Mind Pump: Raw Fitness Truth - 2554: The 5 Best Exercises for a Stronger Grip and Forearms & More (Listener Live Coaching)

Episode Date: March 15, 2025

Mind Pump Fit Tip: The 5 best exercises for a stronger grip and forearms. (2:27) Optimizing your mitochondrial health is one of the keys to longevity. (16:34) Feeling manly. (24:48) Justin is getting his metal fix in. (28:56) How out of touch with reality can you possibly be? (33:53) Caffeine withdrawal is nasty. (37:07) Red vs. white wine, is there a difference in health benefits? (43:26) The ideological gap between Gen Z boys and girls. (47:43) CRAZY odds. (49:29) The future of live performance and entertainment. (54:38) #ListenerLive question #1 – Any guidance that would be able to steer me in the right direction and get more information on my peptide journey? (57:02) #ListenerLive question #2 – Is there a way to counteract the hand pain I am experiencing while lifting? How can I improve my grip strength? (1:08:57) #ListenerLive question #3 – Any advice how I can improve my overall squat mobility getting under the bar? (1:16:33) #ListenerLive question #4 – What are your thoughts on Hyrox? Am I living the most optimal lifestyle to make maximum progress with my Hyrox training? (1:26:13) Related Links/Products Mentioned Ask a question to Mind Pump, live! Email: [e-mail] Visit Joovv for an exclusive offer for Mind Pump listeners! ** Code MINDPUMP to get $50 off your first purchase. ** Visit Rock Recovery Center for the exclusive offer for Mind Pump listeners! ** They’re offering a free consultation call to discuss your situation. Whether you’re personally battling addiction or have a loved one in need of help, they’re here to guide you toward the support you need. By filling out the form and scheduling your call, you’ll also be entered for a chance to win a free 60-day scholarship at Rock Recovery Center, their premier treatment center in West Palm Beach, Florida ** March Promotion: MAPS Performance or MAPS Performance Advanced 50% off! ** Code MARCH50 at checkout ** Mind Pump # 1895: Eight Hacks for an Insanely Strong Grip HANDGRIP DYNAMOMETER Red Light Therapy and Methylene Blue May Promote Brain Health Angel Reese hints at possible strike by WNBA players: 'If y'all don't give us what we want, we sitting out' The Most Commonly Abused Drug Statistics Consumption of Red Versus White Wine and Cancer Risk: A Meta-Analysis of Observational Studies Gen Z's widening gender divide has turned political. It's ruining our relationships. The Bible is a collection of 66 - Miraculous Bible Visit Butcher Box for this month’s exclusive Mind Pump offer!  ** New users that sign up will receive ground beef in every box for the LIFETIME of their subscription + $20 off their first box when they use code MINDPUMP at checkout. ** Train the Trainer Webinar Series Mind Pump Hormones Facebook Private Forum MAPS Prime Webinar MAPS Prime Pro Webinar Mind Pump Podcast – YouTube Mind Pump Free Resources People Mentioned Jay Campbell (@jaycampbell333) Instagram Dr. William Seeds (@williamseedsmd) Instagram Dr. Tyna Moore (@drtyna) Instagram LAUREN FITZ, M.D. (@drlaurenfitz) Instagram Amelia Boone (@arboone11) Instagram Hunter McIntyre (@huntthesheriff) Instagram  

If you want to pump your body and expand your mind, there's only one place to go. 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 Mind Pump. Today's episode, we had live callers call in

and we got to help them on air. We got to coach them, but that was after the intro. Today's intro was 54 minutes long. Today Justin and I, it was just Justin and I, had a lot of fun. We talked about fitness, diet, working out, studies. It was awesome. After that we got to the live callers. By the way if you want to be on an episode like this one, email us at yourquestion at live at mindpumpmedia.com. This episode is brought to you by some sponsors. The first one is Juv. This is red light therapy like you see in the studies. So when you read studies that

shows that red light therapy helps with your skin, helps with inflammation, with healing, with recovery, boosts testosterone, grows back hair. It's the red light that Juv uses. Other companies don't use the same red light that I use the same frequency or the same intensity so you have to use it like ten times as much to get the same effects don't waste your money get Juv that's the real deal go to J O O V V dot com forward slash mind pump use the code mind pump get $50 off your first purchase this episode is also brought to you by Rock Recovery Center. This is a rehab facility That helps with addiction and they're very generous. Here's what they did

They'll give anybody anybody who goes to rock recovery center.com forward slash mind pump a free consultation But one person will win a free scholarship a 60,000 scholarship to go through rehab if you are struggling or someone you know or love is struggling, by the way, we trust these guys. We know them personally, we love them, we trust them. If I had a family member in need, that's exactly where I'd send them.

So if you have someone like that, you wanna help them out, go to rockrecoverycenter.com forward slash mind pump. Also, the sale this month is MAPS performance and MAPS performance advance. Both incredible athletic performance training workout programs. They teach you how to move fast, give you explosive power, develop balanced muscle, burn body fat. Both of them 50% off. If you're interested go to MAPSfitnessproducts.com and then use the code MARCH50 for the discount. Alright here comes the show. You think you're interested, go to mapsfitnessproducts.com and then use the code MARCH50 for the discount.

All right, here comes the show. You think you're strong, but if your hands are weak, your forearms are weak, you're not. Your hands connect you to the world. We're gonna talk about the five best exercises and movements to give you strong hands and strong forearms. I'll start with the first one. Justin, the farmer's walk.

This is my favorite. This is the best, in my opinion, one of the best exercises for the kind of grip strength that translates, because what you tend to need with grip strength, crushing strength is important, of course, but static strength, the ability to isometrically contract and hold is so important for our hands.

And a farmer's walk trains that effectively. Yeah. And you really feel that when you're doing compound lifts and you have to get through a lot of reps and to maintain that kind of composure and strength, that's definitely a skill that you can work on and build. So, farmer carries, it's a fantastic exercise for that because it's now we're getting that isometric contraction, but we're extending that and then adding variables of movement in there. So I'm so glad you said that because someone might be like, well why can't I just hold the dumbbells? Which you can. You can just hold dumbbells, but the walk includes the

rest of the body and what makes that so good is that you want to be able to exert strength with your grip while doing other things because that's tends to be what happens when you're using your grip. When you're using your grip you tend to have to also do other things like pulling or pushing and so a farmer's walk and it also look the shifting of the weight also makes the each dumbbell a little heavier as the weight moves through space. It does, you know, train a little bit of a loss. It does.

I mean, and that's the thing. I think a lot of people don't realize just like those little variances and those factors that kind of pull you left to right or twist you, it fatigues you a lot faster than normal. So if you're training that, and something like that happens when you're in a more static lifting situation,

but you can control that, your body can react to that without exerting too much energy, it's like, man, you're so much more efficient at that. Yeah, and by the way, a lot of people believe that the only application for grip strength in the gym, or the reason why I should say to say to be a little bit more clear that grip strength is important for pulling movements only. That's not true. Now of course your grip is very important for pulling movements. All pulling

movements involve you grabbing something whether it be a handle or a bar or a dumbbell and you need your grip needs to be strong enough to support the rest of your body. But a lot of people don't realize that a weak grip will also impair your ability to press. Your weak forearms and a weak grip will make it harder to press. Now if you don't believe me, look at the top powerlifters and how they wear wrist guards or braces when they're pressing ungodly weight. If you have a weak forearm and wrist and your hand is weak then that will limit you in every upper body exercise that you do. More so in the pulling movements but also in the pressing movements and you can do this test yourself if you tend to do

overhead presses or bench presses and you don't think too much about your grip, next time you press do this. Squeeze and crush the bar while pressing and you will feel stronger. Yeah. You end up lifting a little more as a result. It's actually amazing how many more muscle fibers you can recruit by having that real solid tight grip and it's that a radiation effect right? We see that play out and to be able to tense up and embrace not only is it more protective for your spine and everything else, but too it adds in like a 10% more output. Yeah, so irradiation is a term that refers to how the central nervous system, I guess for lack of a better term, fires. So if I were to do a leg extension with one leg, I would exert a certain amount of force.

If I were to do that leg extension and then tense up my whole body while doing it, I would exert more force. You could test this yourself. You could squeeze something with one hand as hard as you can, but try to keep every other muscle in your body relaxed besides the ones you need to squeeze. And then repeat it by gritting your teeth and squeezing the rest of your body, and you're gonna feel much stronger. You can measure this.

You can get a dynamometer, that's it. You can get a dynamometer, test it out for yourself, do one with everything relaxed, then do one with 10. And by the way, your body naturally knows this. This is why when you exert maximal effort, you tend to tense up your face, grit your teeth, and involve the rest of the body in an effort that might not even necessarily need the rest of the body

because the central nervous system fires more powerfully that way, so gripping the bar, squeezing it when you're pressing, that's part of what you're getting. Did I tell you I just started to wear a mouth guard like training right now. It make a difference? It makes a big difference. And mainly because I've noticed that like my teeth have been a big issue for me and I've had the hood of the dentist so many times now I'm like,

I gotta do something. I'm cracking teeth, grinding at night. And, you know, so I'm like, I guess now that I'm really trying to kind of push and exceed my limits a little bit more, like I should probably consider that. Is it for lifting or is it like a, like a football one or lacrosse? No, you know, for right now I should probably mold one and, and, and bring one just for training, but I've been using like my night guard just as, just as like, you know, a placeholder for the meantime. But to that point you're bringing it up though,

when you really kind of bite down and use all the masters and use these muscles in your neck, and it all translates into more power outputs, crazy. Of course, all right, so another great exercise is another isometric hold, but it's with a different grip. These are pinch grip holds and typically what you do is you'll grab a plate with your fingers flat

against the plate. So a bar is like this, right? You do this kind of flat grip and you hold them at your sides and you can do a farmer walk like this as well and because of the position of the fingers and How you're holding the weight it is a different stimulus on the forearms and I found that when I've added pinch grip Holds to my workout that the rest of my grip gets much stronger just because of the difference in typically don't grab things that way So it's a different no. He has like the Kung Fu grip, right?

It's like a GI Joe. Yeah. I was actually thinking about that. What if you, you know, replaced your fork with like chopsticks and I wonder if that would like, you know, add just that little bit of extra, uh, dexterity and finger strength. I don't know. Or you had a dumbbell fork. Yeah. But yeah, so a pinch grip hold, just like you would use it, just like a farmer's walk, it's just a different grip.

And then the next one, I used to do these all the time when I was doing jujitsu and it was mainly because the demands that the gi would place on my hands was so unique. So I could get my hands strong in the gym, but gripping a gi, gripping cloth was totally different. It placed more pressure on the ends of my fingers. Sometimes the cloth would gather differently. It would be different sizes of grips.

If I got a lot of cloth or a little bit of cloth, or if I wrapped it around my hand. And so what I started doing, uh, was bringing a towel, two towels to the gym and I'd hang them over a pull-up bar and I'd grip the towel and hang or do pull-ups. And that strength, not only does it strengthen your hands like nothing else, very painful by the way, if you've never done these before, they're very difficult, but it also strengthened my wrist in this kind of lateral way because of the way that it was being placed on my wrist.

And that's probably the strongest my hands got was when I did those. By the way, you could do that on cable exercise. You could put a towel through the hook and do all kinds of rows and different movements. I know they sell, do you know they sell geese sleeves now with a hook on them? Really? Yeah, so jujitsu guys will use you sometimes.

It's actually a sleeve with a hook that you can put on a cable. Oh, what a trip. I love that, yeah, I love doing that with the towel and especially inverted rows and being able to do that. But just that crushing grip, it translates so well to holding weight and to a firm handshake. Yes.

It'll really improve that if you run into old men. It's 100%. Speaking of gripping a towel, when I first met my wife, she was proficient in the silks. So if people don't know, that's a big, you see this in circus acts and stuff. It's like a huge drape essentially, it's hanging from real high point

and the performers will climb up it, wrap their legs around it, do really crazy aerial things. But she would climb up it with just her hands. She put her legs straight out and she'd climb up it and I remember the first time watching her and I was just impressed with the pull-up part. Yeah. Until I tried it because I could do pull-ups but it was the grip that was really hard because you had to grip the silks like this. How did she say like how long it took her to where it wasn't really as as much of a struggle because I had to take a while for her to build up.

She trained because she traveled with the circus. She wasn't a performer, but she traveled with them. She got to train with some of the best silk performers in the world, and so she hung out with them all the time, and she just trained with them all the time. So I probably, I don't know, to be honest with you, probably a year.

I'm trying to think back if she ever told me. She got really good though. She put one foot in either side and splits and flip and do all this other stuff. But I remember she showed me that and I was just like, Oh, it's looks like that. And I tried to grab it and it was just the, the grip was so difficult.

Another exercise is reverse curls. We've talked about this many times on the podcast really strengthens the brachioradialis muscle, this top forearm muscle. It also strengthens the wrist extension part of your wrist. And a lot of people, they have strength when they lift weights in this flexion part, right,

coming down this way, but in this extension part, they tend to be really weak. And you know this, if you go try to do a reverse curl and you find that you can't do very much weight at all or you can't move your arm. Especially that pronated position. Yes, you rarely will make that movement happen. By the way, this is a great, I used to do these with my tech workers because it helped them a lot with carpal tunnel because they were always in this prone position with their

hands on the keyboard. It becomes imbalanced, right? They get too strong in just that one direction and it dominates and creates an imbalance. Yeah. And you would think to avoid that, but we would do a little reverse curls or Zottman curls and it would fix, I don't know, 80% of their issue just from doing that. Lastly, we have behind the back wrist curls. So these are forearm curls,

but with the barbell behind your back, this is an old school bodybuilding movement. This develops the meaty part of the forearm, the forearm flexors, and it's just a great exercise for developing that muscle. And all of these are great options. Now the next question people often ask is like, when?

Yeah. When do I add these? So here's the thing, if you're not using wrist wraps, your grip's getting some work by lifting weights, you don't need to add a ton to get your hands, especially in the beginning, to get your hands to get stronger. So I suggest picking one of these and doing like two to three sets at the end of your back workout once a week, start there.

And by the, by the second or third week, you should see significant strength gains and then if you want to scale up from there, but what people tend to do is they tend to go, Oh, I want to get a stronger grip. Then they program in like a full hand and forearm workout and they on top of their regular workout. Yeah. And they just overdo it and fry themselves out. And then you have all those tools that people use, uh, that you can use.

I have, I have a pair here. Uh, these grippers like this is like real inexpensive by them on Amazon. I love these for grip strength. Really easy to over train though. If you just do them all day long. I made that mistake. Have you done that before? Well, cause.

That tennis elbow. Yeah. Yeah. And because, um, I was trying to get more strength and dexterity in my fingers even because, so they have one that's like that, but it's like, it has different spring sections where I could push down one finger at a time. Oh, I've seen that. Yeah.

Like the finger hoops? Uh-huh. The hoops, okay. And so I, I was kind of obsessed with it, almost like it was a fidget tool during the day and, and, and I was constantly of obsessed with it, almost like it was a fidget tool during the day. And I was constantly doing it, and to the point where, yeah, I just started to naturally bring some arthritis and pain, and it was just because I was overdoing it on top of training and everything else.

But once I started to kind of spread it out and then do it a little bit less frequently, it did make a difference. Like, my fingers were a lot stronger and could apply more pressure for guitar. Yeah, yeah. So something like this, if somebody wants to try one of these, I suggest getting one that is relatively easy where you could rep out 30 of them. And then what you do is you do, so let's say you could do 30 and 30 is pretty hard for you. Do like 10, like three times a day. So you just pick it up do 10 on each hand three times a day practice that frequently don't scale up until it gets extremely easy and that'll get your grip

strong very very quickly. Well there is that one I would also suggest because we don't get a lot of that flexion where our fingers are in this position coming up and so they actually have like little loops. I've seen that. With rubber bands that you can- You just do this. Express, yeah, you can widen your fingers and also pull them back. And I think it's just a good offset to a lot of, because we're always kind of gripping

down and the crush grips, I guess, a little bit more naturally, you know, we use that a lot more. Yeah, yeah. They sell kits. Look at that on Amazon. There's a whole pack. Is it called trigger finger? I think my wife had that for a bit. naturally, we use that a lot more. They sell kits, look at that on Amazon. There's a whole pack. Is it called trigger finger? I think my wife had that for a bit. Oh, did she?

She was using that too to counter it. And she had to train in that extension part. Wow, that's really interesting. Hey, I gotta tell you about, so mitochondrial health, big topic, especially in the like, by the way, people wondering where Adam is, he's sick right now. He's at home sick.

Yeah, we're not just ignoring him. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He would never not talk this way. I was gonna say, that'd be hilarious if he was just sitting there the whole time. No, his whole family got influenza, and they know this because the person who gave it to them tested themselves for, and they got tested positive

for influenza A. By the way, I sent him thymus and alpha, the peptide. But I think it was too late because he was already really sick. You gotta use that early on. Does that help a lot with the immune system? Oh dude, it's incredible. Oh, it's incredible.

If you feel like you're getting sick, you start using it. I mean, they used it in, so when COVID was going crazy, there were a lot of doctors that started using thymus and alpha and were reporting that it was preventing quite a bit of problems. And then, okay, here's a little conspiracy theory. They made it so you couldn't get thymus and alpha, which you can get it now.

Yeah. But during that period of time, they're like, no, no thymus and alpha. Is it the same? Cause I've also heard of VIP is one. No, different. That's a different peptide. Different. That's a different one.

Also good for the immune system. But thymus and alpha is like at the top for immune system health. So it's like, I always have it. And in case I'm gonna get sick. Which by the way, did you know that you can Uber, you can do courier with Uber? No.

Yeah. I did not know that. Yeah, cause I was on the phone with Adam, and he's like super sick, and he's got a fever in and out, and I know that Max and Katrina were super sick, and I'm like, oh, this isn't good. So I'm like, I got thymus and alpha, and I was trying to figure out a way to get it to him,

and then my wife's like, I think you can Uber, you could do Courier. Wow, that's smart. She's like, you did it before, I'm like, I did? So I said, yeah, dude, I could literally send anyone anything by Uber. It's crazy, I mean it makes sense, because they're driving and- Well when I was doing it too, I was thinking to myself,

like, it was like in a- You're not gonna like mail it. It was like in a brown paper bag, you know what I mean? And it's got like syringes in there, so I'm hooking them up, you know, it's injectable. And I'm like, I wonder how many like, drug deals have gone down like this. Drug deals have gone down with these Uber drivers. Yeah,'m like, I wonder how many like, drug deals have gone down like this. Yeah, how many drug deals have gone down

with these Uber drivers. Yeah. Wow. So anyway, I sent that over to him. Interesting. Yeah, but he's still, he's still out. All right, so mitochondrial health. So we hear a lot about how optimizing your mitochondria

is probably one of the keys to longevity. We see a lot of chronic health conditions and degenerative conditions that are at least coming from, maybe not the root, but many of them we think is the root is this mitochondrial dysfunction, right? Mitochondria is at the heart of energy production for all of your cells. And when your mitochondria isn't healthy, you're not healthy period. End of story. And what does that look like? It could look like a lot of things,

but typically it looks like fatigue, inflammation, weakness. And then it looks like chronic health conditions. So this is why all the biohackers talk about it. This is why methylene blue is like this big talked about thing. Apparently it's really

good for mitochondria. I got to tell you a story about methylene blue. So I don't have a ton of experience with it. You can look at, you know, if you've just recently been experimenting with it. Yeah. And you can look this up if you want to read up on it. It's been around for a hundred years and it's a, it's a MAOI inhibitor natural one. So if you're on an antidepressant, you don't want to necessarily take it, could cause problems, but it improves energy. It's good for your brain health, this, that, and the other, all the things they say about these

types of compounds. But anyway, I've been experimenting with it. One of the side effects of it is because it's blue, is that you pee blue. Yeah. Which is noticeable. So I was at home and I mean, it's blue, is that you pee blue. Yeah. Which is noticeable. So I was at home, and I mean, it's blue pee. It's not like a little blue.

It's blue pee. No, no, it fills the bowl up with blue. Yeah, dude. Yeah, it's legit. Look like someone washed the toilet. Yeah, yeah, yeah, like you use the scrubber. Yeah, so I go to the bathroom, so I'm at home, I'm upstairs with my wife, we're getting ready for bed.

She's, you know, I don't remember what she was doing, brushing her teeth or something, and I'm peeing, right? And she doesn't know I'm taking Meth, I'm upstairs with my wife, we're getting ready for bed. She's, I don't remember if she's brushing her teeth or something, and I'm peeing, right? And she doesn't know I'm taking Methyl and Blue, or whatever, so I'm like, oh babe, come look at my pee. Bro, she's freaked out. What the F are you doing? What are you taking now?

I'm like, oh no, no, it's not a big deal. It's not good for your liver. Yeah, you're gonna tell her. You're freaking out. She's totally freaking out. Like, no, it's normal, it's not a big deal. You take too much stuff, which is just true, 100% true. Yeah, I'm not denying that, but.

But anyway, Methyl and Blue, I've been reading articles, you pointed this out, articles on combining it with red light therapy. Yeah, because red light therapy, what does that do? It enhances your mitochondrial function. I actually looked it up, how they work together. So methylene blue biochemically works on your mitochondria. Red light therapy is what's called biophysical.

So what that means is your mitochondria will actually feed off of red light, a special kind of red light, not any kind of red light, but a special kind of red light that you'll get from like our partners at J.U.V.E. make red light panels that do this. And you got to get the right kind. You can find some that they're not the right intensity, they're not the right wavelength, or it's really weak. You have to use it 15 times to get the effects that you would get from like Juve once. But anyway, if you get the right kind, that kind of red light, when you shine it on your body, it literally feeds the mitochondria.

Yeah. So the, you brought this up off air. I looked it up and- So now in combination, was that like- Both. They're like, do these together and you get this really amplified effect of energy production from your mitochondria.

I'm remembering now, there's a podcast, I was listening to a biohacker and he was kind of bringing this up and he just kind of was throwing numbers out there. I don't know necessarily that it was like a legit study on it yet, but like he was trying to claim that it was almost like a 60, 65% increase of, you know, the effect of the methyl and blue because of the red light. Wow. Yeah, in combination with it. So like really magnified it. But again, like I said, there's no, he didn't pin to a very specific study, but it was interesting that, you know, I, it was interesting that, it did, again, they're looking into it in terms of studying the fact of it together.

Wow, look at that article Doug brought up, the title of it, Red Light Therapy and Methylene Blue May Promote Brain Health. The combination shows promise for mental health treatment. When it comes to things like depression and anxiety, there are psychological causes, right? Like, um, I don't have a, I don't have

purpose in my life, meaning I got, I mean, aiming at the wrong things. I'm, you know, those types of things, but then there's also physical causes of depression and anxiety, like poor health, obesity, inflammation, mitochondrial dysfunction. So this is talking about treating the physical roots of some of those things. Because you know, sometimes, well I don't know,

sometimes you see this quite a bit, people with anxiety and depression will see a significant reduction just because they're healthier. Oh yeah, yeah. Like their life circumstances didn't even change it's just they got... Their body's functioning better, their brains working better, you're getting more blood flow so they're healing more. Yeah there's a lot of those just healthy habits like contributes to just

a better operating brain. Yeah so and red light therapy by itself in studies has been shown to be beneficial for both anxiety and depression. Basically anything that will improve from improved mitochondria has been shown in studies to be positively impacted by red light therapy. And by the way, these studies go back, some of them as far as 70s?

Yeah, I was gonna say 60s, but yeah, 70s for sure. Yeah, yeah, they go back a long way, so it's not something new. Anyway, speaking of my wife, I got a funny story for you. So we go out to dinner Friday night, it's our date night, and she had bought this dress, and we were in Hawaii recently, and we found this store that she really liked,

and she bought this dress, it was just smoking hot dress. She just looked gorgeous in it. By the way, it's funny, I don't know if this ever happens to you, she puts on this dress and I'm like, oh my God, you're so, wow, you look so good. Like, you look incredible, like hot. You've been holding out on me. Yeah, no, I mean, I'm like.

I used to tell my wife that when she puts makeup on, I'm like, oh my God. Oh no, no. Who are you? No, no. It's all right, she still looks great without it, Oh my God. Oh no. No. Who are you? No. No. It's all right, she still looks great without it, but she's, you know, she rarely does it, so. Who is this?

Who is this lady of the night? No, no, so she puts on this dress and she looks just like super hot in it. I'm like, am I gonna last all night with her or what? This is gonna be, like, I'm gonna get her homesick. But anyway, she puts it on. And then I have this thought, like, we get in the car and I'm like, hey babe gonna last all night with her or what? This is gonna be, like you're gonna run. But anyway, she was, and then I had this thought, like we get in the car and I'm like,

hey babe, you're not gonna wear that like when you go out without me, right? Like you're not gonna like go out with your friends and wear that. She's like, why? No, I mean, I don't know why. Like, great ladies night dress? I'm like, no, I don't think you should wear that

when you're out without me. I think that's just the husband dress. But anyway, she looked great, right? So we go out, we have a good time, we had some margaritas. We're coming home, and so my wife has this thing where, if she feels confined, she'll start to panic.

Okay. Just because of the tightness or the? If she starts to feel trapped, right? And I think it goes back to when she was a kid, her brother, her older brother would hold her down and like tickle her or he do the thing where he spits and then he sucks it out. Older brothers huh? Yeah and she would scream or whatever so like like if we're in the car

you know sometimes you take off and your seatbelt and your seatbelt will tighten on you and you know how it kind of locks yeah that'll freak her out she'll like unplug it right if she starts to feel confined right you know like if she's trying to take a sweater off and it gets stuck on her head, oh no, she'll freak out. Yeah, so you gotta go over and like rip it off. Anyway, so we're on our way home and my wife, she decides she wants to unzip the side of the dress

just to breathe a little bit because it's kind of tight around here. So she starts to try to unzip it. And I'm not noticing anything, I'm driving and it's stuck. So she starts to, but now she feels trapped. Right. Cause now it's like a panic thing. Yeah. So she's like, working it's not going down. It's not going down. I hear the ramp up, right? Hear the ramp up. It's not going down. Okay. I need this off. So help me. I need this off. I need this off.

So I'm reaching over trying to pull it down and it's stuck and I'm trying to pull it down. Not to like get it on her skin or just just I'm not trying to damage the dress. Yeah, that too. So I'm like pulling it, like doing the thing, driving, I'm adding a little bit more strength. Now she's going, then she starts to go in a full panic mode. I need to get out, I need to get out. She starts freaking out. So we stop at a stoplight.

So now my wife's freaking out. So I gotta save her, right? So I just rip that fucker in half. You ripped your dress dude! Oh no! You ripped my dress, dude. Oh no. You ripped my dress. I'm like, let's try to save you, babe. You're like freaking out over here, dude.

Sorry. Yeah, I'm just being helpful. Yeah. But it was part of me that was kind of like, oh, you know, you kind of feel manly. Like, yeah. Yeah, I did that. I just saved you.

Yeah. You know what I mean? Now let's celebrate. Yeah. So we got home. Was she mad though that her dress was all ruined? She was upset. Yeah, she was upset.

But she, you know, I'm like, well, it's all right. We got to wear it once, you know? Yeah, there's been a few of those that, like, you get to wear it once, and then it's like, it just, yeah, it gets trashed. That doesn't happen to me, dude. I wear the same things over and over again until it's too late.

I can never find, yeah, I've always tried to look at opportunities to take Courtney somewhere where it's like you gotta dress somewhat formal and it's just like, that's a hard thing to find. It's like, where do you go to like a play or like where do you go where you're all like, you know, suited up, I don't know. Do you like symphonies?

I've been to symphonies, yeah, I like symphonies, but. So I found one. I guess that would be one. I found one that's candlelight. They do a candlelight symphony in San Jose. Okay. That I'm gonna be going to. I Yeah, I like symphonies. But yeah, I guess that would be one. I found one that's candlelight They do a candlelight symphony in San Jose. Okay, that I'm gonna be going to you kind of dress up for that I just don't do enough classy things. I guess You can't take her to a mosh pit Metal concert. Oh dude, so I got I got my metal fix on over the weekend and went up to Trekkie and oh Did you met you you did your you and your band? Yeah, they all came out and it was like was that massive guy your buddy

yeah you met him right yeah the towering giant he's the one I was talking about when we started the podcast he was my roommate in college that's the guy yeah and like he's a big dude he's huge yeah he's huge so in college you must have been in policy oh bro I was. What's his name? So he's 6'8". Yeah. Yeah, he's 6'8". He's a big boy.

He's a little bit taller than my dad. And I don't know if that's weird, but I always, you know what's weird about that? I was always friends with like really, you know, giant guys like that. Like, I don't know what that means about me, but it was just like, cause I like to test, you know, my strength and all. So I would usually like try and wrestle him and like, I I like to test my strength and all. So I would usually try and wrestle him. And I was reminding him of one time I actually got him. And he's like, oh, remember that?

I'm like, oh, but you remember the big indenture in the wall? Because I caught him right as he was getting out of his room. And I picked him up and kind of threw him into the wall. And he left this huge indent in the wall. And then of course he grabbed me and held me up, and I was kicking. But it was like, I remember that one time I got him. It's the same thing with my dad.

That's so funny. So you guys went up and played? Yeah, yeah, so he's the drummer. My other friend's a big guy. He's another guitarist, and then my friend Andrew, so Adam and Andrew. And so we all were in a band in college and had all these aspirations and whatnot. And then it was just like, we went on our own separate ways,

but we're still really good friends. And Andrew's been able to maintain a pretty decent career as a musician. And he does worship and songwriting and stuff within his church. And, um, also goes to like Nashville all the time and plays like solo projects. And so he's like really talented, super talented. He's the talent. And so is Adam. They're both the talent. And then me and Ed were, were like, uh, just bringing it back. And I've been playing with him here.

He lives down in San Luis Obispo area. bringing it back and I've been playing with him here. He lives down in San Francisco area. And so we just started to kind of get our chops back. And so I, we met up this weekend and, and wrote a couple of songs together, recorded them and it was fun. Yeah. Brand new. It was like a trip about about being old dads. You know? Yeah. One of of them. I was like, that makes perfect sense if you wrote a song about. Yeah, one of them was, but it's like, still metal, so it's not like sappy or anything.

Is it angry? Uh, not necessarily angry, but. I hear that sometimes. Well, the other one, the main one that we record, I showed Doug, it was for like a, like I had an idea for a kid show a while back and this was kind of like a fun metal version of like you know Saturday morning cartoons how you had like Mighty Morphin Power Rangers like Voltron so it sounds just like that

but a little more metal. Oh wow. And you have it recorded? Yeah. Yeah. Are we allowed to share it? I mean we can once I get it mastered and all that, I'll put it up and I'll send a link. What's the name of your band? So we were Bloodshed Promise, but now, the kid version of it. Bloodshed Promise. Bloodshed Promise.

Check us out on SoundCloud. Yeah. What's it called now? Yeah, so we were like, if it was like the kid show version of us, it was five feather death punch. No, it wasn't. Instead of like five finger death punch, it's five feather. You took out the finger, not the death?

Yeah, I don't know why. It's a kid's bad name? Yeah, yeah, yeah. This will make it more kid friendly. It's probably the cool kids. That's awesome. We might have to change that friendly. It's really the cool kids. Yeah. That's awesome.

We might have to change that part. That's awesome, dude. Yeah. Was it fun? It was really fun. We had a blast. We like, that's the thing, it's like, what else am I gonna do?

Get drunk and destructive, and you know, this is like us geeking out and like being, you know, collaborating. What do you guys do? Do you guys get to get, so is it just all day you guys just play? Dude, yeah, it's cause we all, Oh, that's my old, my old band song right there. Little surprise.

I wrote that song. I didn't expect it to be up there. Wow. I expected to start playing. I'm going to be listening to these. I actually liked the beginning of that song. It made me feel a little, yeah. So the, it has that kind of metal core vibe,

and that was our theme song for the show too. So yeah, it's good. It was fun. It was a good time, dude. We just had a blast and acted like kids and idiots and rode the scooters and you know, big ass dudes on a scooter. Wait, those guys were.

You should have seen it, dude. Did they even go? Did they even go? We're all going and then my friend Ed's in the back just like, he's like, we had to wait on him a bunch. The engine broke. I think you hit capacity there, bro. Oh man. Speaking of funny stuff, did you see the, who is it in the WNBA that wants to call for a strike? Oh, I saw, it was, I don't know her name, but she has like a podcast and I

think it started there, I believe. What is, so, I mean, how out of touch with reality can you possibly be? Yeah. They're subsidized. So the WNBA is subsidized by the NBA. In other words, money that the NBA makes, they give to make the WNBA able to continue. It doesn't make much money, because it needs to be subsidized.

Nobody watches it. And you have these girls, what's her name, Angel Reese? Yeah. Okay. They're coming out and saying, we're gonna go on strike to secure better pay. And they're talking about gender gap and whatever. Here's the thing, nobody watches, that's why.

More people watch, they'll make more money. It's not a male-female thing that there's some kind of discrimination. It's like, nobody watches. Yeah, no, I get that. That's crazy. I think her angle, though, I get that. That's crazy. I think, I think her angle though, I was, I was trying to listen was that, um, new girls coming into the league are, are making better contracts.

And so she's kind of been in the league for a while. And so I think this was her way of like trying to renegotiate, you know, for some of the older veteran players, but I don't know. Yeah, you're, it's, you're right. It's, it's, it's, it's a bleeding, uh, sport. Like it's not, um, doing well. Like it is, it's propped up by, uh, the, the NBA. So, but I mean, Caitlin, um, King Clark, right. Yeah. Brought a lot of new life and new eyes and attention into it. And so she's got more of those. What's that? Didn't she get a lot of hate from a lot of the players? I'm not,

I don't follow any of it, but I just loosely, you know, I'm interested in athletes in general, but yeah, she, she actually, I mean, brought it, you know, when you have like one like electric player that comes in and like really kind of sparks interest, like she had that that factor. And so if anything, they should be embracing that and like, let's get more people in the seats and you know, hopefully like that develops. Because that's the thing too. It's like, I'm not trying to hate on the girls trying to have, you know, a sport and like do something, you know, to work up to that point. You know to work up to that point. You know what nobody likes though

Nobody likes it when you're in a position In a lucky position, you're actually getting paid to play. Yeah a sport You're getting paid to play a game which Nobody nobody likes to hear nobody gets paid to play a game except for the the most rarest of individuals So you're getting paid to play a game That's also being subsidized because you guys can't make enough money and you're complaining. You just don't have a lot of leverage.

Yeah, so she's getting ripped on social media. Everybody's hammering them on social media, which is just not, you know, like. Yeah, I mean, yeah, you gotta be realistic. Like with the league, it's like, it's not in the position right now. You don't have any leverage going into the negotiation. No, no, no.

So, not good. I'm gonna talk about withdrawal for a second because I'm now day, what's today, Monday? Oh my God, I forgot you were off caffeine. I'm off caffeine, I'm now on day, so I started last, I started on Wednesday. So how many days is that now, Doug? Six days, yeah.

I'm six days zero caffeine. You know, caffeine withdrawal's nasty, dude. It's pretty funny that we take this drug every day. We don't even think about it. But it's addictive. There's classic withdrawal from it. You get headaches. The LD50, which is the dose needed to kill half the people, I don't remember what the number is.

What's the LD50 on caffeine, 200 or something like that? Which is, it's not a high number, meaning, I mean. It could happen pretty easily. In fact, people have been killed. People die from caffeine all the time. Especially the powdered form. Well yeah, that was a huge problem. Yeah, because kids were taking,

not realizing that it's dose to milligrams, not grams type of deal. But, and then when you go off of it, it's so hard to go off because it's a daily ritual, makes you feel good, then you need it, you know, type of deal. The lethal dose of caffeine is what? What does it say? It's 192 milligrams per kilogram body weight? Yeah, 150 to 200 milligrams per kilogram, by the way? Yeah, 150 to 200 milligrams per kilogram, yes.

Okay, so that's a big dose, but still, it's within the realm of possible. 10 to 14 grams of caffeine. But not through drinking it, yeah, so okay, so it's safer than I thought. But nonetheless, it's a classic drug. So, withdrawal sucks. So I looked up withdrawal stats on different substances.

So with caffeine, I'll look it up for you right now. Caffeine withdrawal can take up to two weeks, so I'm probably still feeling it. Yeah. That was about 400 milligrams a day, which is not super high, but for me that's pretty high. Opiates, how long do you guys think that the withdrawal for opiates is, typically?

So it's about, it could be up to two weeks for caffeine. So with opiates, by the way, the numbers I'm giving, there can be a wide individual variance, obviously. Well yeah, and how long were you addicted, right? Doesn't that play a factor? It does, and I haven't gone on a break of caffeine in a long time. Right, but for opiates too, that's like, so I would imagine that's a longer, quite a bit longer.

It's actually not as, I thought the same thing, it's not. Really? From what I'm reading, on average around two weeks is when you're over the worst of it. Now the difference is, opiate withdrawal is painful. Yeah, like your whole body suffers. You have no painkillers in your body. Remember when you're taking opiates, your body down regulates its own production of those

natural painkillers and those receptors. So then you go off, now you have no natural painkillers, your receptors are all shut down. You are feeling every bit of everything. That's why it's so intense. Super intense. It's supposed to be one of the worst. Like people have described one of the worst.

Like people have described it as the worst flu they've ever had in their entire life. Non-stop, can't sleep, all that stuff. So it's really, really bad. But they said two weeks is, when I looked it up, was about the average, like, worst of it. Cold turkey it. Yeah.

Like you could get through about two weeks. Two weeks is the worst of it. Yeah. Nicotine was up to three weeks. Now nicotine is, especially in cigarette forms, super hard to, cause as I was reading these, I was reading about, yeah. Nicotine can last longer, the withdrawal.

Nicotine's really hard though because, from what I've read, the frequency of use. So I'm smoking several cigarettes a day. It's the short acting, um, nature of it. And the fact that I'm using it so often that I'm not just building a physiological dependence, but there's also movement, action and behavior. Oh, the associated, uh, parts to go with that.

This is why you'll hear cigarette smokers taking nicotine lozenge, but they'll still say, I miss the bringing the cigarette to my mouth because it's a trained behavior. So nicotine itself is addicting, but cigarettes are more addicting. Where does cocaine factor in it? I don't look it up. We gotta look up cocaine withdrawal, I don't look that up.

Alcohol, three weeks withdrawal. Alcohol is one of the only ones I know of that you could die if you go cold turkey. Yeah, it's dangerous, right? Is it organ failure or what happens as a result? Your neurons can't fire properly. You'll literally die if you go off cold turkey on alcohol if you're really, really bad alcoholic. Yeah, so that's a real nasty one. And then cannabis, what's that say for? Cocaine, three to four weeks weeks up to three to four weeks. Okay. Okay. And then weed or cannabis is up to four weeks.

By the way, a lot of people don't know this. Let's say you quit. This has actually happened. Let's say you use cannabis regularly and then you quit and you get it out of your system. Okay. So six weeks out, no cannabis, I go take a THC test and it shows that I'm negative. And you're like, cool, I'm negative. And you stay off of it. And then you're like, I'm gonna lose some weight,

I'm overweight. So you start cutting your calories, working out, you lose 20 pounds, you can actually test positive for THC again. Because it's fat soluble, it gets stored in your fat. That's right. This has actually happened to people where they've lost weight and it was within months

of them quitting. You get a test? Yes. Oh wow. Yeah and it showed up on one of their tests. Which is kind of wild. So lucky that didn't happen to me. I told you my dad tested me when I was growing up. Yeah you did. You did. So lucky that didn't happen to me.

Tested me when I was growing up. Yeah, you did. So anyway, and then just reminding me of our sponsor, Rock Recovery Center, which by the way, they're still doing that sponsorship. This is the most, It's so awesome they're doing that. It's the most generous thing that any of our sponsors I think has ever done.

What's the price tag on this, like 50 grand? Yeah, it's up there. Yeah, somewhere along there. It's like a scholarship, you go there, you can enter to win if you go through our link. I think, and if they pick you, you're there and they're taking care of you and they're getting you off whatever you need

and they're covering the cost, which is crazy. $60,000. $60,000. Yeah, yeah, that's pretty wild. Anyway, um, all right, I looked something else up that I thought was kind of interesting. Red versus white wine. Okay. Do you think there's a difference in health, you guys? They say there is. Yeah, they say, right, because... Resveratrol. In the red wine. Yeah, they say there's a little more health benefit to that, but I'm curious, what did you find? So there's speculation

But this study looked at cancer risk specifically. Okay, and so they did a meta analysis To look at cancer risk between red and white wine The consumption of white wine was Associated with a 22% increased risk of skin cancer, but not red wine. Really? Yeah. Yeah, now, do you think there might be,

I was thinking about this, and could it be the wine, or could it be how people consume the wine? Are people more likely to drink outside in the sun white wine than they are red wine? Is that a thing? Probably. Well, red wine, I think, is a lot more

paired with meals and obviously with red meat and steak and dinner and inside. And at night, you'd probably be more likely to drink red wine. And white wine, I think, you could make a case people would probably drink. Because typically you drink it more chilled. Yeah. And so it's cooler in the summer or outside in the sun. I'm wondering. Yeah, I'm wondering.

It could also just be that maybe there is a protective effect in red wine that's happening. But I was trying to think of the behaviors in consumption. And you're right, white wine, I'm not a wine drinker, but I think more people drink that. Chilled and outside when they're out, like outside of the beach or the pool or something like that. Yeah.

What do they call those, you know, in, um, cannabis and CBD or, you know, in the plant has those, um, terpenes, terpenes. I wonder if the tannins or whatever, wine, if there's different type of protective or some kind of other values from that. I don't know. Yeah, interesting. But anyway, that's what they found. They found that at least when it comes to cancer risk,

red wine is a little better. I don't think either one of them's good. I don't think you should drink wine for fight cancer risk, but according to that study, white wine was not as healthy. You know, for that. Well, us fitness people are always looking for, you know, reasons to include alcohol somehow. Yeah, dude.

Oh, this is healthier. Dude, I drank a little bit over the weekend, which I never do, and we had margaritas on both days, Saturday and Sunday. Not a lot. I probably had a granditas on both days, Saturday and Sunday. Not a lot. I probably had a grand total throughout the whole day, two or three each day. I've got it spread out.

Totally feel it. Totally feel it. Oh God, I just don't feel good. I just don't feel good. Just as like pussy. Yeah. You challenged me not to drink for Lent. Oh yeah, is that what you did?

Yeah, I'm doing it. Oh, good. So I've been experimenting with non-alcoholic type of substitutes for tequila and whiskey. Oh really, for the hard alcohol that you have. Yeah, yeah, making like an old fashioned with a whiskey substitute or a margarita. It's actually not too bad, some of them. See, I hate the taste of alcohol so much that makes zero sense why anyone would

drink alcohol with no alcohol in it. Well you learned to like it you know and that's the thing. You learned to like it. You trained to like it. It's not like you love beer right away you know that took some effort. Yeah it's the same with whiskey. You kind of build a palette for it. So yeah, I'm curious about that because actually I had read that with millennials even, and then below it, there's these bars popping up where it's non-alcoholic drinks, but there are different spirits that they make with this non-alcoholic options. And so you'll still have cocktails and you'll hang out. Except you don't make bad decisions.

Exactly, you feel better too. People you bring home a little bit more attractive. Or you don't bring anyone home, you actually go by yourself. You're not trying to bring everybody home all the time. Right, yeah, maybe you don't do that, I'm just saying. The goggles are a real thing. You brought up millennials, have you seen the statistics on Gen Z?

In what direction? The ideological gap between Gen Z boys and girls. No. It's huge. Huge. Gen Z girls are going this way with liberal ideology and Gen Z boys are going this way. Oh wow, a Complete split ideology.

Well, I mean, it's, it's interesting cause it seems like one ideology favors, you know, you know, and then shits on the other completely. So it's like, you know, it makes sense. Like boys don't really have anything there for them. Yeah. You know, like, let's be honest. Where's the appeal? I was thinking about that.

I was thinking if it was a reaction, right, that the guys were getting sick of being told that they're- They're toxic. They're horrible. They're horrible. Yeah. Yeah. And so, maybe, you know?

It's interesting. Now, where young men go tends to be where societies, where culture tends to move. They just tend to be the driver. It's just historically, just when you look through history, that tends to be the direction. So because Gen Z boys are moving in that direction, we're probably moving in that direction, which I think people already see that.

But I did think that was interesting. People are speculating, like, oh no, are they never gonna date each other or whatever? No, I don't think that's the case. But I do think that's was interesting. People are speculating, like, oh no, are they never gonna date each other or whatever. No, I don't think that's the case. But I do think that's very interesting. Because it's one of the biggest gaps we've seen in a long time. Yeah, it's almost like, it's just the extremes

of the spectrum, they just got pushed a little further away from each other. But you know how that all goes. They'll all kind of reconnect in college. You know, make it work, soften up a bit on both of their ideas. Dude, speaking of like crazy theories and odds and stuff like that, I got the, so I, I watched this, this video and it tripped me out on some of the, it's just some of the craziest odds that you could ever, um, you can,

you, you can't imagine how crazy these odds are that this guy was was highlighting and it's it's like the ultimate you know call it what you want conspiracy theory or ultimate whatever okay but it's trip so the odds that that what I'm about to say happened which did according to many, many historical records, the odds of it are so insane that just a fraction of these things happening, the odds were one in ten to the 17th power. Okay? So I'm gonna tell you what it is. And by the way, this is wild to me. I didn't know this, I didn't quite understand this, but as I was watching this is wild to me. I didn't know this, I didn't quite understand this,

but as I was watching this video and I was kind of doing some digging, it's pretty wild. So, it has to do with the Bible. It was written by, it's 66 books, written by 40 authors, three different languages on three different continents, written over the course of 1500 years. Okay? So you think, okay, whatever, right? But what's crazy about that is that in books that were written hundreds or thousands of years before, they made prophecies that then came true and fulfilled much, much, much, much, much later, Jesus fulfilled 300 prophecies. 300 prophecies, many of them in one day.

So there were prophecies in these old books that said that he would be betrayed for 30 pieces of silver, that he would be crucified, his hands and feet pierced, that he would be offered a sour drink and feet pierced, that he would be offered a sour drink, that's when they gave him the sour wine or vinegar, that his side would be pierced. That was just in one day. But 300 prophecies were fulfilled, which is insane. And then there's that AI model of all the cross references. Pete I've seen that, yeah. How, yeah, both in the Old and New Testament,

how there's this crossover of information. When I was an atheist, I wish somebody showed me this because I would look at it and go, wait a minute, how is that even possible? How is that even possible for those books? Because they didn't have a printing press, they didn't have internet, they didn't have email. It was, much of it was a tradition of oral history,

which is how records were kept for a long time before they started really writing things down. It's so wild. It's incomprehensible. Yeah, and it's crazy. It's cool that there's people out there that can really study it and find a lot of these metrics and things, because it's like, there's not,

I mean, name another book. There isn't, there's nothing. There isn't. And it's that, that holds, you know, some crazy value of its own. It's like, wow, there was, there's a lot of like really intricate knowledge in here that was really, really well thought out, you know, and it, and it's, um, it gets overlooked a lot of times because of, you know of certain points of contention in there and certain things people have issues with, but it's like to have all of these factors align

in that crazy of a way is astounding. Well, there was one book, I think it was a book of Isaiah, that they found this Dead Sea Scrolls. Is it that one? Yeah. the Book of Isaiah, that they found this Dead Sea Scrolls? Is that the one? Is it that one? Okay. Before they found the Dead Sea Scrolls, the oldest copy of it came from like the Middle Ages.

And there were prophecies in there, but people discredited them because the book that they found was written after the prophecies had happened. So like, of course they're gonna write in there the prophecies, cause it's whatever. Then they found the Dead Sea Scrolls. And these were- It predates that.

A thousand years, something like that. Like insanely old. And by the way, that Dead Sea Scroll version and the Middle Ages version one were identical. They didn't even miss- Which doesn't happen. They didn't miss a sentence. Yeah.

So, I mean, for me, the only way you can explain that is supernatural, because that- Yeah, and I mean, for me, the only way you can explain that is supernatural. Yeah, and I mean, there's a whole book about the Bible code. And so, there's literal algorithms like built in there and the amount of words that are repeated and like, you could mathematically put all that together too. So, every version of like how we learn, it's represented in there. You can find it. Which is mind boggling. It's insane. So yeah, the odds that eight of those prophecies would get filled, one in 10 to the 17th power. By the way, the odds, and he did 300, what are the odds of getting

struck by lightning? I looked that up. It's got to be a couple thousand or so. One in 15,000. Yeah. So that's, so it's like so much more infinitely more improbable that that would happen, that those things would happen than getting struck by lightning. Pretty crazy.

Yeah. All that stuff. No, I geek out on that kind of stuff too. So speaking of tech though, I was looking at this really cool stage. There was this theater. I don't know where this was, but they put one of these big LED kind of screens behind. And so these performers, this guy was actually able to have like this stage prop. It was like a, it was like a motorcycle and he's on top of this motorcycle and nothing's like

really moving, but the, the screen shows this whole like chase with, with, with, with a cop kind of approaching him and you know, and it's, this is all like filmed ahead of time, but then he's acting it out. And so he's acting out that he's getting chased by this cop and it takes you through all this crazy like visual. It's really stunning. And then he gets off the bike and then he's climbing up on top of this like street light. But what it just showed was like, there's a whole new dimension now that they can portray like in that kind of form of entertainment where they could play with the screen to do all these things to interact with live performance.

So live performance, screen, it interacts in a whole, it was tripping me out. Yeah. We'll have to put a link to it, but so you can kind of see what I'm talking about. I like live, you like live shows. I love it. I really enjoy them. Yeah. Especially now too, because it's like, I feel like that element itself is the only one

that's not gonna be able to be replicated. Like robots are gonna have a hard time doing what we can do. They will, but it'll be a while. They will, but it's gonna be pretty janky for a while. Yeah, totally. meat, crepe-free pork, wild caught fish to your door. This is healthy meat to your door at great prices. And if you go through our link, butcherbox.com forward slash mind pump,

if you're a new user, you'll get free ground beef in every box for the lifetime of your box. Plus $20 off your first box. You just gotta use the code MINDPUMP. Go to butcherbox.com forward slash MINDPUMP. The code is MINDPUMP. Go to butcherbox.com forward slash mind pump. The code is MINDPUMP. All right, back to the show. Trainers and coaches, come check out our webinars

that we do for free at trainerwebinar.com. The last one was on building your business through social media, it crushed. They're all free. Go there and register. Our first caller is Rob from Indiana. What's up Rob? What's happening Rob?

How can we help you? Oh, what's up Sal? What's up Adam, Justin, Doug. Man, it's crazy to meet you guys. Long time listener. And I just recently actually got my wife to start listening to your podcast. That's awesome.

Right on, nice. Yeah, no, but I was calling in because when you guys had that one call with Jay Campbell, me and my wife, you know, we've been doing some peptides here and there. And so a lot of things, you know, started popping up in our head. And so recently we started with SEMA and then now we're actually on the reda. And some of the things that we want to know is, you know, we're also with the reda, we're doing a IPA button CJC.

And so we're wondering right now for the IP and CJC, should we take a break from that? Cause right now we're doing it five days on two days off. And so we were just kind of wondering like for that, do we have to like, you know, take a break from it? And if we do have to take a break from it, is there anything you guys recommend that we should take? While we're off this break. Okay, so your question So the first thing so a question for sure what you're taking is the glp1 the retattatribe is the one that you're taking

I'm assuming you're micro dosing it because you don't look like you lose. Yeah. No, yeah micro dosing I know okay, and then CJC in is it Ipah, Maryland both the combo Correct. So those for people are you, there's increased growth hormone secretion. Should you cycle off of them? You know, and again, this is outside of my scope of expertise. This is just based off of what I've read and the people I've interviewed who are experts. They recommend that you, some of them recommend you cycle because of insulin sensitivity issues with elevated growth hormone. And some people say, no, you're perfectly fine.

So my question to you is, do you monitor your blood sugar, your fasting blood sugar? Do you look at insulin sensitivity and do you watch those numbers? And I know you strength train, so that makes a big difference. So I, you know, the question isn't, the, the answer isn't super clear. I know with some of the growth hormone ones, like Ibutamorin, they do recommend you cycle because they raise growth hormones so much. So how regularly would you have him look at his

blood and what would he be looking at? Every few months. And you look at fasting glucose is the, would be the main thing that you'd be looking at. Uh, but you know, I've been told no, but I've also told maybe, you know, probably a good idea. So wouldn't you say the safest bet is to monitor every three months

and then if you see anything elevated whatsoever, that's your indicator that you might want to cycle off. And whoever your provider is, they should be looking at that anyway. Definitely, and then I guess when I'm checking like my blood glucose and everything, is that more so something that I would have to do through like an actual doctor? Because we did buy the like, you know, that little prick that you can do and check your blood sugar

level there is like that good enough or is that? Yeah, that's fine. Yeah. All right. Perfect. Awesome. And then the other question I also had in regards to this, you know, when I was doing the semi glutide, I did that for two months and, you know, I was seeing great results, right? Because it was the first time I was ever doing a peptide and, you know, the weight was coming down. I was losing a little bit of a muscle mass, but it was just literally like one pound every month. And then, you know, my body fat was coming down as well. And then, I mean, I was obviously, you know, weightlifting, you know, getting my protein and everything like that. But then when I mean, I was obviously, you know, weightlifting, you know, getting my protein

and everything like that. But then when I started on Reta Trutide, I kind of just went from Sema to Reta. I didn't necessarily take a break or anything like that. So like, is that fine if I did that? Or should I have actually taken, you know, a break before starting Reta in order to give my, you know, receptors some sort of reset? Yeah, again, this is a gray area. If you were to ask Dr. Seeds, he'd probably say no. Some people say you should, maybe, but you're microdosing, so you're probably okay. I know Dr., who is it that we had?

It wasn't Dr. Laura. Dr. Tina, she has people cycle, is what she recommends that people do. But you know, so you initially took it to lose weight. So you went from a higher dose to a lower dose. Yeah. So initially, I mean, I took it to one lose weight because I've always been really great with working out and everything, but you know, now that I'm older,

I definitely saw that, you know, I wasn't getting the exact results that I was getting even back then. Right. I mean, granted, you know, high school, you can gain weight, But you know, now that I'm older, I definitely saw that, you know, I wasn't getting the exact results that I was getting even back then, right? I mean, granted, you know, high school, you can gain weight really quickly, gain really good muscle. But like, nowadays, you know, being 30, it was a little bit harder for me because I was, you know, doing the diet, right, you know, getting my macros in, you know, eating consistently, working out consistently. But there was like, there was other stuff that was going on with me, such as like testosterone levels was really low.

So I had to go get that checked out and brought it back up. But even then too, it was just like, the weight was barely coming off. And for me too, it was, I stopped looking at the weight by numbers, right? Like, cause that was always something that I always focused heavily on and now more so it's more just to get, you know, healthier and just look better. Right. And so the weight to me, it doesn't really matter. Like if I gain weight and it's muscle just to get healthier and just look better. And so the weight to me, it doesn't really matter. Like if I gain weight and it's muscle, like I'm happy with that.

If I lose weight, but still gain my muscle mass, I'm stoked on that as well. So for me, it was just more so that I definitely wanted to have some sort of, I guess, a little advantage or a little cheat code to lose weight quicker. And I mean, it did help. But even then too, I mean, even when you guys talked with Jay Campbell, right, like it's crazy what people are doing when they're doing like, you know, the Wigovia and Manjaro and they're doing like, you know, per dose, it's like five milligrams, which is insane to me. Right.

Cause I get a little violent. Five milligrams is that, and that's supposed to last me for like eight weeks. So, um, yeah, for me, it was more so just to get healthier and better shape and also lose this excess fat and body weight that I had that I knew I had as well. Yeah, I mean, again, the consensus is a bit mixed on whether you should cycle or not. I'll say this, like for someone like you,

I would go off and just see what happens, see how you feel. Yeah, definitely. I wouldn't hurt anything. We're not dealing with losing a hundred pounds. But even then, if someone were my client, we had a GLP-1 group that we worked with and the advice that we were communicating to them through the experts that we've talked to was, when you lose that weight, one strategy is to taper down

on the dose and then go off and then have it in your back pocket if things start to really come back up. So I think that's a good strategy just psychologically anyway, so you're not so attached to a compound, I should say. Definitely. And then I guess as far as like workouts go, right? I mean, I was doing definitely like cardio, a little bit more focused cardio, like definitely increased my cardio a lot more, but you know, still doing, you know, my weightlifting, you know, my squats, deadlifts, you know, bench press and everything. squats, deadlifts, you know, bench press and everything. But as far as that goes with like, you know, weightlifting, is there like a certain protocol I should be kind of following?

Because if anything, you know, I was almost weightlifting, you know, five to six times per week. And then Sunday would be my like kind of resay. So I was like, where are your calories, Rob? Where you what do you eat? Are you tracking? I mean, kind of. I've just tracked the floor, so I kind of know what I'm doing right now, but for, uh, protein it's around, you know, daily it's around 180 to like 220.

And then for, uh, calories, it's, you know, definitely in the two thousands or more. Two thousands or more? Like 2000, 2500. Okay. Yeah. Okay. So, you know, I hear you have to judge, I mean, you've heard us, you've heard the podcast, so it's going to be the same for you that we would say to anybody, it would be based off of your performance, your strength and how you feel.

If you're plateauing real hard, if you're not feeling very strong, then, you know, I would try changing the programming. If you're working out a lot, you probably work out less. When you cut your calories, you should work out less. People tend to do the programming. If you're working out a lot, you probably work out less. When you cut your calories, you should work out less. People tend to do the opposite. They tend to increase their volume when they cut their calories.

But that's not a good idea. It's typically better to reduce them. Generally speaking for most people, what you're looking at, and you sound like somebody that really tries to dial everything in, so you're probably looking at a moderate intensity, moderate volume most of the time with short spurts of higher volume, higher type of intensity. So what does that typically look like? Three or four days a week most of the time, sometimes five days a week type of deal. From a cardio perspective, do you want endurance or are you doing this for health or are you doing this for fat loss? I'm also doing it just kind of for endurance and also just like a

cardio cardiovascular health as well. If you want endurance and cardiovascular health, then, you know, HIIT cardio is a great idea, a great way to do that. That's a great way to build stamina with minimal time required. And a few days a week of that we'll do that. Also minimizing muscle loss too. Definitely. And then even for like my weight lifting legs, I'm super strong.

Like I've never had issues there. You know, I can squat a lot, deadlift a lot, but when it comes to chest, it looks like I have a really big chest and a lot of people come up to me and they're like, dude, what are you bench pressing? Are you like 300 or more? And I was like, bro, like I'm barely even hitting, you know, just a 45 plate. So like, I know it's, you know, consistency that's going to make it, you know, better. But is there any like, I guess

any workouts you recommend in order for me to be able to increase my, you know, potential for bench pressing mass power lift, power lift will give you all three lifts technique, man. That's where it'll come up with technique a lot of times. And by the way, if you're like killing it with squats and deadlifts and bench, you would cut volume from those areas and place more of the frequency and volume

towards bench press. And so bench pressing two or three days a week, one day being hard, a couple of days on technique would kind of, you know, generally be. Rob, are you structure? What maps are you following a mass program right now? No, I did a maps on a ball, like around like two years ago. But right now it's more so just kind of like doing my own little workouts from all these other workouts I've had so what I definitely want to why don't we send you power lift and then you follow power lift I think that's a good yeah That's a good amount of volume to with what you got going on

And fall and then since you want to increase your bench press you're gonna get that from that So I'll have Doug send over maps power lift for you Awesome. No, I appreciate that guys. You're gonna want to say thank you guys thank you guys for everything also Rob you uh I don't know if you are are you in the uh the peptide forum you'd be a good person to be in that yeah no I are not the peptide forum but I think I'm in your guys's uh mind pump uh Facebook group the hormone the hormones one we have a hormone one. Yeah. Okay good. I was gonna say yeah you're a good person to be in there someone who's who's taking and trying all the stuff you are and there's people in there

floating around so you're a good person to share and ask questions in there too. So just want to make sure you're in there. No definitely. Alright cool. Definitely. Thanks again guys seriously I love your podcast. You know I look forward to every time you guys put something else. So thanks again for everything. Thank you, Rob. Appreciate it. Thanks, man. Anytime.

There's a gray area. He's on all kinds of their stuff. I mean, I know it's on sloop. It's like there. So there's like this, you know, you can use peptides and hormones in ways that improve your health. And then there's ways that you can use them where you start to move away from that more towards

aesthetic and performance. And so, for people listening, there is a, there's definitely a gray area where you go from health to now I'm trying to really push the limits a bit. Now I'm not one to judge, I play with that, I play that game all the time. But that is what happens with those. That being said, regardless of what your goals are, you gotta have the staples down first

because the peptides aren't gonna touch what diet, sleep, and exercise will do. Not even close. No. Not even close. Our next caller is Morgan from New York. Hi Morgan. Hello.

How can we help ya? Hi, and I'm actually from Nebraska. I don't know why it says New York. What are those N states? Yeah, it starts with N. How can we help you? I am a fitness enthusiast and recently I had a goal of improving my grip strength. So I ditched the wrist wraps and I've been trying to fix my grip. But I keep running into like hand cramps during workouts,

as well as like I just have really bad calluses that are always splitting, it seems, and it makes it really hard for me to do deadlifts or even just dead hangs and farmer carries because my hands are the limiting factor. So I was just wondering if there was a way to kind of try to counteract that. I am an accountant, so I work a desk job and I feel like maybe typing and stuff could have a factor on that. But yeah, that's just my question. How long have you ditched the straps?

Um, probably about a year. Oh good. And how long did you wear them for? Um, before that I did all of my dead lifts with them. Um, so, I mean, I'd done it like probably three or four years of deadlifting with the wrist wraps. It took me, I use wrist wraps all the time as a kid. And when I finally ditched them, it took me like a year or two for my hands to really start to catch up because

they were, they were, it was such a deficit because I always wore wrist straps. So you're doing the right thing. As far as calluses are concerned, you got to file them down if they start to get in the way or rip off, you'll see this a lot with power lifters. That they'll do a lift and the callus will rip off. So you want to kind of keep them filed down.

So that doesn't, that doesn't happen. I also think it's bad ass that you have calluses. I love that. I know. Or more chalk, dude. Yeah. When they, uh, you know, and you know, here's a deal like, um, the limiting factors are grips, there's two options here.

One is to, that's the gauge as to how much weight you can use. Allow that to be up. And you, and you just allow that to build up. That's what I did. The other thing is you could, you could train as much weight you can use. Allow that to be up. And you just allow that to build up, that's what I did. The other thing is you could train as long as you can without straps, and at the very end if you need them, then you throw them on type of deal. Those are both two strategies.

The second strategy probably will, it'll take your hands longer to catch up to speed, but they're both okay. What I did was I just, I just, it was my grip was a limiting factor. And, uh, it just took a long time. It's just gradual. I mean, like doing what you're doing already and just extending that out. Um, I mean, the other ones to express is the pinch grip and, you know, the kind of the crushing grip and, you know, just to kind of, uh,

incorporate that, not overdo it. So again, this is where tooth, if that's a big focus, a lot of times people just throw everything on top of it and then it's too much stress for the hands in the grip. But to kind of alternate it and do more like of a pinch grip focus for one day or like a crush grip. So you get like a towel and you're doing, you know, rows or pull-ups or, you know, just expose your hands to different variations, different size. But again, gradually,

not like all at once. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Another thing you could do too is how often do you work out or lift? Too much by your standards, but. I can tell by the look you made when I said that. Are you working out five, six days a week? Are you not following a MAPS program? What's going on? I am. I've done a couple, I've done a MAPS program, but yeah, I kind of just do a split right now.

And what are you doing, six days a week? Yeah. Okay. Well, I mean, look, let me ask you this. Do you want to get stronger and see better results? Yeah. I do, I do. Okay. Well, I mean, look, let me ask you this. Do you want to get, do you want to get stronger and see better results? Yeah, I do. I do. Okay. Okay. Let's, let's, let's have you follow one of our programs. You're a power lift and watch what happened. Do you, if, if strength is your thing,

I'll send you a mass power lift and just follow that and you'll see your strength go through the roof. That'd be cool. I, I'd like that. I did performance, um, a while ago. So, but power lift would be cool. I'd like that. I did performance a while ago, but Power Lift would be cool. Yeah. All right. We'll send that to you. Old time strength would be cool too for grip, but that's my opinion. Yeah. We'll send you Power Lift. If you like going off and doing other stuff too, old time strength is real fun too. So that would be something to follow up with. But trust the process. If you've been listening to us for a while and you believe we kind of know what we're talking about, just trust the process and follow the program the way it's laid out.

Give it like a few weeks and you'll see. You'll see your strength go up for sure. Okay. Awesome. All right. All right. Thanks for calling in. Hey, thank you guys.

Love all you do. You got it. I just think communicate to, cause people, you know, real weird about wrist straps. Every time I do a post, it's like it pisses people off. Oh really? Yeah, and look, you can wear them if you want, but here's the deal, like, if you're doing an exercise and one of your muscles doesn't allow you to use more weight,

that's the weight that you can use. That's what you can use. So that's the understanding around it. Now I do understand bodybuilders who use wrist straps because they don't care about limiting factors. Looking to maximally develop certain parts of the body. But whenever somebody tells me, well I gotta use wrist straps for whatever,

what I like to hear from them, and I'm gonna sound like a jerk right now, is you better be lifting some crazy weight then. You know, oh, you're a guy and you're pulling 200 pounds and you need wrist straps? No, no, work on your grip. You know, oh, I'm pulling 600 pounds, okay. Well, that's the limiting factor,

and if you bypass that, you're creating less optimal recruitment patterns, and it's something that's gonna stick with you. So it's a compromise, but again, to the power lift, or the bodybuilding side, they're trying to isolate muscles. They're trying to build and develop muscles specifically. They don't care about the function quite as much.

That's a huge part of the process. Yeah, and they don't care about their entire body working together. I didn't give a shit about that. I wanted a thicker. You want to go on stage and look good. I want a thicker back at this point. And if my forearms are keeping me from doing that,

then they're getting in the way of what I'm trying to do. So it made sense in that case. That's the only place I think it really makes a lot of sense. Or if you're in some sort of a competition that allows those tools. Yeah, like some strongman competitions that'll allow you to use them for certain reasons. Then it makes sense.

But other than that, it just doesn't make sense. I think at the bare minimum, a good rule of thumb for most people, if you already are, is at least do as many sets as you can without them and then save them for your top set. Right. Right. It's like work up to, which is what I did for real, even in bodybuilding, I still did

that. Like I would work my way up to like, okay, now I'm at that point where it is the limiting factor and I want to keep going. So okay, I'm going to throw them on that last top set. So I think that's a good habit in itself is at least do that but man it turned into like You know gym rats or bodybuilder jewelry Uniform yeah, yeah you like where I'm like the it's that the belt was the same thing to the belt the wraps You know the strap. Yeah, I feel the same way about belt and they like work on your core

You should be able to have that kind of strength and control to support yourself. And look, if you've been using them for a long time, it takes a while for your body to catch up. So, but I look, I've worked out with rock climbers. I've worked out with construction workers. Your hands can get real strong, like really, really strong when you train them. And so what's happened is you just have, you've just allowed them to lag behind. But I've worked with a lot of climbers whose grip could support what a body

builder lifts, you know? So our next caller is Dana from Washington. Hi, Dana. How you doing? Hello. How can we help you? Everybody. So I, um, get right to the chase is that, have been having trying to figure out a way to

do back squats or front squats. And I'm wondering if it's a mobility issue. More than anything. I'm sure you've read what I had sent in, which was that, you know, I've been doing, I mean, working out, you know, I'm 50, almost 54. And I've been doing weights, specifically, trying to build strength for probably the last five years. I did have shoulder surgery.

Well, the right shoulder I had 20 years ago for bone spurs, but the left shoulder I had my rotator cuff was completely torn and the bicep had fallen down. So that surgery I had in August of 23. And 22, 22, 23, 20. Now it's it was 23 because we're in 25. And did all the things once I got to my one year of being good, fully repaired, and I just still can't get when I do back squats. When I go out, it's like I can't go back far enough until like my girlfriend and I we work

out we're on maps 15 right now. And even when I like back it up to the bar at the gym to try and get back there. It's like I can't, when I go back far enough, it's like more like I've got an arm workout, then then then I'm getting my posterior chain. And I'm trying to figure out what, what if it's something I'm doing, if it's in mochamical mechanics. And so that's, uh, that's what I was hoping I might be able to get some guidance from you guys. Yeah, that is what it is. Yeah.

It's a shoulder connection and mobility issue. And that's not uncommon. Um, that's actually one of the more. Especially with that injury. Yeah. That's one of the more common challenges that people will have with a, with a back squat. Yeah, that's one of the more common challenges that people will have with a back squat. So some focused work on shoulder mobility and strength.

And do you have Maps Prime or Prime Pro? We did Muscle Mommy and we're just finishing up the second section of Maps 15. Center Prime Pro. Yeah, I'm gonna send you Maps Prime Pro and there are scapular and shoulder mobility movements in there that I would want you to practice every single day. And you can pick a couple of them.

Pick the ones that you feel are kind of addressing that issue and practice them. Watch the videos carefully because your intention is very important. So just going through them isn't the same as like going through them, but having a particular intention, practice them every day, twice a day, at least. So, you know, spend five to 10 minutes in the morning, five to 10 minutes at night, and practice. And over time, you should see an improvement with your ability to, you know, externally rotate

and get that depression from the scalpel that allows you to grab the bar. In the meantime, are you not back squatting? Are you doing something else instead? Oh, hi, I'm back squatting. And so, um, like in the, Matt's 15 and the progression. So I'll start like the last time we did it, um, cause it's on day five for us. So that's Friday this week. I would start with bar and it's a standard 45 bar. So bar two and a half, five, seven and a half, 10. So I'd end with a ten you know and that's obviously on each side and 15 of course there's a lot of reps Kenny can go hire my girlfriend

good women working out together for years and so um so we're trying to build up to that but what I've found is that it's not it's not in my legs it's in my arms. I literally just, and, and I'll, like I said, I'll try and back in on, I will say by the time I get to the fifth set, um, probably the fourth set, I do know that I have a little bit more. Oh good. That's a good, that's a good sign. That's a really good, that's a really good sign. It's what you're kind of doing unintentionally is priming your priming that back area. So what we would want to do. So you know what give her prime also Doug

Because what you should do is our zone one test every day before you work out It's and then you should spend a good five minutes at least doing that before you start your workouts and Then you'll go into your first set feeling like that already and then hopefully it gets even better by the third, third set of your squatting like that. What's happening is we really need to wake up all those muscles that help pull the shoulder girdle back and down to get you in that position. And so we'd want to spend time. If you were my client, we'd spend a lot of time before the workout, priming all those

muscles and warming them up and doing a little bit of the shoulder mobility Sal was talking about in Prime Pro to get you ready to go do that. And if you consistently do that for a while, you're going to notice that start to progress. Wall press and then even on the floor if it's like you can't hit all those touch points, you know, doing it on the floor first and then kind of working your way up to the wall will help a lot. But again, the intention going into it and really squeezing and pressing back like with intensity That's gonna help just like you're going through those sets you realize later on it kind of

Relaxes and allows you to get into that position more It's you're gonna have that same effect if you can really, you know, intentionally squeeze and connect to that beforehand and also too I wish this was more available because one of my friends actually had this as a question for me and wants to do back loads. Squats has a hard time getting in position. There is a safety bar, which is, it has two handles in the front, it kind of rests over your shoulders,

and then it goes out to the side, you can load it. So that's an option, it's expensive, but if you wanted to, if this is a priority and you wanted to buy that, that would help. If you go to the, your gym might have one. How do you get under, how do you get into the bar for a squat, you back into it? Well, that's what I've been trying to do

is to back into it. I used to just go up and under, but it's like I'm not going under very much. But I do, I've tried to go in front of it and back up to it to try and get a little bit more that way. I want you to try two things. So number one, do some static stretching for your chest before you go bench. So static stretching, hold a real deep stretch for one side, hold another deep stretch for

the other side. And then I want you to try going under it again. But what you're going to do is you're going to grab the bar, you're going to get kind of underneath it, and then I want you to squeeze your shoulders down and back and get underneath it. And then while you're doing the set Your focus is on not this that's gonna happen on its own If I push too hard by trying to get my hand back there, you're gonna cramp in your shoulder What I want you to focus on most is squeezing the shoulder blades down and back and hold that position while you squat

What tends to happen is as we fatigue the shoulder blades start to fall forward and then we're trying to pull the hands back And then that becomes it's like a cramp and it starts to feel real uncomfortable So what I would have with clients that I have them grab the bar with kind of a wide grip step underneath it and squeeze the shoulders down and back and really focus on squeezing the shoulders down and back and Holding that position and focusing there more than the hands. It's really in the shoulder blades That's where the issue is coming from. This is this deathless. We can definitely solve this. For sure. It's the hardest part. I think right now is trying to communicate it over virtually and not have you and

where are you located at? You're not anywhere near us. Are you? No, I'm in Washington. It's funny because this morning, um, Candy says to me, so when you talk to them, cause she is, you know, it was, it was, it was, it was awesome that I got the opportunity. I really appreciate that.

And she's like, well, maybe, you know, you could even, you know, take your, your laptop into your gym. I said, meaning, cause I have a gym here at my house. I said, the problem with it is my bench is attached to it's all one piece. So I can't get up and under it. Oh, when you squat. Okay. Okay.

All right. So, well, nonetheless, focus on the shoulder blades, squeezing back and down. I want Doug to send, send her the prime webinar where Justin takes you through the three tests. So that's why I want to send her to the webinar. So I want you to send, send her the webinar link. And then Justin takes you through a zone one test. This is the main test that we need to focus on with you.

And that needs to become, really pay attention to how he cues it and- That's your warmup. That's how you warm up every day before you go in. And you can, by the way, the more you do it, the better this will be. So you can even do it when you're not working out, anytime you can just get up against a wall,

practice this movement. You doing that before squatting is gonna do, make a world of a difference. So that this needs to be a practice that you do all the time that paired with what Sal is sending over the prime pro. There's two movements in particular that I'd like to see you do, which is the wall circles or the, uh, the scapula circles, uh, that's on there. And then the handcuff with rotation,

handcuff with rotation and that, between those three things, starting to practice those movements before your workout for sure. And then any other time that you're willing to do out throughout the day is really going to make a major improvement on that ability to get back down and hold those shoulder blades down like Sal was talking about.

Okay, well that's perfect. Cause if nothing, I'm a consistent student because I've learned over the years that's what maintains and that's what helps me hold my ground and go forward and not backwards. Awesome. Yeah, good job. Yeah, we'll solve this. We'll get to the bottom of this.

Yep, this is fixable for sure. Perfect. Well, I appreciate that and I look forward to that and yeah a good a good warm-up routine and an anywhere routine is good For me too As a working home person, I take time during the day to do different things. So that'll be something to work into it Perfect. It's beautiful. We'll send that over to you All right. Thank you so much. Thank you. All right This is a common issue very common easy to Easy to fix. Almost always. Almost always.

In fact, I can't think of a time. Especially when she gave away that by the last set, at the last set, she just needs to prime. Yep, yep. Our next caller is Jade from Canada. Hello, Jade. How you doing, Jade? How can we help you?

Morning. Hello, hi, thank you so much. I just wanted to say thank you for everything. Really big fans of you guys, so thank you. i'll just read my question straight off as I sent it So I wanted to ask your thoughts on high rocks. Um, it's a competition lifestyle kind of thing that you've not really discussed I know you had hunter on there a while back, but i'm really big on high on high rocks Um, and as well as this I have a more personal question So i'm currently training for my fifth high rocks happening in april this year Um I've come a really long way. I used to struggle with eating problems. I only

wanted to be really small and skinny doing cardio and abs. I also was missing, sorry, it's too much information, but I was missing my cycle for about five years, which was not good. And now I look back, it's because of overtraining for sure. I took a few weeks off in August 2024 due to overtraining and now it's come back, which is good. So I think I've been training consistently for about five years and I've made some really great progress. However, as I get stronger, my running really suffers and it's only because of leg and knee pain, not because of cardio fitness, because I feel like I can run forever. In terms of like personal information, I'm currently about 63 kilos.

I used to be 56 from five years ago. I'm 5'10", I'm naturally really, really slim. I recently had a Dexascan about six months ago, and my body fat is about 14% at that point, which I know is really low. I do about 20,000 steps a day, train five days a week, four weight training sessions, like probably lasting about two hours each, and I do one run a week.

On my rest days, I do active recovery, such as walks and stretches, and I try to aim for at least 2,500 calories per day, about 130 grams of protein, and I take creatine, magnesium, and I'm on aspirin because I've had previous heart operations. I'm really worried about my running skills because the leg aching is really annoying me and it's holding me back from running.

I also feel like I wake up every day at like 3 a.m. and I can't go back to sleep. Currently, I'm living in Canada, but actually, as of Saturday, I'm moving back home to the UK, so it's been a really stressful few, honestly, months. So I'm looking forward to moving back home. But I was wondering if all of this was to do with stress and over-training and am I living the most optimal lifestyle to make maximum progress with high rocks? Are my calories enough? Is my protein enough? I do use vegan protein powder, but I'm not vegan.

So yeah, any tips would be really good. I definitely have kind of come off the training for the past, honestly, few weeks because I've been so stressed with moving. Um, and I've actually felt okay and I've not lost much progress, but yeah, just any tips would be very helpful. I feel a bit lost. So much to unpack right here. Really great information by the way, Jade, you By the way Jade, you sound like my navigation.

You got such a nice voice with your English accent. Oh thank you so much, thank you. So yes, you're over trained for sure. Classic, classic, classic, classic. The sleep. Especially the sleep. Yeah, that's all signs. Yeah, so if you want your pain to start to get better,

you're gonna have to drastically reduce the volume of your training. You're just doing too much. And by the way, what's a great sign, and you said it already so you see it, you've literally completely scaled back and doing nothing and you haven't really lost anything. So imagine how little you need to continue to do

to maintain this great physique and fitness level you already have. You'll get better. You'll actually get better results. You will. You will get stronger, you'll get better. You'll feel better. You'll sleep better. This is your body. And the same thing goes for all the aches and the pains in the

running. It's all signs of you're doing too much to the body and you need to scale way back and your performance will go up. And that's hard for athletes to wrap their brain around that. Like, how could that make me better if I do, absolute, cause look at it, your body's telling you. It's telling you that you're redlining too much and you've been able to take the time off and you haven't lost anything.

Like when we go back, we go back like 50% less of what you were probably doing. How far do you wanna go with this? Cause I could give you like the, this is what you need to do answer. And I can also be a little bit kinder and give you kind of a scale, a step scale way to say, I know, cause I understand the relationship you have with exercise. I know you said you've reduced it, but that's your tendency and you're still there.

You also mentioned you had some eating stuff in the past. It's all connected. It's all connected. Yeah. It's all connected. So I'll control stuff. Yeah. So, so, um, how far do you want me to just give

you what I think would be the like the best thing to do and then we could take it from there yes yes I think I think you need to back your training down to three days a week of strength training and just walk and I think you need to get your body fat percentage up to about 20% so I mean we actually literally want to gain body fat and we want to really reduce the training and we want to stay there for a while and allow your body to heal. Because what's going to happen if you continue down this,

by the way, you're able to perform in spite of the fact that you're over training, which tells me you probably have some really good underlying athletic, yeah, you have some good athletic genetics underneath it. And athletes often get away with doing these things because they've got these great athletic genes that allow them to perform. I mean, it's optimal.

But I mean, you know, Amelia Boone is a great example. High performing athlete, you know, had injuries, bone breaks, I mean, started suffering from bone weakening. Even though she was a crazy athlete, that's the direction you're going. The direction you're going is you're gonna start to notice hormone issues, you're gonna start to notice things like osteopenia, whereas your body starts to break

down, so if you're okay with it and you think you can do it, it's a big ask because I'm literally asking you to dramatically change a lot of stuff you do and gain body fat, which for most people, that's like what's wrong with you. A three day a week strain training routine with just walking for a good three months would be a great place to start.

And then from there, you could slowly scale it up. And I would keep your calories where they're at. I wouldn't cut your calories while doing that either. If you're open to it, okay? Because I know what Sal's given you, where you need to be. In my history of doing this, and I have somebody who's,

because I've trained many people like this in this situation, we tend to scale back, right? We're on the podcast right now. We've only got you for 15 minutes. So it's like, here's the answer. But we know that in reality, many times with a client like this, we have to slowly rip the bandaid off.

It's not a just rip off right away, or else they end up reverting going back the other direction because of whatever reason. Uh, we, we have, uh, our coaches and trainers underneath us that help people and train people, if you wanted somebody to kind of hold your hand through this process for accountability more than anything else, cause obviously I think you know what you're doing training wise, I think you're probably very smart and advanced, but I think more so the accountability of the, you know,

the bi-weekly check-ins and just checking in on you, where you're at, how you're feeling. Here's what to expect. Here's what's normal. Here's what's normal. You're doing good. Reminding you that to the press, maybe something you might want to consider,

unless you feel confident that you can take the advice, Sal's saying, and you're going to go do it and you're going to be okay with putting some body fat on and training way less than half of what you're doing. If you think you got that then go do it but also know that we have people here to help support you if you need it. Yeah thank you. I think it's because I keep switching. I'm doing Hunter McIntyre's program at the moment but I keep switching between High Rocks Pro and High Rockox Strength because I just don't have the energy to do pro.

It's like two sessions a day, five days a week. It's really intense. So I switched to strength, but even then with process of moving countries, it's just so much. I've not trained properly, honestly, in like two weeks. Hunter McIntyre's routine is overtraining for 99% of people. Yeah, period. So, okay, look, here's what'll happen.

I'll give you some. By the way, that's over-training for people in very healthy positions, too. Yeah, I'm gonna give you, I don't know if this'll sell it to you, but if you did go to three days a week of strength training and you did back way off and just walk, one of the things you'll notice is your strength

is gonna go through the roof. Your strength in the gym will go way up. Sleep will improve. Your sleep will improve. Your aches and pains will go down. Aches and pains will go away and you'll just feel a lot better, a lot better. But it is a very difficult relationship to break up with. How often are you competing in these high rocks?

Like you anticipate yourself signing up for how many a year? Like, what does that look like with your training leading up to that? So on average, I do only one a year, to be honest. I have to skip the Toronto one just because I was so over-trained and Toronto was meant to be in October last year, but I have one in April in literally a month. Um, and so I want to make sure my running's good and that my strength is good. So I'm kind of toying between the idea of, I really don't want to miss this one. Yeah.

This time. You probably should skip it. Yeah. Are you, how old are you? Jay, if you don't mind me asking. I'm 27. Oh, you're so, okay. You're this, it's really important you start to really prioritize your health

because what's going to start to happen is the signals that you're noticing now are going to start to get loud over the next few years. And you don't wanna be- And they already became very loud? Well, they get louder. You start to get, your hormones will crash. And then you'll be- Oh, that's already happened.

Trust me, that's already happened. Yeah, well, it gets worse. You have youth on your side. So, and when it gets worse, it's like, we've worked with many people like this. I have crushing fatigue, depression, anxiety. What is wrong with me? I'm getting sick all the time.

I can't figure it out. And then it's like a six month, get your health back process. I'm telling you, in probably two or three months, you'll turn the ship around. If you do, if you're brave enough to do kind of what we're recommending, which is probably gonna mean you're gonna skip

this competition, but it's gonna set you up for the future. It's not gonna take away what you love. It'll get taken away from you if you don't, is what I'm trying to say. You could absolutely go back to training for this. We're just starting once a year, it's like that's not unreasonable. It's just like leading up to that and being reasonable,

building your body back up, getting the strength involved. The endurance part of it is the quickest to adapt. So that's something like, you know, three months given time of like ramping that back up, you know, next year, if you decide to kind of do that again, would be a totally reasonable thing. Jay, did you tell us what you do for work? What do you do for work?

So I'm a materials developer for a sportswear brand. So I'm constantly around sports all the time. Okay. Nice, sounds like fun. Yeah. Yeah, it's great. Do you want one of our coaches to call you just so you can kind of see what that looks like?

Yeah, I think that would be good. Thank you, I do definitely need accountability because I'm good with discipline, but I'm not good with discipline of rest days. Yeah, that's why, by the way, that's exactly why I said that. I mean, there's no doubt in my mind, you've got the athletic mindset to go do something,

go get it, like you've got that. Like you would be the client that I'm constantly having to talk to, be like, you're fine, we need a rest today, relax, don't worry about that one or two pounds you saw on the scale, you're doing perfect, you're right where, that's the type of conversation you're gonna hear from your trainer is more that,

I don't think you need someone to motivate you to go to the gym or do anymore. It's more so talking to you and staying in your ear and making sure that you don't allow yourself to revert back to kind of old habits and stuff like that. So I'll have our head trainer give you a call and kind of talk through what we would probably do with you and see if we could help you out. Bare minimum, stay in touch with us. Let us help you out through this process. Let me send you a program, the one that I think if you follow it, I think will be a good idea.

That would be MAPS Anabolic, and I'm gonna put you on our forum as well. Over 15? At the very least, yeah, just, you're asking a lot. Well, I think 15 is not, I think you're giving her something to do every day versus giving her only three days.

Okay, we'll send you MAPS 15. I think that's a better approach. Okay. That would be ideal. Yeah, thank you. And what do you think of high rocks overall as a sport? I find being a quote unquote hybrid athlete is so counterintuitive because you want to be fast, but you want to be strong. And it's very difficult for someone like me that loses weight. If I'm stressed for a week, I've lost weight.

Yeah, it's cool. If that's your sport, then that's fine. It's CrossFit without a lot of the dangerous programming. I did used to do CrossFit. Of course you did. Yeah, of course. It's a sport. So just always remember that. This is what I tell all my clients that love CrossFit, HiRox, any of these things is like, I would never ever, ever, ever tell any of my

clients to do a sport to be healthy and fit. Just these things is like, um, I would never ever, ever, ever tell any of my clients to do a sport, to be healthy and fit. Just wouldn't. Now, if you love a sport and, and part of the byproduct is you're strong and you can run fast, then that's cool. I think that's an extra benefit, but don't fool yourself into thinking this is a maximum performance. It's not the best.

Yeah, that's true. And we were, we're misled on this because of covers of magazines with your favorite football player or basketball player. And we talk about how great they look. And it's like, that is not a healthy pursuit in order to get in shape and longevity or any of those things. It doesn't mean you can't do it and you can't pursue it. I think there's, it's awesome to have that goal, but also what has happened with CrossFit, Hirox, we have promoted it like it's a great way to be healthy and in shape.

Yeah, which has muddied everything up. Honestly, the training itself, you should be more reasonable building the body up for strength and then lead up to, like the competition itself is the pinnacle. You don't wanna mirror the competition in your training. I think this is where a lot of that gets wrong in the advice and like people put out programs that are like literally mimicking a lot of the event type intensity, which you know, you want to save your body to actually

perform at a high level for that one event. And so if you kind of lead up to that, you have your big you know, peak of training and then you come back, you scale way back down, you bring the intensity level down, everything's moderate. That's totally reasonable. It also just, Jade, this type of training tends to attract the person who shouldn't be doing this type of training also. It just, it does. And so in our experience, when you hear us comment on high rocks or crossfit or those things That's why we come out that way not that you can't be great at that sport and it's not awesome

I think it's phenomenal watch. I think it's badass some of these athletes what they can do, but it's a sport It's a it's a sport like football basketball But any other sport and when you are a very high performing athlete, you move away from health. You're just, you're not healthy. You're not the healthiest you could be. You could be much healthier having a much more balanced approach. And what we always try and communicate is the things you love, which is probably being able to run and also be strong. You can have that. You can have that and not also have to train like a high rocks athlete. Like you can get very strong and capable endurance wise and all the abilities that the sport gives you

but go about it in a way that is way healthier and better. Yeah, the irony is you're actually performing worse than you would because things are being overdone. Yeah, so you actually get better performance if you take a step back and rebuild a little bit and then go back to these seasons of training. Proud of you for asking though. Yeah, yeah, really good. Proud of you. Thank you so much for your help. I definitely take it way too seriously. I know. What happens? We'll have our guy reach out to you, Jade. Hope to see you there.

Thank you so much. I really appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you. Amelia Boone. I think that's a good podcast for her to listen to. I mean, she was the top athlete in OCR, one of the top female athletes. Amazing accomplishment. And then injury after injury after injury. Like weird stuff. Just can't maintain it.

Can't keep up with that. No, your body breaks down and starts to destroy itself. So, and by the way, when you're looking at these top athletes, they're putting out these programs, they don't train like that all the time. And they also, that's their life. So they take naps, they sleep during the day, they get all the optimal peptides

and maybe hormones and all that stuff, and they're genetically gifted. So, yeah, that's a tough one. 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. Adam.

Thank you for listening to Mind Pump. If your goal is to build and shape your body, dramatically improve your health and energy, and maximize your overall performance, check out our discounted RGB Super Bundle at mindpumpmedia.com. The RGB Super Bundle includes maps and a ballic, maps performance and maps aesthetic.

Nine months of phased expert exercise programming designed by Sal, Adam, and Justin to systematically transform the way your body looks, feels, and performs. With detailed workout blueprints and over 200 videos, the RGB Super Bundle is like having Sal, Adam, and Justin as your own personal trainers, but at a fraction of the price. The RGB Super Bundle has a full 30-day money-back guarantee, and you can get it now plus other valuable free resources at mindpumpmedia.com. If you enjoy this show, please share the love by leaving us a 5-star rating and review on

iTunes and by introducing Mind Pump to your friends and family. We thank you for your support and until next time, this is Mind Pump.