder it is. Yes, I mean, I think this is probably one of my favorite things about being a trainer is learning this about my own body and I think I just shared this the other day about I know if I'm not squatting for a while I already start to notice my hips start to rotate a little bit which then will eventually cause low back pain and it's like

now I'm so I'm so keen on that feeling that as soon as it starts to come I'm like oh I got to get right into doing my body otherwise I'll end up paying for it ten times worse and I'll have that much more work to do when I wait that long so as soon as you feel this not ignoring it and waiting for it to get worse because it will progressively get bad. Yeah and then lastly are you fit and healthy? healthy. So you have many times back pain, knee pain, hip pain, neck pain, shoulder pain is just because you're not fit, you're not healthy or you're not sleeping. Yeah, like it goes away. It's oftentimes a lot of these pains go away, but also this is something else to consider. Fit and healthy people have more success

with surgery as well. So fit and healthy is good across the board. It helps when you have surgery, it also helps you prevent or not have to get surgery. But oftentimes if you're like, oh my God, my knees hurt or my hip hurts or this hurts and you know you're 60 pounds overweight, you know you sit down most of the time, you know your diet's really bad, and you're like, should I get surgery on this joint? Try getting fit and healthy first, unless again, there's like a major tear or whatever. Try getting fit and healthy first, because if that's not the solution, that will at the very least make the surgery far more likely

to be successful. So that should be the place you go no matter what. What is Paul Chek's four doctors? Dr. Sunshine, Dr. Light, Sunshine, Movement. Pain, Water? No, no, no, no, no. Is it what? Yeah. Oh yeah, because he tells you when something's off. Yeah, he's Dr. Pain.

Yeah, he's talking about all the, and like, Movement, Sunlight, Sleep, how often just addressing those things ends up curing a lot of people that are in chronic pain and to go that route first. So is this us peering into you getting older? Is this where this is coming from? Is this us letting us know how you feel lately right now?

Is this some kind of experimental surgery we don't know about? No, this is, so this is a good discussion because I went, I was down in LA yesterday. So you guys know this I was on max. Look of your oh, yeah, how was that? Love max absolutely love max one of my favorite people in the world He's a great guy and he just when I saw so yesterday He was less than two weeks out from back surgery. Okay, he had disc replacement surgery Oh in I want to say l1. I have it written down, I got to see where it was, but he had it in his back, he had disc replacement surgery,

and when I saw him, you know, we talked for a little bit before getting on the podcast, and he goes, man, okay, so Max fit, healthy guy, he's in the wellness, he exercises, takes care of himself, and he was so frustrated because he had reached out to people in our space about this surgery and there were so many people like, don't get back surgery, whatever you do, don't get back surgery, don't do it.

And he was telling me how much better he feels and stuff. I said, you know, Max, the issue with surgeries are, well, first off, there's a self-selection bias of people who tend to get back surgery and they tend to not be like you, fit, healthy people. That's going to dramatically change the outcomes. When you go into surgery and you're not healthy and not fit, the outcomes are going to be worse. Number two, the back or the spine is a very, it's a, I mean that joint moves all over the place.

It rotates, it flexes, it extends extends and it bends laterally, right? So it's a pretty dynamic joint from a movement perspective. If you're not strong, if you don't have stability, if you don't do proper exercise afterwards and you get surgery, then you're going to have dysfunction from because you're weak, because you're unfit or whatever. And that surgery may have worked, but it didn't work for you because you were unfit, unhealthy, et cetera. And so, and he was frustrated because he says,

you know, I did all the correctional exercise stuff, Sal. I did everything and it got so bad. And he showed me his imaging, his MRI, and he talked about his disc. So was it degenerate? He had no disc. Oh, none at all. No, no, no, no.

He wasted away. It was gone and it was bone on bone. Oh wow. Okay, so like you can't. So when they do that, what do they, they put like a little wedge in between? Yeah, they put an artificial disc. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And they go through the abdomen, so he had like a little tiny incision in his midsection. And if you're fit and healthy, you're a good candidate for this, if you're not, what they'll recommend typically is fusion, which fusion can help, but then you have the surrounding discs and joints that start to get lots of wear and tear. Fusion tends to lead to more fusion. How does that, yeah, does that limit your mobility a lot

with fusion, no? No, well yes, with fusion. Yeah, when they fuse, they fuse the two bones together. Right, it just pretty much. And then what happens is the surrounding part of the spine has to- Concretes it together. Has to do the movement.

So, but with Max, he got disc replacement, and again, he was frustrated. He's like, all these correctional exercise people in our space were like, don't get back surgery, this and that. And it's like, Max, their experience is because people who tend to get it come out, and again, they don't go in fit, they don't go in strong, they don't go in with proper rehab, and then it becomes a problem. It's a very dynamic joint. There's also a lot of different, like I say the most common back surgery stuff that you see

that probably could have been prevented is the, and there's a lot of debate around the bulge disc. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Right, because there's- Different. There's scenarios- You can have a bulge disc. Yeah, there's scenarios where, and if you've been in, if you're a movement specialist, or have been training, or chiropractor for a long,

you've seen examples of people having these like, you know, several millimeter bulls disc and completely pain free. And then you have other people that have like, barely anything and they're in like, just excruciating pain. You can take a hundred people who don't feel any pain and you're gonna find a decent amount are gonna have some kind of a herniated right? And so there that's probably what I'd say the most controversial

Thing is around surgery for the back But you know with in our space and you see this around the conversations around so many different things like like GOP ones For example, it's like either all for or all against what. There's no like middle ground. There's no nuance. With surgery there's a lot of nuance there's a ton of nuance and Max is a is a candidate he's a perfect candidate for something like this this was a week and a half out so he had just had the surgery he's got the incision and he's like I can move better a week and a half out than I could. Yeah well you know I mean you said that's really important see like so when you get somebody

who is very deconditioned, like, a lot of the pain they can be going through is just lack of movement, they're inflamed, all these other things. You have somebody like Max, who eats an incredibly healthy whole food diet. He exercises, he strength trains on a regular basis. Like, he has a lot of good practice now.

There's no reason for pain. Yeah, there's no reason for this guy to be in that much pain. And so he's a better example of like, okay, he's probably already exhausted a lot of the natural ways to try and make himself feel better or is already doing that. And therefore he's still got a problem. Okay, this might be a good example. Whereas if I had a family member, which I've had that complain of like chronic back pain and they're contemplating surgery and I'm like,

why don't we first try and exercise a little bit? Let's try and lose the 40 pounds of extra weight you have on you. Let's try and do some core exercises. Let's try and do some things first before- And at the very least, they'll set themselves up for more success. Exactly, a better surgery.

That's why it's like a no-brainer. It's not like, I'm not telling you we're not gonna do surgery, but let's start to move in this direction first and see if we start to feel a little better. Also, the, and I, you know, I had some doctors, some surgeon clients that I worked with that understood this. They were really good. And it's like the rehab and correctional exercise post surgery portion is as important as the surgery. Like if you get surgery, first of all, when you get surgery, you're limited, your emotions limited. You're gonna come out with it with muscle recruitment

issues because you can't move. The rehab is so important otherwise you wasted the surgery many times. You have to rebuild those recruitment patterns, you have to rebuild the whole movement process all over again in the healthy direction. Well I remember you guys this was a lot of motivation behind Prime Pro was trying to bridge that gap. I mean I remember you guys, this was a lot of motivation behind Prime Pro, was trying to bridge that gap. I mean, I remember personally experiencing my surgeries and I've shared this before on the podcast, so I apologize if you already heard this, but I was so blown away by the

way the PTs did our rehab because at that point I was already an experienced trainer and so I knew the importance of movement, right? And movement patterns. And I know I'm coming out of an injury and I remember the, the, the PT just putting me on wall ball squats and then walking away and do it. And I'm like, yeah. And, and, and if you just squat down after like a knee surgery, right. That the body is still, still thinks it's hurt and injured.

And so it naturally drifts away. So I have this dramatic asymmetrical shift in my squat now granted I know what I'm doing so I'm consciously fighting that and slowing it down and making sure that I perform but if I that should be cute wasn't communicating it or cute to me it's like how many people that don't know better are just going up and down on the ball squats and then they check you okay, they can squat up and down, get out of a chair, they're fine, similar way. When now you've created this horrible recruitment pattern and then you go and

then you go to the gym and you just get in there and you start doing your leg press exercise and so with that, you just exacerbate that. It's like there, there needed to be something between physical therapy and then getting a client ready to train. And I feel like prime pro was a lot of that. I mean, it was, again, why we've talked about it being one of the programs we're most proud of. Absolutely, I had a decent amount of clientele

that would transition from physical therapy to me, because they weren't ready to go completely on their own. In fact, I had a physical therapist in my studio that was excellent. She left the medical space and went private because of the limitations that you have with like insurance and stuff like that.

Yeah, well it's interesting too, a lot of these modalities now, like even with El Doa and like the kind of traction you can create with your back. And like, you know, I didn't know a lot of that even when I was a trainer. So like the resources are out there too, in terms of like, you know, furthering your knowledge

and experience with how to help people kind of work through some of the pain. Yeah, now I gotta say, you know what's interesting about this conversation? So I'm, you know, I'm flying down to LA, flying back. I always, I hate flying, doesn't make me feel good, whatever. Hate sitting in the chairs and you know, the altitude. I know what it is, just I don't know. You just had to fly southwest too,

it was a short flight. Yeah, bro. So I told you guys, right? I was in line and I was just kind of minding my own business and behind me was literally my favorite football player of all time. Oh, Ronnie Locke. Ronnie Locke. Oh, that's great. Oh, he was on your flight?

My flight. Oh, really? Yeah, and he sat like across from me and I was like holding myself back. Like I was fan, fangirling like, like completely in my head. Yeah. Just kept it to myself, waited. But then once we got off the plane, I was like, I just want you to know, favorite play of all time, love watching you play.

Yeah, I just took off. That's awesome. Yeah, that was great. So what I want to say about this was, when you do certain types of movement, correctional exercise for yourself, your mental state makes a big difference as well in terms of how effective it is. For example, and never forget learning this, I was doing static stretching years ago

and I was being coached by somebody with the static stretching on how to really, oh, it was my wife actually, it was my wife at the time, was helping me with some static stretching. Now she, at the time, she was doing the silks, she had just finished traveling with Cirque du Soleil, she had incredible flexibility and she learned how to stretch from like some of the best in the world. And I remember I'm doing the stretch and like, and she's like, why are you holding your breath? I'm like, I'm doing the stretch.

She goes, you holding your breath is making your body tighten up. And then a light bulb went off like, oh yeah, it's my CNS. If I hold my breath while I stretch, because I'm trying to do a static stretch, I'm trying to get my CNS to relax, I'm sending competing signals. Static stretch says relax, holding my breath says don't relax. Yeah, you're trying to get past it.

It's not going to work. So I had this like, on the plane, I was using BrainFM, putting Meditate on, listening to that while I was doing stretches in my seat. Oh my God. Made a difference. Oh yeah, because what Brain FM does, we know this right, it changes the...

Brain waves. The brain waves that you can measure. So it can induce what would look like on, if you were to look at this and measure it, like that looks like a brain that's meditating. That looks like a brain that's focused. That looks like a brain that's sleeping, okay looks like a brain that's focused. That looks like a brain that's sleeping. Okay.

So you put on the one that's meditate. I figured meditation is probably the closest you'd want to get to your CNS calming down or whatever. So I put that on, listened to it, five minutes into it, start stretching. Wow. It was like dramatic difference on my ability to get into positions and mobility and stretch type of deal. I never thought to combine the two.

Really? Not with that. I've done it with workouts with focus and it works with focus. It gets you in the zone. But never done it with... When we first were introduced to it, I was still in the prime of my training for bodybuilding and stuff like that. And I'd spend a good 15 minutes or so before every workout priming like that.

And that was kind of part of the routine. I'd just put it in my ears and listen to that. And then get- Wait, because your brain is part of your CNS. So you're gonna get the signal to the CNS that says chill, relax, the stretching, throws another signal in there, and it just amplifies the improvement.

The one I didn't use, that Justin was the one that got me to do this, because, again, to your point, just had an aha moment or duh moment. Whenever I read, part of why I like audio books better than reading is I tend to trail off. I lose focus when I'm reading. Never would I have thought playing music in my ear would help me actually read until I, Justin was doing work and he was listening to Focus on Browse. I was like, that helps you while you're doing it? He's like, yeah, totally. And then I started doing it. Oh my God, it does make a huge difference.

So yeah, when you apply it to things like that. Different things. Yeah, yeah, it's been, I mean, I love that stuff. It's pretty cool. It's all the time. It's super awesome. It's a cool habit. It's funny you brought up the meditation and stretching

because I did do that when I was, I had one crazy workout and I was just, oh my God, I just felt like trashed. And was, um, downstairs and I was in kind of my man cave or whatever and just like, uh, sitting on the couch and, um, I turned on and you know that like YouTube has, they have this one channel where it's like, you get like a nature visual and it had, it plays like almost like binary beats behind it and you just sit there and you

watch it and it's almost almost like binary beats behind it and you just sit there and you watch it It's almost like the most peaceful thing and it's like turned on the brain of him instead because and then it like had double the effect I was just sitting there just and it worked. Yeah, that's how I meditate I need like guided focus and like, you know, I can't just sit there. That's that's so awesome You know speaking of TV. I just saw I Think we've talked about, did you guys, you guys seen the, the translucent TVs now that you can see through? Okay. So now they have like 60 grand or something. Now they have this

TV with, uh, no wires, no anything, and you can suction it to any wall. It has four huge suction cups. You can, you grab the handles like this, you hold it and it's, and it tells you when the suction cups seal and the four of them do it and you can put it anywhere. Wow. Wow. Sick. Yes, sick. I looked up, I think I wrote down the name because I wanted to look into it to see how much they were. How big are the screens? Huge. Oh yeah, like a normal big screen TV. I'll tell you the brand so you can look it

up because I wanted to look it up. It's called Displace TV. That's cool. I'm going to check that out. I know. Isn't that cool? All right. I want to back up to fitness again because I read a study today. It was actually an article in New York Times.

They examined the muscle of active 70-year-olds. So they looked at muscle and they looked at it to compare it to the muscle of active 20 and 30-year-olds. And you know what they found? No difference. I bet, I was gonna say. No difference.

Seven? 70 to 20 year olds. Oh 70. 70. Active seven year olds. All seven year olds active? Yeah, exactly. This just reinforces.

There was no difference. This just reinforces the argument that I'm always trying to make on here about this misnomer of getting older, all these things are bad and everything goes down. It's like, well that's because they're not doing anything. about this misnomer of getting older, all these things are bad and everything goes down. It's like, well, that's because they're not doing anything. It's not, if they were staying active through their entire life,

then a lot of those, all these negative markers that we talk about aging wouldn't be there. And there's a perfect example. If you're telling me that you're comparing a 70 year old and a 20 year old's muscle fibers, and it's like if they're both active and working out they look pretty damn similar. What changes is your ultimate potential right so a 20 year old's potential for how much they can lift how fast they can run maybe up here and a

70 year olds is down here. But there's still a ton of potential there. Now here's the deal as your potential goes down the bottom goes down as well like the worst shape you can be in your 20s, it's pretty bad, the worst shape you can be in your 70s is deadly. So you can keep yourself somewhere in that middle range just by maintaining activity and exercise. And when they look at these things in a lab, by the way, the cardiovascular fitness of these seven year olds was very similar to fit 40 year olds. So it's remarkable what you can do

just by staying active as you get older. It's literally, there's nothing that comes close to proper exercise in that category, you know, that fountain of youth. Yeah, I mean, it would seem that it's mainly all the habits that you've created over a longer period of time that you know with eating and with sleep and all that. One caveat, I didn't say this, these were seven year olds who have been exercising for

fifty years or more. Oh yeah, of course. These weren't likely to start working out. Although you start working out at seventy you'll see great results. These were people who've been exercising active most of their lives. Speaking of longevity, there's so this I read this I knew this already but I forgot all about it but you hear often about how you got to reduce meat consumption because meats bad for you or whatever. Some of the longest lifespans are in Hong Kong. Maybe Doug you

could look up you know lifespan or longevity in Hong Kong. Hong Kong also has the highest per capita meat consumption. Really? They eat more meat than almost anybody. Hong Kong? You've brought that up before. Yes, yeah, yeah. Maybe you could look up, Doug,

their meat consumption versus other countries. So they eat some of the most meat, and yet they're also the longest living. But, you know, they tend to, like, conveniently exclude Hong Kong when it comes to a lot of these different things. But they eat a ton of meat. I'd love to see what the stats are on that, Doug,

how much they average. I think I've heard you bring that up before. I think you've talked about Hong Kong being one of the highest. This is pretty crazy. The average person in Hong Kong eats 664 grams of meat, which is basically two 10- ounce steaks.

Per day? Per day. The average? Wow. Holy crap. That's a lot. That's really high for average. Yeah.

Yeah. Where are the greats in all this meat? I don't know. But yeah, pork, chicken, that's largely what their diet is made up of. And what's their longevity compared to the rest of the world? Yes.

So women, 88.1 years. Wow. And men, 82.5. What does that compare to other countries? I think we're 70, 72. 88 for women, holy, that's average. Almost a whole decade more, I think. So yeah, for the US,

boy, the average is 77.5. Let me see if I can find male female, you know And that's that's a that you think oh ten years the first one That's a lot, but it's also their health span. I love dr. Seeds says this a lot like what's your health span not just how long you're a lot you're you're not dead But how long you're able to like have good health teen health? Mm-hmm, which is you Which is the most important thing. Yeah, men in the US 74.8, women 80.2. Wow, so that's a massive, massive difference.

The whole decade. And like you said, even more importantly, the quality of that life for sure. Speaking of meat and protein and stuff like that, I wanted to bring up something that I see going viral right now, and we knew this with the kick up of GLP-1s, but you see these videos now of the scare tactics around the osteoporosis and people are linking

the GLP-1 to osteoporosis. And it's just like, we've known this forever. If you eat extremely low calorie and low protein and you don't exercise, that's going to happen to you. Even in a young healthy adult, if you do not eat enough calories, you do not eat enough protein and you do not strength train for an extended period of time, that's going to happen to you.

With you taking anything or not, it has nothing to do with that. The GOP-1 doesn't cause bone and muscle loss. It's the severe reduction in calories and then the lack of focus and attention to strength training and protein intake. Look at the osteoporosis rate with anorexics. It's through the roof, right? And these are oftentimes very young people,

but it's not the GLP-1. I know there's that one video, there was this young woman that's like, I lost all this weight. And I go to the doctor and they said, have osteopenia and I wish I knew, would have known that this would have caused, which by the way, you could reverse if you started lifting some weights and ate some more food and some calories.

That's my fear. My fear is that for some people, I think it'll still be a net positive, but I think for some people they're going to trade one problem for another. They're going to go from, I have overweight problems to I have frailty problems. So they're not going to necessarily be better off. In fact, if you look at the data on the issues

and chronic health issues and longevity and quality of life with obesity versus frailty, frailty is worse. Being really underweight is actually worse than being overweight. That's a scary part Yes I mean cuz that's gonna be that that would that would really suck if this ends up, you know Cuz it ends up being a net positive temporarily and then over time ends up being net negative because So many people don't exercise and you know, don't eat enough protein That'd be really unfortunate to see that because I think it has incredible potential benefits

for some people, but like anything else, you're gonna have a percentage of a user. Yeah, I've seen some wild posts about GLP-1 lately, especially the one I heard guys talking about it being attributed to lizard venom. Oh, okay, I've heard snake venom, lizard venom. Lizard venom, and then I've heard that, like within a year, you're looking at thyroid cancer.

It's just, it's wild. What is it derived from? Do you know what it's derived from? No, so what they're comparing to is like, you'll get the digestive system of a Gila monster, is what they'll say, because it slows down gastric emptying. So they're using an example of an animal.

It's really strange, because this is the first time. It's pretty misleading. There's people that literally are saying it's derived from freaking lizard venom. Yeah, or snake venom. Snake venom is lighter. I don't know about that, but if it was, it's not the same thing.

They'd use that for blood pressure. It's not the same thing as injecting yourself with snake venom. No. So, okay, so here's the deal. What you have here are two of the most powerful influential industries in the world. They're fighting right now.

And they're both super powerful, make a lot of money, and there's a lot of corruption and weird shit that happens to both of them, okay? You have the processed food industry, which is a behemoth monster, which is already, they've influenced policy for a long time now. They're the ones behind the food industry, which is a behemoth monster, which has already, they've influenced policy for a long time now. They're the ones behind the food pyramid,

and this is healthy, that's not healthy, and whatever. Sugar studies. Yes, so there's that. And then you have the pharmaceutical industry, which is another monster that has its own, and both of them are fighting. Yes.

You have now the pharmaceutical industry has this. They want to control the messaging. Has this drug that makes you eat less, and the food industry's like, uh oh, what do we do? And so it's like the propaganda wars with these two monsters, which is really interesting. We're gonna go through that for a while, for sure.

What's it say there, Doug? It's a lot of scientific mumbo jumbo. It's an exogenous glucagon-like peptide, GLP-1 is derived from a pre- I don't think they're extracting it from it. You need to go, a better way to have Google that is it is derived from the snake venom that instead of saying, yeah, because if you do that, it's going to give you that. I think it's made in a lab. I don't think they're taking snakes

and extract. I don't think so either, but Justin brought that up. I didn't bring it up because I thought it was ridiculous to the fact that Justin's been hit with somebody saying it. I've had a couple people try and say it. I know people have hit me up about it. It's true and I just, I want to make sure that we at least put it out there. Okay, that's why. See, this is so dumb. Snake venom proteins have been studied as potential treatments for diabetes and a hormone in Gila monster, that's where it was, venom, inspired the development of these peptides. It inspired it Yeah, so they created in the lab, but they're not actually

Scientists discovered that Gila was been of contains a hormone like molecules And that's so that's even then whatever that's where they got the idea And then they developed but I knew they were working on to even with snake venom it was blood pressure because they found That that was effective. Yes, I Don't know. I don't know that that's a problem anyway. It's just like we learn a lot from nature. GLP ones are gonna be incredible for the right people done the right way and for the wrong people

done the wrong way, they're gonna be terrible. That's it, that's the bottom line. There's nuance here everybody. People who are like all on one side versus the other, that's not the case with something like this? No, no. I mean, we've already been, we've seen it enough, already been massive for people.

I mean, it's been life changing for people. So, but I've- I think this case is where we see people like, oh, you know, why are you on? Yeah, yeah. So, I mean, I agree. You're going to see both. But I mean, to me, and this is why I really wanted to experiment with it myself is so I could feel it and I think communicate it from that

perspective. And I tell you what, in my experience, I've never had anything that made the abstaining from super palatable addictive foods so easy. That in itself was, and just- It's empowering just for that fact. That's right, just creating that space to not feel like you have the, cause let me tell you, I know, I don't even think of myself,

but I've had lots of clients who really have struggled with this that would tell me, Adam, it is like white knuckling at night, to not go- This is how I like to, it is like white knuckling at night, to not go and get. This is how I like to communicate it. So when you think of an addiction, I know people argue, oh, there's no such thing as addiction to hyper, you know, processed foods

or addiction to eating in particular. That's, I don't think, I disagree completely. I think there are real addictive properties and for some people they're worse than for others for a lot of different reasons, but there are the physical physiological effects of The addiction and then there's this psychological, right? So you smoke every day. Okay, you smoke every single day It's a habit you enjoy it. I can replace the nicotine you get from the cigarette

That's gonna get rid of the physiological withdrawal of not smoking. But you still have the behavior. In the association with it. And this is why, by the way, nicotine patches and gums are better than nothing, but they're not a cure because they use the nicotine and they get that physiological effect. So it's not pulling as strongly, but they still miss the smoke, the whatever, right?

And so you'll talk to anybody who smokes, this is what happens. Well, what happens with the GLP-1 for some people, and look, we're speaking from experience. Remember, we trained people for 20 plus years. I worked with enough people who had to lose a lot of weight and through my compassion and understanding and experience, I was, it's like, this is not the same for them.

This is very hard, they're dealing with something that I don't, I've never experienced, and gosh, I wish there was a way we could take the edge away a little bit, and that's what a GLP-1 does. It will take away that pull that feels incessant, that's constant. Now they still can have some of the pull to the food,

because I still get stressed. I used to reach for food food but I'm not hungry anymore but I still need something to, and so sometimes you'll see this. In fact, we worked with people in our group. We did a group coaching a little while ago with people on GOP1s and there was, I remember there was a couple of people in there

who said, you know what, I'm not hungry but I still feel myself reaching for these foods when I'm stressed. Remember that? And that just highlights what I'm talking about. So what you do with these individuals is Yeah. Remember that? Yeah, yeah. And that just highlights what I'm talking about. 100%. So what you do with these individuals is you take away that strong pull, you give them

time to break free from that behavior, and you replace it with another behavior that can supplant it. So maybe now when you're stressed, instead of reaching for food, you do this other thing or you attach it to something else. And then you do this over the course of a year or two years, and then you break those chains and you develop new behaviors, and this is the best strategy that I've ever seen ever where you can combine that with good coaching,

with proper strength training, where we might actually be able to cure people in the sense that we can take people who have a 1% chance of doing this forever. You're not going back. Yeah, and then you keep the GLP-1 in your back pocket. Because, okay, we did it for two years. You're no longer reaching for food like you used to.

That hunger signal wasn't there, so it made it easier. Now let's take you off. And then they're like, oh my god, I'm doing good, I'm doing good. Oh my god, I'm starting to veer back a little bit. All right, let's go back to GLP-1 for a month or two or three. And then I think we have a good strategy for those people. But for other individuals, I think there's better options and I don't think it's great. It's unnecessary for a lot of people.

Yeah, for every single person. Yeah, I know. Yeah, speaking of our group coaching, super excited to do this transformation one. I think this is going to be interesting. How long until that starts, Doug? When does this go live right now, the episode that we're on right now? Yeah, this is the 21st, so in two weeks. Two weeks, so two weeks away from it.

Less than that, actually. So we did already group coaching once, so we're going to do it again. So two weeks away from it. Less than that actually. So we already did group coaching once, so we're going to do it again. The last one was for people on GOP1s. This one's for people who are looking to transform robotics. Come back. Yeah, get back at it. Get me back into shape.

But it's very small, very limited because we're not going to blow this up for a while. We're going to keep it small and it'll be run by our trainers, but we'll be popping in. So this will be. There's a lot of psychological games with that, as you saw in Adam's journey with that as well. But yeah, I think this is a powerful tool at your disposal to have coaches in your corner

and really talk you through all these things. And then working with other people. It's mindpumpgroupcoaching.com where you can sign up. Hopefully it's still available by the time we're talking about this. Yeah, I think so. Nah, maybe not. I don't know, how many episodes

would have that announced before this one? This is only 50. A few, handful, maybe five. Well, we'll see. We'll see, maybe we'll do another one later. I tell you what, if it's that full by the time this goes already like that, then we may be potentially run two separate groups.

I don't know, we'll figure something out. Dude, I gotta tell you guys about it. I had an observation at the gym the other day that just reminded me of such a, there was a huge change in gym layouts that happened about, I want to say 15 years ago, that I totally forgot about. So you guys all worked in gyms that had, were started in the early 90s, we all did.

And then right around like 2000s or so, they changed one segment of the layout significantly because they noticed people enjoyed it more, worked out more because of it. And it was how they placed their cardio. Do you guys remember what it was? Where it was facing? Yeah.

So we could watch everybody work out? Yeah, dude. Remember back in the day, cardio was watching TVs. Yeah, TVs. There were a bunch of TVs. Then they figured out that people would rather watch other people work out? Yes, dude. Remember back in the day, cardio was watching TVs. Yeah, TVs. With a bunch of TVs. Then they figured out that people would rather watch other people work out. Yeah.

And it was way more successful. There's nobody who watches TV when they do cardio. They watch other people. It's so crazy. What is that about us as creatures, right? Ooh, that looks hard. That's something that Katrina and I always joke about. Admittedly, I love to have

People watch you know, what's more interesting that's why I too I used to love my favorite gym of all the ones I worked out was the Santa Teresa one because you had that glass window right by your desk And so I could look out Floor and just it was comical. You know every day you saw something that was characters everywhere Yes. Yes, and they all have you like where did they come up with? These routines, but what is that pool? I mean I know I have it I know there's a pool to want to watch watch people. Yeah humans are social There's nothing more interested than people is that what it is just something about me is just super curious about look at the shows on TV

We watch we're watching other people's lives in story. You know, you're funny you bringing that up how I just was talking about that. There's something, some other reality show. I'm like, man, isn't it wild to think that our generation, we had television pre and post, you know, reality TV. And it's crazy when you look back, like there was a time you guys when there was like no reality tv And then there was like one or two shows that sort of do it And now when you look at like netflix like 90 percent of it is so everything some form of and there's like 10 spin-offs of like there's like 10 spin-offs of every successful one like you know the The voice or the whatever the singer one is like 10 different versions of that and there there's 10 different versions of love Island. There's 10. I mean,

there's like so many just trip out on these like mundane jobs. Like you're, you're a pawn shop owner and you're like, you know, just selling people like everything, you know, it's like, or you're, you're trying to bid on like a, some storage unit. It's like, it's so funny. It's just like, it's a bit sad. It's a bit sad that we're interested in other people. People are interested in people. There's nothing more.

It's so mind numbing content though. It's like nothing useful coming from that really. Like, come on there. What are you, what are you getting from? I mean, I guess if you were into, if you were into storage wars and actually in that business, it would make sense, I guess, to watch a little bit of that because that could add some value maybe.

I doubt. But most of it is drama based. Most of it is just soap opera. It's like the modern day soap opera. They all hate this one guy because he's like all branded out. I've actually watched this. He shows up in this van and they're like, oh, there's Rick. You know, they're all talking shit about Rick.

And then, you know, he's gonna, if he bids this, I'm gonna bid this. And they're all like, you know, colluding against him. I just love, like you mentioned the gym in Santa Teresa. I, like, one of the things I loved about working in a gym was watching people. It's my favorite thing to do in the world. Oh yeah.

Eat your lunch and just watch the gym floor. That's better than any TV show you could ever, you could ever find. How is, so how else do you think the gym has evolved? Like the things that we've watched out... We watched the evolution of... Remember there used to be women's rooms? That doesn't exist. Oh women's weight rooms? Yeah. They used to have their... Rack a ball. Doesn't exist anymore. Yeah then they had the circuit training section only. Do they still do that? No. It's so funny, the big gyms saw the success of CrossFit, no, Weight Watchers.

No, not Weight Watchers. No, it's a... What was it called? The circuit, the women's circuit. Curves. Curves, yes. They saw curves, and they were like, oh, we're going to do that ourselves. Then functional training. Yeah, now we had the turf.

The turf came into the gym. Bumper plays. So supposedly, I just saw someone doing a video clip that does all the gym news or whatever, talking about how that's evolving now too. That they evolved to have all this grass, but now they're moving away from it because it's a bunch of wasted space. Because it was novel for a while,

everybody wanted to do it, and then nobody's using it, now you have this huge footprint that you're not. I was the only guy using it. So it's gonna be interesting to see. And then one's using it. Now you have this huge footprint that you're not using it. So it's gonna be interesting to see. And then the one of the most popular new things is outside is moving a lot of equipment outside, which is funny because that's what we got in COVID. It was by that. I love that too. I think it's great. So a lot of gyms that are being built now are building a outdoor indoor version, which is just smart from a business when you think about what happened to us in COVID,

is a guy in case that ever happens again, will be set with this outdoor setup. But I thought that was really interesting. I always thought of a gym design where the ceiling would retract. I would love that. Like if it's sunny outside, you pull it out and just working out in the sun.

You know why you don't? Just not enough money in that space. Of course, of course. What would I do? I'd spend $10 dollars on a chip? It'd be interesting to see what are the some of the most profitable? Facilities right now what I've seen now is the more luxury gym. Yeah, that's really yeah a lot of them are popping up now and even like

It's Santa Cruz Athletic Club is kind of like trying to do that But will they have the hormone doctor specialists is there. They got the recovery part where they have the Normatech boots and they got like, you know, cold plunge. And then they have like all these things kind of set up for like these bio hacking kind of options. And then over here, it's like, then you have the rest of the gym and then you have, you know, the training. And so it's, it's,

it's interesting because it's like people are kind of demanding a lot of these. We watched the middle of the row, middle of the row gym get destroyed. It doesn't exist. It's either super cheap or expensive. Exactly. You either want to pay the $19 fitness gym place or what's the other purple one or whatever. You pay that $9, $20 fee or you're on the other extreme where you're paying $150, $200 a month for the spa type of all the amenities.

It's like there's nothing in the middle really anymore. How was your, you went down to LA and you didn't work out. Oh yeah, how was your- Yeah, I went down to LA. I was invited on a podcast. Seven hour interview or something like that? Yeah, because we did a whole vlog and everything ahead of time. And so like a workout. Yeah.

Oh, yeah. Yeah, which is like, you know, it's always a little awkward. It's just like, well, I didn't really know what to expect because I haven't actually met Justin. He was the guy that actually interviewed me. But I met him through my friend Jake. And so they knew that I was actually friends with Brandon Schiappati.

And so I got to actually hang out with Brent Shepard yet His gym at rise above fitness So they kind of worked it out so we could go there which was fun because it was it was great to To see him again and his gyms rad It's like totally my vibes like really crazy metal plane in the background and then cardio sucks like in big letters Like we gotta have the editing team post some photo I know Doug took a bunch of photos of all of us when we worked out down there years ago.

That was like what, eight years ago? It was so cool. Probably. Yeah, a long time ago. Brandon was telling me like there was meetups. There was mind pump meetups that were happening a lot even after we had just been there one time, but like they were like connecting

and hanging out at Rise Above Fitness. And so it was cool because we had like, kind like our community was going to that gym a lot. Uh, but yeah, so we did. So I didn't know what to do. I mean, the guy's like coming and he's like, Oh, lead the workout. You know, I'm just like, Oh great. You know, like I don't, like I don't work out with people. I'm sorry. It's not my thing. Uh, so I ended up taking them through, uh, I didn't know if he was going to try

to ego lift and like try and outlift me or something. And so I was like, well, I better like do a good warmup. And so I started going through mobility and I was making them do, you know, just some stick mobility stuff and some 90 90 and some, you know, just like three basic like mobility moves and he's just like, ah, what is this dude? Like completely never had, had attempted to do any of these types of movements. I was like, it was cool. He appreciated it because he's like, wow, I feel like, you know, everything's tracking.

I feel everything is, is, you know, like he felt really good after that, but we, we really didn't work out. We were just kind of lifting weights, shooting the shit. Uh, so I was like, Oh, thank God. It wasn't like, you know, he was, I'm gonna bury you. And like, you know, we're gonna get on film. So you've been working out a lot lately. Have you taken a day off yet?

Or like you're, that's another reason why I was worried. That's another reason why I was worried because I just. I've seen two of his workouts out here, Adam. So the opposite of me, right? Can we not be more different or what? I swear to God, I swear to God, you have two speeds. You don't have any of the speeds. You have off or a hundred percent. Hard. Hard or like, you know, cruising. There's nothing like that.

So no, it wasn't intentional because like I was trying to get in film sessions so I could bank them before like, because people are going to be gone next week. I don't know what the schedule looks like. And Dylan was like, hey, let's do a workout. I'm like, I just did it yesterday. I'm like, I'll be fine. I'll just do a lighter one today. And then I realized, oh, yeah, they want to film and do a workout as I get there tomorrow.

I was like, this is not going to be good. So I tried to do it for movements, but yeah, you know, I'm threshold, you know, I'm toeing the line. You already, your body's responding already. I can already tell. Can you tell? Yeah, are you, now are you doing anything else, like I know right now, the role for the audience

that doesn't know, like you're doing a whole series right now, the goal is to get to 315 push press, is that right? Yes. And are you you are you messing with the diet at all? Are you like trying to mess with recovery stuff or you're just purely programming around mobility and progressive overload to get to the point where you could do that. Like what's the yeah mobility progressive overload and then I mean honestly this first month in general I'm not I'm not pushing the boundaries of strength or maxing. I'm not adding a lot of load.

It's really minimal. So it's really just getting, reinforcing the entire structure and frame and getting good stability. So it's not as crazy as it looks, although it is, I will admit, it's not like as crazy as it looks, although it is, I will admit it's too frequent. I could space it out a lot more effectively, and that would help my body, because I did have some days, like initially after the first two workouts,

I was feeling it, you know, and I had to do a lot to kind of recover. But now I'm actually hitting a stride, and I was feeling it, you know, and I had to do a lot to kind of recover But now I'm actually hitting hitting the stride and feeling good And it's like my strengths coming back your body's changed in Weeks already changed so fun, dude, and are you messing with anything nutritionally or you just kind of do what you normally do? I'm I'm I'm upping my calories and I'm upping my protein intake and really making an extra effort in the morning, especially The morning I'm really you having for breakfast So I'm like like just four or five scrambled eggs and and bacon and sausage and everything else you can find the house

And then as I'm going out the door I'm like chugging down a whey protein shake down a whey protein shake. This is a good time. I'm like, I'm loading it. I can't wait. Moose Justin. I haven't been gassing you guys out yet or anything so I'm not like... So you're good. Yeah, I'm like, again, like with the training, they're kind of both, you know, I'm toeing the line. We'll see how this goes. That's awesome. Element is an electrolyte powder with no artificial sweeteners, no sugar, that has the right amount of sodium. It can help prevent and eliminate headaches, muscle cramps, fatigue. It can help give you energy. I like it because I get

incredible pumps in the gym when I drink Element before and during my workout. Go check them out. Go to www.drinkelemente.com forward slash mind pump and on that link you'll get a free sample pack with any drink mix purchase. Alright, back to the show. This segment of the podcast is brought to you by trainerwebinar.com. If you're a trainer or a coach or aspiring to become one, go to trainerwebinar.com. Adam and I do free coaching and courses on how to teach you how to be more successful. Go check it out. Our first caller is Jim from Australia. What's going on Jim? Jim what's happening? How can I help you? This is more surreal than I

thought boys. You guys are actually real. What's up buddy? How you doing? In the flesh. I'll just put my coffee down boys. Now boys I'm gonna go off a script. My wife keeps telling me that I waffle on too much and I go on tangents all the time. So I thought if I stick to a script, I'll best utilize your time. Your message is getting out there almost through osmosis and that's powerful. I personally haven't experienced anything like this, like your approach or your type of advice in the 50 years that I've been doing this stuff. So I hope you guys keep it up. I hope, I hope you guys don't change your formula or your approach,

because I want this message going out to my kids and now my grandkids. So very much appreciated. Thank you. Okay. Thank you. All right. So my challenge boys, um, so I can be near as a bitch. Um, you guys in your mid forties, so you'd start to feel the effects just a little bit, but you could put it off as, you know, didn't get enough carbs the last 24 hours or something like that. But when you get to your early and mid sixties, trust me boys, she becomes a vengeful bitch. And that's the core of my challenge or my question or my problem. Anyway, let me set up a framework for you.

I'm 66, I'll be 67 next month. I picked up my first weights when I was 16 years old. And really I haven't looked back since. Mind you, back in those days, I came from a very, very poor sort of background. My mum was a single mum, was only meeting my brother, and no money for anything other than food and a roof over her head. So I had to be quite, what's the word, probably creative in terms of my first sort of gear that I created in the early 70s. So what I did was I made a bench out of an old bedhead. So it's an old wooden bedhead. I cut it out. I used pillows for

the base and I just strapped it all down. For my weight stands, I use, well, I re-appropriated, maybe there's a better word than that. A couple of stop signs from our local council. Hopefully they won't be listening. And cut off the stop signs and I just cut a slot and that was my weight. That was my weight set up for wow. Wow. Five or six years. But anyway, it just shows you if you're committed, you can do it no matter what. All right.

Since then, I've lived the life. I'm still married after 44 years to my gorgeous wife. I've raised three beautiful, successful children. And I'm now a nono. And Sal, you'll appreciate this. We both, myself and my wife are of Italian heritage. I'm Sicilian. My wife comes from the north of Italy, in a little place called Belluno, north of Venice.

So we constantly have debates on what being Italian really is. Because it's so far apart. Anyway, through all these chapters of life, I've kept passionate to my weight training, all being the varying degrees of motivation and availability. Life gets in the way sometimes. And I've had my own set up in the garage here for about 30 odd years. So I've got no excuses.

All right, fundamentals. I've been weight training 50 years. I weigh 78 kilos, which is about 172 pounds. I'm 175 centimeters tall, which is about 5 foot 9, but I'm shrinking. Another beautiful aspect of getting older. 27% body fat according to my scale this morning. I average about 25, 2600 calories a day. Always prioritize my protein.

I get about 160 to 180 grams a day. For instance, this morning I'm going to have chicken thigh fillets for breakfast, which much to my wife's disgust. Now I've always trained a four day split. And that's part of my question that I'm coming to you guys with. I currently bench 200. Squats and powerlifts, I know I've heard you guys go over and over and over this. I haven't done squats or powerlifts for most of my training career.

I've only just started. The reason being is I've always thought it puts too much pressure on my lower back. And some of the big gorillas I used to train with in the 80s and 90s, they've all got back issues now. And I sort of justify that in my mind. But I'm coming around and I'd like you to hammer that into me, I guess. In my training career, I've torn a pec, I've torn a lat, I've dislocated my shoulder about four or five times. I've torn my right bicep in half. I only have half a bicep in my right arm. All these things to show you that I am committed to what I do.

I love it. Absolutely love it. I don't train hard anymore, but I am consistent. All right, what's my question? I suppose I am starting to, but I am consistent. All right. What's my question? I suppose I am starting to waffle on even. Bloody hell. I'm sorry. I think she would not my wife to write this.

All right. Uh, my question, look guys, I mean, listening to you for about two years now, um, ever since my daughter came to me and said, Hey dad, I'm getting married in six months. So I thought, oh shit, I've got to get back to some sort of, some sort of a steak or some sort of look, I guess. So it took me six months to go through

my traditional four day split routine with some real weight, what I thought was some real weight. Constant injury and rehabilitation. split routine with some real weight, what I thought was some real weight, constant injury and rehabilitation. Adam, I'm really associated with you and what you went through lately. Pure utter frustration and not being able to do anywhere near what I thought I was capable of. And that realization created havoc in my psyche, boys. I'm not the man I used to be. Anyway, I'm a stubborn Italian. I don't believe there's much new in the game since I purchased my Joey the bodybuilding system some 40 odd years ago. A squat is a squat is a squat. A bench press is a bench press. A curl is a curl. There's not much new in this space in my mind. Although I did change when Arnie came out with these supernating bicep curls. I thought, shit, that's a good idea.

idea. I wrote to you guys a couple of months back saying, help, I'm stuck in this full day split routine. I can't do anywhere near what I used to do. I wanted some ideas. I wanted some some of it just hit me across the back of the head and say, Jim, do this or that'd be stupid or whatever. But in writing that email to you guys, there was a realization. I went out and bought Maps and Ebolik. Now, it's the first time I bought anyone else's program in 40 odd years. And I put my faith in you guys. But I've got a problem. But I've got a problem. I don't think there's enough volume in it for me. At the end of phase two, I'll start phase three tomorrow. And I used to do five different exercises or four sets each for just for my chest twice

a week. I'm going down to just two exercises a week or three exercises a week from a chest. It's it's doing my head in boys. I I'm I'm looking for guidance. I'm looking for inspiration. I'm looking for advice. Now after that diatribe, what can I do? What's your advice?

You're doing really good, Jim. I mean, you've been doing this for so long, I'd probably be the one asking you questions because of the experience you have with what you're doing. So don't discredit the wisdom that you've developed over decades of training your body. I would say the struggles that you have are the struggles that most of us have when we strength train, which is, am I doing the appropriate amount

and do I have a tendency to overdo it? This is probably why you have those muscle tears that you experienced in your career, just pushing it a little too hard. Just like those guys you talked about who have all bad backs now from squatting experienced in your career, just pushing it a little too hard. Just like those guys you talked about who have all bad backs now from squatting back in the day. It wasn't the squat that hurt them, it was that they did a weight or a rep range

or volume that was inappropriate. And I get that when you train at the extremes, you sacrifice things. When you train at the extremes, you sacrifice technique a little bit. If you're squatting 400 pounds, 500 pounds, if your technique is off by two degrees, you might not notice, but you do that long enough and it starts to develop problems because the weight is so heavy.

But I think you're doing a great job. Really, you've got to ask yourself, now that you're following a different program, do you feel different? Do you feel better? Are you noticing any changes in the positive? And if the answer is no, then I would say go back to the higher volume. We've been doing this for so long, Jim,

that you're gonna know your body pretty well. But if you also know that your tendencies overdo it, and you're looking objectively, like you know what, I kind of feel stronger, I kind of feel better, I think things are improving, or this might even happen, nothing has changed, but I'm doing less. Well that also is a clue that you might be doing more than was necessary before and you can devote a little more time to maybe other forms of physical activity like mobility and flexibility

work which you know a lot of us tend to avoid. But that's really it, you've been doing this for so long. I love talking to people like you because you have a lot of insight, especially when it comes to your body that I'm not going to have. It would take me a year of training you to have even close to the insight that you have. So, and by the way, the whole comparison thing, comparing yourself to your, you know, how you used to be, that's not fair.

Compare yourself to other 66 and 67 year olds. How are you around your friends that haven't strength trained for 40 years? Is there a difference between the two of you? Massive difference. I mean, the typical 67 year old doesn't look like you, can't move like you, doesn't work out like you, doesn't have your energy. So, you know, that's, if you're going to do a comparison, that would be a little bit more fair. And you're you're light years. I'm looking at you right now on camera for somebody who's would you say 66, 67? I hope I look like that. I hope I look like that at 66.

That's my goal. So, I mean, Jim, if you were my client with the experience, knowledge and where you're already at physique wise, you know, you're the type of person that I would let steer a little bit here. Even though I'm the professional, this is my thing. I would go, hey, you know what? If you think it's that low volume gym and you can handle a lot more or you want to do a lot more, I would let you toggle over to something like MAPS Aesthetic and then we would compare. But I would make you do that though.

I'd say, let's be honest with ourselves and ask the questions that Sal's saying. Like, are you fully recovered? Are you you as strong or stronger do you feel as good like because those are two very different programs as far as volumes concern so they're there when you look at all of our programs they're probably the two ends of the spectrum right we have maps anabolic which would be considered our base kind of program as far as volume is concerned and then maps aesthetic is towards the other complete end of the spectrum as far as volume is concerned and then MAPS Aesthetic is towards the other complete end of the spectrum as far as it's too much volume for most people. But you're experienced enough and know your body well enough that I would let you go that

direction and then I'd just be asking you like, all right Jim, be honest with me, like how are you feeling? How are the joints? Do we feel stronger? Do you feel better? Do you, and if you're telling me, oh man, Adam, I am, that's what we needed, then we're going to rock that program. But if you're like, you know what, oh man,

my elbows, my knees, I just, or we're going backwards in weight, and then it's like, ah, too much. So I would do that with you. Yeah, the other thing too, Jim, you wanna consider is your tolerance for volume, even though you're getting older, there's two competing forces here. Age will reduce your body's ability

to handle volume and frequency, but practice, and especially over decades, increases that ability. I've told the story many times of going to work with my dad as a, I think I was 16, a 16 year old, you know, full of energy. And my grandfather, my Sicilian grandfather came to visit and him and I were taking turns mixing cement. And just buried you. And my Sicilian grand, in the hot sun,

it was like 97 degrees, and he just destroyed me. And I was a 16 year old kid, worked out all the time, and he just murdered me. And he'd been doing that kind of work since he was eight years old. So even though he was much older than me. So you probably do have a pretty high tolerance, but you just gotta be honest with yourself

and don't fool yourself, because we tend to fool ourselves like you know what you can tolerate isn't necessarily what's ideal. And then one thing I'll say to you about the squats and deadlifts and you mentioned like in you know the decades you started strength training those exercises started falling out of favor a little bit for a while now you go to the gym everybody's doing them the best way for you to approach those lifts that you're not experienced with is don't treat them like a lift treat them like a skill so when you go do your squats don't think to yourself like you do when you

work out you know with a bench press or a curl just go and say I'm gonna just practice the skill and get good at it and so you're not even trying to like really work your legs really hard yet or anything like that you're just trying to get really good at the skill that'll get you that'll move you in the right and you'll get better results that way but if you if you approach this lift that you haven't done this whole time you've been strength training like you do the lifts that you are really good at then your risk of injury is gonna be really high Jim did you watch the series I did on YouTube did you watch that whole series

I haven't watched the whole series now yeah I mean I think that would be good you know I you kind of referred to it I didn't know how whole series now. Yeah, I mean, I think that would be good. You know, you kind of referred to it. I didn't know how much you saw of it or not. But I mean, I don't know. I think, you know, you've got more experience than I do, but I've got a lot of experience lifting. And, you know, I tend to play the same game of like, I can tolerate, I can do more.

And then constantly reminding myself, I don't need to. I can get just as good of results with half of the intensity that I used to train with. And so, you know, that's what I meant by like allowing you to train in like something as high volume as Maps Aesthetic. But then I'm checking in with you on a weekly basis and going, how are you feeling? Like, you know, be honest with me. Do you feel better?

We're doing twice as much volume right now. Are you feeling like you're getting more results or you feel like you can handle it, but you're not getting any better results? Then I'd be questioning you like, well then why are we doing all this, Jim? Why are we doing all this extra work and you don't feel better than we're doing half the work? So I would just challenge you

and make sure you are being honest with yourself. And but like to Sal's point too, maybe you do because you have built such a high tolerance, you respond better at that higher volume program and you feel better. And if you do, then like MAPS better at that higher volume program and you feel better. And if you do, then like MAPS Aesthetic is the program for you. At the end of the day, it's not going to hurt you, right?

It's an experiment. If you haven't really gone through the whole process of it, it's an experiment. And then the most it's going to hurt is your ego because you want to keep going and pushing. And so maybe that's something to work on. I don't know. It's totally like the, that's why we challenge ourselves in so many different directions.

That's what's beautiful about fitness and health and, you know, trying to improve and grow. So, I mean, at your age, like you're killing it. And, you know, whatever you haven't done is, I mean, that's kind of like where the grass is. I mean, I would love to do this with him. Like you're on phase three of Maps and a Bullet, right? The volume goes up quite a bit in-

Your phase three right now? So I would love, Doug, to send you Maps Aesthetic, and then I would love for you to go through Maps Aesthetic, and then I'd love to have you back on the show. And I'd love to hear your opinion of comparing the two programs and being honest with your journey through both of them and which one-

Everything you hated and loved. Yeah, and what was better for you? I mean, you've got enough wisdom in that way. Yeah. You can even probably go in the middle if, if, if you find a little, a little more, but aesthetics too much. Yeah. No, but I'm going to have Doug's, I'm going to have Doug send that to you.

Well, it sounds like a great, great approach for my psyche. That's, that's, that's what I need. I think, I think I need to have that as a comparison and push myself back to how I like to push myself. You guys know it. You've been to gym. When you're pushing these things, it's such an ego boost just to feel your body.

Doesn't have to be a big way, just to feel your body. So I appreciate that, Adam. I think that's a great idea, boys. I'd like to try that. I love that. I'm gonna have Doug send that to you. The one thing I'm asking you, finish MAPS Anabolic, finish it off.

When you're done, check your waist, your weight, kind of write down your numbers on your main lifts that you know that you do. Get some objective. To get some numbers, right? And you know, really observe like, okay, how do I feel? How's the sleep in? How's the joints in? Okay, cool. Now I'm onto Maps Aesthetic. Let's run that sucker and then we'll check back in with all those stats and if you haven't improved with adding that much volume then to Sal's point, well,

what the fuck are we doing? There's no reason to be doing that much more volume intensity if it didn't improve you. And so let's see if it does. And if it does, then the other point is true. You have built a physique that needs more intensity and volume for so many years of conditioning like that so let's test it out pull our ego out of it and let's just see and let's see what the numbers are by the way what you said about nothing not much has changed you're right like a lot of the wisdom that we pull comes from stuff that we'll yeah that we've known. We stray away from the good stuff. Yeah so you're right not much has changed at all.

The only the only advantage we have is that we've trained a lot of different people and we learned how to communicate to a lot of different people but I don't I'm not gonna know you the way you are no way man it would take me it would take me years of training you as a personal trainer, even close to being able to get that kind of insight. So consider that. If anything, it would be more of just a check.

You know, like hey, you're going a little too hard. It's just like one of these guys would do with me if we were working out together. But you'll be a great person for our audience to hear from, so I would love for you, I want you to do it. Yeah, let's get that set up. Yeah, let's do it. Let's do anabolic finish it, then we're gonna send over aesthetic on us and then I'd like to schedule another call in like

two or three months with you and hear your feedback. I think it would be great. Boys, you didn't disappoint. Thank you so much. It's exactly what I wanted to hear. Thank you boys. Awesome. So I appreciate it. You got it my friend. Thank you Jim, we care. Thanks for the inspiration. Thanks. You know, when people need to know this, when you're a guy like that, in the gym working out, that instead. It's way more impressive than seeing it.

That inspires everyone in the gym. It's what I love about gym culture, the old guys in the gym are getting all the respect and admiration And I mean you can see it there. It's it's also more impressive to me than the 25 year old IFBB Pro More impressive to me. I mean it's it's one thing to have proven that you have the discipline to build an awesome physique in a period Of your life. It's another thing to have made it. Talk through every season of life. Yes, to be in your mid to late 60s and look that good and have that much vitality. And I'm going to be very clear in this, you know, this is just straight up for coaches

and trainers to humble themselves a little bit. None of us in this room, as experienced as we are, are going to be able to train him or understand him the way he does because of his experience. We've just trained lots of different people so I might be able to train lots of different people but if Jim hired me it would be a lot a lot of my coaching for him would have been let me let me ask you questions let me help check you because exactly why I said I would let him steer I would say hey you feel that way okay let's get into Maps Aesthetic and then let's compare the two and I know how dramatic of a difference in Volume that is and then all I would do would challenge him to be honest with himself and just say hey

How did you feel when we finished? I would need yeah. Yeah, exactly Like I'm not gonna come try to tell you what to do like I already you're gonna show me like yeah Yeah, yeah, it was okay. Well, let's try this for a little bit and then together Let's be honest with ourselves. And you know, I'm there. So it holds them accountable to being like, oh, you're right. I fucking my benches about the same or down, you know, you're right. My fucking knees, my elbow hurts.

Yeah. See it. And it's like, yeah, bro. And we're doing twice as much work. Like, is that what you want to do is twice as much work for the same or less results, or would you like to do half the work and get the same result? I'd tell you what, man, to see a 66, 67 year old man look like that, talk like that, whatever.

Like, is there anything that could sell anything that could sell strength training better than that? Nothing. Our next caller is Josh from Tennessee. Josh, what's happening? What's going on Josh? What's up Josh? Hey guys.

How's it going? Good. Good. How can we help you? Well, um, so I'm 43 I've been lifting pretty consistently since I was about 14 or 15, of course times throughout life There's been different life's demands and stuff, but I've pretty much always stayed active The challenge though is ever since I've hit 41

Doesn't seem to matter what I do. I don't see the physical results that I'd like to I've tried changing up Workout plans, you know tweaking diet. I eat about 80% clean nothing seems to Work the way that it used to I've had a couple setbacks over the years went through a divorce Tennis elbow that lasted for about two and a half years. Did lots of PT with it. Still dealing with some issues with that. I've had like constant stomach distension

for about two years. I've seen GI docs, seen normal docs, seen like functional medicine doctors. Nobody's been able to kind of pinpoint that one had a PT who said very little diastasis recti but nothing that would lend to that. I've had a scope done. Upside of this during all this I've gotten remarried have awesome wife we've got five kids combined ages 11 to 17. I'm just wanting to be in the best possible shape for my wife and kids You know kind of disappointing, you know get remarried and you don't feel like you have the energy that you did when you're younger Feel like that's kind of like a less-than scenario

Kind of feel stuck in a dad bod Situation no matter how much kind of effort put in and change things up. Just wanting to get some advice. I want to continue to be an inspiration for my boys who they've started working out in the past year. And then I've got a almost 16 year old daughter who, of course, I want to just look Jacked enough that any guys wanting to date her think twice about anything

Give me a give me a little bit more on your definition of 80% good on the diet So like so obviously you there's it's not perfect And so what are the things that you tend to mess up on or don't do so good? It's more so I'd say like eating 80% clean, 20% processed in that sense. So most of the foods. Okay. Okay. Yeah. Most mostly whole foods.

I have like one day a week, Friday morning that I go to a men's prayer breakfast and it's like down home, Southern cooking. So I don't know. I can't skip out on that, but outside of that, try to keep it pretty clean. Do you, okay. So I need a little bit more information. What is your workout look like now? How is your sleep? Um, do you have, uh, how is your stress levels? And then let's start here. You talked about your

gut, uh, distension. Yeah. Uh, they, I'm assuming they did testing for parasites, SIBO, everything. Yes. Parasite SIBO, uh, C diff. everything yes parasite SIBO see diff they did a scope just see if there was anything internally going on they said I had a very minimal hiatal hernia but the GI doctor was like there's no reason that like from her perspective that that should cause anything and you've done elimination diet to try to identify anything. Yep, I went gluten free, did keto, did dairy free, those kind of things.

Okay, okay. So tell me about your sleep and your strength training routine, because I know you got five kids married, you work, so we get the, you know, there's already high stress there. What does your sleep look like? How often, are you consistent with it? Is it good, or do you wake up like you're tired?

I'm consistent as far as like bedtime, what time I get to bed, what time I set my alarm for. Sleep's been off and on, honestly, since the divorce, but like lately, I can't seem to get more than about six and a half hours of sleep, but that's typically interrupted in the middle of the night. Um, goal, go ahead. What interrupts your sleep?

Are you just waking up? Just wake up. Oh, I'll wake up pretty consistently between about two 30 and three 15. Um, I can even, let's say I go to bed at nine. I could even wake up at 12 30, pop a melatonin in the middle of the night to just try to stay asleep till my alarm goes off and I'll still wake up. Yeah. Okay. All right. And now, uh, tell me about your current workout.

Um, most recent current workout routine I did, I just came off of a, like a deload week and just started something new this week. But before that, I was kind of doing a, um, I'd say like a combo between Dorian Yates and Mike Mincer approach, um, doing, uh, weightlifting three days a week, but you know, like one day was legs. We'll say another day was back and buys.

And another day was, uh, shoulders and arms, trying to just get seen if I needed more rest and recovery for each body part and then, um, in between those days do abs and zone two cardio. So you're going to failure and beyond, uh, like, like, like a blood and guts or heavy duty, not, not that part. I wasn't falling to the extreme just because with my elbow even having been through PT and everything, I can't always seem to go to complete failure because of the elbow, if that makes sense. It does. And then your gut, does it get, do you notice gut issues after you eat? Or does it just always kind of feel that way? It just always kind of feels that way.

I mean it'll feel worse if say like I've eaten a bigger meal just kind of like okay even if I didn't have the gut distention you know you kind of eat too much you're like uh why did I do that? So the symptoms of waking up like restlessness is what is how you would label that. Gut issues how you would label that. Gut issues, tell me that your body is dealing with stress that's above and beyond what you can adapt to or tolerate at the moment. Now the challenge is what we tend to do is we tend to look at what we're dealing with

and we judge it and say, well I used to be able to handle more. But for whatever reason right now, those are classic signs that it's just, you're not able to handle what's happening right now, and you need to go through maybe a prolonged period. Also explains why you're not seeing the results

that you want to see from the work that you're doing. Yeah, you're not gonna get results. You'll have gut issues and you'll have sleep issues. You also may notice things like libido issues, hot, cold, and tolerance issues. Energy will feel either wired or tired. So you're not gonna feel kind of nice clean energy, you know, that might be one of them. Yeah, pretty tired all

the time. Yeah. Have we had our hormones checked? That was exactly where I was gonna go next. The last time I had my hormones checked were about, I think, close to two years ago and testosterone was like between like 420 and 440. Yeah. I'm gonna have you, so here's the two things I'll do. I'm gonna send you MAPS 15. Yeah, okay. That's the program you need to follow. Do the barbell version.

There's inside that program, you have the suspension trainer version. Okay. And the barbell version. Do the barbell version. Don't go to failure. Okay. Follow that. I think that'll be more appropriate. And then I want you to go to mphormones.com,

talk to the people there, and you get a hormone panel done, and then talk to them about peptides for recovery and healing. You're probably a pretty good candidate for BPC, KPV capsules for gut. And then what they're gonna do, so the difference between a traditional doctor when it comes to hormones and like these specialists

is they don't just look at your numbers, they also look at your symptoms. And so total testosterone 400, it's within range. But if you're also noticing symptoms of lower testosterone, then they'll probably bring you up to 800 or something like that, which is still within range, but that often makes a difference with somebody. And you're over 40, are you planning on having more kids?

No. Yeah, you're good. So I would go there, reduce the volume, and only because you've already checked all the big boxes. If you hadn't seen a functional medicine practitioner, that's where I would send you first. But since you have, and they've said, look, you're good, no SIBO, no CFO, no parasites, we did a scope, we don't know what's going on, like what's happening, then I would reduce the volume, go work with a hormone specialist,

and if they recommend a protocol, try both, and that very well likely will turn things around a pretty dramatic way, especially a man your age. Okay. Awesome. Yeah. There's not much to add to that. That's literally like the,

that's why I was going right away was I would have you go check hormones and see that, especially if everything you're saying about the way you eat and you've trained for so long, you know your body, like there's something deeper going on that's causing it. And the only thing that could exacerbate this is doing too much in the gym thinking that you're not doing enough. We're not going to outwork it. That's why and so keep that in mind as you switch over to Maps 15 a lot of times guys are like with it

are used because they've been training for a long time or like oh my god this is this isn't enough. It's like yeah it is especially in the context of where you're at right now because every all the sides are saying the body's overstressed. So, you know, hammering it even more in the gym is the last thing you need to do, and you need a more appropriate volume and intensity type program. 15 is probably the perfect program for you.

Just consider this, this isn't a permanent thing. So, stress on the body can be cumulative over time. So, right now, this may be appropriate. You may come out of this and then go back to your old training because now that's more appropriate. So sometimes people are like, oh my god, I'm just gonna do this 20 minute workout a day for the rest of my life. Probably not. But right now that's kind of where you're at because you're in a bit of a deficit. The last thing I'll add is if you do go on hormone replacement therapy, which you don't want kids anymore your age, it's appropriate for many men, even just for improving quality of life, that may fool you into going harder than you need to in the gym. So when you get on, if you do, you're like, oh man, I feel like I'm 20 years old again.

Fight the urge to go beat the crap out of yourself in the gym because you'll just erase whatever extra value that new testosterone levels will give you. Just still be smart about it. How long do you think y'all to follow the map, 15? Oh, I would follow it until you felt sleep was good. Man, I'm sleeping throughout the night. I'm stronger again, I feel great. And then I would say, okay, let me see if,

maybe run another cycle of it, and then maybe move into, you know, slightly bump the volume into another type of program, but don't go crazy. And you can stay in that type of training for a long period of time. It doesn't mean you need to. I mean, I would ride it as long as I'm feeling good and I'm seeing positive results.

I mean, and then only if I feel like, man, I've gained all this strength, I feel good, I feel like I could do so much more, and I've been positive results. I mean, and then only if I feel like, man, I've gained all this strength, I feel good, good, I feel like I could do so much more and I've been doing this for a while, okay, then maybe we can move to more. But I mean, right now I'd stay there until I got you feeling really, really healthy and really good.

Okay. Yeah. I love for you to send that to you. I love for you to reach back, Josh, and give us an update. Yeah, let us know what happens. Anytime we have a client that's, we're trying to troubleshoot what's going on

and you've already seen lots of doctors, I'd like to see how we can help. So. Yeah, I'd love to get you back on like 90 days if that's all right. Oh yeah, I'd love that. Okay. You got it my friend.

Cool, yeah, follow up with us Josh. Thank you Josh. Awesome, thank y'all. Y'all have a great day. You too. All right. Yeah, I mean for people watching or listening right now, I made the recommendation I did

because he did all the big things first. Yeah, he already checked the other boxes. That's it. Yeah. You know? And going through a divorce, five kids, like, it's no joke. You know?

I know that's a huge change. Well, change, yeah. And if you're like a lot of men that tend to do is we- Bury it. That's right. Pull the Justin move, you know? Stuff it down there, you know? Stuff it down there and I'm fine.

Gotta extract all the darkness out. I'm fine, that was two years ago, I'm good. You know what I'm saying? It's like, nah, it's still there. And it's manifesting in other ways and a lot of times that's what it is when all these doctors can't see something. When they can't put their finger on it like, oh it's this one thing. It's like, yeah, it's because of what's going on is you're suppressing a lot of that. So I hope he gets to the bottom of it. I hope, uh, I hope we hear back from him and hear what's going on. Our next caller is Jeremy from Texas. What's up, man.

How you doing, Jeremy? How can we help you? Hey, how's it going? Good. Nice to meet you guys. Um, a little bit about me, a little background about me with my questions. I'm 43 years old. I'm married with two kids.

Um, I have a 12 month old, I have an eight year old son. My career, I'm a physician associate. I work in primary care with a growing focus on weight loss management and nutrition counseling. My fitness journey in my 20s, I was very active. I worked at Belly Total Fitness as a fitness instructor. I was in the army, but I focused in, leaned very heavily on cardio,

though I struggled to build muscle and hypertrophy definition. Life caught up to me with, just before I went to PA school, and with shifts in the ER, bad habits, lead to gradual weight gain. So by March, 2023, I reached a turning point when hypertension, sleep apnea, GERD, fatigue, and low T

made me make some serious life changes. So here's what I've accomplished so far. Weight loss, I lost about 67 pounds. I went from 257 to 190 pounds Using mostly HIIT workouts and bodyweight workouts at first. I also used a compounded form of cellulatide to help out with the weight loss Building muscle I discovered your podcast around October 2023 which shifted my focus to muscle building and sustainable progress. So in training progress,

I completed two rounds of MAPS anabolic three days a week, gained about eight pounds of muscle. I'm currently or at the time of the email, I was currently in phase four symmetry, loving that, I was currently in phase four symmetry, loving that. Really got a mind muscle connection for the first time, individually on working unilateral. And then nutrition, I reverse dieted from, really at the beginning of the first round of maps, I was hitting about 21, 2,200 calories. I went up to 27 to 2,800 calories now per day

with about 200, 215 grams of protein. Despite the calorie increase at that point and neat, I kept at about 10,000 steps. I leaned out from 25% body fat to 23% on bioimpedance scale. Excellent. And then my main questions really would be what's next? So currently, I jump back into MAPS Anabolic while deciding what I'm going to do next.

I'm in phase two. I've really enjoyed MAPS Anabolic. I'm getting my gains. I've really enjoyed MAPS Anabolic. It's really, I'm getting my gains. Symmetry was wonderful. I'll do it again, you know, probably later this year, but I have a couple of your programs aside from the ones I've mentioned, MAPS Advanced, or MAPS Anabolic Advanced,

MAPS 15, performance, aesthetic. My main question is I'd like to get down about 18 to 20% body fat, continue with my strength increasing. And I really enjoy MAPS Anabolic, but should I explore some of the other programs for my goal? And then my next question would be, should I continue going up or stay the same? I've kind of stabilized at about, at that point I was 196, I've actually put on another two pounds, which is muscle by bioimpedance. Should I continue increasing

or stay the same? And then I have a question on your coaching, you know, program, whether that would be a fit for me, I'm more focused on obesity management, I have an obesity management certification as a physician associate, and I use that within my primary care practice. And I'm integrating, you know, a lot of weight loss management and nutrition counseling with my current practice, but I'm also planning on and doing a coaching program outside of that, to help people a lot of weight loss management and nutrition counseling with my current practice, but I'm also planning on

and doing a coaching program outside of that to help people with their transformations, just like I did. So I was wondering if that would be a fit for what I'm looking to go ahead and do. 100%. And you're killing it, bro. Yeah, you're like, great job.

So on point. You have two options here, really. You could either stay the course. Well, more than two options, but two options that I would point to. You could either stay the course, keep your calories right about where they're at, because what looks like is happening is you're burning.

He's goalie locked zone. You're getting leaner and building muscle. So you're still building muscle, body fat percentage is slowly going down. So you could just keep your calories where they're at and then ride that. You could also do mini cuts and mini bulks, see what that feels like.

So go from 2,700 calories to 2,200 calories for a couple weeks and bring it up to, let's say 2,900 calories for a couple weeks and see what that does. I personally, if I were you, I would kind of hover where you've been at and just maintain. And then the next program, Symmetry's Gray, you could go anabolic advanced, it is more intense.

So just pay attention to how your body is responding to it. That might be another program that you go into. I have a different opinion. Yeah, go ahead. Yeah, yeah, I think this is, you're in such a cool place, you have a lot of options. I would love to bump you a couple hundred calories and move you to a program that's really different than anything else you're doing.

Like a Map Strong, you know, or an old timey strength. Like move you to a program that is kind of foreign as far as like the type of movements. And so you get this new stimulus that your body really hasn't seen in the last couple of years. And because you where you're at to Sal's point of why he said you could just keep your calories, like you're in that goalie log zone where you could probably eat right where you're eating, maintain your weight and just kind of slowly lean out and get stronger. And that's a great place to be. And I've got no problem with you being there, but what would be fun to do

with you is I think we could go up in calories again. And I think if I gave you a different stimulus and you're doing movements that is like, this is foreign and new to me, Strong. You're going to get stronger, you're going to build more muscle, and I think the metabolism is just going to keep going up, which is only going to make getting shredded and leaned out easier down the road for you while also doing some fun new stuff. So if you're open to that, I would love to do that with you. And I think that you're going to respond great.

Map Strong will be a great partner. I love that. I think Map Strong, bump your calories, 250 calories or so, and then I bet you still lean out. I think you lean out and you eat more. Now as far as the course is concerned, it's perfect for what you're looking to do. Yes. I mean what we talk about is essentially how to build that business and what that looks like client relationship wise. By the by the way with your background and experience I mean that's a great you're gonna be great in that space yeah built-in leads all day long yeah it's really really will work out well so I mean you're gonna do good with

that for sure for sure that sounds awesome yeah every time that I do new stuff you know it just gets me like totally excited So I like the idea of the strong program Let me have let me have Doug send it to you I'll have Doug send you strong and I love the idea of bumping your calories and doing that Jeremy Do you use a CRM at all to manage your business? Do you have anything that you use to kind of do the the client relationship management tools anything like that? Not yet, no.

Oh, you're gonna love, you're gonna love. Let me have somebody reach out to you to talk to you about what we have for that kind of stuff, because especially somebody like you, you're already a professional, you'll really appreciate and be able to utilize all of the things that it does to build the build, just this incredible business.

I love that, yeah, have Ann call him. So we're gonna send you over strong, follow that, bump the calories, 250 calories, and then on the business side, we'll have Ann call you and kind of show you everything that we're doing on the backside so you can see what you, because I think you'll love that too. Yep. Awesome. Thank you so much. You're killing it, bro. That makes me feel really good. And so sometimes you lose sight of where you've come from and where you're going. Oh, you did great, dude. Really good choices the way you did it too and where you're at metabolically. I mean, you're in a great place.

Yeah, good job, man. Awesome. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah. Totally. I just want to say thank you guys for what you're doing. I really am stoked on how much you guys put out truth. You know, and I try to go ahead and put that value back into, you know,

the people that I'm, I'm seeing on my end, whether it's medicine or, you know, the coaching side. So I'm thankful that you guys are available. I look forward to seeing you in the program. Yeah, definitely. Yep. Awesome, for sure. Thanks Jeremy. Great job.

Yeah, he killed it. Yeah, what a great one. By the way, He has before and after pictures. He's nuts. You know what? Every time I hear something, which is all the time, we hear this all the time, I get so frustrated.

Because I saw another post the other day where they talked about the myth of reverse dieting and how that doesn't work. It's like, we have so many- Why are you deterring people? You just don't understand how it works. That's all you gotta say. If we have so many people where they do this, they go up in calories, metabolism speeds up,

and they get leaner, so you just don't understand why it's working. That's okay, we'll figure it out at some point. But it works. They didn't coach somebody through that, so they don't have that perspective. Our next caller is Kayla from Texas. Hi, Kayla.

How can I help you? Hey everybody. Morning. How are y'all? Good. We're good. How can we help you? Yeah.

Okay. So I was recently sleeved back in August, the gastric sleeve, and I'm trying to obviously lose weight and build muscle. I'm going to the gym three times a week, but the only, I'm getting protein in, most of my protein with protein shakes and Greek yogurt. I have a hard time eating meat. So I only eat meat like once a day.

And I'm only getting like a hundred grams to maybe 130 grams of protein every day is that enough and is it sustainable to only drink protein and eat Greek yogurt? Yeah it's not bad yeah especially considering our situation that's it that's not bad at all. Yeah I mean do you like eggs? No. No. Okay that's fine you're doing fine.. I mean, dairy is a great source of protein. Greek yogurt's great. Shakes, you know, whole foods always of course ideal, but here's the deal, we're dealing with

a different context here. I mean, in your email it says that you really, eating meat is just so, and what I don't, what I wouldn't want you to do, unless there was a medical emergency, is sit there and force yourself to eat all the time because that's not worth. It's also not sustainable. You won't continue that forever. You'll end up, you'll end up going reverting. So it's not a good idea.

Tell me a little bit about the three days a week training. What, what is your strength training looks like? So I do a lower body day, an upper body day and a full body day. Okay. You fall, are you following anything particular or did you put it together yourself? Like, no, I have it online coach and I followed the program that she's given me. Okay.

How's it been going so far? It's been going well. Um, I've been going to the gym consistently for about four months now. And I do, I have gotten stronger in some areas, but some areas stay the same. Okay, when you, so before four months ago, were you doing any strength training or is this totally new?

No, I was just walking. Okay. Okay, so I'm gonna guess that the volume may not be appropriate, because if this is your first four months of strength training You should see pretty consistent strength gains across the board Unless your diet was really low calorie and really had a tough time eating in the beginning or something like that

Can you tell me how long your workouts take and how many exercises general you're doing? Yeah, so about 45 minutes to an hour And I do about six or seven different sets. Okay. That seems okay. It's not bad. No, I mean, I would prefer her on maps 15 where she's doing just a couple of exercises. Can we send you a program to take a look at maybe follow it, follow one of our

programs? Yeah, I would love that. I'd love to look at that. Okay. And how long have you been with your coach? Uh, just the four months that I had been going to the gym. Okay. And you, you enjoy working with them?

Yeah. Okay. Good. We have coaches too. So if you ever wanted to change or try something different, um, we don't advertise it just cause we're, we're, we would get too many people that we could, you know, service or whatever. Um, but if you're happy with your coach and they seem to be supporting you

well, um, then stay the course and we'll send you a program that you can try out that's different than the one you're following that we think might be okay. Sounds like you're on a pretty good track though. I mean, if you're happy with your coach, you're seeing some strength change, you're able to hit the 100, 130 grams of protein or 110 grams of protein, that's good. You're doing good. Okay.

Yeah. And obviously you've heard us say and you know that ideally is Whole Foods, but again, context matters. And I've trained many, many clients that have done this, and it's like, that's hard to eat a lot of- It has to be sustainable. ... a lot of calories and a lot of food that way, solid food that way. So I think you're doing a great job.

What you're doing is far better than the person who just decides not to eat. I am so happy to hear this because I truly thought y'all were gonna say, no, that's not enough, and no, you need more animal protein or some kind of protein in. So I'm really happy, you guys. Thank y'all. Yeah, you got it.

Thank you for calling in, Kayla. Yeah, keep it up and then if you have any more questions, reach back to us, all right? Okay, sounds good. Thank y'all. Thank you. Yeah, for context, people she's lost 40 over 40 pounds already. Yeah yeah you know doing this. And she's strained training she's over doing it. She's getting enough protein that's the point like could she take in more to be

more ideal yeah probably but you don't want to do is place the wrong priorities and force feed and getting that so hard with the client. I'm like so happy if my client is hitting her protein intake when they've done that surgery. It's like, it's so hard for them to eat, and so it's like, just you consistently hitting your protein is a huge win. And if you need to do it through shakes

and Greek yogurt and things like that, I'm fine with that. I'm all good. Look, if you like the show, come find us on Instagram. Justin is at Mind Pump. Justin, I'm at Mind Pump to Stefano, and Adam's at Mind Pump. 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

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