Mind Pump: Raw Fitness Truth - 2609: Five Times It’s Better to NOT Add Weight to the Bar & More (Listener Live Coaching)

Episode Date: May 31, 2025

In this episode of Quah (Q & A), Sal, Adam & Justin coach four Pump Heads via Zoom. Mind Pump Fit Tip: 5 times it’s better to NOT add weight to the bar. (2:03) The cognitive benefits of taking a break from smartphones. (17:24) A promising new trend for touring bands. (32:07) Effect of polyphenols on cognitive function. (33:44) Digital Drew. (35:04) Shout out to Mind Pump Josh! (44:17) The PB&J divide. (45:19) Kids say the darndest things. (48:40) Letting your kid win. (51:23) Good vibes at Mind Pump HQ. (54:47) #ListenerLive question #1 – What is the key to long-term success, stick to powerlifting year-round or upgrade every part of the “car?” (56:36) #ListenerLive question #2 – What is your take on this EMS studio trend? (1:10:48) #ListenerLive question #3 – What order and how frequently should I be using tools to maximize recovery? (1:19:40) #ListenerLive question #4 – How does one know when they’re ready to ramp up training volume? (1:29:24) Related Links/Products Mentioned Ask a question to Mind Pump, live! Email: [e-mail] Visit Organifi for the exclusive offer for Mind Pump listeners! ** Promo code MINDPUMP at checkout for 20% off ** Mind Pump Group Coaching Train the Trainer Webinar Series May Special: MAPS 15 Performance or RGB Bundle 50% off! ** Code MAY50 at checkout ** Why Your Tempo Matters When You Workout! – Mind Pump TV Mind Pump #1932: Lifting Heavy Vs. Lifting Light Blocking mobile internet on smartphones improves sustained attention, mental health, and subjective well-being  Irresistible: The Rise of Addictive Technology and the Business of Keeping Us Hooked – Book by Adam Alter All-American Rejects crashing house parties around the US. Where to next? Daily fruit and vegetable extracts may boost brain power Cold Case: The Tylenol Murders Zygomatic Spot It! Classic Card Game (2024 Refresh) - Pocket Eco Edition, 5-in-1 Visual Perception Game for Quick Reflexes and Family Fun, Ages 6+, 2-8 Players, 10 Minute Playtime, Made Visit Paleovalley for an exclusive offer for Mind Pump listeners! ** Discount is now automatically applied at checkout: 15% off your first order! ** Mind Pump Podcast – YouTube Mind Pump Free Resources People Mentioned Jim Kwik (@jimkwik) Instagram Drew Canole (@drewcanole) Instagram Josh Nickerson (@mindpumpjosh) Instagram Ed Coan (@eddycoan) Instagram Ben Pollack, Ph.D. (@phdeadlift)  Instagram Layne Norton, Ph.D. (@biolayne) Instagram  

If you want to pump your body and expand your mind, there's only one place to go. Mind pump with your hosts, Sal DeStefano, Adam Schaefer, and Justin Andrews. You just found the most downloaded fitness, health, and entertainment podcast. This is mind pump. In today's episode, we had live callers call in. We got to coach them on air, but this was after an intro. Today's intro was 54 minutes long. In the intro we talk about fitness, science,

fat loss, muscle gain, health, and we talk about current events and family stuff. It's a good time. By the way, if you wanna be on an episode like this where you can call in and we can help you, email us your question at live at mindpumpmedia.com. Now this episode is brought to you by some sponsors. The first one is Organifi.

Today we talked about their green juice. I brought up a study on polyphenols and how they boost BDNF in the brain. It's good for your brain to have 600 milligrams of polyphenols daily. Well, Organifi has a green juice that is packed full of polyphenols. Go check them out. That's organifi.com forward slash mind pump. That's Check them out. That's organifi.com forward slash mind pump. That's O-R-G-M-I-F-I dot com forward slash mind pump. Use the code mind pump for 20% off.

This episode is also brought to you by Mind Pump Group Coaching. We have two groups that we are now currently gonna start coaching. One is for fat loss, one is for muscle gain. If you wanna get coached by one of our trainers in a group, go to mindpumpgroupcoaching.com. By the way, trainers and coaches,

if you want to learn how to sell training more effectively, I'm gonna be doing a free webinar on Tuesday. You need to sign up though, it's free. Go to trainorwebinar.com. It's happening again June 3rd. We also have a sale on some workout programs this month. There's actually one day left, so it's gonna end very quickly, very soon.

Here's the sale. MAPS 15 Performance and the RGB Bundle are both half off. If you're interested, go to MAPSFitnessProducts.com and to use the discount code May50, so it's May5-0, use that for the 50% off discount. All right, here comes the show. You want to add weight to the bar, stop. Don't do it yet. There's actually five reasons why you shouldn't add weight to the bar or to put it differently. You'll get better results if you do

what we're about to talk about. I like this. Yes, great idea you came up with here. Oh, look at you, giving me credit today. Geez, you are in a good mood. We are evolving. Yes, yes we are. No.

No. We can't. You guys are playing nice. Yeah. Well, okay, so I'll start with the first one just so people aren't waiting too long. When the risk outweighs the benefit, this is when adding weight to the bar is probably not a good idea. But the reason why we're having this conversation is because, well, number one, getting stronger

is extremely important. It really, really is. And for the first few years, this is probably one of the top things you should be concerned with. But after that, it can become an issue, and it can definitely become an issue when the risks start to become larger than the benefit. And this starts to happen when you start

to get really strong. Like, when you start to get really strong, having bad technique or having your form be off by 5% as a man with let's say 100 pounds on your back, I mean that could cause an injury. But if your form is off 5% with 300 pounds on your back, well now you're talking about a very high risk of injury.

And at that point you wanna ask yourself, is adding 20 pounds to the bar going to give me better results than slowing down my form or having better technique or making it feel heavier? Oftentimes especially when you're experienced, adding weight to the bar is not the best option. I think too, you highlighted earlier, like this is the part of the maturity. Like you earn your way into this sort of mentality, like coming in and obviously loading the bar for progressive overload is a definite function

of starting out and this is something we need to build in terms of foundational strength, but there's a lot of other variables you can manipulate there to lower that overall risk factor now and still make great progress. You have to ask yourself too, what's your goal? Because many times the client's goal, I mean, yes, they want to be strong, but they're not chasing a specific number.

They're like, hey, I just want to be strong and healthy, and or I want to look good, which is really what most people are trying to achieve is to be fitter, feel fitter, look fitter. And if you're already stronger than your peers, because you've been training consistently for the last three years, then adding five or 10 more pounds to the bar, uh, doesn't always make sense. Especially in the context of it's a, a late risky movement to compound lift, or it's an area where you know, you, you don't have perfect form or can be off slightly, uh, slow the tempo down.

I mean, you're, you're far better off doing that. And that still increases the intensity. It still progressively overloads the body. You'll still build muscle from that. So yeah, I think more often than not, as a trainer, I would default this way. It was only the occasional client where I was like, oh, I just keep stacking more weight.

Yeah. Well, that's a good point. I think when you're training people, if you're a good trainer, weight on the bar never trumps technique or stability or control, ever. So the only time I would add weight to the bar, even with new clients, where adding weight to the bar

is gonna give you huge returns, right? When you first start strength training, getting stronger, adding weight to the bar gives you huge, huge benefits, but never at the compromise of technique or form, because even if you don't hurt yourself, you're gonna get strong in ways that don't benefit you, and you're not gonna develop the kind of muscle you think

because your technique is off. And this can lead to dysfunction, it can lead to a lot of different issues. But then later, when you're really strong, you get real strong, a lot of different issues. But then later, when you're really strong, you get real strong, this really starts to fall down the list of priorities.

I personally, I have a personal experience with this. It was a few years ago where I hit, I had broke my previous deadlift PR. I had deadlifted 605 pounds. And I remember after I did that, after about a month later, I thought to myself, I said, you know what would be really cool if I pulled 700 pounds before I turned 50?

Because at the time I was 45. I'm like, you know, 700 pounds at the end of 50. But what would the benefits be of getting that, am I gonna develop a much different looking body? No, at that point it's just technique, it's specific types of training, it's neural output, and what benefits I'm going to get from it versus the potential risk of really bad injury. You hurt yourself deadlifting 200 pounds, okay.

If I hurt myself deadlifting 650 pounds, it's probably going to be an injury that's going to affect me maybe for the rest of my life, maybe not debilitate me, but probably affect me long term. And what gains would I get from that? Not that much. Would I get the same kind of gains by training differently, slowing down my tempo, improving my connection, whatever? Yeah, I'll get just as great of gains from doing that. So you have to ask yourself, especially if you're advanced, is the risk of getting...

Now if you're going to compete in power of getting, now if you're gonna compete in powerlifting and that's the name of the game, that's fine, that's a sport, but if you do this for fitness and health and looking good and feeling good, you know, you ask yourself, all right, what are the benefits of adding 50 pounds to my 300 pound squat? If you can't name what it translates in real life for you,

it's pretty much worthless. If you can't be like, well now I can do that thing now. It's nice. What thing can you not do at a 500 pound deadlift that you can now do in 600 pound lift? There's nothing. Yeah, it's funny now too, because it's like I'm so looking forward to getting back into that mentality

and the way I was training before, trying to really press the envelope and get into that crazy PR type of training. But it's so and it's, it's so nerve wracking now too, at that point, like if you're, you're toeing that line every time I train, I'm like, Oh my God, like don't exceed it. Don't, don't overdo it. You know, pull back, recover. And it's because the risk factor is so much higher, you know, when you're, when you're really shooting for that.

Yeah. Listen, you could, if you take a client who's middle age or advanced age and they've never trained before, they struggle walking up their stairs or getting up out of bed or doing things like that, and you get that client to now all of a sudden squat 135, 150, that's life changing. Life changing.

Life changing for that person. From that point on though, them going from 150 to 250 doesn't make that big of a difference in their life anymore. And then the new risk you put them at by doing that is just, it's not worth it. And the higher that number gets, the less. Yeah, like you said, if a new person adds 50 pounds to their lifts, it changes their life.

If you're advanced and you're lifting heavy weights and you add 50 pounds to your lifts, you feel nothing different. Except for maybe more aches and pains. It's stiffness. So again, you have to look at the risk versus the reward and can I get the same rewards or similar rewards without adding weight to the bar?

And when you're advanced, oftentimes the answer is yes. Adding weight to the bar is probably not the smart thing. There's so many parts of training that you can focus on that don't even involve lifting really heavy weight. You could just fill in so many gaps and be such a better overall performing person if you just shift the focus. Here's another reason or time when it's not better to add weight to the bar and that's

when your range of motion can be improved. So if you're squatting and you're going down to 90 degrees and you're like wow I'm stronger I'm gonna add weight to the bar why don't you just not add weight to the bar and go a little lower. You actually get better results by doing that. You actually build more muscle you'll get a more balanced looking physique you'll reduce your risk of injury you'll get more benefit from doing that with less risk so long as it's done within reason, then you would by adding weight to the bar. So if your range of motion is limited and you're stronger,

challenge your range of motion. Don't challenge the load. That's actually the worst thing you could do at that point. Or work towards getting a greater range of motion because the reality is you're probably not going to be able to, if you only squat down to say 90 degrees with whatever weight and lightening it up, you may not necessarily be able to go any deeper with good form because that's what's happening is your form probably breaks down. But it's the work you have to put in in order to get a deeper squat that has so much more

return. So you take somebody who has now reached, say, 200-something pounds in a squat and they're only squatting 90 degrees and I say, okay, as a client, we're gonna strip the weight down, we're gonna do like an isometric hold at the bottom, we're gonna do some 90 90s ankle work, we're gonna get to a place where we can get six more inches of depth and all that work in order to get those extra six inches

are so valuable to that client, far more than if we would've added 25 or 50 more pounds to that squat. I remember as a kid learning how to shoulder press and I remember the first certifications we got with shoulder press told you to limit your range of motion down to 90 degrees. It was really just the safe way of them teaching trainers

how to not hurt people, but it wasn't the best way to train. But anyway, I was shoulder pressing like this forever and I remember getting convinced to go all the way down and go much lighter and my shoulders blew up. I got so much better results, way better function, I was strong on all my lifts and my delts looked better from the fuller range of motion versus just adding weight to the bar with that short range of motion. The full range of motion was superior. One of the other reasons is when you need more recovery. When you're feeling

a bit fried, it's probably better to slow your reps down and make the weight feel heavier than it is to add weight to the bar. Adding weight to the bar can definitely hammer your ability to recover. So you can still have a good workout, you're just not going to go heavier. Instead, you're going to make the weight feel heavier. And this tends to translate into less damage to the body. It just tends to. Now, I know people can make the argument you can make lightweight feel just as intense as heavyweight, but there's something about the heavyweight, whether it's how it's affecting

the stabilizers or your balance, maybe the fear factor of it, who knows? I could come up with a list of reasons, but I know that if I lift a lighter weight and make the weight feel heavier, I seem to recover faster than if I max out with the weight. Well, it's more extrinsic, not intrinsic. Because intrinsically, you could obviously, like, struggle more. You could produce more effort, which does apply to that, you know. But yeah, it's so much less of a risk and better for your body a lot of times to kind of focus more on your own effort into it. Well, this is a quick recipe to get in that

what you call the recovery trap. I mean, this is what happened. I mean, we were probably all guilty of this as early lifters, just thinking that being that sore was a part of being that sore. I remember many workouts heading into it and being really really sore and going like I just got to push it again and then your body's constantly trying to recover versus adapting from it. So I think it's a quick recipe for someone to get stuck in that recovery trap

by training this way when you'd be far better off lightening the load, working on range of motion and you're gonna get you're strong if not stronger, you'll recover faster, just a far better, smarter way to approach it. Totally. Next is, this is why bodybuilders are tend to do this, because really advanced bodybuilders are good at this, is when you have a lagging body part, this is especially true for compound lifts, if you have a, let's say, a prime mover in a compound lift, like your glutes when you squat or your chest when you bench press.

You're like, you know what? I bench press and I'm getting stronger. My delts and my triceps are developing but my chest isn't. Or you're like, I'm squatting, I'm getting stronger but my butt doesn't seem to be responding well. Rather than adding weight to the bar, modify your technique to start to feel and connect to those lagging body parts. Sometimes, oftentimes, when I train somebody with a lagging body part and we were doing

those compound lifts, I would lighten the load and slow down and say squeeze and feel it here. Because here's what happens, when you do a compound lift, your body doesn't think body parts. It doesn't think. No, it says move the weight. Hit chest, hit glute. It thinks, it thinks, move the weight

in the most efficient way possible. Now most efficient meaning the way your body moves in the best way, which means you could have muscle groups that aren't firing the way they should, but your body learned to move that way, so that's how you're going to move the most weight. That's right, so you're quad dominant when you squat or you're bench pressing and you're tricep and shoulder dominant. Well, lighten it up and change the technique a little bit, focus on those lagging body parts and then watch what happens. This is how, this was my recipe for people with lagging body parts was lighten it up,

squeeze those areas. Let's see what happens. Throw some isometric, some unilateral type exercises so you can really kind of hone in on, uh, you know, reconnecting to that muscle. I actually think this is something that, just a general rule for all lifters, is you should run a series or a cycle every year of unilateral work, just to do a diagnostics,

to come back and check on that. Because if you do a lot of barbell lifting, ends up happening what you said, is that you're concerned about lifting the bar over your head or getting the bar up off your Chest and you're not thinking about oh is my left and my right firing equally and you don't notice that Discrepancy until you go to you know a lot of work and then you see the you know I work you go. Oh my god

My left side is you know ten pounds weaker and all these less that does to your bar path, too Yeah, how much more vertical you can huge different and I think this is all like it's always evolving and changing So even as you get really experienced say you've been lifting as long as one of us I still have these these periods of time where I'll go back to it and I'll see oh I created a little bit of an imbalance again So the more barbell work you do the more likely you will find these imbalances And it's just good just good habits to annually check back in and go hey, you know what? I'm gonna run a unilateral cycle right now and just pay attention to my left and right

and try and balance it just for me, versus let's keep pushing the barbell movements and see if I can add another 20 pounds. That's right, and then lastly, maybe when you're limited on time, maybe you have a home gym and you have those dumbbells that require you to unscrew the ends and add weight to, or you just have the gym and you gotta get up

and go add weight, and you're like, okay, I'm supposed to do 12 reps, but this weight feels a little light, I think I'm getting 15 reps with it. Well, instead you got to get up and go add weight. You're like, okay, I'm supposed to do 12 reps, but this weight feels a little light. I think I'm getting 15 reps with it. Well, instead of having to get up and get, grab the weights because you're limited, just slow your reps down. Make the weight feel heavy so that now you perform the desired amount of reps with the desired amount of intensity.

In fact, this is what I do nowadays. When I train nowadays at the gym, rarely do I add weight to the bar for the third or fourth set. It's typically, oh, I miss, you know, I miscalculated my weight, it's a little light, here's what I'm gonna do, I'm just gonna slow down. I'll hit my desired rep range by slowing the reps down and making it feel hard at the 10 rep mark rather than adding weight to the machine. I love this tip. This is, I mean, this is how you solve a hotel gym problem, right? Oh, totally. I mean, they go up to 50 pound dumbbells. Yeah. So, I mean, that's at my, well, I take that

back. I just recently ordered the heavier ones, but I've been, I was lifting it to 50 pound dumbbells at my house for the longest time. And, you know, I love the, just grab one pair of dumbbells and then I get an entire workout right there because even the exercises where 50 pounds seems light I just got to slow the tempo down or go unilateral and split stance and do things like that and it'll intensify it just fine so this idea that we always have to add weight to the bar yes it has tremendous value yes early on I mean it's really good and it's important that we focus on strength but at some point the the returns are

diminishing. 100%. All right, I gotta go through that study, Adam, that you shared with me. I just, I saw it come up from, give the credit to Jim Quick, it was on his post. Yeah, dude. And I saw that and I went, oh my God, that's alarming. So this is a well-made study, and up until now,

we've speculated that easy access to the internet and social media is probably negatively affecting our ability to focus or concentrate. It maybe has some negative effects on cognitive performance and function. Yeah, we're outsourcing everything. But up until now, a lot of it's been speculative. Now the speculation, I think, has been on point because the way that your smartphone and its apps and social media and all the stuff, the way that they're all engineered is very similar

to the way that processed foods have been engineered. So processed foods are expertly engineered to make you overeat. These social media apps and all stuff on the internet and stuff, it's even more well engineered because they actually engineer themselves in real time. So like if you're on social media, the algorithm will engineer it to you personally. So imagine eating a processed food.

That was perfect for you. That's hard to resist. It's already hard to resist Oreos, you're eating them. Except the Oreos now get feedback from you and can make themselves more sweet, more salty, more crunchy based on your personal. More olive oil for sal. Yeah.

Thanks. More chicken. Imagine technology getting that far where every food that you eat tastes like your favorite food. Oh my God. Imagine that. Imagine everything was cheese, bro.

You can eat everything. I do, I just wake up and imagine everything was cheese. I eat a big old thing of salmon, but it tasted like cheese, you know what I'm saying? How amazing that would be, right? If somebody could figure that out, I would eat fish. Matt took a while off, I thought about you the other day, someone got a Ritz cracker,

you know how they have the little holes in it? Yeah. It was like a hack, and then he put the little spray cheese through the hole in the middle and sprayed it, and it perfectly made this cheese cheese like topping on it. I'm like Justin. I've probably done that already. Yeah, he's probably like, I've done that.

Anyway, so the study was actually well done. So what they did with the study is they did a month long randomized control trial. The goal was to investigate how removing constant access to the internet through smartphones might impact psychological functioning. They used a mobile phone application to block all mobile internet access from participants' smartphones for two weeks and objectively track their compliance.

So are they off, like let's track it. And I believe they were, the only things they were allowed to do was take phone calls and text messages. That's right. So the intervention specifically targeted the feature that makes smart phones smart, so the mobile internet, while allowing participants to maintain mobile connection

through texts and calls and non-mobile access to the internet, so they'd have to go to their desktop computer to get on the internet. The intervention improved mental health, subjective well-being, and objectively measured ability to sustain attention. 91% of participants improved on at least one of those outcomes.

Almost everybody got better. And at least one of those things that I'm of course. So we discussed recently, I brought it up to you guys, about a friend of mine that's going through with his son with the ADD, potential ADD medication and stuff. And I said, how is that not a study to prove that the games and things like that, that's 100% right?

So these shows like Cocoa Melon and these TV, especially the part about this that's really insidious is that it's especially true in these children's video games. Their video games, their television shows are... have you heard, like I know you know about CocoMilk, do you like know how they figure that out? Like they literally put all these kids in and as soon as the kids lose attention, they switch, they change, they go, okay we got to edit that, we got to change what we do right there, switch the color, switch to this. Okay, good, do it again.

And then they just keep doing that until they can keep these kids completely looped in for the entire duration of the show. And then, okay, then we've made one, now the next one. And they just keep doing that. And so you do that to a kid, and he's getting all that stimulation, then he plays video games,

and then you want him to sit in a classroom for an hour and learn about history, or like, are you kidding me? And then wonder why he can't sit still and doesn't want, I mean, it's fascinating to me that we, this isn't discussed more. And when I Googled, like the, I told you the, when it first came up, I started searching, and when you search, they don't say that you, it causes any of that.

So there's no video game, uh, YouTube, no, there's no articles out there or studies that are showing that it could cause ADD, but there's clearly a correlation to that with what we're seeing from this, right? And that similar, isn't that what it's basically saying? Yeah. The, the issue, I mean, it's not saying it's causing ADD, but I mean, for somebody who struggles with potentially that-

The potential's there. It's gotta be aggravating it. It's- Or accelerating it. Again, okay, I'll use kids as an example. We'll go back to health, because it's a health and fitness podcast. Go to the grocery store and go look at all the kids' foods.

The most engineered crap you'll find are for kids. Now why is that? Because parents don't wanna struggle with getting their kids to eat. And so if a food manufacturer can make a food that a kid will eat on their own, parents naturally will go to that because raising kids is hard, it's tough, it's stressful.

And you look, my kids wanna eat and I put out this food, they don't wanna eat it rather than I put it out and they love it and they eat it and it seems okay, type of deal. By the way, oftentimes what they do is they wrap this in something that's healthy. So your kids are watching attention-destroying educational content.

But they're learning. Well, that's what CocoMilk, that's why CocoMilk's so insidious, because you're like, oh, well, they're learning these songs, and they're learning colors. At what cost is what's happening. But this was adults. This study was done on adults. Adults, our brains are not nearly as plastic as children.

So who knows what the effect will be long term. It's gotta be worse for kids. How malleable their brains are at that age. It is. No, 100%. And so what happens with these attention grabbing things is you're flooding your brain with dopamine and neurotransmitters and your brain starts to adjust and down regulate receptors to adjust to this flood of dopamine

that would never happen naturally. Never would you get that kind of changing of scenery and novelty in nature. Just doesn't exist. So the brain starts to adapt to the point where normal life becomes so unstimulating you cannot pay attention. That's what happens. It's no different than eating heavily processed foods. If you eat strawberry flavored candy all the time, your brain will adjust to the point where you'll eat a real strawberry and it's going to taste bland. Nature's candy is going to taste super bland. We've all experienced that,

you know, cutting off certain foods or whatever. It's the same thing with this kind of stuff. So it's really interesting to me that it's not interesting. I think it confirms kind of what we all know. And I'm going to speak as an adult. I have to consciously, I'm constantly struggling myself with my phone, with the way that it grabs

my attention. We joke about it in here all the time. So this is a real thing. I don't know what the answer is. I don't know if it's gonna be like, you know, get a dumb phone? Well you see that, we've seen that movement. I don't know how, it'd be interesting to see

how popular that movement is. And how long it lasts. Yeah, cause I've seen that there's some high school kids that are opting for the flip phone. Yeah, the flip phone. So I don't know if that's... My cousin did. I don't know if that's because they care more about their health or they didn't know their parents are tracking them in smartphones. I'm not sure which one it is. My cousin did for health reasons. Really? Yeah. So he's a really... I told you guys about this kid that I... My cousin, he's like one of the most remarkable kids I've ever met. Super like growth minded, devout Catholic, just very responsible, like great kid.

And he switched to a smartphone because he's like, I can't resist going on the internet and distracting myself all the time. So now he's using a flip phone. So I mean, Doug, can you search? I'm curious to see like, cause is it- Like sales? Yeah, well no, is like there's a movement behind it.

Like look up, you know, dumb phone or flip phone movement. Brick phone. Is it catching fire? Was it a trend for a minute? Are dumb phones becoming more popular? Yeah, I don't know. Yeah, you can look up sales. There you go.

I don't see it. I don't see any kids do that. I know. See, I've seen the articles and I've heard. I think it's a great novel idea. I think we sit in here and we want that you know, but it's not it's not a thing Yeah, you know you really have to like Isolate you have to be comfortable with the fact that you're gonna isolate yourself

I just think it's case so I shared with you guys off-air so Max had pneumonia and the flu the last five days So it's been a rough like five days especially for Katrina. She's just like nonstop. Now he's puking and feels miserable. So laying around the couch, watching TV. I mean, that's kind of what you're doing at the time. And we did that for like four days straight. So he's feeling much better now.

We're on the mend. We're still coughing and sick. And he's not better completely. And he's still needy. But we're on the mend. Now easily, and Katrina's not better completely and he's still needy but we're on the men. Now easily and Katrina's got stuff to do today, easily she could go I just I need to get work done and he's you know laying around the couch she's still not filming I'll just let him watch tv but knowing how much we've already given him in this short period of time and how addictive it's already

become in that short period of time like she set up all these stations for him and she made a game out of it, right? Well, every time he completes a station, he gets a sticker and they're all active things. Just to pull them out. Yeah, just to pull, and by the way, these are things that he would love to do organically and naturally,

but we recognize how much the pull is and that short period of time of allowing him to do that and that it takes a little more effort than just being like, hey, you're gonna play outside or hey, you're just gonna play with these toys. So my point is, it just takes a real conscious effort from us as parents to be aware of that. Like I always, I always feel for like you guys who have older kids who like didn't know.

You know, I was so unaware. Well, most people were. If you, I mean, 15 years ago, nobody, I mean, let's be honest, eight years ago when I started talking about you guys were making fun of me. Remember when I brought the book, remember that was a big joke on this podcast? Like, oh, Adam, recommending Irresistible again. Hey, that one book, right? Like, I mean- We still make fun of you, but yeah.

Yeah, yeah. But I mean, it wasn't- There's truth there. There's always was truth there. Yeah, there was just not a lot of conversation around it 10, 15 years ago. So you know, didn't know any better. But for people that have kids now that are like my son's age or younger, it really is up to us to create those habits early on.

Then I think you won't have as hard of a time with these high school kids. I think you have to realize, I think this will help parents. You have to realize that it's you versus billions and billions of dollars of innovation and engineering. So it's you versus the smartest engineers.

Oh yeah, no, it's David versus Goliath. Yeah, so you have to realize that because... It's attrition. It's not just like, you know, you do this and you implement it. Like it's for... It's a struggle. Ever. Forever.

You can't fucking stop. That's the thing. And we're going through it right now. That's why I'm frustrated, because it's like, now you're going into summer, they don't have the structure of school. They don't have this woman do. Then they want to just geek out on video and like go out, see your friends and like, and so now I have to come in with the hammer and battle acts, everything

and throw all this shit away and like, you're not going to get it back and I got to be that guy, but you have to be that guy. Yeah. And that's it. And it's not fun. It's not cool. And you're not like the best friend guy, but you got to come that guy. Yeah. And that's it. And it's not fun. Yeah. And it's not cool. And you're not like the best friend guy.

Yeah. But you gotta come in and you gotta lay it down. It's gonna suck. So my wife is really good with the little ones and electronics and TV. Like she's very strict. And we've done this experiment where, you know, cause I grew up watching Mr. Rogers as a kid.

That's what was on TV when I was a kid. And she tells our kids, you can watch unlimited Mr. Rogers, but everything else is limited to, it's 20 minutes, 20 minutes total for the day. If we put on Mr. Rogers, my kids will stop watching it. They'll watch it for a little while and they're done. It won't keep them engaged because it's slow and they're just, let me do something else.

You put on something else, I mean, my kids will stay on there until they lose their mind. I told you I figured that out with Nintendo, right? The original Nintendo. Like, Max will just get bored. Like, we'll be doing it and he'll be like. I thought it was just the distance at first because I had the same experience

because it was at least you're pulled back from the screen but it's so much more than that. No, I mean. They just didn't figure it out. Well only have you only have three lives then you die start all over you know the game is slow it's boring music it's like it's not visually all over the place it's very you know the characters the characters are like this you know so it's I mean the science in that has evolved so much that I think a lot of people just don't realize how much, because I know a lot of people say exactly what you I've heard this like my buddies when we all

talk about this with our kids and be like, well, you know, I also don't want to be that dad because you know, we played video games, you know, we remember we played when we were kids. It wasn't the same because we what I remember we used to do and they all agree the same thing is like we used to play basketball, football, baseball, everything outside until the sun went down and then we couldn't play outside anymore. So then we had to go outside. It was the second option.

Yeah, then we would play and then we would normally stop because you eventually get bored because it is kind of like the same thing over and over where man, the way they've designed them now is not like that. They just hang out with their friends in there. Yes, yes. That's the new way they hang out. I know and look it sucks but if you want to

be healthy in the entire sense of the word health, mental health, physical health, spiritual health, you can't be like everyone else. Your kids can't be like all the other kids. Look at the data. Like most people are not well so yeah you're gonna have to be that guy. Stand out a bit. And your kid's gonna be different. And what I encourage parents to do, because we've done this through our church, is find other families who are aligned,

because then your kids can be with other kids who get it. Otherwise your kids are hanging out with other kids and they're like, but my friends can do this and my friends can do that. And it's a constant battle versus they go tell their friend, yeah, my dad won't let me be on my phone for more than 15 minutes. They're like, my dad won't let me either.

I'm like, okay. Well, that makes a huge difference, I think. Huge difference. Because if you can find other parents that align with the similar values, because then the kid doesn't feel like. It makes your life easier. Way easier.

Way easier. I think it's also a lot easier, too, again, if you start it early, where it takes a little bit of effort from Katrina and I right now, in hopes that when he's later in life like he gets that. Well I gotta talk about something positive about social media which is gonna throw this whole conversation off but I saw a really interesting cool trend or I don't know if it's a trend or if it's just something that this one band did that I've heard about that

other bands are taking notice of but you remember the band All American Rejects? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Super popular band back in the day. That was Peaches, right? No, that was. Oh, that was Presidents. Presidents of the United States of America. Yeah. But anyways, they they decided that they were not going to do Ticketmaster. They're not going to do like venues.

They were just going to literally have their own audience like choose a place and then get enough people to show up there. And then they would play in somebody's backyard. Oh, that's kind of a park at a pool like place like wherever. And then they would just, they would just plot it based off of like, you know, how many people contributed and like, if it was people pay to make it happen. Yeah, paid but it's like direct to the band yeah that's direct to them like they just played like house parties that they've been even more profitable I guess doing this because there's no no hands in the pot hands yeah they're catering to their most well I was like that's brilliant yeah yeah

exactly there yeah they're getting more fervorous fans as a result I was like, that's so brilliant. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah, they're getting more fervorous fans as a result. I feel like that's the direction things are going to go with AI anyway, because AI is going to be entertaining and doing things that the real hardcore fans are the ones that are going to make business possible for a lot of these people. I love it, dude. It's like the grassroots kind of thing is starting to poke through

and get rid of all these middlemen. Well, at Spina AI, I know we have organify today commercial. Oh dude I got a polyphenol study related to organify. Well tell me. I'm gonna tell you the study so let me pull it up so this is a pretty cool study I read the other day I saved it for this episode. I saw that earlier I thought it said polygamy. No, no, no. It's just weird. Yeah, dude. Don't do it. What are you into now, Sal? No, stop it. What's up?

You know in the Old Testament. No, no, no. It says, this is a study, 600 milligrams a day of polyphenols from fruit and vegetable concentrates, okay? So it wasn't just from the food, but from the concentrates. Improved cognition and boosted brain biomarkers,

BDNF and CREB. So BDNF is like, it's really good for the brain, right? Helps it with neuroplasticity and growth and learning. So this was from 600 milligrams a day of polyphenols. So Organifi's Green Juice is polyphenol city. It is concentrated polyphenols. You know how much? No, but it's definitely enough to make a difference because it's concentrated. Oh, interesting. Yeah, polyphenols are You know how much? No, but it's definitely enough to make a difference

because it's concentrated. Oh, interesting. Polyphenols are these micronutrients with really powerful antioxidant ability or capabilities that you find in fruits and vegetables. So a concentrated form like a green juice, which is almost no calories, so it's not like juice, would be able to create that.

So I was bringing in Organifi and Drew up because of the AI conversation we had because his AI bot was just. Clone. His clone is, the fact that we're here, that that's here, I mean we were talking about that for. Yeah, that was trippy. A long time on the podcast how easy it would be

to do that of one of us because of the amount of content that we have on video. So you have to explain what he did. Yeah. So I forget the company. So maybe Doug can look up what the company is and we can shout them out or whatever, but this company basically makes a AI clone of yourself.

And he literally did it right in front of us. It was so wild. He- Digital Drew. Yeah. He pulled up his clone, his clone of himself. And he said, and he said, Hey Drew, I'm going on the mind pump podcast today. Do you have some tips for me? And then it was his voice. Yeah. And then it tells him all these great

tips, right? Great. Basically analyzed what our shows about what we stand for, our values and things that we talk about the stuff we ask questions about and gave him all kinds of tips on how to prepare for that. And the way it works is it aggregated data from all of his podcasts and things he's written. So it literally, it got his personality in it. So like if you have, you could plug this into this thing apparently, and it creates a clone of you,

which is, what is it? Is that the? Yeah, Delphi.ai. That's weird. What are the three options, what does that mean? His voice, inflection? Oh, yeah, and it was like it came distinguishable. Yeah, it was really close already Yeah, it was close enough that the average person wouldn't know any better obviously a little bit of a delay But just a little you know, I mean it's so we're here. It's like it's only a matter of time Yeah, it'd be so fun to see if we could like replace one of us in the conversation and see

How that flowed just for you? I'll take that baby version I think it's really my mic is turned down. Yeah, it's really about how much How many messages you can get in minutes you can get every month. Oh wow. So you pay for additional minutes. This seems to me like the ultimate narcissistic tool. You know what I mean? If I could just have another me. Yes and no, but remember.

If you could write your emails for you. What was that sci-fi show that you really liked that you got me to watch? Not upload, there's the other one where the guy, he's talking to his brother who died in the other one where the guy he's talking to his brother who died in war something like that and he's um what show was it was one of you guys a sci-fi a black mirror episode so he he was like he was like going through therapy and it was but it was like his brother who was

communicating to us and it was and it was like an AI version of it so I can think of examples huh no no it wasn't her, it was in a movie, it was a show, it was a series. Oh, Westworld. Westworld. It was one of the last. How does Westworld end? Yeah, I don't remember the end of that,

but I remember it was one of the seasons, and I remember, and we brought it up when it happened on the show, and I think you said the same thing too, like I know, and I'm like, and I brought up the point of how cool it would be to talk to my dad. Like, if my dad had the amount of content that I have put out there, and let's say if Max were to lose me, right, at his young age of five, six years old right now, and 20 years from now, actually he cares, because he probably doesn't care his teenage

years to talk to dad, but he cares and he gets older, like, man, I missed out on dad, and he would want to have this conversation. With the amount of data that we have of me communicating on here and written content It would be really close to like communicate and to me that's better than nothing, right? I have nothing right now I have like a handful of pictures a little bit of stories from family That's passed down and like but not but if I had the ability to like Call and talk to him and have a conversation, and it would be him like him, I don't know. I think that would be.

I don't think a majority of people use it that way. I can see what you're saying. You know who did that first, by the way? What movie showed something like that first? Let's see if Justin knows. Justin's a movie nerd like I am. Okay. I'll give you a hint.

It's a superhero movie. That used the clone? Kind of like that. Remember when Superman, he went and he built his fortress of solitude and he would talk to his parents, they all got destroyed. You don't like Superman? No.

Oh yeah, you're Batman. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But I do, okay, so. The superhero and those superpowers. Yeah. Superman just has all of them, like oh cool, yeah. Anyways. I mean, you right away, so what comes to mind for you

is bad application on it, like the word. All of this makes me think of that. Really? Yeah, dude. I don't think that, I don you you right away you so you what comes to mind for you is bad application on it Like the word all of this makes me think of that. Yeah, dude. I don't think that I don't think that way Where do you guys think a Good chunk of the money goes into innovation on the internet. And what do you think? They're gonna take this technology? Okay, well, I'm glad you went that direction Yeah internet number one sites probably porn all kinds of bad negative stuff But generally speaking would you not say the internet was an incredible thing? Yeah, okay. I just caution it so it'll be it'll be like that. It'll be like that just like that

There'll probably be a lot more people that use it for bad and evil and it'll be abused and all the things that you're thinking But we never really had a chance to acclimate, is how I feel. It's so fast. It's so fast, it's so disruptive, it's so innovative. There's positives, there's negatives, but we've never been able to just sit and be like, oh, we've adapted. I don't know, dude, I'm in a different head space,

or a weird head space, because I just came back from Vegas, Las Vegas this weekend. We went for my niece's. My niece's in Vegas? Yeah, we went for my niece's graduation. That's Sin City bro. So I've all no matter even before even secular Sal when I would go to Vegas after a couple days I'd want to leave. Yeah I just would feel kind of like ugh right shower. Yeah, I just would feel kind of like, ugh, right? Yeah.

But through a different filter, right? You know, now I have a faith and I went there and we, I don't know why we decided this would be okay, but we walked the strip for an hour. With your kids? And I saw. Yeah. Did you get the handouts?

Yeah. It was, it was. What were you thinking? It was every sin or every terrible thing celebrated. By the way, it's human nature, we're all falling broken, all that stuff. But it's so celebrated that as we're walking through, I just felt so sad.

I mean, I saw a dude almost getting a fist fight in the street, so I saw rage, lust everywhere. At one point, there was a woman dressed as a nun with her boobs exposed. That was her scht, shtick. I saw extreme poverty, I saw total addiction. It was, as we're walking, I just felt so, ugh, by it. And I'm just like, man, human nature.

And what's crazy about it is, you just called it, Vegas advertises it, and that's what brings people to it. They don't even play, they don't even try to pretend. They're like, this is Sin City, you guys. And that's how they get everybody to go over there. So as I'm walking through, I'm just like, oh my gosh. So you talk about technology, and I'm just like, oh what are people gonna do with this? Is there gonna be some good, maybe, hopefully, but is there gonna

be like some craziness that we can't even, I can't even conceptualize? Probably. I mean it'll make bad people worse, but good people, you'll be able to do good things with it. I think it'll be like, I think the internet was a perfect analogy. It will be like that technology. It will absolutely be disruptive. It absolutely will do some evil things. But I mean, that's everything.

That's never not been the case. It's always been that. And we only see, it only seems so in our face because the internet because we have the ability to see somebody doing evil across the country where you would go your whole lifetime and never hear that story because it was across the country just across country but now it's like on your instagram feed the same day. Well it's a good. So just you guys hear about the the Tylenol murders. Oh I saw that I saw that I saw the series on never even heard of that like yeah well, so yeah again to this whole point like

so I think this was what back in the 80s maybe but they now they have a Like a seal that you put on medications like that you put you know in convenience stores because of incident, because this guy put cyanide in Tylenol, because you could remove the capsule and you could stuff in. So he'd go to these convenience stores and they found this guy was putting cyanide

and people were just taking Tylenol and dying. Oh my God. Yeah, and it's like super insidious, like crazy, like that that even could have happened. But then it's like, well, if that's the potential, this is gonna happen. You take them a while to catch. Yeah, because they thought maybe it was

from the manufacturing plants, and they realized that it was just isolated in this one city. And so what they found out, it wasn't the responsibility, it wasn't somebody working at the plant that was like doing this. It was actually somebody that was going to the convenience store and then taking, taking actual product off the shelf, putting it in.

What comes over someone that makes them want to randomly kill people? Yeah, I haven't gotten into the second episode yet, so I don't know if you did a psycho. That's so terrible. I mean, but again, you're, you're highlighting my point, which I mean, it's just, evil always will exist and there are and people will find ways to do bad things. I mean, so, and I think that's, when I see a technology like that,

my optimistic brain goes right to the things like, oh, this could be really, really, really cool. I think it'll be cool for a lot of reasons. I'll give you guys some uplifting. Did you guys see what, I gotta give him a shout out, he's so humble, Josh, what he did over the weekend? Did you guys see what he did? What did he do? He went to Mexico. Oh, I did see this, yeah. With his church out, he's so humble. Josh, what he did over the weekend, did you guys see what he did? No.

He went to Mexico with his church and he built some houses. I didn't know he did that. Yeah, dude. This weekend? He just did, he just got back. He's on one leg and everything? And he's got his knee.

He's got a bum leg and he's out there building houses. And he went out there to help build houses for people that needed houses. Yeah, that's right. He sent me some pictures of it. Who'd he go with? He went with his girlfriend. Just the two of them. And he went out there to help build houses for people that needed houses to be built. He sent me some pictures of it. Who'd he go with? He went with his girlfriend. Just the two of them?

In the church. In the church. There's like a whole group. How great is that? Yeah, it was awesome. That is so awesome. That's really good. What a great kid.

He's such a good, again, shout out to that guy. I mean, what's great about it is that, because there's a lot of kids that go and do stuff like that. Many times though, their parents have set them up on it. So for him to actively choose that as a young adult, you know, to go do something like that. What do you want to do this weekend with your busted knee? I'm gonna go in some place and go sleep on a cot

in a room with a bunch of people and then go build a house, even though my knee's busted. That's so cool. I thought that was, you know. That was cool. Speaking of cool, Katrina texted me this morning that, you know, I told you she set up all these little stations. And then she also said, hey, you have to make your lunch today because, you know, mommy's got to work and then you're home today. So she set out all the stuff for

him to make himself a peanut butter jelly sandwich. And he started telling her how he needs to put the jelly on first so it wipes off. Basically, daddy says this. You're training him wrong. You tell him to sit down and pee too. Cause that's the other debate we've had. Oh my God. You know, I forgot how much that stirred up the internet when we did it the first time. And then of course, Josh made the video with the babies and us arguing. Like it is wild to me how many people are like divided.

Oh, so divided. It is. I mean, clearly division there that people think I'm crazy for doing that. And other people were like, how is there any other way? Yeah, it's so strange. I had no idea when I said that. I mean, that was so real and authentic when it happened when we were just having conversation, I thought, wait, you guys do it that way?

Like what? It's like people setting up their toilet paper. Like they get really like, Oh, if it goes the wrong way. Oh, what's the wait, so you guys do it that way? Like what? It's like people setting up their toilet paper, like they get really like angry. Oh, if it goes all the way, yeah. Oh, which direction? And it's split too, it's not like one has the right answer. So I know people say have it over because that's the aesthetic way to do it,

but I learned as a parent early on that don't do that when you have little kids because they hit the toilet paper. And just keep going. And flip it off. So you have it under because when they hit it, then it doesn't off. So you have it under, because when they hit it, then it doesn't come off the roll. Over is what you're supposed to do, right?

That's the assumption. I don't think I even pay attention when I do it. That's how I do it. You just throw it on? Yeah, I literally just throw it on in whichever way. So maybe it's one way. You got us all on the wet wipes kit. Come on, man.

Yeah, you have detail about all those things. I know, actually, I normally am about a lot of things, but that's actually one that I've never been like that. It's never really, I think, bothered me maybe because the type of ones I've had it because I think it's only it's really Frustrating if you have like one of the like kind of like the contraption we have here Where it's like it's being fed in terrible paper. First of all, just like rips off. I hate that Quality first, especially we use a toilet at the airport. Are we buying ours? Are we buying ours? No, I don't think so. We supplied. Okay. Yeah, because I'm like, who's buying this cheap ass toilet paper? Like, aren't we doing better? I hate it when it's one square of the time. That's a measure of success. Quilted toilet paper.

Get with the program. My wife agreed with Doug, by the way. She's like, I'll use two knives. So I know a lot of people that do that. I know a lot of people that go, that's wasteful though. That's totally eggs. Dishwasher or wash two knives and one knife. Hey, when you're only gonna wash one dish, you're like, that makes total sense. You're like, fucking use four. Why not use one for every swipe?

Yeah, when was the last time you guys have had a peanut butter? Maybe when I was, yeah, junior high. Has it been that long? Yeah. Oh, I used to eat them a lot when I was competing. It was a way for me to get calories up. It was like a late night, thousand calories for me when I was trying to keep calories up.

Do you see how lazy people are these days? Have you seen that you can actually buy a peanut butter and jelly sandwich already made with the crust cut off? You can go buy it. They call them crustables or something like that. How lazy have you become? That everything is put in your mouth for you now?

I saw the grocery store. Well, they make that, they also make that. For all these kids that have helicopter moms that did everything for them. They also make that peanut butter and jelly that's already made together. You've seen that before, right? It's like peanut butter in every quarter

is like, is jelly in there so you just do like. It just feels like it's gonna get messy. That's just lazy. Let's come on. I gotta tell you what my two year old, she's a little spicy little girl, man. We were at the outdoor mall up in Palo Alto earlier Yes yesterday and I'm walking with her and I'm singing to her cuz she's my little girl

So I'm singing a little cute song sir, and she looks at me. She she closes my mouth with her hands She goes shut your lips, Papa. Don't sing, please Spare us. Remember when we years ago, wasn't it? wasn't it Alessia who told you to shut up or whatever with that inside the car? Oh, I don't like the way you're breathing. Yes, I don't like the way you're breathing. That's what she said. Your daughters, bro.

Daughters are great, man. I love it. They're so great, yeah. I just, you know, my four and a half year old is at the age, he's starting to get to the age now where we can watch like kind of cool movies. Cause you know, I have to be careful, right? Otherwise it's a little too scary, a little too much action.

But he likes, he's really into the same stuff I was into when I was a kid. He likes Godzilla, he likes like robots. So I found, remember, have you guys seen the movie Pacific Rim? It's actually a pretty bad ass movie. That's pretty violent though. It is, but we only watch the fight scenes.

And the fight scenes are cartoonish. It's not like real blood or whatever It's like so we were watching a bunch of big-ass robots big robots fighting big monsters, bro He was he was jumping up and down on the couch. I love it Did you see the game that I sent over to Jessica for you guys? No, what is it? So he just found a game really cool. I think it's called spot it And they're just it's a really simple game So it's great for like a reallylius and my son, right?

Just young. So basically all he has to do is, and I don't know if Aurelius likes this, but Max loves matching and find the thing, whatever, like those highlights books and stuff. And you flip two cards over, and there's, I don't know, I'd say there's like eight images on each. And every card has got one of the other images,

but they're different sizes, different colors and shapes. And so you got to match them and call them out when as soon as you see it. Oh. And it's like a speed game, like how fast you can do it. So, I don't know, this is like, you know, Katrina and I, Katrina got it. She's like, I thought you could play with him and maybe you can get a little of his competitive spirit up or like that. So we play like the first game and he's good at it. He's actually really good at it.

So I don't have to like totally lay down for him to be all right. It's like, okay, like he's got, he's quick on a couple of these. And so, uh, you know, I kept the Cape, the game close, but he barely edged me out. And I was like, Oh man, you, what could she was like, Oh, make it a big deal. Like that he won. And, uh, she's like, do you want to play again? He's like, nah, I'm good. It could truly like really had to like egg him on to do it again. And so I'm

like, Oh, I'm going to get you this time. And so I beat him the second time. And then try to get him to play a third one. He's like, no, I'm good. Daddy will probably win. I'm like, Oh no, no competitive bone in him whatsoever. Dude. He was just like, yeah, daddy will probably. I was just going to ask you, how often do you let him win versus you win because I know that that's like a thing with kids it's a mix right so I want I want him to lose that he I beat him right the second game I beat him or I'll keep it close

what about other stuff like do you have to be like like oh I gotta win sometimes not win sometimes yeah I don't I don't let him win always definitely not I definitely want him to see me beat him. And that's I, but what, what I notice about him is just like he's got no interest. If he gets beat, he's over it. He's good. Yeah, he's cool. I'm like, no, there's no like, Oh, I want to get you back dad or like that. Like I beat him in a race. I beat him in anything that we do. He's just like, no,

we just got to the age with my, my four and a half year old where now he can handle losing. Cause when they're real young, they just scream and cry, it sucks. Like you gotta let him win. And then little by little, so now it's like, I will let him win three out of four games, but there's that one game, and I can tell it really bothers him,

but I'll make sure I win every once in a while. As he gets older, you know, once they're teenagers, you just kick the crap out of them all the time. I'm sure that's what happens with you. I never let them win. Yeah, see, that's not. It's just day one. What's your team name?

No, really? Just his other one. We're on 15 years straight. I'm undefeated. Yeah. His kids are going to say that in therapy when they're older. They beat me at home. My dad never let me win. Oh, yeah. It's so dark.

They earned it. Yeah. Yeah. That's hilarious. No, I try and get him to like, so when I lose, I make a big deal out of it. Like, oh man, you got me. I'm going to get you next time. Like, trying make a big deal out of it. Like, oh man, you got me. I'm going to get you next time. Like, trying to see if he'll get that. But he's not.

Until it does not work on him. It's like, he's the total opposite. Like he loses and he's like, oh, good job, daddy. You know what's funny about that though? Oh really? That's great. He like celebrates me for winning, dude. Dude. Everett actually, he's really good about that with other kids and stuff. He'll let like these other kids win. He'll keep inviting them in to play, especially if he's doing like horse or,

you know what I'm like, dude. And he just- Just as like crush them. What are you doing? You know, like, I didn't teach you that. But it was great. I love seeing it. He's better about that than I am.

Well, you know it's a social skill. There's one famous experiment where they show mice, where they wrestle, and it's pro-social, it helps them develop, and if the stronger mouse keeps winning, nobody will play with it anymore. So they actually have a number, I don't remember what it was, but there's a certain percentage of time

that the stronger mouse will have to allow the other mouse to win in order to keep playing. Otherwise, nobody's gonna wanna play with it anymore.. So it's so counter-digestive. Yeah, well it's just funny, I'm just trying to think back like why, because I was in such an environment where everybody, like there was- You're the younger brother! It was cutthroat. Like there was no, there was no like, people letting me win, ever. Yeah, you're the younger brother, that's all, you're always probably battling your older

brother and his friends. And then my dad is six, seven, he'd just smother me. And then it was just like, oh, I'm always just going to get smothered and lose. Like, fuck this. So it just created a monster. All this anger. All this rage. No, Aurelius will actually, like we were playing the game of life, you know, the game of life, whatever. And we're playing that. And if, and I'll look over here for a second, and I can tell he's calculating,

like oh my dad's winning. He'll take money from the bank and put it in his pile. I'm like what'd you do? Oh nothing? I'm like it doesn't count if you cheat, you know what I mean? So I'm trying to like, you know. Yeah, well yeah.

I mean I would take a little bit of that, you know what I'm saying? I'd take a little bit of that or something, over what I got right now. I'm actually just like not interested whatsoever. Anyway, speaking of competition stuff, I tell you, well, actually, let me take a step back. Walking into our studio, I gotta tell you guys,

the environment we have in here now is so incredible. It feels like, it feels like when I used to run gyms, cause now we have trainers in here training clients. We got people coaching people, and the vibe is just so. It's like good electricity. I haven't been this excited about what we do in a long time.

I love what we do, but man, now it's just so. I mean, it's perfect timing. We've been doing this for quite some time now, a decade, and there was a period of time where it was just like really the four of us coming in here. Like it was quiet. I like you guys. I'm not that one.

Yeah. So it's a total different vibe. It reminds me of the gym. It sounds like that. When you walk in, it sounds just like what it used to sound like when we walk into the gym. So I love hearing all the voices. So I'm excited for these group coaching that we're doing because we've done a couple of

them and they're so awesome. And now we're getting to the popular ones. So it's fat loss and muscle building. Do we have space still? Do you know, Doug, where we're at? we've done a couple of them and they're so awesome. Yeah. And now we're getting to the popular ones. So it's fat loss and muscle building. Do we have space still? Do you know Doug, where we're at? Yeah, we do. At this moment we do. So this is group coaching. You're getting coached. It's a, it's a group of 50 fat loss and a group of 50 for muscle building. And you're getting coached by mind pump trainers.

These are people that we train develop that work for us. They're going to coach you. And it's exciting. This, this, this. Yep. Built in accountability. This direction is really exciting for me and we're gonna keep moving this direction of just investing more in training and coaching and helping people through that. It's mindpumpgroupcoaching.com, Doug? Yes.

Is that where it is, sign up? Yep. One of the best protein powders I've ever tried is from Paleo Valley. This is bone broth protein chocolate. Tastes like chocolate donuts It's also extremely easy to digest Go check them out. They have other flavors go to paleo valley comm forward slash mind pump on that link

You'll get an automatic 15% off. All right back to the show. Our first caller is Kevin from Nevada. Hey, what's up, man? Welcome back. So Kevin, how you doing? Kev. Hey guys. Thank you Thank you for picking up this um um, guys like this one. This one means a lot because of, uh, well, I'll explain why. Um, so, um, because I am going to be competing on the national competition in July, I have about, what is that? Two months? Um, I have already told a lot of people, I think this is just, uh, as a dad, I'm

just worried about, I don't want any injuries and just. And the worst thing I would want is that I'm competing at a national level, cool, but then I show my kids that I'm all injured and hurt and all that crap. That would not be like the best example for all of this. So I've already told people that are telling me like, yo, after the nationals, what are you gonna do? And then I already told them, I wanna take like a six, seven, eight month break.

Don't even focus on powerlifting. I just wanna build my body and make sure do. And then I already told them I want to take like a six, seven, eight month break, don't even focus on powerlifting. I just want to build my body and make sure that I do this right because these people that I'm competing with, they have like 10 years on their body of built muscle. I'm coming here with just like four years of just barely learning how to even train at the gym. So I don't want to, I, I think you always talk about this. So in the question I just mentioned, my thought process is even though I'm getting more skilled at driving the car, like lifting all these three lifts, that's cool, but I am scared that potentially I am missing out on upgrading my parts, like every single part of the car,

so that I can equal the skill of the lift. And all the parts of my body can actually handle the level that I want to achieve. I did put in the question that I do want to take the state record, because people have told me I have the potential for it. But again, the last thing I want to do is chase it knowing that I'm just skipping and might injure myself so every single time I say this to somebody especially if they've been powerlifting they all look at me like I am crazy

they're like what you're gonna take a break from powerlifting specific programming like what the hell you're gonna you're gonna miss out on growing your numbers and for me it's so hard to explain to them like I don't care about that crap like eventually I'll probably get it but am I doing a better like is it my thought process even though it's longer is that better than just continuously yes yes based on what you're saying yeah yes you have that you have the better thought process just because these guys have been powerlifting for 10 years and Have found it what works for them is it's not necessarily ideal the two sides of the coin here are

If you want to be as competitive as possible in powerlifting that was your goal and you're just like I just want to be The best strongest powerlifter ever then then train like a powerlifter. That's true However, what that comes with is a lot of risks associated with that type of focus on that type of training. What I hear from you is, that's cool, and I want that, but more than that, I don't want to get hurt, and more than that, I want longevity in my body. And with what you're saying, you have the right approach. So if your goal was to get the best numbers

possible by nationals or by next year then you got to train like a power lifter most of the time and then you train in other ways to kind of support that. If you want longevity overall in your body and in overall and power lifting right you want to keep doing this and not suffer major injuries and your approach is right. So yes, it will take you longer, but the risk of injury goes way down with your approach, which I think is the smart approach.

But I also get the high competitive, like, you know, there's a lot of guys out there that don't care, like, I'll just take the risk and get hurt. Yeah, it's by all means necessary. Yeah, and I get that too. I understand what that's like, but I think you have a very mature approach. I also think in the long run he wins.

Oh yeah. Like if we were looking at a six month window and how what's the fastest way to increase your numbers? Well yeah of course sticking to the programming for just powerlifting for the next six months would give you the advantage per pound. But if you extended that goal out over five years, what's your goal five years from now? You're, I think you're, it may feel like yours would take longer, but you're more likely not only to do it safely, not get hurt,

but I think you would actually surpass the numbers of the guy who decides, I'm just going to keep running power lift over and over. I mean and over. I mean, look, that's debatable, right? You got to look at are the top PowerLifters in the world, how they've always trained. And what they do is they train a specific type of programming most of the time. That's just the way they train. So now we know how to train bodies and how to keep people

from getting hurt and improve longevity with it all. But yeah, I mean to say that you're going to get better numbers in five years by doing what we're saying. That's if you know, maybe there was a big injury that you avoid who knows but when I say longevity, I mean like you plan on lifting weights and having a body that moves well for the rest of your life. So I don't know if it's gonna give you better numbers, but it definitely is better for you.

So if you're like, some people are like, look, the most important thing in the world is this trophy. Okay, but you know, it sounds to me like you're like, the most important thing in my life is my family, and I like strength training, and it feels good. For that, I think you have the right approach. But if you go into the debate with powerlifting coaches and that's all they do, they're going to tell you, look, you want the best numbers, you got to train this particular way. I just don't think it's...

I mean, I would openly have that debate. It's the same thing that somebody would told me in the competitive world of men's physique, because this is the way, because we've done it this way forever is a better way and bullshit. I disagree. Just because people have been doing it away for so long. Yeah. And it's worked for them. Doesn't mean there is a better approach. I would make the argument that bolstering like the analogy you gave bolstering your car with better suspension and handling over time. I think you win. Well, that's not to mention all the straps and all the fitness aids and all the chemical enhancements they need to add in because of their recovery.

So yeah, I mean, we could debate this. I think with Kevin though, I think it's pretty clear what you want. And I think the direction that you're going is perfect with what you want. Yeah, yeah, definitely like with what you said with the trophy, my trophy is that I get to show my kids like a whole life that I never knew about until late.

And then the little flex is that along the way I've been able to learn from you guys and do it right. And you can you can be strong, you can be like you can be a hybrid athlete, but you can be everything into one you just don't have to be so dang excessive with it. That's right. That's right. No, perfect. Yeah. And then the other question, like the mini question to that is just the programming I was thinking of doing is it, uh, after the competition performance, just so I can, um,

get back into the different planes of movement. Um, then anabolic and then split before I would even go back to... I would split with symmetry. That's what I would do. Okay. I think there's going to be tremendous value to doing, especially if the goal is to bolster your body unilateral work and there's just more of that in symmetry than any of those

other programs. Thanks, Nicole. And so I would go, I like anabolic and performance in there, but then I would add symmetry instead of split. It'll serve you more. Okay, awesome. Thank you guys. And then by the way, I just got to tell you guys. So my wife and I were attending like the, the mic where we already are enrolled in the micro pump course. Nice. And it of crazy I don't know it's probably all you three so we plan on part of why I even want to take a six seven month break is because we really want to go into this like full force and we just have so much fulfillment because we're such latecomers to fitness that we do feel like how much it

changes and like we're like oh my god's only we knew this when we were younger. But we've already seen, of course, what happens with our kids. I want to tell you the really quick effect if I can. This is crazy. So you guys always mentioned like do it for free, you know, like close family friends first. So our plan was to do that. We only wanted like five, six people because we have our careers right now We have our kids we don't really want to like, you know Try and make this a full-time thing it turned into 17 because of the people that wow We're helping our whole focus with most of them is they're all like us

You guys always talk about like just treat all of this like skill mastery And if you can match the skill within each of the exercises you will do better. All of that has made it much more enjoyable for everybody. All of the type of programming that we're telling them like yo that's just more don't kill yourself for five to seven days we're all parents. They're all surprised with how much they're gaining with like one two days a week. So it's like, um, we do have people like we keep trying to push people off. Like we don't want to target or trying to keep it cool. But in the meantime,

you know, maybe you could wait till maybe after the competition, but right now it's turning to 17. Uh, we're excited because this is like the first time we've been hustlers, like hustlers and like the nicest way I could ever even say that. Um, but we've never had fulfillment attached to it. And I think this is just like a beautiful thing that now our whole family can be a part of. And I'll try and say this slowly

because my mom's outside this room. My mom never listened to me for anything. Like even if it's like, Adam, like you guys would have, I would have to say all of these guys, they're their professionals and they train professional, I'd have to say like celebrities or something. They would listen to you because of that. They've never listened to me, but this is the first time ever.

My mom is actually on training, wants me to train her. She's been training four days a week through that starter program. So I think this is just like all meant to be. And thank you guys. I'm freaking excited about like what the heck is awesome. Great to hear, dude. Very, very cool, bro. Good job awesome, Kevin. Great to hear, dude. Very, very cool, bro.

Good job, man. Very cool. Thank you so much, guys. So yeah, thank you for asking my question. That helps a lot, guys. You got it, dude. Right on. Good luck on your competition, brother.

Thank you. Thank you. I have a go. You got it. You know, I got to add with your analogy of the physique world versus the strength world, it's so different because physique world is subjective. Powerlifting, Olympic lifting is as scientific as training gets for that sport. It's all objective and powerlifting's been around

for decades and there are schools that produce so many more champions than other schools because of their scientific approach. Same thing with Olympic lifting. So I would never debate a seasoned powerlifting coach who comes from a good school on, this is gonna give you the best squat deadlift and whatever. But when it comes to longevity

and what Kevin's looking for, he's right, 100%. But I don't think that's the best way to be the most competitive powerlifter ever. I just don't because they've proven that through decades of objective Numbers and producing some of the best athletes. I don't risk is high. I don't thinking in a small wind That's exactly what I'm saying a small window. You're right. I said five years I said five years for a reason because he's not talking about the next three to six months You're right. And if you hired a powerlifting coach, and he's like in six to nine months,

I'm like yeah, of course that is better. But you extend that to five years, I call bullshit. Well, I wanna see what they would record. I don't know what powerlifting programming looks like for five years. I do know that they've really gotten pretty smart with some of it. Like Ed Cohn is so scientific,

and I know that he included hypertrophy training. I don't know how much. West Side, Barbell, all that. Yeah, I don't know how much, you know, but these, I mean West Side is very scientific with their approaches. But when I look at powerlifting, like programming, it's done in like blocks, you know what I mean? So I don't know what it would look like over a five year period. Yeah, I mean the thought is that when you hire a powerlifting coach, you're hiring them to get you proficient in the three lifts, and that is the best approach to do that. None of those guys say,

oh, I'm also gonna make you this healthy dad who's also mobile. No, it's powerlifting. It's powerlifting. And so I would never debate the strength thing, but if you're talking about somebody who's going to extend that for five, 10 years. Yeah, what he said, what he wants,

and what's important to him, he's right. I mean, look at our examples of some of our friends that were like world class, like Ben Pollock, and stuff like that, they learned that the hard way. Oh yeah. He, I mean, and no one's gonna debate, yeah, Lane Norton, you're not gonna debate that those guys didn't understand the science

of power lifting, and they weren't following an incredible protocol when it comes to that in order to hit these records, but what ends up happening to those guys five years down the road, I mean, yeah, they all get hurt. They all get hurt because they're all, they're all approaching it in a way that's been approached for max potential. They got the highest possible, but that's the goal. That's yeah, exactly. That's the goal. Like you're going to drive, you know, you're going to drive.

That's like what we're, I don't know. Like if we're going to debate that, like how much longer could they have kept producing? Longer is different than max performance, right? Yeah, and that's why I extended to five years You extend to five years and now you got a debate like if you try to debate me over a year like, okay I'm not gonna I'm gonna fight you or argue with you on that but you're gonna extend it to five ten years I will debate that all day long interesting to look and see what they did over those long periods of time I've never seen power. Yeah, I will debate that all day long. It would be interesting to look and see what they did over those long periods of time. I've never seen power lifting programs longer than like six months. Especially the longest power lifter in their career.

Like who had the longest career? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And also how long did that same coach work with that same athlete? Because I would imagine, at least in my experience of watching our peers do this, they typically go just like with bodybuilding, I've got a show in nine months or I got an event I went in nine months I hire a coach they take me through it very rarely do you hear guys like I've been with my same coach for five six years lifting it's normally for a specific a meet that they're gonna do and they and they approach it that way so he's got he's got the right are those

his numbers that you had incredible right's incredible, right? For his weight. His weight and his, how early he's into this. I know it's pretty cool. Dude, incredible. Our next caller is Jen from New Jersey. Hi Jen. How you doing Jen? Hi, how are you? How can we help you?

Thanks for taking my question by the way. And sorry in advance, you're going to be seeing a lot of dogs during this, during this call. There are two of them here. Yeah. The reason why I wanted to reach out to you guys recently in my neighborhood, which is Hoboken, New Jersey, there's a lot of fitness here. We've been seeing these studios pop up that are called EMS studios and they're like, you go there and they kind of strap these

bands on your body and they kind of like, I guess, I don't know, zap you with electricity and theoretically stimulate your muscles. So my trainer who's like, you know, who's always up for trying like whatever the new thing is, just to see how it goes, went a couple times, and she thought it was kind of fun. It hurts a little bit. It's about 25 minutes, they put bands on your arms, your chest, your legs, everything, and they kind of like can adjust each muscle group, and then they give you electric shock. And so she, they gave her a few free sessions. She tried it.

I tried a few sessions. I kind of can't really tell. I mean, you're very sore afterwards. You sweat. It's definitely hard. But I guess a bunch of us who sort of tried it are just wondering like, is this legit or is this like, what is it? It's not, it doesn't replace training obviously, but um, you know, we were kind

of using it to top off what we're already doing and we just, a bunch of us just were curious whether or not it was a real thing or if it was kind of like smoke and mirrors. So you definitely sore afterwards. How are they using it, Jen, how are they using it? Are they putting them on you and then making you exercise while you get the stim or you just sit there and get stim? No. So you, so there's a, there's like a machine that's sort of a device

that has kind of like a place that you can hold onto and they give you squeezy balls, they put you in a vest and the straps, they make them wet. And then you go through like kind of very slowly, like squats, lunges, you know, like sort of like very, very slowly do the kind of like exercises while they kind of like ratchet up the stimulation. Yeah.

So the studies on this are pretty interesting. They are, they do increase muscle fiber activation and they seem to cause better gains than without using them. It's not a huge effect, but it's enough to be significant in a study. That being said, the way they market them is bullshit. I see in your email here that it says that it gives you four hours of muscle stimulation exercises in 20 minutes. That's what they say. We were like, is this really true or is this sort of hype or is

there anything happening at all? No. Yes, something's happening and it's going to give you a little more than you would normally get. An external signal, for sure. But it's not like this huge, crazy effect, and if you do the cost average, you're probably not worth it. But yeah, no, it's not gonna give you four hours

of exercise effects in 20 minutes, that's baloney. It's cool, the science is cool, it's a neat, niche idea. It's novelty as fuck. Yeah, it's novel, so overrated. That's what I would say. But if I had one laying around and it was in the gym, like you could find me messing with it with my buddies. I'm like, oh, let's do a workout with this.

But to get all, I could only imagine like strapping up into that every. I can only see a very small window of effectiveness with this. The way you do it makes a big difference too. So the way that I would use it was I would put it on me and then I would do a barbell exercise with it. Well, I'll tell you where I think the most effective way

to use something like this would be rehabbing somebody from an injury because you can take them through, That's historically how it's always been. You can take them through a body weight exercise and make their body feel like they trained really heavy. And that during a recovery of an injury, that could be tremendously valuable. So let's say I had a very high end athlete or somebody who's in the bodybuilding world who's in incredible shape and they tore their Achilles and they've been rehabbing it and we're okay,

the doctor would probably want us to stay off of it still for another month or two but we're gonna go ahead and start do some of these exercises with no weight, just our body weight and I'm gonna stay, and I can see a huge benefit to that athlete. Jane, you exercise regularly anyway, right? I do and so it seems to be there are two camps of people. When we go in there, we see a bunch of elderly people

who are doing this as their workout. If they're marketing it as this is their exercise. So you'll see 70-year-old people that are just sort of, I guess that this is what they're doing in place of exercise. And then there are other people, me and a couple of friends, who work out regularly,

we're always up to try something new that looks fun or cool or different. So it was kind of treating it as a top off, like of just our regular, it's not replacing anything. Well, I'll tell you, here's where I would, if you were my client, Jen, because you already work out,

you're already consistent. I like the seven year olds doing it, by the way. I think that's cool. And I think for fun, it's cool. Here's how I would use it if you're already consistent. I like the 70 year olds doing it by the way. I think that's cool. And I think for fun it's cool. Here's how I would use if you were my client. If you had a body part that you had difficulty connecting to, if you're like, hey man it's really hard for me to feel my glutes when I squat, then I would use this on your glutes while you squat. Just to give you the sense of feeling of what it feels like to really contract the glutes appropriately. But doing a lot, doing a full body workout on this

on top of your current workout, that could be good, it could be bad. I mean, if you tend to train yourself to the limit anyway, if you're one of those fanatics that's like, yeah, I could probably get better results if I trained a little less, then I wouldn't just add another workout, and I see the face you made. So I get that impression, right?

It's interesting because I did it with my boyfriend the first time, and he's a big, strong man right? Well, it's interesting because I did it with my boyfriend the first time and he's like a big strong man and he's a runner and he did it and he absolutely hated it. He almost died. They had to give him a lollipop afterwards. He was sitting on the floor. He was like, it's way too much, you know, and I did it and I was like, okay, I'm kind of sore, you know, but I was of course interested because, you know, it's a four hours worth

of hypertrophy, you know, training into 25 minutes. It sounds pretty good, but it also sounds like a little too good. So he refuses to go back, but I've been going for like six weeks once a week. And the only downside I would say is I am like pretty sore afterwards. So I usually do it on a day when the next two days I have like just yoga or something. It's like Friday and I'm just going to do yoga on the weekend. I don't do it before like just yoga or something. It's like Friday and I'm just going to do yoga on the weekend. I don't do it before big workout or whatever. Um, but I can't tell if it's my regular workouts that are giving, I'm happy with

my results, but I can't tell if it's this or if it's just, you know, from being consistent or whatever, but it definitely, it's, it's hard. Like you feel it afterwards. You sweat, you're, you're tired, you're dehydrated afterwards. Like it's doing something for sure. Um, well, you're tired, you're dehydrated afterwards. Like it's doing something for sure. Well, you get tired and you'd be dehydrated and sweaty if I just had you jump in place real fast too. That doesn't mean it's doing anything necessarily.

Are you getting stronger in your normal workouts? That's a no. I may not, no. Yeah, it's not obvious. Yeah, if you just added this for six weeks and you're like, my lifts went up 15 pounds you're just, if you're just, if you're just, if you're just, if you're just, if you're just, if you're just, if you're just, if you're just, if you're just, if you're just, if you're just, if you're just, if you're just, if you're just, if you're just, if you're just,

if you're just, if you're just, if you're just, if you're just, if you're just, if you're just, if you're just, if you're just, if you're just, if you're just, if you're just, if you're just, if you're just, if you're just, if you're just, if you're just,

if you're just, if you're just, if you're just, if you're just, if you're just, if you're just, if you're just, if you're just, if you're just, if you're just, if you're just, if you're just, if you're just, if you're just, if you're just, if you're just,

if you're just, if you're just, if you're just, if you're just, if you're just, if you're just, if you're just, if you're just, if you're just, if you're just, if you're just, if you're just, if you're just, if you're just, if you're just, if you're just, if you're just, if you're just, if you're just, if. Take care, bye bye. Bye bye. You know, that is why. What bullshit marketing? Four hours of workouts. Well, and you know what, okay, so the person who gets addicted to this thing or things, that's just it, we still connect soreness

and how hard a workout is with how effective it is. That's right, yes. I got beat up. Soreness and sweating. And that's coming from somebody who's been lifting for a very long time and is very experienced We still tend to do that people still think because it hurts because it's hard because I sweat because I'm sore as hell Yeah, it must be a really good workout. It's like no that's not true at all. It's so funny because I remember when boot camps first became popular

People would be like, oh my god, it's so hard, they're yelling at you, they're hammering you, it's like. I threw up. Yeah, like what are you talking about? Did you get stronger? No, by the way, the reason why people get so sore on this is the eccentric on this is amplified, like you're lowering and it's contracting,

it's like a lot of muscle damage. It just sounds like you could overdo it so easy. Yeah, and it just doesn't, yeah. And of course at the end, I'm like, do you get stronger? I love it, like I lot of muscle damage. It just sounds like you could overdo it so easy. Yeah. It just doesn't, yeah. And of course at the end, like you get stronger. I love it, like I said, for rehab. If I had a client. It's always been used for rehab. It doesn't have forever.

Body weight, yeah, that makes sense. It makes total sense where you could, I mean, I'm sure, actually, I wouldn't be surprised if this is what got this popular again, is I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of your professional athletes use it. Oh yeah, astronauts too, right? Yeah, you you have Steph Curry right now in the middle of playoffs, goes down with a hamstring strain and they want him back in the game by next week. It's like that

would normally take the rest of us six to eight weeks to be back. I'm sure Katy Perry did it before her life. She totally went into space. Our next caller is John from Virginia. John what's happening? What's So John? Hey, how's it going guys? Pretty surreal talking to you guys appreciate you taking this time to answer my question Been a long time listener and pretty much the only podcast I listened to Came for the fitness stayed for the fatherhood and everything else. So really like what you guys have out there. Thanks, man Hey Sean Alright, so my question

Is gonna be kind of in regards to recovery and recovery equipment and how best to utilize it? It's a little bit about my background. So I'm 34. I've been lifting about 12 years I typically do a upper lower split twice a week with a recovery day in between or trigger session active rest something like that and Right now pre-workout. I'll do kind of mobility some priming Post workout. I'll do some static stretching Some sauna and all that and then on my days off just try and focus on a little extra recovery But now as I'm aging 34, I have a family prone to injury

I'm trying to focus a little more on recovery and the new gym I started going to has a ton of recovery resources that I hear you guys talk about a lot. So they have the NormaTech compression boots, the Hydro Massage chair, cryotherapy chair, red light therapy and they have sauna, hot tub. So I'm just trying to understand how I should best utilize all those well to enhance my goals Keep progressing in the gym and everything I don't want to use them as a crutch though because I feel like for the most part I have my recovery in check

I'm hitting my protein goal Daily, I'm getting about 10,000 steps a day. I was at nine hours of sleep a night, but we just had a newborn two weeks ago, so now it's down to maybe seven. But for the most part, I think my recovery is there. I'm keeping hydrated, do element pretty regularly. And the recovery is important to me because like you saw kind of newborn Christian there and I spend that recovery time doing a lot of spiritual daily devotional and stuff. So any kind of input on how I could use that time because Maximize my pre or post workout time or active rest days using those resources

Yeah, any advice your last bit you just said there would would change the way I answer it just because of that In fact, okay I would say because what you're doing already in my opinion is great. And so if you said that you're using this as a spiritual practice time also for yourself, I would say which one is most conducive for that? Do you feel like when you're in the sauna, it's more relaxing and you can you feel better connected and you feel like you're more consistent with doing that I think there's a tremendous value to that if you feel like it's laying there in the in the Norma tech boots Are the times when you do that because you said that at the end that that's a priority and what you're kind of I think that you're already checking the big boxes of

Like recovery actively walking getting enough rest, adequate protein, like balanced workout, I mean, I think you're doing a great job. I got, you know, I can be real specific, I love what you said, Adam, and I can get real specific with this. By the way, congratulations on your new baby. Thanks, second one, so. Good for you, man.

So, okay, so, couple things. Your sleep went down, I think you would, right now, best if you move from upper, lower, four day a week workout to a three day full body routine. I think taking that one day off will make a big difference, especially because I don't know what it's like when you have a new kid and it's going to be like that for about a year. So I think three days a week you won't lose any gains if anything you might even see some

improvements. And then as far as your recovery, I could tell you what the data shows, and I actually think it's gonna be in line with what Adam says as well. Of all the things you mentioned, the one that's probably gonna make the biggest recovery impact, aside from getting more sleep, that's always number one,

is gonna be the sauna. Now I like the sauna for spiritual work too because you can't take your phone in the sauna. Now you can sit in your Normatech boots. I don't know how you are with your phone. I know for me it's like it calls my name out whenever it's near me. And so if I had Normatech boots on,

or if I'm standing in front of a red light, like I could get on my phone. But in the sauna, it'll kill your phone. Your phone will shut off after so many minutes because it's so hot. So I like the sauna. Go in the sauna, sit in there for 20 minutes, 30 minutes if you can handle it. And that's where you can do your prayer, that's where you can do your, you know, you can meditate on scripture.

And it's also, the data shows it's probably the most effective for recovery as well. And longevity and overall. Everything. So it's, I agree, I'm on board with that. And I love the idea, I didn't even think about switching you from a split to a full body the extra day of rest and just the mix-up of being a guy who does splits normally switch into a full body you might see nice gains from that. So the way it would look with your three with your full body workout is you would you would kind of hit so how much volume are you doing for let's say let's say chest how many sets do you do twice a week? So I'll do five and another three, eight, maybe 12.

Total or twice a week? 12 total. 12 sets total, perfect. Yeah, that's nice. So here's what you do. Do three sets per body part three days a week. So you're gonna drop the sets down to nine. You're doing full body Monday, Wednesday, Friday, you'll probably see gains anyway, but I

think that'll be more appropriate with the reduction. What I love about that recommendation too is you're taking him from four days of lifting in the gym with the one day recovery in between, you just add another day of recovery training. So now you go through, you're still going to the gym same amount of time, so you're five days, but now two of those days are focused on the kind of recovery type stuff, and three of it's on the full body. I think that would do you well right now. Yep.

Okay, and I had done anabolic before for the three day kind of full body. If I had done, if I switched to anabolic advanced, would that be too much? Or is that something I could look at for the three day option? I think no, it's not. It's more more but I would do anabolic advanced when your sleep gets back to normal okay then you want to kind of push it. Anabolic advanced is definitely high intensity but anabolic style three-day week workout would be would be great. Okay awesome yeah that answers it I kind of was doing mainly the sauna and then just the new gym

which is kind of felt a little overwhelming with all that and then I just know there's like a lot back and forth about kind of like cold plunge and temperature stuff so I wasn't sure if like going on the cryotherapy chair and doing something cold was like right after my workouts kind of like slow down recovery and stuff, but Yeah, appreciate what you guys said. That sounds like a good strategy and plan. Yeah, no, sauna's the best of all of it, if I had to pick. Cold is great, but cold is more of a stress than sauna.

And I would use, so there's ways to use the other ones for specific things. For example, like if you overreached, then I think the cryo and cold would do good for speeding up the recovery time, right? So if you had a day where, let's say, I think the, the recommendation of the sauna twice a week is awesome. And that's going to also double as the thing for meditation also is going to

double as the thing that's best for you longevity wise in comparison, all those. But then let's say you overdid it on one of your workouts And you're feeling it. You're really sore that day that might be a day you do the cold plunge or do the cryo To help speed up that work that specific recovery because you overreached But generally, I agree. I think the sauna is the is the play. That's the way to do it Awesome, thanks. Glad to hear that and now can I ask one other quick thing in regards to kind of like hydration and So I've been doing element I was kind of unsure about it because I do have high blood pressure and take Medication for that so I wasn't sure if the extra sodium is bad or if that's something I should be asking my general practitioner about More if you know anything about what the data says about that.

Yeah, so okay, that's great. I'm glad you told me that. Sauna is going to be the best thing you do for blood pressure. That's the best thing you can do. I would ask them what they thought. First ask them their advice. Electrolyte usage, especially high sodium, if you sweat a lot and what, you know, like going into the sauna, it's probably a good idea to have it in there with you. But you would definitely need to check with your doctor to see if this is something that they would want you to be careful with.

Okay, sounds good. Yeah, you got it man. All right, thanks a lot, appreciate it. You got it brother, congratulations again. Yep. Thanks, see ya. Sounds like a cool gym he goes to. Yeah. He does. He's got all kinds of stuff. He's got all kinds

of toys. If you have anybody listening, if you have the choice between all of those things, of course, you know, there's always, you know, situations where one is better than the other. But generally speaking, overall, with the mountains of data and stuff that is like sauna, sauna for continual use to just I mean, like you kind of mentioned, if you have like days you really overreached or that, I think like cold is a great option for that.

Yeah, for a very specific thing. Those are very cool to use that. But I think I shared with you guys, I was listening to an interview that Peter Atiyah did. And one of the questions that was asked was like, is there anything you've changed your mind or opinion on? And he's like, yeah, I used to think that sauna use was overrated or whatever he goes,

but what the research says, it's like the best. Blood pressure, it's like vascular health, oh my God, man. It's like sauna will positively affect your vascular system like exercise. It's pretty crazy. It's awesome. Our next caller is Chris from New Hampshire. What's up, Chris?

What's happening? Hey, how's it going, guys? Good, man, how can we help you? Good, so first off, thank you for just taking my call and just the opportunity to be on the show is a little bit surreal for me. I've been listening to the show for five or six years now and it's just, it's awesome to see you guys in person. Thank you. So do you want me to ask

my question then provide some context? Sure. Yep. Let's hear it. All right. So the essence of my question is, how does one know when they're ready to ramp up their training volume? I'm 32 years old. You could say I'm a career overtrainer. Eight-ish years ago, I was really into the OCR scene, training with some insane volume, like running 50 miles in a week, in addition to lifting and HIIT workouts. Oh, wow.

It was, yeah, it was a little crazy. I'm proud of my accomplishments, but eventually my body did revolt. And I was forced to drastically reduce my training and focus on mobility and mastering movement patterns. When I started to feel and move better, I started doing traditional weightlifting because I'd stumbled upon your podcast. I've bought a few maps programs since. I continued lifting without any significant issues and saw a lot of great gains from focusing on lifting.

About seven months ago, I came to the realization that I was overtraining again because I had some of the negative side effects that you guys frequently talk about in association with overtraining. My libido was down, I was waking up in the middle of the night, wide awake, I'd wake up with night sweats, those kind of things. So I did a cycle of maps 15 to reduce volume and just the overall

stress and I noticed almost immediate positive results. I was sleeping through the night, libido was a lot better and I wasn't ending the day feeling completely wiped out. So this is where the context is a little slightly different from my original email. I wrapped up Maps 15 around the end of March, took an additional deload week before starting Maps Strong. You guys have been talking about the benefits of non-traditional lifts around that time and I figured it would be a good program to phase in instead of going into power lift. I do eventually want to hit a 500 pound deadlift but I'm not, that's taking a side to the side burner for now. I got through the first phase of strong but I ended up getting sick for a couple of weeks and which kind of stopped the process

but I ended up getting sick for a couple of weeks, and which kind of stopped the process. And then I had two weeks in between feeling better and going on a trip to Aruba with my wife, during which I did a few Maps 15 workouts to just kind of stay in things. I restarted phase one of strong this week, but ended up cutting out the third set of most of the exercises in the first foundational workout.

I didn't want to overload myself from going almost, or from almost nothing to, you know, the normal program sets and reps. I figured I would do that for this first week, see how it goes, and then ramp up the full sets in week two or three if I was feeling well. So I really just wanted to hear your advice and kind of sanity check the process. I'm not trying to do too much too fast. But I'm curious how you guys would assess whether or not someone is ready to ramp up the volume

going from 15 to strong or from 15 to really any other program. That's a good question. Let me ask you this, were you getting stronger in Mass 15? Yeah, definitely. Okay, and so you got stronger throughout the program up until the end? Yes. Keep doing it.

Keep doing it. Okay. Yeah, I think a lot of times we get excited and then we want to add more and more and more. By the way, if you're getting stronger, just so you know, you are progressing your volume. So, if you do a lift and then by the end of the program it's 20 pounds heavier, you've added volume. You're progressively overloading. You've already progressively added volume. So and because of your history I mean you could stay in that probably for a full another cycle and then jump to something

like Strong. You can also slowly... performance versions. Yeah do that I like that. I agree with everything you're saying and you could also ease your way up volume-wise through that program. For example, let's say you're on the second round of it and it's been going great. You're like, man, I feel good. Maybe try adding one exercise. That's it. Or two sets. There you go.

That's it. And then really stick to that for a while and evaluate, oh man, I'm feeling good. I'm seeing gains still. Okay, maybe add two more. And just keep slowly ramping up on 15. It's such a good low level of volume to start, especially for someone that's a chronic overtrainer. And then you just inch your way up.

But just be honest with yourself because sometimes guys like us that tend to go that way, we convince ourselves, oh, I'm feeling good. Yeah, I'll do more. I'll do more. Oh, yeah, it's working. And then you realize like, oh, maybe it's not maybe maybe that's just what do you just have an itch to do more of like, do you want to do more?

Is that what what it's all about? To a certain extent, yes, it's just it feels like a natural progression for me to say, you know, I finished math maps and I'm feeling good You know, let's experiment with you know another program see how that kind of goes And if it you know if it goes poorly Then kind of going back to 15 and going through another cycle of that like you guys are suggesting. Yeah, there's nothing wrong with that There's nothing you just gotta be able to know what your body's telling you But you know, look, here's how you view adding,

this is how adding volume should be done. And here's how, and then there's also how people typically do it, which is wrong. So I'll start with the latter. Here's how people traditionally tend to add volume. They'll go, okay, I'm doing five sets per body part. So now I'm gonna add volume, I'm gonna do seven sets per body part.

Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. You just added more volume to everything, okay? So the right way to do it would be like, I'm gonna add volume next week, I'm gonna go seven sets for this one body part. And I'm gonna stay like that for a while. And now I'm gonna go up two more sets for another body part.

Not all of them at the same time. See what I'm saying? It's a huge bump in volume when people do that. Not to mention those same people, if they're getting stronger, are naturally adding volume already. So you have to keep taking, you know, here's a thought is,

and is how I approach training is, I'm gonna do the least amount to list the most change for as long as I can. So if 15's given me return and it's the second or third time, I'm going to keep running it. And then eventually you will get really strong, really proficient for that low of volume and then go, okay, now, and then you take Sal's advice of just pick a muscle group. Hey, you know what? I want to work a little more on my shoulders. I'm going to add a shoulder exercise to this routine or I'm gonna add two more sets to the already shoulder exercises And that's it and then reap the benefits for that for the next month or so

And you know, so so step up like that versus I think I can handle more. Let's just do more It's like well, why don't you keep squeezing that orange if you're getting juice out of it If you're still getting juice from the 15th especially because that's what you did pre the previous to this, right? Like you were always like the high volume and running that for a long period of time. This is a fairly new stimulus for you. Your body's obviously enjoying the process of it. Yeah, trying to extend that a little bit

makes sense to me. Yeah, and again, if you're getting stronger, the volume's already added. So you can say to yourself, oh wow, I added volume this week because I did another rep or I went five pounds heavier. But yeah, the idea, and I know what happens mentality wise, it's like, oh, I want to add volume to my whole body. But what happens is you get no return on everything then. So pick that one area, add it there and see what happens unless the volume's

already been added. And people don't count that.'s already been added and people don't count that. They only count sets. They don't count that they did an extra rep or they added weight. That's all added volume. Right, yeah, that actually totally makes sense. Cool. Yeah, good.

By the way, look at your whole fitness journey like this. Most of it is cruising. Like 90%, maybe even 95% is cruising. Then you got five to ten percent sprints. Yeah, we throttle every now and then. Everybody does the opposite. 90% sprint, then they cruise when they're forced to. Then oh, 10% of time I'm chilling. I'm doing deload week. Well, I add up all your deload weeks. It makes up like 5% of all your training. It should look like cruising with little sprints in between. That's how you get consistent progress.

Right. Right. And another thing about 15, it was just, it was nice to go in to the gym, spend like the 15 minutes. Um, and then afterwards just have that time with my wife, you know, spending time with family, spending time with friends and not being consumed because like I'm gonna work, I'm up for work at 5 30 in the morning and I don't get home till about 5 at night and so that's after that would

be my gym time so I'm trying to get in get out get back to my family. Yeah dude you got kids? Even more reason. Exactly. You got kids too? No, no, just don't kiss my wife. All right, so you'll have kids soon too. Your fitness will make you better at everything. Unless your fitness is your top priority, then it makes everything worse. Yeah. So true.

Yep, yep. You're doing good, Chris. Yep. Awesome, thanks guys. You got it, man. Thanks for calling in. Yeah. I wish I knew this as younger.

I wish I knew. And I even struggle with it now, because I just love working out so much. But wish I knew this as younger. I wish I knew. And I even struggle with it now because I just love working out so much. But when I was a kid, if I added volume, it was to everything. And if I got stronger. And getting stronger, I never thought that that was more volume.

I was like, I'm doing the same three sets. Well yeah, dude, you're doing twice as much weight. What do you think's gonna happen? It's much more difficult. Yeah, for the audience, if you're following something like Mass 15 and it's showing you return, you're getting stronger to your point, you're adding volume, you don't need to change a thing.

And I'm gonna ride that as long as I can. I'm gonna, like, if I'm still getting juice out of it, it's like, hey, this is awesome, I'm only doing two exercises a day and I'm seeing gains, I'm getting stronger, ride that. And then eventually you will. You eventually will peak, max out what you're doing with that amount of volume

and then you do what you said. You pick a muscle group and you go, hey, I'm gonna add two sets. You know what I'm saying? And that's it. And then you ride that way for a while and you stair step like that. And that lays, that sets you up for the next few years

of like consistent gains. But what we do is we jump right away to what we can tolerate. And then, and the worst part about that, but I think is important to explain the audience is what's deceiving is let's say he was doing 15 and the, like I said, and then he goes to like a maps PED and the first like three weeks or that he actually sees some results, like he gets, he feels a little stronger, but he's doing so much more and then it's really quick that body plateaus of that.

Then where does he go from there? Backwards. Yeah, backwards. It can be deceiving sometimes when someone does that because they can tolerate it and maybe they even see some positive change, but that it was the right amount. It's crazy to me because even at the highest level of athletics where millions of dollars are on the line, they have pre-season training, they have in-season training and off-season training.

Yeah. Like NBA players and NFL and NHL, they don't train hardcore all the time. It's actually a small time. They just constantly touch the muscle groups just to keep that strength. I mean, when I used to train people, even my most consistent clients,

like people who like kind of kept everything dialed in, when they hired me, they saw strength gains relatively consistently for three years. You know, Doug got stronger consistently for almost about three years, working out two or three days a week at most. For about three years, it was consistent strength gains. So there's a lot of runway.

Look, if you like the show, come find us on Instagram. Justin is at mind pump. Justin, I'm at mind pumped to Stefano Adams at mind pump. Thank you for listening to mind pump. If your goal is to build and shape your body, dramatically improve your health and energy and maximize your overall performance, check out our discounted RGB super bundle at mind pump media.com. The RGB super bundle includes maps anabolic, maps performance and maps aesthetic.

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