Mind Pump: Raw Fitness Truth - 2656: Machines Vs. Free Weight... The Final Debate! & More (Listener Live Coaching)

Episode Date: August 6, 2025

In this episode of Quah (Q & A), Sal, Adam & Justin coach three Pump Heads via Zoom. Mind Pump Fit Tip: The final debate! Machines vs free weights. (2:54) The dumbest features in new cars. (23:19) When was the last time you got pulled over? (25:55) Optimize your C15 levels to help support your long-term health and wellness. (35:15) Justin’s sunny and smoky day on the racetrack. (40:10) Nobody in America knows how to make espresso. (44:09) The gym culture evolution. (51:45) #ListenerLive question #1 – How can I most efficiently return to my optimal weight and hormonal balance without resorting to aggressive cardio or restrictive dieting? (59:39) #ListenerLive question #2 – Am I failing my reverse diet? (1:18:22) #ListenerLive question #3 – If I want to have a long, healthy life with work and personal life, how can I balance cardiovascular training and endurance? (1:27:43) Related Links/Products Mentioned Ask a question to Mind Pump, live! Email: [e-mail] Visit Fatty15 for an exclusive offer for Mind Pump listeners! ** You can get an additional 15% off their 90-day subscription Starter Kit with code MINDPUMP ** Visit Caldera Lab for an exclusive offer for Mind Pump listeners! **Code MINDPUMP20 for 20% off your first order of their best products. ** August Special: MAPS 15 50% off! ** Code MUSCLE50 at checkout ** Mind Pump # 1782: When Machines Are Better Than Free Weights Visit Paleovalley for an exclusive offer for Mind Pump listeners! ** Discount is now automatically applied at checkout: 15% off your first order! ** Visit Transcend for this month’s exclusive Mind Pump offer! ** Telehealth Provider • Physician Directed GET YOUR PERSONALIZED TREATMENT PLAN!  Hormone Replacement Therapy, Cognitive Function, Sleep & Fatigue, Athletic Performance and MORE! ** Mind Pump #2560: How to Break Free from Destructive Body Image Issues Mind Pump #2502: Hormone Therapy for Aesthetics With Dr. Lauren Fitzgerald Reverse Dieting: The Best Way to Boost Your Metabolism Without Gaining Fat Mind Pump #1487: The Best Way for First Responders to Stay in Shape Mind Pump #2655: Ten Cardio Hacks for Fat Loss, Health & Endurance Mind Pump #1927: Performance Training Secrets from a Top NBA Trainer With Cory Schlesinger Mind Pump Podcast – YouTube Mind Pump Free Resources People Mentioned Mike Salemi (@mike.salemi) Instagram Bradley Martyn (@bradleymartyn) Instagram LAUREN FITZ, M.D. (@drlaurenfitz) Instagram Cory Schlesinger (@schlesstrength) Instagram  

If you want to pump your body and expand your mind, there's only one place to go. Mind Pump, Mind Pump with your hosts, Sal DeStefano, Adam Schaefer, and Justin Andrews. You just found the most downloaded fitness, health, and entertainment podcast ever. This is mind pumping. Today's episode, we had live callers, call in, and we got to coach them on air. We helped them with their fitness on air, but this was after the intro. Today's intro was 56 minutes long. And in the intro, we talk about fat loss, muscle gain, studies on diet, longevity.

It's a good time. By the way, if you want to be on an episode like this where we can coach you on air, send us your question at live at mindpumpmedia.com. Now, this episode is brought to you by some sponsors. The first one is a new one. Fatty 15, this is the fatty acid C15, which has been shown to have remarkable health and longevity benefits, better cell integrity, lower inflammation, better cognitive function, and better gut health.

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With Maps 15, you'll get short 15-minute daily workouts that you can stick to. They build muscle, they burn body fat. It's just 15 minutes a day, and you can do them at home with minimal equipment, or if you want to use barbells and dumbbells, there's a version in that for those as well. Head over to mindpumpmedia.com forward slash maps dash 15-minutes and use the code Muscle 50 at checkout for the 50% off. Back to the show. T-shirt time

And it's T-shirt time Ah, shit, Doug, you know it's my favorite time in a week. Three winners this week, two for Apple Podcasts, one for Facebook. The Apple Podcast winners are Cole, Seth, and Miss Alicia May. And for Facebook, we have Tanner Overstreet. All three of you are winners

send the name I just read to iTunes at Mind Pumpmedia.com. Include your shirt size and your shipping address, and we'll get that shirt right out to you. This is the debate to end this debate, you know, free weights versus machines. It's constant.

It's been happening for decades. Which one's better? Which one's better for what? What is this data show? What do we think? This is it. The final one. We're going to break it down.

The final counts. Let's go. We're still doing this? We are. Is something prompt us? What happened? Are you just on top of life? Is somebody arguing with you in the gym?

There's always clips on social media. Yeah. About this particular debate. And it typically looks something like the studies show that they build the same amount of muscle. Muscle is only no tension, blah, blah, blah. You know, it's a bit, it's a bit silly that this is a thing. Because imagine the, you know, imagine if there was like, maybe there is a big, is there

like a big following of like contractors that follow each other on the internet? I don't think so. And could you imagine like the big like nails or hammers, which is more important? You know what I'm saying? There's this big debate on which one is more needed for building the house. Put screws in a deck. Yeah. Well, I think to prep to set this up, right?

Because here's what we're going to talk about, like, which one builds more muscle and strength, which one builds it faster, what has the best carryover strength? Which one taxes the body more? What about functional flexibility? What if you have a weak body part? You go machines, free weights. And then injuries, like which one prevents them better? And if you have an injury, which one should you choose, machines are free weights. Now, to preface this, it's important.

I kind of did already. But it's important to understand that strength training provides so many benefits. So when this debate becomes silly to me is when we focus on one benefit of strength training. Right. Like build muscle. Like as if that's all strength training does. That's one of the things it does. And that's the thing that people like because it makes you look better.

Yeah. But there's so many benefits that strength training provides besides just building bigger muscles. And so we're going to go through all these different points. We're going to talk about the data, the studies. And why it's so nuanced. Why this is a silly debate when it's based just on data. or when it's based just on a particular athlete. Like, we've got to really break it down so people understand,

well, which one do I pick for what? Isn't it just people arguing their preferences? You know, it's just like, I prefer doing this. And therefore, I'm going to reach to the one that makes the best argument for the thing I like. Absolutely, absolutely. So let's talk about which one builds more muscle and more strength. And we're going to also break this down into the short term and into the long term.

Oh, that's a good one. And the reason why I did that, you know, I've seen studies. Yeah. And I've seen studies that'll compare like a hack squat, like a sled, to a barbell squat. And they'll take relative beginners. They'll put them on them. And they'll do like an 18 week or 16 week or 12 week study. And they'll map the strength gains.

And then what they'll find in those studies sometimes is that the strength gains in the hack squat were muscle gains to a particular muscle like the quads in that period of time, which is short, right? 12 weeks, 16 weeks. It might be a little better. for the machines. Now, I'm going to explain why. Strength training with free weights requires a lot more skill. It's just harder to do a barbell.

When you're a beginner, it takes you a longer time to learn how to do a barbell squat than it does to just push your body on a sled. That's relatively easy. I can take almost any beginner so long as they're having injuries. And if I pick the right weight on a sled,

they're going to do it right. Barbell squat, if I take a beginner, it's going to take me oftentimes, even if they're healthy, it'll take me a month or two. Benefits are going to take a bit for you to learn and adapt properly. That's right. So in the short term with the sled, you're going to be able to push the weight harder and just focus on the muscle faster.

But in the long term, here's what I'll argue the case for free weights. Because of the skill acquisition, I believe that the muscle gain effects will just continue to happen over time in a better way from free weights. Now, this is a bit of a, again, we're a little bit of a. nuance here because here's the here's where you hear a lot of fitness influencers say muscles don't know they just know tension they don't know what you're doing well that's true but we'll start with strength uh it's it's it's specific so here's what the data shows free weights getting stronger of free weights gets you better at free weights getting stronger machines get you better at machines so and we'll get to the other points like carryover strength why that might

be important but when it comes to building muscle and strength they're both pretty damn good They both work very, very well, but I would give the nod to free weights long term. Like if you just did barbell squats for two years or just did hack squats for two years, I believe the, and I would bet money on this, that the barbell squat would produce more muscle gains over a two-year period, not just the 12-week. Yeah, if you've never hit a baseball before, you're going to hit it further off of a T than someone throwing the ball at you. At first.

Yeah, at first. But learn how to hit with someone throwing you the ball, and eventually you'll hit that ball significantly further than the tea. Great, great example. And I feel like that's a similar if you did that, if you took someone who's never hit a ball and he said, here's it on a tee, or here this guy's going to throw it at you's 80 miles an hour, see what you can do. Wait, less variables involved.

Yeah. And so, you know, it's similar. But similar in the sense of like, I think the skill acquisition part, right, is going to take longer to get better at hitting the ball, getting coming at you. But once you do, you're going to get a lot further. I feel the same way with a barbell back squat, it's going to take you a little bit longer to get good at it. but when you do it, it's going to take you a lot further.

I'll use another example just to piggyback off you. If you take somebody who's never used a keyboard before, a computer keyboard, you tell them to type as fast as they can. They're going to be faster with their two index fingers like this at first. You teach them how to type properly. It's going to take a while to learn the technique. But over time, which one types faster? Proper typing technique does.

So I think that's also true with the free weights. It's just over time free weights provide more. because of the skill involved in doing them. So although that might make it more difficult in the beginning, after six months a year, two years, three years, especially when you get past the year. It's like, come on. This is one of my only regrets.

I didn't ever learn how to like properly type. Oh, my God. Neither. Classes. I'm just still hacking at it. I did and I still suck. Did you learn? Yeah, I got up to 30, 32 or 34, which is not impressive.

I think that's pretty slow, isn't it? It is pretty slow. Yeah, it's pretty like this way. I mean, I got up to that. So I think it was in the 30s, maybe high 30s, if I'm lucky, but I know it wasn't impressive, but I got to, but then still, I didn't keep it going. I got remarkably fast when I just my two-indexam. For now when I was like 50 or 60s. You work with what you can work with. Now you're this. You know, what's interesting about this conversation for us as trainers is, and why this is, why it's a bit of a silly argument is because no matter how pro I am for. free weights. There's also plenty of examples where I went to a machine first with the client.

And so it always depends on the client, what the desired outcome is, what their limitations are, where they're currently at, right, which also potentially other loads of stress for that week. So there's so many other factors that I'm going to take it. And this goes for myself. There's times where I might come in and I might choose a leg press, like, machine. and not choose the barbell. Even though I know the barbell backspot provides me more return because there's other variables that I'm also factored. No, and we're going to get to those.

That's great. So next is what about like carryover strength? The carry over strength means if you get stronger in an exercise, how much of that strength translates to anything else you may do? Do they have specific studies for this style? Because I think it's not even close. No, it's not. And they do.

They have athletic studies. So like a barbell squat versus leg press for football, for sprinting, for jumping, free weights are superior. And the reason why is because free weights are, if you lift anything in the real world, it's a free weight. Like, anytime you have to use strength in the real world, it's almost never on a track. Lateral and rotational forces apply. That's it. You're going to pick up a table. The table's free.

You're going to move a couch. The couch is free. You do a sport like wrestling or football or whatever. Nothing's on a track. everything is free. And the data on this is very clear. If you get stronger at free weights, then you're going to get stronger at the free weight exercises.

You get stronger machines, it tends to be pretty closely contained to machines. And the world is not made up of machines. So if you're going to, if you want to get stronger, they're both great. They're both going to get you stronger. But if you want the kind of strength that then you can tell that you got at the park, on the field,

moving furniture, whatever, free weights, because they're closer to the real world. I think, too, if you compare the two of them, like, you, let's use leg press and squat, find me a guy that can squat 500 pounds, barbell back squat, and he never leg presses. He'll get on that leg press, and he'll leg press. Yeah, a thousand pounds. Yeah, be a champion. Find me a guy, okay, and I was this kid who could leg press 1,000 pounds, but could barely barbell back squat two plates.

You know what I'm saying? So it's like the carryover for the leg press over you could be really strong in a leg press. Those are respect 800 to 1,000 pounds in a leg press is very respectful. Yeah, you got strong legs. Yeah. And this was my early years of training my legs was this. I did more leg pressing and hack squatting and leg extension work and got really strong at those exercises. But then I go over in barbell back squat and I could barely do two plates.

But once I got to a place where I was squatting over 400 pounds, I didn't have to even leg press anymore. I can come back and still keep that leg press strength. Yes, yes. All right. Next up is, now this one's title, which one taxes the body more? And believe it or not, there's pros and cons to this. So I'll give everybody a good example. You may see pro bodybuilders who are the most muscular strength training athletes in the world, right?

So you have lots of different athletes that utilize strength training as a primary form of exercise, power lifters, strong men, Olympic lifters. But I don't think I need to argue that pro bodybuilders have the most muscle. just big, lots of muscle. Now, why do they use a lot of machines? Because they do. They use way more machines than power lifters, strong men, and especially Olympic women. The amount of volume. Because, yes, free weights tax the body a lot.

And when you're walking around at 5-9, 280 pounds, relatively lean, and you got that much muscle on your body, and you need to hit a certain amount of volume to continue to train your body, free weights is too much. It's just going to fry you. But you can go do 20 sets of machines. in the gym so bodybuilders oftentimes start with free weights but end up with a lot of machines because uh that they tax the body now what about the average person uh well if you feel like you're pushing it and your stress level's kind of high go do a machine workout it's going to it's not going to beat you up as much uh if you're feeling great and you want to get after it uh then go

strength training with free weights now you some people would say well you could modify so instead of doing 20 sets of machines, why not just do 10 sets with free weights? And that's totally viable argument, 100% that's credible argument. Now, here's the problem with it, though. It's not easy to equate. There are some free weight exercises that two or three hard sets will fry you,

whereas 15 sets of machines you feel perfectly fine. You're doing an Olympic lift in particular, or you're doing squats, deadlift. Even a barbell back squat will do that. Yes, yes. And so if you know your body and how you feel, then you need to adjust and say, well, today machines are more appropriate. That's what's going to give me better results. And other times, well, I'm going to use free weights. To give an example how this is probably one of the most common ways that I end up using it. This just happened last week, where I go into a week and I tell myself, I'm lifting Monday and Wednesday full body. So Monday, I start with. barbell back squats. Wednesday rolls around and I'm a lot more sore than I thought of me. I end up fine leg pressing, leg extension leg rolls. And so even though again,

I would make the case all day long that free weights is better, but because I overreached on Monday, it now becomes more appropriate and better for my body to do machines like that. And I think this is one of the best ways. This is my personal opinion on how you interchange or use the both of them. I think that the foundation should be built around these free weight type of movements. The reality is sometimes you're going to push it a little more. It's time to train that body part again. You're still pretty sore from that. I want to train. I don't want to just not train at all. I'm going to move those. And I want to facilitate recovery, but I don't need to tax it that hard because I already taxed that hard. So then here's a great time that you use machines to add that

volume. Totally. It's a great option to have, like, especially when you are, yeah, you're overtrained you're taxed and you just want to make sure you keep that signal going and it's like to get the volume without a lot of the intensity and the intensity is something you're always trying to gauge based on you know where you're at like you don't overdo that so to have machines as an option you can still train get the benefit you know work together with it totally 100% now let's talk about functional flexibility now functional flexibility is the kind of flexibility that actually matters like it's cool if you can get into the splits but if you don't have it any strength or support, you're just unstable. It's like a baby. Like you have a baby who's super

flexible, but they can hurt themselves because they don't have any strength or stability around that. Functional flexibility means you're flexible, but you're strong and all of you don't hurt yourself. You can get out of that position easy. That's right. Free weights, this is not even close. Free weights are superior for this because functional flexibility requires balance and stability. Machines require very little. Now, one of the arguments that really annoys me with this is you'll Often here people use EMG studies, the show, look, the stabilizer muscles are just as active in the leg press as they are in the squat.

Active versus are they able to stabilize in unison? Is the central nervous system coordinated with these muscles, stabilizing the body? Very different. It's very different. You can activate the muscles all you want and develop them, but that doesn't necessarily equate to more stability. This is why like a bodybuilder who's got all this muscle,

more muscle and strength than the average person will hurt themselves. throwing a frisbee because they don't have their CNS hasn't been trained to have the right amount of stability free weights provide this like they provide this because you have to balance because everything has to operate in a stabilized way because the weight is free so and if you do free weights properly lots of different you know full ranges of motion train appropriately different planes of motion you'll actually get incredible functional flexibility you'll get really really good protective functional flexibility would you guys are i would i would argue of all the points we're making this is the most applicable to like all for gin and pop this is this is why most clients

their programming was built around free weights is for this totally yeah yeah because i mean look at the opposite if you just train with machines you can look at the dysfunction that creates uh when you go to move in unison and yeah and organize your body for these other types of movements like it's dysfunctional because you've been training it to be limited to these certain ranges. That's 100%. And when you train clients, they want to look good,

which is, of course, that's their number one goal. But if they hurt themselves, you failed. Like if your client comes to you after you've trained them for six months and it's like, I got to cancel my session.

What happened? Oh, man, I went to go pick up my kid or I stepped off the curb wrong way and I hurt myself. You got to ask yourself, am I training this person? I mean, they're fit in the gym.

How the hell they hurt themselves? I said them up for success. That's right. This is an area that, admittedly, I think I failed a lot of my early clients. Oh, totally. I think I defaulted to the machines so often because it was easy. It was safer. It was less work. You know what I'm saying? I get them. Less coaching. Yeah. It was way, way less coaching and easier. And I justified it because, oh, you know, she's older and she has this. And the risk, the risk injury, this, that's like, I would have been far better off just reducing the load to next to nothing and teaching them free weight stuff versus machines. It wasn't until later my career. Did I realize, the value of we could literally spend this whole hour

just trying to get the barbell back squat and you'll get more value than me taking you through 10 machine exercises every single time inside the gym. Right. All right. Next up, what if you got a weak body part? Like, what if you have, you've been working out and everything seems to be developing well, but you've got that one body part that's lagging. What's better for that weak body part, free weight or machine?

Well, this one goes to the machines. Machines, yeah. Machines are superior for weak body parts because I can sit on a machine and isolate and think about the muscle I want to develop. And not have to worry about balance, not have to worry about stability.

In fact, oftentimes a machine is on a track that puts me in the right position. And so this is another reason why bodybuilders like machines is they can go on there and isolate the rear delt, the rhomboid. They can get just the lats. They can get just this part of the quad,

even they'll say, or this part of the hamstring or my outer glutes. Machines are great for this. So if you have a body part that's lagging and you're like, okay, I want to like really develop this. Machines might be a great way to go to get that body part to catch up. Now, there's more that goes to it like programming considerations. But when it comes to weak body parts and getting them to activate. Because free weights, you can do this for free weights, but free weights require so much more that oftentimes you'll revert to your old patterns, which is what developed the lagging body part.

And or just tax to CNS more, like when you don't, you don't want. I think this is one of the biggest misconceptions around why bodybuilders seem to be doing so many machines is because they're, they're, you don't see that they're in the gym seven days a week, sometimes twice a day. And they're still probably barbell squatting and barbell bench pressing and doing all those movements as much as the average person, if not more. What you see, though, is the all this volume. All the accessory lifts. Yeah, all the little detail lifts like that. And so then a lot of, I think people think that, oh, they must lift like all, they must only train like this way. And it's like, no, it's just a part of their training and their programming is so they can focus on a small body part.

Right. All right. Lastly, which one's better for injuries? This is actually divided. If you want to prevent injuries, free weights. If you get good at free weights, you have more stability, more balance, and strength that carries over into the real world. In all injuries that where you hurt yourself, not the ones where you get hit by a car, but the ones who you actually hurt yourself, all of those are because you lack to. strength and stability to deal with what you just did, okay? And free weights are better at that. But what about if you are already hurt and now you need to rehab? That's what the machine was. Now machines. I mean, this is the, this was actually the reason for the invention.

Yeah. It was designed for rehab. Their best use. Yes. So this makes total sense for, for machines is I just got knee surgery, but I still want to train my quads. I am not going to barbell back squat with that client when they're six weeks post surgery. But you absolutely

could sit them down. And I remember even my rehab starting that way, sitting down with like an ankle weight and you're doing leg extensions. And so in that says, where you're keeping the knee in a very fixed and stable position, this makes a lot of sense. Yeah, and I'll give a more real world examples. Like, oh, my hurt, my low back.

How do I train my back? How do I train my legs? Machines. Machines will hold you in place and you can still work out without hurting it. But which one will prevent done properly? Of course, which and we'll prevent these kind of injuries more free weights. So it is divided there. I think what we're getting to is it's more nuanced than they make it sound.

And ultimately, if you're smart and you're doing this for a while and you're consistent, use both when appropriate for best results. Anyway, I got to tell you guys about, I looked something up over the weekend because I was super annoyed. One of, and I'll tell you why I was annoyed. one of the dumbest features in new cars that I'm like, why do they put this in here? Does anybody actually use this? It's so stupid. Is the stupid start, stop function? I hate it.

Like, does anybody keep that off immediately? Every time I got hit the button to turn it. Because I don't like the gas saving elements. Yeah, like I don't like my car turning off every time I stop. Didn't you also look it up though? It actually saves pretty good. I looked it up. It does.

I'm going to read you guys. Yeah, I bet it does. I'm going to read you guys how, like how much of it, because that's what I'm is worth putting up. with. Well, I was looking at, I'm like, how much of a difference does actually make? Like, why do they have this? Like, what's the deal? So check this out. Uh, if you're in a, if you are in start, stop conditions like traffic or, you know, you're in a city. Like constantly. Bro, it could say between 10 to 20 percent fuel. 10 to 20? 10 to 20 percent. 20 is a lot.

A lot. That's if you're like in really bad traffic. Start. So you live in L.A. But even 10 percent. I mean, everybody in here is probably spending north of $600 a month. gas. Yeah. So if you're, now, if you're like on freeways all the time, it's a waste of time. Yeah. Doesn't make a big difference.

But it's also not kicking in then either. No, exactly. So that's why it's a waste of time. Yeah. So I looked it up and I said, okay, well, what's the average, like, car? How much would the average car save? This is based off of 287 a gallon, which it's a lot more. 27.

I know. This is what I got off. Where is that? It's a 20-21. It's a different state. We also live in California. Yeah. Is it in North Dakota or something?

So based off that, so it's going to be more than this if you live like in California. I mean, it's going to be double to triple this. So go ahead. Yeah. So this would save the average driver about $10 a month. So here, probably save the average driver $20 a month. That's not, that's not nothing. That's not nothing.

So it would take like a year or so to offset the cost of the actual saving thing. Now, they did it for EPA standards, right? So I think if you added up on all the cars in cities, it actually makes a difference. Yeah. But it's so annoying. I hate it. It is. Especially because you're probably trying to race everybody.

No, I'm not. You get to the stop side and you get ready to race. I just hate it. This thing's turned off on me. I just hate stopping and then you hear the car turn off. And then you hit the, you know,

you take off a little bit, turns back on. Like, you're so dumb, dude. You know who keeps them on all the time? Everybody's getting you on the jump. That's why, huh? Like Uber drivers and taxi drivers. They always keep their own.

Well, then yeah, because they're, they're saving every dollar. Yeah, because they're going through. To increase their margins. God, I got a ticket this weekend, dude. First ticket. I was just bragging about you guys getting out of tickets. Dude, here we go.

I know. I can't believe he didn't listen to the show, dude. I didn't even try. You know what, for sure screwed me? You should have name dropped. He had to carry. He had a ride along, dude. And I'm, and I knew it when he pulled me over and I saw the, because, first of all,

CHP gets you, you're tough. They almost never let you off. And then on top of that, a ride along. I'm like, sure, man, I'm for sure to me. He's going to show him how it's done. Yeah. He was really friendly. I tried being friendly with him too, but it still didn't go over. Just, bro, the worst timing. I mean, it was right where the freeways converge. And I was passing on the right side right before the shoulder disappeared. And so I gunned it. Plus, you drive exotic cars. Like you're driving more car. Just right. And I like this. And then look right to my left and he's looking right at me. And I'm looking right at me. Oh, man.

Instantly speeds right behind me. And I'm like, oh, fuck. So there was a moment where I can. he was so friendly. I thought maybe he was going to let me off. But when I saw him talking to the kid in the back and was like, oh, he's teaching this guy how to write me a ticket right now. This is a horrible timing. I'm going to name drop Justin, bro. They all like Justin. I'm going to go meet my friend Justin Andrews from mind pump. So I think the CHPs all have body cams, don't they? I don't know. I think they do. Okay. Remember and I told the story about the last guy that let me off because of the, that car. He didn't say anything. He just let you go. Yeah. So I think you, I think they're being recorded.

They've got to be undercover about it. So you can't, you know, yeah, you can't be like, hey, I'm mind pump. Last one saved me because that one was registered to mind pump. So this one's registered to mind pump. So this one's registered me personally. So you don't give a shit. Last time I got pulled over. What's it say? What's it say?

So they don't have them yet, everyone, but by March of 2026, they should. Yeah. Oh, wow. Yeah. That's good. I like body cams. I got pulled up. This was a while ago with my son in the car.

So I had my four-year-old in the car. And we get pulled over. and because I had gone past the line at the stoplight There's this weird light by my house And I went past it And then I turned green I passed and I took off And then he pulls me over in my small city

So it's kind of embarrassing But I pull in the parking lot And I'm like you know It's a good time to show my son How to be how to be respectful The police officers So I was very respectful And before the guy pulled me over

I told him I said hey I'm getting pulled over I think I might have broken a law I said these guys do a really good job So I was trying to show my son because I don't want them to be fearful or hate police because I think sometimes people can be like that and their kids pick up on that.

You know, it took me until I was deep into my 30s before I got rid of that like anxiety from cops because of my bad experiences as a young kid. So it's wild how that sticks with you. I remember like it was a long time. How many bad experiences did you have? Quite a bit. I mean, I almost lost my license in one year.

So you hit your fourth ticket in a year and they'll pull your license. And so I got, got four in a year and luckily I went to court for the fourth one and the cop didn't show up so I got to keep my license but yeah when I was in when I was in high school was same yeah an idiot you know and so Justin never did he look how white he is I mean I did a lot dumb thing yeah yeah yeah I mean I look at you like oh he's one of us yeah well now I get the mustache yeah yeah yeah he's like hey you're off duty yeah you know fireman reading yeah I'll show you my car

I got thrown on the hood I got thrown on the hood at 16 years old Oh wow yeah dude I did a burnout I was in the car Girlfriend my cousin with his girlfriend in the back And I was showing off Of course It was like I had a car to show off with

But you know you're 16 you think yeah And I did a little burnout And three of them came up I don't know what they were they were But they both came up to me And he looks at me Do you know why I pulled you over I said no

And he started yelling at me Get out the car And like threw me on the hood Wow And I think he was trying to scare me. I think he was trying to teach me. And it did scare the shit out of me. I was like, what's happening?

I saw this happen to my friend. We were in Milwaukee, and it was like a blizzard. And you couldn't really see these cops directing traffic. It was very hard to see, but they were trying to tell him to turn. They're like, turn, turn, turn, turn, turn. And he just kind of went past them. It was like, oh, oops. And then they were talking to him and pulled him out of the car, and then literally

grabbed him and slammed him on the back of the truck. who were like, hey, hey, hey, and they're just, like, manhandling him. And then they took them off and left us by ourselves, took them to jail overnight. Did he have a, did he have a, did he have a warrant? No, he, no, they were trying to make an example out of him.

Like, we were pulling that way from a concert. We were, you know, in college, so I'm sure we were just like, they thought we were just dumb college kids. Was, was Marcello, C-HP or is he local? He was, he was, L-A-P-D. He was L-A-P-D. I couldn't remember if he was C-HP. He's, like, a great example of a good call.

Super. He looks and talks like a cop. He does. He does as a trainer. As well as a trainer. So for all you cops that might want to be trainers. You want to know it's funny. People love him.

I talk to him the other day. I've talked to him about this and said, hey, because you hear stories at LAPD, like there's some crazy areas down there. Like, do you have any crazy examples? He's like, no, man, never. I'm like, what? And he goes, this is what he told me. I hope I don't get him in trouble. He goes, I firmly believe that the way you treat people, it really makes a big difference on

whether or not they're going to comply. Yeah, the energy put out. He's like, I was always respectful. I was always, you know, and people just kind of, you know, any time I got, yeah, you know, in trouble, it was like I was in an asshole, you know, so I put that out there, I got it back. Well, they have that option to be, like, the guy was really nice to me. Like, even though I got the ticket, like, I couldn't be mad because he was polite.

He even said, hey, man, he said, I said, he was like, you're probably doing over a hundred. I clocked you at 90. He goes, I put 75 on the ticket. It's like, well, it's like, well, like. Your ticket's 35? Yeah. That's nothing, dude. Well, bro, I don't care about the dollar.

I would rather pay the, pay me the... You shouldn't brag about your ticket. I don't want... It's not cool. It wasn't a cool ticket. No, I care more about the insurance than you care about the actual fine. I'd rather pay a higher fine. Does that mess up your insurance?

You're doing just 10 over? Oh, yeah. You get a speeding ticket. It doesn't matter if it's five miles hour or... Now, if you go reckless, you can get big time trouble. But it affects the insurance all the same. Yeah. But I still have...

Because I haven't had a ticket. it since I was, God, remember how old I was. I mean, either. I haven't, I haven't, I haven't had a long time. I can do traffic court. So I haven't, I wonder what it's going to be like. Did I ever tell you guys my traffic court story? I'll never forget what I got, uh, when I was getting one of my tickets off when I was younger. And my first traffic school that I ever done, I got so excited to go because it was pizza, comedy and fun was the title of the thing. And I'll never forget showing up. And there was pizza, but there was no comedy and there was no fun. And even there's a

point. I raised my hand at one point. I was like, hey, the comedy. Yeah, and he said some stupid joke. I was like, oh my God, it's a ploy just to get you to... Because when you go to this, how it was back then, I don't know how much this has changed, but when I was a kid, there's... Yeah, you just look at the title of this one to pick. Yeah, there's a list of like...

And they get paid by the city. Yeah, and there's just tons of them. And they all have these different titles and names. So they're trying to track people. Yes. What's smart. So I chose pizza comedy and fun traffic school. And there was something fun and nothing funny about this traffic school.

The only thing that was on point was we got pizza for lunch. You know what they used to do in traffic school? They stopped doing this when we were going, but they might have been doing this before. I don't know, Doug, have you ever been to traffic school? They make you watch the scary videos. They make you watch videos of dead bodies and brains and brains and the traumatism Yeah, that was a staple. Did you watch that?

That's it. That's the name of it. I never saw any of that. Oh, I saw it. That's what they played. We had to watch that. Bro, it was so boring. It's probably too traumatic for the, you know, Jen's ears and everything.

Wow, it is traumatic. You want to see some of the brain. Well, it is, but yeah, that's real. It was from the scary straight. Model. Yeah. Yeah. That's our whole childhood is scary.

So what is it? Is anyone in here? Doug, have you done travel school when he's never have. He never did. Doug's a good guy. He's never been able to.

You don't think of a lot. Have you ever even sped in any of your car? Have you known? I've sped. All right. Following you. He's like, he's like,

he's like, yeah. No, I've had a couple tickets over the years. Yeah. Two? Like two. Your whole life? Two or three, yeah.

Wow. That's good. That's good. It's good for you. Good for you. Yeah. I'm pretty good at spotting, you know, I shouldn't give out my secrets today. Dylan, have you done Travis school lately?

I want to hear, I want to find out what they're... You want to go with a friend? Yeah. You know what they're like now? I have no idea. I have no idea. Could you imagine... Can you imagine...

Can you do them online now, you think? Yeah. Maybe. Really? I think so, yeah. Oh, that'd be awesome. Yeah. Are you going to have Katrina to do it?

You're going to do it. Shh, come on, both. Stop. Hey, could you imagine the three of us in Travis school? We get caught up so fast for it. You know, I was that guy, like, going through their manuals and books and just, like, drawing... Drawing dicks. Why?

They having them say stupid things. Why can't draw something else? I don't know. It's relevant. That's it. It's like, it's like, favorite thing to draw. It's iconic. Justin Andrew.

You saw a therapist about this yet? There might be something. There might be something going on there. Yeah. I avoid therapy. You might like, you love one of those. Therapies for whims. For whips.

All right. All right. I'm going to change topics. Uh, I just. learned, so rarely do I get excited about a new compound or supplement. And I just learned about a fatty acid called C-15. So this is, we just started working with them. Oh, I couldn't wait to ask you about this. So, I saw a fatty 15 on there. Well, so the audience, that's the name of the product. I don't know if we've ever told the audience how, how, like, a lot of partnerships

work, not all, but most our partnerships get run by Sal. I just, I help manage and run it with Katrina, but she would always be asking me, well, what about this? I'm like, I'm not going to be the one who's going to say yes or no to this. I'm like, so just direct it to sell. So now we've gotten so good with our systems. Sometimes I don't even know. We come in here and I'm like, we have a new partner. I have no idea about.

But I know it's approved by you. So I'm always curious to like, what is it? What are we doing? I'm really slow down. So I'm actually really excited about this. So C-15 is a fatty acid. And there's debate as to whether or not it's essential because if you don't have enough of it, it can cause some, well, it can actually, to put it bluntly,

it can cause accelerated aging in the body. Which, by the way, okay, super common, especially when we were trainers in our early years, still is common. How often did you have a female client that grossly underate protein in fats? Oh, and you can see it. Oh, yeah.

Hair, hair, hair, hair, skin. It was actually really common. And we still, people that listen to our callers, many times we'll have someone break their macros down. We're like, you've got to bump your fats. That's right. fat. So C15 is a fat that's found in full fat dairy. Okay. And a lot of people just don't have a lot of full. And it's a healthy fat. Yeah. Most people avoid it. It contributes to sell integrity and structure and strength. And if you have too little of it, which about about 25 to 35% of people get too little C15. And what happens you have accelerated aging in the body. So they can actually test this. So C15, in my strong opinion, will be one of those fatty acids like, well, like omega-3s that you're going to hear,

they're going to hear talked about a lot. Wow. Like, take this. You need to take this. It's a big deal. Okay. And it makes a big difference. The date on, it's pretty remarkable.

This is a dairy intolerance. Can you still take it? Yes. Oh. It is not dairy. It's just the fatty acid. But that's where you would get it naturally. Right.

So it makes sense that if you're somebody who already eats a lower fat diet and or has an intolerance to dairy, this would be probably beneficial to you. I'm going to take this for sure, 100%. So. So anti-inflammatory, pro-cell integrity, it's going to help basically your body function more. Is it? So, pill, powder, what is it? Oh, it's capsule.

Capsule. That's it. Nice. So this is, so, again, I think that this is going to be like, for a lot of people, like omega-3s. You start taking omega-thes. Is that the company's name right there, done? Fatty 15. I like the branding.

And so we're going to be working with them. Ted X-Net, Fat-S. So it's one of those supplements that, you know, it's an, like I said, you got fat-a-th fats, carbs, and proteins, fats and proteins are essential. This one for a lot of people, you'll notice. You'll take this. Within a couple months, you'll notice. It says on the website, obviously healthier skin, balance metabolism, that's all.

Oh, better. Deeper sleep. Deeper sleep. That, to me, it's very interesting. Yes. Deeper sleep and better, and microbiome health. Well, when your fatty acid profile isn't ideal, your inflammation's up, and your brain isn't operating well. Your brain isn't operating the way it should.

So more cellular benefits than omega-3. That's what the data is starting to show. So it's three times more cellular benefits. In some cases, yes. I wouldn't go as far as to say, you're not going to switch out omega-3s for this, but I think in combination with your omega-3s, you should take this.

Interesting. But it's a supplement that I would put, based off of what I'm reading, this is pretty close to a must-have for a lot of people. So it would be interesting. That is interesting. Yeah, yeah. Maybe if this is a new partnership,

Maybe I see maybe one of the doctors get somebody on here We can actually talk about it. Oh, we will. Yeah. I want them to break down the science and the data on it. Yeah. I dug deep. No, I know. I know you do. If we're talking about it, then it was obviously something that you would approve. And so people probably have no idea how. You know, when you get your fatty acid profile. Right. Here's what it feels like. Because people are like, all right, what would I notice? Here's what you'll feel. Your joints will feel better. You'll recover faster. You'll notice better sleep, better digestion. you'll just feel and move better is what it's going to feel like. When fatty acid profiles are off, you just feel off and you feel more stiff. That's what it feels like. More inflammation. More inflammation isn't just pain, by the way. It's also groggyness or I can't think straight.

That's also what inflammation. It makes sense this would be super valuable too. Like, I mean, I think back to like my dieting days when I'm cutting really hard and aggressive. Oh, totally. And then I would supplement with something like this. That's right. Yeah, this would be interesting. You keep nutrients there.

Yeah. Oh, dude, I mean, can you guys tell I got, like, sunburn over the weekend? A little bit. Yeah. I mean, it's a lot better than it was. I was, like, so red, dude. My kids were, like, I was that guy that didn't put the sun tan lotion on them. Like, I just was like, hey, let's just, you know, we're going to be fine.

Like, the weather was nice. We went to the drag races up in Sonoma. Again, of course, Sonoma, it's like, once the sun comes out, it's like, it makes you a laser. Yeah. Yeah. So, dude, we were there. and I so you have you ever been where there's like nitro ever oh yeah dude nitro fuel is so crazy and loud and in anyways they started up this funny car and we went and like walked right

behind it and we're all excited and we're like you know yeah like it's so cool and loud and like all the smoke was billowing up and and we're like you know immersing I'm looking around and all of a sudden this huge crowd like just dissipates it everybody's leaving and like you know running for the hills and I'm just sitting there like yeah this is great and then all of a sudden my eyes start tearing up and start burning and then I'm like oh I can't breathe and like oh my god I was like in panic mode and my son behind me

the same thing and we're just like scrambling dude it felt like I got maced like in the face I don't know if you've ever got that close from the fumes I've never been that close and I look and like some of the guys there like the mechanics they had like gas masks on and everything and I'm just standing there like yeah this is awesome right like filming it getting blasted like crying like my eyes were like bright red would go away quickly when you moved away i mean it went away from i could taste it the whole day

so i was like oh this is great i'm sure that's healthy you did you look up and see if our homegirl was there the mind pump list i actually reached out to her she was she out there no because it didn't have her class of drag basis yeah that would have been cool i know i want a meg i think yes yeah yeah we should shot her out on i forget her hand i was hoping she was there to watch but Did you talk to her at all? Did she, did you like, yeah, I talked to her, but she was like, no, we're not there. So, okay, so this is great, great segue, but you didn't use the Caldera Lab sunscreen. I didn't, yeah, which was stupid, because I did have it in my backpack, uh, and I left my backpack in the car.

I was like, no. I'm actually, I've been using that. Yeah. Yeah. I didn't realize it was 30 SPF. So, and it, uh, it feels like I'm rubbing like any of the other Caldera creams. Like, it just, it goes into my skin. Like, sometimes when you rub, like, suntan lotion on it, feel, I feel, I feel,

like I'm rubbing plastic on my skin or what like that. And it actually feels really good. And so we've been laying out the pool and I've been using it. It's not all oil-y. No, no. It absorbs right in. And I know that it's all natural. So I know I'm not putting a bunch of crap on me.

Yeah, people need to know the difference between sunscreen that is mineral-based and well-made versus the chemical ones. So the chemical ones, I mean, those, they get in your blood and the levels, when they do tests on these, the levels of these chemicals in people's blood are higher than with the, what the FDA says is actually safe. And they have hormonal effects in the body, maybe carcinogenic, but not good for you. Mineral-based ones sit on the skin and they reflect the UV rays. And I would argue that 30 SPF with mineral-based ones like the Caldera Lab one is stronger than the 30 SPF with the chemical base. Really? You think so?

Because it reflects it off. I've used both of them. My kids have used both. We don't use the chemical ones anymore. Like, I use that. Yeah. That's it. We're done for the day.

Because that reflects it off. I imagine if it's going on your face, it has to be safer than even the mineral bit. Oh, yeah. So I've been using it on max completely. So I know it's not a huge bottle, but it's like, I'm like, okay, this is good for my face. It's 30 SPF.

I'd just rather, because I don't know the stuff that Katrina has been getting him and I haven't done my own digging on hers, but I know that's good. So when him and I have been going to the pool, which we've been doing a lot of. You don't break out from him and all that stuff because I'll break out a little bit.

Oh, yeah. I know. Yeah. And Ever, it's like real sensitive of the skin. So, yeah, some of those. like do not do well with the skin. I got to tell you guys, my dad, you crack me up this weekend. So he, so a while ago when I got baptized, we had a bunch of people from the church

come over our house. And my dad was so excited to make people espresso. He loves doing this, right? He loves making espresso for people. Yeah, and he was making it. Yeah. And he's like his famous espresso and it's like a thing, right? And Italians are really funny about, about their foods and things.

They're very like, no, there's only one way to do it. So he told me like it's a lot of the secret is the water. right the purified water of course of course he talked to you about it I was like so he makes these espressoes and my friend charlie who he runs a lot of the operations at the church he had somebody's like oh my god Dominic this is so good and he's like hey I got to tell you we're going to open up a coffee shop at the church I don't know if you guys know this adventure they have a coffee shop now yeah it's really cool and he's like when we are open I want you to come and give me an honest like give me your honest opinion on our espresso you got to tell me oh no so they made they did it they opened it

It's beautiful. It's really popular. Church run coffee. Come on, dude. It's actually, it's actually. Step above Folgers. No, no, no. They're using holy water?

Well, no, that might help. That's a good at a selling point. Yeah, dude, I feel so much. The fruit of the spirit. It's, I mean, they made it professional. Like, they got, it's like you're going to, like, a pizza or a Starbucks. Okay. So, so they made it very professional.

Okay. So, now, the problem is, my dad would say, nobody, he just let the story, he says it. Nobody in America knows how to make espresso. So anyway. It's nobody. Nobody makes it always, what does he call it? It calls it, uh, octopus water.

You know, the ink? Octopus water. Because I don't know why they make so much water. So anyway, uh, we go to church. My dad, Charlie sees my dad. He's, hey, you got to come see this. I want you to try it. Give me your honest opinion.

So my dad's like, okay, so they go in. And they got this really fancy, like espresso machine, like one of those real expensive ones. One, and he's like, and this guy, he used to run a Pete's coffee. He knows what he's doing. He introduced him my dad. This is, you know, Sal's dad. He's from Italy.

Make him a really good. good espresso, so they got the real good coffee, they prepared it. So my dad's telling me the story, right? So I guess they made it for him. They gave it to him. And my dad drinks it. And he's like, you want me to be honest? He's like, yeah, I give it a six. And he goes, on a scale of what? One to ten. I'm sorry? I'm like, dad, that's me. It's great. He's like, it's okay. It's okay. It's not bad. Nobody knows how to make espresso. Oh, my God. It's so good. It's so funny. He's like, I think I heard his feeling. The water thing is actually a major hack for almost I want to say a year or two

In fact, this is actually what moved me from drinking coffee on the morning on a regular basis. When I was at my last place, for some reason, my coffee just, and I actually thought it was a beans. I'm like, I've been using these and I wrote, there's like three beans brands that I like that I kind of rotate through.

All of them were just taking it. Then I thought it was the coffee pot. I bought a whole new one. Still, I'm like, what is, why is my coffee taste like shiffer? And I remember one day pouring in like already, like, you know, crystal geyser water in there and I just said it's the tap water and I just it's so funny you said crystal geyser that's the one my dad says is the best oh and it says use crystal dude and it made it was like I just I was I just thought that because it was boiling it's like

oh it should I don't know neutralize everything it should be the same mineral content pro it was a huge difference and I thought this whole time I had no idea that I should have been doing that no my dad is crystal geyser that's this that's the secret water secret yeah that you have to use Dude, I'm telling you right now, it was a, it was, I stopped drinking coffee because, and I was so irritated that it wasn't, it wasn't right. It was like, I've been making the same coffee, same everything for so long, and they just went through this phase where it was like, it tastes like shit. Yeah, you got to talk to Mike Salemi.

He's got it down to science, dude. He'll break it down about what you. He's like a chemist was there. Doug, you have espresso quite often, don't you? Oh, yeah, every day. Yeah, I should have my dad come over. Yeah, you should come over. I'm pretty serious about it, all right?

I'll take the challenge. You know what it is? You know what it is? I'll tell you right now the mistake, a lot of them make, according to my dad. When they make espressoes here, they're just like a lot of coffee. You go to Italy, it's a little bit and it's thick. Yeah. It's got to be thick.

Like a 30 gram pole. Yes. You got to do a short pole. It's got to be concentrated. That's the espion. Yeah. I mean, I take it seriously. So, I mean, I would like to take the challenge.

Just because you have a nice piece of equipment doesn't mean you know how to use it, right? Your $5 million coffee. Well, not just that. I've told you guys about people like Jimmy Butler and stuff of that. They're so particular about it. He flies all over when he... Oh, yeah, I saw him. He has the same machine I have.

Yes, yes. And he flies with it. He flies with it. He flies with it. He takes it on his private plane with the team. Yeah, because you're not going to go to a coffee shop and get it. You know, that same experience. Yeah, they get all crazy.

I used to train this old guy. So in the 90s is when Starbucks started exploding. And then, of course, it took off. And I used to train this old guy to make fun of Starbucks all time because he would go to Dunkin' Donuts. He was from the East Coast. Dunkin' Donuts is the best coffee. They've always said that.

People spending all this money on coffee. They're so stupid. So I had a coffee expert guy tell me, spit game on me about Starbucks. And you know why Starbucks is considered shit coffee is because they intentionally burn it. Yeah, they make everything because they make it uniform. Yeah, consistent flavor. That's all they care. You know who gets high ratings for coffee?

McDonald's. And they do. Yeah, they do. And Dunkin' Donuts, look it up. Duncan Donuts has for sure. But just their drip. For just the drip. McDonald's gets high reviews.

I knew that about Dunkin' Donuts, but I don't know about it. Just their drink coffee. I mean, Verve is great, but, you know. No standard. Dunkin's angry. Yeah, I would think you're small, like, mom-and-paw type of places, like, Verve that have, like, somebody back there doing it. It's probably better than that.

They care a little bit more. Because they probably, McDonald's being compared to Starbucks, Dunkin' Don't, all the, like, commercial. I think Starbucks used to care a long time ago. Yeah, you're probably right. The machine. It's probably how they started. Now everything's automated.

Well, they're more well-known. They branched out so far. Starbucks is not as more well known, not for their just coffee, but for their flavored drinks. That's where they make all the money on the food that they brought in. That's where they started real money. Yeah. When you look into it, yeah, when they started incorporating food, they make so much more money on that. They make more on the, the margins and coffee are that great to begin with.

Oh, that makes sense. Yeah, it became like a place to eat. That's like gas stations. Gas stations don't make their money off gas. That's true. They don't. That is competitive as hell. Oh, yeah.

They make a lot of gas stations damn near loose. it's so close on the gas itself. It's all the snacks and stuff on it. They make all the money. Wow. I mean, interesting to see what the average actual gas profits are on the gas, but yeah, they're subject to whatever is going on in the market and this and that. And so, and it's so competitive. It's like

you can only profit a little bit. Yeah, that's already fixed. And so, yeah, for them to make money, they have to like add all these. It's all the other stuff. Yeah, they make a few cents per gallon. It's because it's so competitive. There's a gas station every corner and you're going to go to the one that's cheaper. Right. So they push each other. as low as you can. It's smarter to go lower and eat that profit a bit

and then bring people in. This is what like people like Costco and stuff does. This is great gas. We had one of those opened up and that's what they do. They bank it on people showing up. It's the same strategy that Costco does with their chicken. Like they lose on that. Like there's certain things. Knowing people by other things. Yeah. That's this is what people, I wish people

understood about markets is the more competitive you make a market, the better gets for consumer. It's always better. They're fighting for you. your service or your purchases, and if they compete overpriced, then that's great. It's got to make all the high pricers come back down. That's right. And the less competitive of a market is, the bigger the margins.

You know, speaking of that, I think this is like, this is in our space or our wheelhouse. You know, watching the gym industry involved right now is really interesting. Oh, it's so funny you said that. I just have this conversation with my cousin. Oh, yeah. Yeah, that middle, that mid-range gym is gone. Gone. It's the dirt cheap or they're really nice.

Yes. Luxury or, yeah, dirt. That's it. Yeah, it's really gone that direction, which is cool to see some of these really posh ones. I've been forever the Bay is just done terrible with that. For considering we're in Silicon Valley where you would think, we have one or two,

yeah, and they're just okay. They're not even that, like, there's way better, I've seen better gyms than Reno, you know, than we have here in the Bay area.

And it's like, why? It doesn't make any sense to me that we haven't catered that market. Somebody has to. I made a, I made a semi-viral post on X where I said, I think there's, I think now might be the time where a gym can put forth a dress code and ban pulling your phone out during workouts. Ooh, really?

Yes. I think those two things need to happen. I think a lot of people, you know, with gyms, starting to become less serious. You're seeing people film themselves. And I think a dress code should be important in a gym. I think you're in there to work out. That is, that's a hot take. Yeah.

That's a hot take because. I don't know anybody's really brought that up, yeah. I think that I don't know if I don't know if I agree with you just because I think people will be I think a lot of gyms will be afraid well I mean that sounds like three old dudes talking about the good old days to me. It could be but I sounds like as things are evolving and changing. I mean there's probably more case to be like you have people like what's his face you know Bradley Martin and some of that that encourages the shirt off. Oh yeah they make it very you know social media friendly and so it'd be interesting to compare I feel like what model is more profitable. And I could be. Totally wrong, but I feel like a gym that really tried to create a serious fitness culture. Not serious, like you have to be hardcore, but like, that's what we're here to do. We're here to work out. You're not going to film yourself, film other people. You're going to, you know, dress appropriately.

Like, this is a gym. And I feel like if you create that culture, I feel like enough people would be attracted to that. It has to be people who've already done it and know. Because, like, you know, the outside perspective, if I own a gym, the best thing you can do is get more marketing. being by people like promoting it on social media and reinforcing it and bringing awareness. You know, so it's like their mindset's going to be there. So to talk them out of it, that's going to be hard. I mean, here's what I'll agree with you in your point.

I don't think that's, I don't think generally speaking that would do well. I do think there is a market for somebody who would pay a premium. Right. For an experience like that. For example, Katrina pays to go to this gym that nobody knows about. It's pretty small, but it's very private. Yeah. But she likes that.

Yeah, and it doesn't have a lot of amenities, but she likes that it's quiet, private, not a lot of people and stuff like that. And so, you know, we're at that point in our lives where that's more appealing to us and we're willing to pay a premium price for that type of experience than the, you know, super busy, everybody there, cameras out or like that. So I mean, so I think there's a market there. And I, but I think that leans more towards the super high in place. I also think a gym that would be trainer focused would be. would do really well with really good trainers for the same reasons. One that is like, like, you know, this is about really helping people become fit and healthy. And a trainer-centered gym would do that because they're instructors. They know what they're doing. I think we'll build one within two years.

Mark the date, Doug, when I said that. What is whatever? Two years. July 28th. I think within two years of the today, we will build one. I think that would be awesome. Yeah, I think the way with what's going on with our training staff right now and the way it's growing and how it's going.

Like, I think that, I think that's for sure in our, in our future. A lot of interest there for sure. Would not have said that a year ago. I didn't think that was. We've been avoiding that idea. I don't think it'll be our most profitable thing. I'll tell you that much. But I think it'll be cool.

I think it would be really neat to go in with. And I do like this idea, because I have no interest in the race to the bottom of being one of the cheapest gyms. I love the idea of something that is, you know, semi-private, high-end. Results driven. Very cool amenities. results driven with the best of the best culture very best of the best trainers like i think that um i mean this area is is ripe for that i don't know why we don't have something like that i think you you would

need something like us uh because we have such a uh wide ranging podcast we could do it if you just open one in the middle of the city you'd have to really do a lot of outreach to get people aware of what's going on yeah um but i think i think we would be able to do you know how i mean you're pretty close to the the the UFC gym guys and stuff like that. You talk to them more than I do. How is that, how is that chain doing in general? Great.

They are. Yeah. They're still. Yeah, really good. They do really, really well. Of course. Mark is behind that.

Yeah. Of course, right. Mastroff is just, he's the, he's the, do you have any idea how many they have? I mean,

I remember when they, you know, they had just a couple. And Doug, look up at UFC gym, how many, how many locations they have. And if you have any numbers on money and stuff,

too, I'm curious. Yeah. Yeah, just curious how they're doing. Had an opportunity to open, what, the second one? The second one in Concord. You did? Yeah, I think that was number two. Yeah, I mean, I almost did it.

I mean, I met with Adam and Gallup over there. But it was going to be a lateral move for me. So it didn't make a lot of leave, leave what I've been doing for 10 years, already had a name for myself to make this same, you know? So it was interesting. And the idea of switching at that time I wanted to. But I think it was a smart move, too, because like how much jujitsu has exploded. And they offered things like,

They offer Jiu-Zitsu. Yeah, those classes are really with the mainstream. I remember when they first partner. What do you got, Doug? 150 locations. They're up to 150. Yeah. Wow.

They are on them. Each brings in about 3.7 million per year. Gross? Well, revenue. Yeah, gross. Okay, gross. Still, that's pretty good. Yeah, 3.7, you're looking at probably close to a million in profit.

That's pretty good for a gym. That's not bad. Yeah, no, if you're pulling a quarter to a half a million in a gym, you're doing good. You're doing really well. You're doing really good. So to think that you could actually pull a million. Now people are listening. I'm going to open a gym.

It's hard. Yeah. It's hard. It's really hard to be very profitable. It's, I think most people that I have met that have had a lot of success in it or love it is because you love the culture. Yes. You love.

You want to live there. You're cool with living there. You love. And I get that because that's a, man, I stayed there. You can make it work. I stayed at that gym making a lot less money than I could have made for most of my 20s because I love the environment so much. I just, you know, it was one of, even working for a company that I, that I watched go downhill, I still put up with a lot being there because I enjoyed the culture

so much. And so if you, you love that vibe, owning your own place and, you know, making a living is a very respectable way to live a life. And so, you know, it's not, I would not encourage somebody who wants to be a millionaire. It's not a good course of doing that. There's easier ways. You have much easier ways. Paleo Valley bone broth protein is easily the best tasting and easiest to digest protein powder you'll ever use. You can take a lot of it and it makes your digestive system better and it tastes incredible. Their chocolate tastes like chocolate donuts, their salted caramel tastes like a delicious Starbucks drink. They have the best tasting protein I've ever had, minimally processed.

And again, good for your digestive system. joints, your skin, your hair, and your nails. Go check them out. Go to paleovalley.com forward slash mind pump. On that link, you'll get 15% off. Back to the show. Our first caller is Issa from New Jersey. Hi, Issa. Hi, Issa. How are you? Hey, guys. Thank you so much for taking your time. It's an honor to speak to you, honestly. Thank you so much. How can we help you? So, yes, I do have an email that I sent, and it's very specific. Would you like me to read that out, or would you prefer me just to ask my question at the end, whatever you prefer? Why don't you give us some context, give the audience some context and kind of talk a little bit

about your email, and then you can ask your question. Gotcha, of course. So yeah, for full context, I'm a 23-year-old female currently recovering from clinical hypothyroidism for three years, and I'm very sorry to say, but I followed a strict keto diet, and I felt great on it. And it was just, it would serve me. I would travel. I would do many different things and I felt my and did blood work and everything was always stable. But then I started waitressing full time. And that's when strange things started happening. I started having these cycles of kind of like under eating and then kind of binge

restricting. I accidentally underestimated my calories. I would do stupid fasting things to make sure my, like I don't gain too much weight. And then I ended up just crashing my thyroid leading to like a 15 to 20 pound weight gain and just sluggish energy, bad psychological function. etc. And I checked my blood work, did extensive, like, things, background checks, and I don't have Hashimoto's or any other autoimmune markers, but just a sluggish output on my thyroid when it comes to, like, my thyroid levels and my hormones. So I began to actually work with

Transcend Telehealth, and they prescribed me about 60 milligrams of armoured thyroid. I started feeling much better. I started losing weight steadily, and of course I'm eating, I'm eating carbs again finally and I'm just like following just a more relaxed protocol when it comes to working out I'm actually following Maps 15 advanced with just some core work

maybe something's tailored for like combat because I'm a martial artist on the side and yeah I began losing weight steadily then I was switched to a lower dose of armor thyroid but then I had a lot of stress happen in the family just like at conflicts like job loss etc and that triggered just again

the water retention the weight gain everything just came back even though I was on the armor thyroid, I increased the dose to 60 milligrams. I started feeling good again. And currently I'm just in a weird place. So I weigh about 117 to 118 pounds. I used to weigh about 100 pounds. And I'm a little under 5 foot.

I eat rather, I would say, I came from eating 1,200 calories to eating 1,900 calories. So I'm pretty happy about that. And I make sure to eat enough carbs. They eat between, I would say, 120 to like 150 carbs. Like, nothing too crazy. Just lax, but enough. I follow Maps 15. I have a rather active lifestyle.

I travel. I used to waitress. Now I don't do it anymore, but I still, I work, like, receptionist work, so it's not too much stress. I make sure to supplement. I take multivitamins. I take omega-3. I take, like, what's called the aschwaganda, like, adrenal restoring supplements.

Yeah, I'm currently taking armoured thyroid on 60 milligrams. The only issue is that, like, I have a very high. my T3 and suppressed Tsh, and I remember they wanted to put me down to a lower dose because they don't want that causing any issues long term. I feel great on the 60 milligrams, and it's like, I don't know what to do. So my main question is basically, how can I most effectively return to my weight, which was like around 100 pounds, or kind of not deal with this constant hormonal flux going back and forth of weight gain drop, weight gain drop, just recover a steady weight

without doing any aggressive cardio, restricting. Basically, how do I continue the reverse diet that I have strategically, maintain my energy, keep my thyroid-supported long-term, given my current routine, stress level, and lifestyle, etc. I hope I didn't lose you guys. No, you didn't. That's a good question. By the way, it's not uncommon.

There seems to be a correlation between, especially for women, long-term ketogenic diet and thyroid issues. So I'm not quite sure why, but we do sometimes see this. I'm assuming you're already avoiding gluten now, even though you eat carbohydrates. You know, I cheat with Ezekiel bread because I like it. But I make sure I'm very, very, I would say, very strict with it. Like if I were to eat gluten, it's only maybe like whole grains, like quinoa or something like that. That's usually organic or something.

Okay, Kewa, I think is gluten-free, but, yeah, typically with thyroid, you want to stay away from gluten because it tends to be something that's reactive. Do you know, how much fat are you eating every day? Oh, I would say around 60 to 70 grams. I make sure to eat like a, like, you know, I love fish. Yeah. So fish, walnuts, avocado, like usually nut butter, that kind of stuff. No, you're good. And what makes you feel like your ideal body weight is 100 pounds?

Oof, I know. Oh, that's, this is a question. So what happened is that I used to, for a long time, I was 100 pounds and I felt great at that weight. Honestly, it's just a psychological benchmarker. I just feel like I still am retaining that water. And I just want to get rid of that, that kind of fat that I've accumulated, so to to speak.

So 100 pounds is like a rough gauge for me. I think it's definitely important to point out something that I heard you say that I think is really a positive thing. The fact that you went from 1,200 to 1,900 calories, and you also went from a waitress job where you're probably moving on your feet like crazy to a little more sedentary, probably in the job you're at now, and you didn't put on a bunch of body fat.

You actually, I'm assuming that you put on some muscle with some of that weight gain. And so kind of back to Sal's question is like, I don't know, you know, and it's obviously it's your body. You can do whatever you want. with it but you you probably are in a pretty healthy good spot right now and uh i don't know how much we'd want to change that and also keep in mind when you increase those calories and now add carbohydrates which you weren't really eating your body's going to naturally hold a little bit

of more water i mean you can literally reduce that in a in a day or two just by cutting that by or having a low carb day one day and you probably see water come out like you would see yourself lose some of that so as long as it's just your basic water retention and it's not inflammation that we're talking about, it's good. It's healthy. Yeah, if you went ketogenic now, you'd probably lose 10 pounds on the scale. Yeah. It wouldn't be body fat. It would be water. It used to be water. Yeah. So what you might be thinking is like too much water is that you're used to having very little water from going ketogenic for three years. So here's the, here's the formula. And right now you have it reversed. Okay. You want to you want to look at your energy,

your health, your strength, your function. And if those things feel good, like I'm getting stronger, I feel good, I've got good energy, no pain. Then you look at the scale and say, okay, well, this seems to be an ideal body weight for me. What you don't want to do is chase a body weight because if you chase a body weight, then what tends to happen to you sacrifice all those other things. And at your height, you know, let's say you're 411, if you're strong and your strength training, 117 to 119 pounds is fine. It's actually a good body weight.

Yeah. A hundred pounds is a bit light unless you were absolutely. absolutely shredded, which you don't necessarily want to be as a young woman, walking around at, you know, 14% body fat, probably not a good idea. It'll probably have a negative influence or impact on your hormones. I'd like to see, you know, if you were my client, I'd like to keep you in the, in the low 20s for body fat percentage. And I'd like to, and I'd watch your strength in the gym. Have you tested that by any chance? My body weight, I think. No, no, body fat. Sorry, Sorry, sorry, yes.

Oh, my, it's hard to find an accurate model, of course. I've done a Dexas scan when I was in Poland, and I think it was like 24%, like, percent. And like, the thing is, is that I still feel fluffy. And sometimes when there's a photo, I'm like, I still, I hate the fact that I see a double chin and all that. Just like, it's, it just, it drains my confidence. And I think for context, if I'm an actress and I work in the UK, I work in the US. And like, when I audition, I'm like, oh, crap, I see. myself. I often go out for young roles because I look younger. And I'm like, I don't want to look

like I don't want to be chubby because that's not me. I'm always disciplined. I'm always on top of myself. You're not chubby. Yeah, you're not. You're not chubby. You know, if you were my client and I'm hearing hearing you right now, like I would show you something in a week's time just to show you that all we're doing is letting go of water and holding water and then just remind you that. And you could do that before an audition if you really wanted to look a little leaner when you go do an audition or whatever, but I think you're in a really healthy place. You're doing great.

How's your strength? How much strength have you gained since doing the reverse diet? Well, I mean, my deadlift, I would say, is about 170 pounds, which is nice. That's all I need you here. Yeah, you're strong too. Yeah, I'm going to tell you something. This is really hard to do, especially in the field that you're in. But stop studying yourself. Like, stop staring at yourself and trying to find, you know, things that you don't like because you'll find them and that'll become the

focus. Not only that, you'll always find them. You'll always find them. No matter where you're at, body fat, fat, you'll always do that. That's just, that's just human nature. Now, you're also a young woman and you're going to have, you have a young face, which is good. I'm going to tell you something right now. You're going to, when you're in your 40s, you're going to be like, oh, my God, I loved it

when I was in my 20s and I had this young face and because then that starts to hollow out as you get older. So, yeah, I think you're being very harsh on yourself. I think your body weight's good. If your strength is good, your energy is good. You're kind of finding, you know, you feel great. Do you also want to have kids one day? Do you plan to have kids one day? I mean, yeah, sometime in the future. Like, I'm not thinking about it now, but yeah. Well, the reason why I say that is because even though you're not thinking about having kids right now, the way you diet and exercise right now will impact that. And you're at a very healthy place right now. And you came from somewhere where you were starting to go down the wrong direction.

And where you're at now is to go from 1,200 to 1,900 calories. Yeah, that's 4.11. Yeah, you almost doubled your calories. You reduced the amount of activity and movement you on a daily basis. You are strong. As long as you're hanging around that 20 to 24 percent body fat, you're lean. So, I mean, yes, we can push lower, but then now we risk what Sal said. We risk health.

You get, you're going to be, I mean, yes, you could look that way, but it would be unhealthy for you. You're in a healthy place. Now, I'll sell it. I'll sell it to you, okay? Okay. Keep strength training. Keep your calories where they're at, slowly increase them if you want to keep increasing your strength. And just keep getting stronger.

And what will happen over time is you'll develop more strength, more sculpt, more shape to your body. And you're going to continue to progress. And you'll continue to feel better. Yeah. So aesthetically speaking, you're going to keep progressing as long as you continue to focus on getting stronger in the gym. And your calories can, they can hover. They can probably get up as high as 23, 2,400 calories over time. So I would continue to just kind of move in that direction.

If you feel uncomfortable eating that much, like, oh, my God, I'm meeting too much. That's fine. You can pull back. But keep working on strength. 170 pound deadlift at your size is phenomenal. That's excellent. So, yeah. Yeah.

I appreciate that. I'm with Sal, too. you, if you keep focusing on getting strong and building muscle, you will tighten up and be more sculpted on that path. If you try and cut right now, you'll just end up sacrificing muscle. So you might lose a little bit of water and maybe a percent of body fat, but you'll also lose some of that good muscle that you're building, which impacts your metabolic, right? It'll make it much more difficult later on. Yeah, but if you just stay the course and keep on the reverse diet, keep getting stronger. Yeah, you look healthy right now.

You got your good skin, your hair looks healthy from what I'm hearing. You're totally doing the right things. Just stay the course and be very careful with judging and studying yourself in the mirror or pictures because it'll never go right if you do that. How much MMA are you practicing too? So MMA, my sister loves it. I'm more like strike your wing chun base, but I honestly, it's like an inspired thing. It comes on a daily basis.

Like, oh, like if I have five minutes here, I'll work on something. I also fence. So I'm like, oh, let me like, you know, grab a sword and like do something. it comes inspired and I don't have a regimen about it. Okay. Oh, yeah. You're good. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I like Mass 15 for you. I think the other original Mass 15 would be another good one to toggle

between. Do you have the original Mass 15 team? Yes, I do because I've purchased it. And I've also got Maps TRX. Oh, she's doing advance. Sorry. Do you have Mass 15 performance? No, no. Oh, let's send that to you. You'll love that. Talkal between them. Yeah, you'll love that. Yeah. Awesome. Yeah, I appreciate it. And I know I do have TRX and that's fun. NAPS TRX. I enjoyed that. I just have, just because I remember we,

thank you so much for the advice. I did kind of touch on the armor thyroid and the fact that I, like taking the 60 milligrams, I have, I have a pretty high T3 and low TSH. I do remember there was an episode that you spoke to, Dr. Lawrence Fitzgerald. And she did mention something that, like, she has clients that walk around with kind of higher T3, low TSH. I was wondering, would you say that is safe for me, even though it's out of, like, it's kind of out of range in my labs, or should I find something a little more in range? Because, like, I feel great on it. I try the lower dose and it's not bad, but I feel sluggish. Well, I'll, I'll speak from the interview. So this is not my field of expertise. But she would say it's, you want to base it off both labs and

symptoms. Yeah, how you feel. So how you feel. And you're going to have low TSA when you're supplementing with thyroid. There's a negative feedback loop with hormones. So of course your TSA is low because your body's sensing that you have more thyroid. So that's that's to be expected. And thyroid is one of those hormones that, you know, if you if you optimize, it's typically a good thing. And it's a pretty easy hormone to optimize versus other hormones. So it seems like you've kind of figured this out, too, because you went down a little bit and you notice when you went down, you feel sluggish. And I, if I know Dr. Lauren, that's what she would say back to you is like, how do you feel? And if you lower the dose and you still felt great, she'd say, great, let's keep it low. But if you lower the dose, feel sluggish, as soon as you go right back, you'd say, she'd say, she'd say, that's probably what she would say to you. That's right. And it seems that I'll be taking this for a long time, if not forever, or typically, I mean, you could, you can, you were subclinical. So maybe you could go off and have thyroid come back up. You could experiment with that later. But it's, if, if I had to, if I had to choose a hormone deficiency, if I had to pick and someone said, you have to

have a hormone deficiency, which one would you want? It would be thyroid. It's the easiest to remedy. All right. I see. Damn the keto diet. I'm so sorry. I ate it. The age of the internet literally screwed with my mind and I do not like that because there was not enough. Literally, you guys were the main source of information that I followed that has no BS. So thank you guys for that. And thank you also. You guys inspired my sister to pursue a master's in kinesiology. She's a person trainer. She loves you guys.

So she kind of referred me, listen to them. They know what they're doing. Oh, good, good. You know, very positive thing is you caught this early. Yeah, you're young. You're 23. You're doing well.

A lot of people don't listen and don't try and figure it out. And they just keep hammering themselves until they're in their late 20s. And then a lot of the stuff, that's why I was asking about kids and things like that, then they have struggle, having kids and stuff in the future. So you're in a good place. You're doing good. And I think if you just keep building muscle and focusing on getting strong. And you're not going to build muscle cutting so that you just know that, right?

So if you get tempted to want to go back down in calories just so you can lose a little bit of water weight, you're not going to build muscle there. You need to be where you're at in calories or above. And so if you keep focusing on that, the sculpting and shaping the body is going to happen over time. You're very young in your lifting career. The more years, you're, trust me, you keep getting better and better. If as a woman who's lifting how you're lifting already, you continue down that path and that body will continue to sculpt and get better and better. I think my wife looks better at 45 than she did at 29, way better. And it's just from years and years of lifting and sculpting.

So stay with it. Thank you. Yeah. Bless you guys. And even the stress, I assume that, like, it's a natural part of life. But like, I hope that's going to balance out too because I hate the fact like, oh, you stress as a woman and you put on so much water and then you get puffy. And then you can't like your home and said, you guys are lucky.

Yeah. I will. Well, thank you very much. Keep it up. Thank you. We'll send that over to you. awesome thank you guys bye bye you know what this makes me think of Adam what you know in bodybuilding how they talk about muscle maturity yeah you know what they're talking about is muscle maturity

they're like in their 20s but they're jacked but they have a look and they'll say oh in another 10 years you're gonna it'll look way better even though don't even if they're not bigger same muscle there's a different look to muscle what it is is your skin gets thinner yeah as you get older which you don't necessarily want like you want like when you're younger you have thicker skin and dermis and it's what gives you that youthful look. Yeah. And so sometimes, you know,

when we're as a young woman or even a young man and you're like idolizing these shredded bodies and you're like, man, I kind of look puffy. No, what you're looking at is youth. And believe me, when your skin gets thinner, you want it to go be, you look back and go, man, I wish I had that. It also takes, I mean,

think both your journeys, our wives' journeys, like it takes a long time to build muscle. Muscle doesn't just come on overnight, especially when your calories are moderately low. It takes a long time to do that. And I mean, 100% Katrina at 45 post kid has a better body than she did at 29. Yeah.

And I know a lot of that is just through. It's the muscle. Yes. She's built a lot of muscle in the last decade and a half. And so she'll keep getting better. If you start lifting in your early 20s as a girl, your body will continue to get better as you continue to have that. As long as you feed it appropriately and take care of it. if you cut hard all the time and carry you know then good luck it's going to be really tough

and then you're not going to be healthy and not get the body you want but stay the course you'll continue to sculpt that physique our next caller is lindsay from tennessee hi lindsay hi how are you all we're good how are you doing i'm well okay i will read my question so it is regarding whether or not i am failing my reverse diet um so i've been listening to your show for around six months or so. And as a result, I started a reverse diet three months ago and I've gone extremely slow. I add 70 to 100 calories every two to four weeks or so. I started at 1,500 calories and I'm now up to 2,000 to 2,200 depending on the day. I subjectively feel I have more fat around my abdomen, legs, and arms. Just for context, I am 33 years old. I'm

I am 134 pounds, and I'm 5 foot 2. I eat 140 grams of protein every day, and I track my calories, but not my other macros. And I haven't gotten back on the scale since I started my reverse diet because it messes with my mind. Currently, I am in phase 3 of muscle mommy, and I've gotten much stronger. I went from no weight on the bar for my squat to adding 50 pounds to the bar, and my deadlift is around 100 pounds. I'm discouraged that I'm not visibly leaner, as we often talk about on the show with people who reverse diet. And if anything, I feel like I've put on more body fat. I am encouraged that I get, I am stronger.

I just was hoping my aesthetics would follow my strength gains. I feel that I'm in a surplus despite me really trying to slow my reverse diets. So what advice do you have? What makes you think you fail? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. What makes you're doing good?

You're doing good. Yeah. Yeah. You added 40 pounds? You need somebody in your ear telling you that. To your squat? Yeah, you're doing good. And you don't look any different?

Are you married? Do you have a husband or someone that could tell you like, you know, do you have somebody there that can tell you like you look different? I do. Yes. I can ask. Because if you added 40 pounds of your squat, your butt probably looks way different. Yeah.

In addition to that, you've also added a significant amount of calories already. You're doing good. You're heading the right direction. And by the way, it's a very short period of time right now. Yeah. By the way. It hasn't been that long. Here's the thing.

A reverse diet is not designed. The goal of a reverse diet is not to make you leaner. No, no, yeah. It's to get you stronger, build muscle. And the other part of it is to set you up. So it's easier to get leaner later on. But in a reverse diet, by the way, the reason why we call it a reverse diet is because when I say bulk, which is what we used to call it back in the day, women run the other

direction. It's like, yikes. Yeah. But you're doing what's called a bulk. And a bulk in the old days and the new dent today, the idea of it's to build muscle to build that metabolically active tissue, that burns calories, that makes your hormones, you move in a more optimal position in a way, and then later set us up for a more effective cut for fat loss.

Let me ask you some more questions. How do you feel otherwise? How is energy, sleep, libido with the higher calories? Are you noticing any improvements in those things? Yeah, I feel the best that I've felt for a really long time. All positive. Wow. I'm here.

Yes. I think it's just aesthetically. I feel a little fluffier. Well, you gain 40 pounds of squat. You're probably built some muscle. Lindsay, have you ever had a personal trainer? Have you ever considered having a personal trainer? No, I've never had a personal trainer.

I'm fairly new to strength training. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. And the reason why I say that is I think just to have a trainer kind of in your ear letting you know what's going on, why you feel the way, where we're at, how good you're doing. really, really worth its weight and goal because this is very common, especially somebody who's

early in weightlifting, to get in their own way, to get in their own head and, because I don't care how good you look. We find a way to look at all of our flaws and the worst part. You're not assessing all the group. And building muscle will make you feel more full in your body. I used to have to do this with clients, okay, where I would, and I would tell them, I don't, I don't care. I just want you to take this photo, do this. And then what I do in a moment like this, I'd be like, hey, those photos that I had you take, I want you to take them again. And I I'd put them side by side, and I would have to tell a client like you, Lindsay, look at, look at your butt right here. Look at your shoulders right here.

Like, I'd have to point out every positive thing because all they want was like, I feel like my waist is bigger at them or I feel like my thighs are bigger. And I'm like, yeah, you built muscle. And look at all these. And look at, and I'd have to, I literally would have to take them through their own body and point out all the things that I could see that you were doing so well. And to get them to trust the, continue to trust. So you're doing great. don't give up on it you're heading the right direction it is still really early um give it some time you have you have you got a couple years of getting stronger uh let me let me give you some

let me just like uh put this in percentages so it makes more sense right you started squatting with the bar right just the bar you almost now you added 4% you double you almost doubled your strength you got in three months you got twice as strong so you right now versus you three months ago, you're two times stronger. That's crazy. That's like superhuman if you actually think about it. And you've done that by increasing your calories, 600, 700 calories.

So you're doing great. Keep going. How long? What should I shoot for in terms of calories? When do I stop? With someone like you, my goal always is this, is I want to get you to a place where you look back and me go, Adam, this is, I can't eat anymore.

It's so much food. because then I know that I've got you to that where it's like, okay, this is almost uncomfortable how much I have to eat because it's just a lot of volume. And then we just go, okay, let's cut back a meal or let's reduce your portion size in half. And then you get me.

And then you just lean out. And it just comes off. But we got to get there first in order for that to work. If you do it too soon, then you might notice a little bit. Definitely the waste will come in a tiny bit. You might even drop a pound or two,

but then it'll plateau really hard. And so we want to get to a place where you're built up where you feel like you're eating more food than you ever had. Your energy level is great. Your libido's great. So everything's more strong. And you're just like, man, this is a lot of, okay, let's cut a little bit out. Let's cut a little bit out.

And then you land in a place where you feel satisfied still. You don't feel like you're starving or having to restrict hard, but yet the body is just leaning out. That's what it looks like. But yeah, you're only three months into it too. This is like, yeah, you're actually going to start seeing accelerated results if you keep moving. You can go, you can reverse diet as slow as you want.

whatever you're comfortable with, and just keep focusing on getting stronger. It says you've been listening to the show for six months. Are you pretty consistent with listening? Yeah, I listen every day. Okay, good. Okay, good. So I feel like if you don't have a trainer,

at least have us in your ears every day talking to you to hopefully keep you on the path because I think you're doing it. I like to, if you're not already in it, I'd love Doug to put you in our private forum too. Okay, yeah. No, I'm not in it. That would be nice. The other thing, too, Lindsay, is before three months ago,

were you kind of a chronic dieter? Were you like, oh, I cut. I'm trying to always cut. I'm trying to over, you know, work off these calories. I'm trying to eat a little, but yeah. Yeah, I grew up in the era of 1,200 calories, lots of running. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah, you got to give it some time. Well, I'm putting you in the forum now.

So now you got direct, direct access to us, okay? So every time you start thinking like this, I want you to message us in there, okay? Yeah, write a post. Tell us how you're feeling. Tell us where you're at what's going on. And then let us, let us talk you off the ledge and keep you head in the right because you're doing a great job. You're doing a really good. Yes.

I'm going to finish muscle mommy in a few weeks and start anabolic. Oh, you're going to get. Beautiful. You're going to get strong. Yes. This will be great. Yep. Thank you so much.

All right. You got it. Good job. Stay close to us, okay? Thank you so much. I appreciate it. Thanks, Lindsay. Bye.

So I know what this feels like in the reverse. You know, Adam and I, you and I have talked about this before. I never went on a cut. because as soon as I started cut, I would start to feel smaller and I'd freak out and I'd go back on the bowl. So I never got like really lean because I was, I would just get in my own way.

Paranoid, you were losing muscle. Yeah, and I remember. She's the opposite. Paranoid, she's putting fat on. Yep. And I remember there was like one summer where I was just like, I'm going to just do the course.

I'm just going to stay. It was really hard for me and I'd cover myself up because I freaked, you know, I'd look in the mirror and I'd end up messing with myself. And I got, for the first time ever, I got like lean.

I got 7% or something like that body fat. And then it was like, I got through it. Like, okay. Not only that. I know what it feels like to cut out. I know this happened to you too. I, because I vividly remember this moment is people seeing me.

Yeah. You look like you're jacked. How much muscle you put on it? I'm like, are you kidding me? I'm down 15 pounds. I'm smaller than what I, but that just shows you how we mess with our own head psychologically, just like she's feeling right now.

She's in her head, she's going, oh, my God, I'm putting on body fat. We're probably her husband's like, oh, you look great. We're going the right direction. I like this. But you tell yourself, this story that's traffic. So I hope one, I hope she stays listening to the show.

I wouldn't mind. I like one of the trainers to call her because I think her having somebody who's kind of coached. One of the values of working with her. Yeah. So having you off the lead. Having someone coach her along because she's doing a really good job. Our next caller is Bradley from Texas. Bradley, what's happening? What's going down?

It's good, man. It's weird to see you guys. I've been following you guys. I don't want to say day one, but I want to say episode around 100 or so. Oh, wow. Right. On the old days. It's been a long time. So I know you got a lot of caller. So let me get to the question, kind of like what everyone says.

So I've been listening to you guys, like I said, for over eight years. I want to say longer than that. Have similar stories to all you all, I've been a per, I was a personal trainer in the beginning of my career after college when I graduated, 2013, played sports in college, baseball and football. I managed. I was a personal trainer for a big box gym. I wound up being general manager and eventually DVP for a big. box gym in California, originally born and raised San Diego and then moved out to Texas a little over 10 years ago. Even though I 100% agree with all your philosophies on correct dosage, you know,

training, intensity, sleep, recovery, all this kind of stuff. For the average person, I'm no longer the average person job. And I'll get to that a sec. But my sleep is interrupted consistently and I have to perform at a high mental and physical level. I'm a firefighter paramedic for the third busiest department in the country. The Dallas Fire Department, and I work 24-hour shifts on and then I have 48 hours off. Some shifts, I only ride the ambulance where it's more busy, more calls, where I just do my paramedic duties, where I have to be mentally sharp to help people. I have to think fast to help others, even in the middle of the night,

two o'clock in the morning analyzing rhythms correct drugs to give and so on um some shifts i ride and other shifts i ride the engine and truck you know where i'm doing more of the physical stuff uh going to you know multi uh alarm fires uh not only uh at any time where it could be two o'clock in the morning 10 a m but i'm also wearing you know all the gear where it's extremely hot it's also Texas, so it's always hot. We're in the gear, carrying tools into the structure. My training-wise and all that, I'm required to have, you know, incredible cardiovascular strength and endurance to be able to breathe on an air bottle. I always tell people this, you know, the air, you and me are breathing right now. You know, that, if that's at 100%, the actual air were breathing

is at about 70% of that, so we're not getting the full amount. You know, to climb upstairs. confined spaces, climb over objects. Meanwhile, carrying, you know, a hundred pound hose that's charged, carrying tools, finding people, being in a fire, not be able to see all that kind of stuff. I understand recovery and understand your philosophy on the average person doing traditional strength training two to three times a week. When I was a trainer, I mean, I preached that all day, every day. Fortunately, that kind of training won't cut it for what I need to do now. I know you guys talk about stress on the body adaptation, not just that kind of stress, but obviously I'm married and I have a two-year-old daughter working on child number two. I'm active in my church

and serve on the medical team, so I have obligations there as well. Justin, you're going to love this. I'm going to say a bad word here, but I think CrossFit is the best type of gym for me or lots of workouts saying that, you know, I'm not a huge believer on their programming and all that kind of stuff so I totally get it just it might be better towards me but obviously I want to get you all's input on what that looks like not just in the acute training job now but obviously I need a long healthy life and healthy not just outside but internal stuff as far as heart health and all that kind of stuff goes so that's it's interesting you say that because the first thing that comes in mind as you were listening is I was thinking microdosing my training and then doing what I need to do

endurance and stamina, so I stay at the top of my game endurance. 15 performance and then stack it when you can. Yep. I'll say this, Bradley. First off, thank God for people like you, the sacrifice just to help people. I don't think people realize how difficult it is to do the job that you do. By the way, what big box gym did you work for in California? LA Fitness.

All right, good deal. So, all right, so here's a deal. It's a shift in mindset, Bradley. if you are chasing progress, fitness progress, this is where you can run into some problems while doing your job. So if I'm trying to simultaneously do a stressful job or my sleep is interrupted and try to gain strength and endurance and stamina at the same time, you have to tread very carefully. So what that's going to look like is when appropriate, you can push yourself a little bit, but you've got to be very judicious with it. For the most part, for a job like yours, Bradley, you're already fit and healthy. We train you more like a pro athlete.

Yeah. And yes. That's how we train you. What you want to do with your training is to prevent injury and degradation of health. So if you chase performance while doing what you're doing, you are going to, they're going to cross. and you're going to get running some problems. You're going to actually lose performance. You're going to start getting hormonal issues.

You'll start to really degrade your health. So think like this. 90% of the time, I'm preventing. I'm just trying to keep myself healthy. And then every once in a while when the stars align, you got some time, you feel good, you'll throw in that challenging workout. So that's what that looks like.

That's the mentality. But if you're if you chase, if you're trying to chase performance gains, consistently while doing what you're doing, it's going to be a problem. I mean, I'm, I'm microdosing your training and we're doing on your off days

some of your endurance training. That's what it looks like. It looks like you're doing two lifts, the 15 minute maps 15 type of lifting, and then when you have days off, that's when we do some of your endurance running and stuff like that to keep your cardiovascular endurance up and stamina up like you need to.

And that's what it looks like. And it goes off of how you feel and your shift. And you heard, I don't know if you heard Justin time in. He's like, you know, some days you stack that. So you have the MAP 15 protocol, which is, you know, basically six days a week of 15 minutes. But sometimes you're not going to be able to lift at all.

But that's okay because on other days, you're going to be able to stack two of those workouts because you're off. And so it's like you're following the 15 protocol. And then when you have the days of rest and you feel good, we can stack two of those workouts. Other times you just do the two lifts and that's all you do lifting-wise. And then the days that you have off, we do our endurance and stamina training. Yeah.

So I've trained quite a few. people that work in a field like yours, firefighters, paramedics, ER doctors. So, and what it typically looks like, and correct me if I'm wrong, is you go through periods of time where it's like, nothing really stressful happening. You're just, you're at the station, whatever. And then there's like, all of a sudden, shit hits the fan. And it's like, okay, so that's how you got to gauge this, right? So it might look like, you know, you're just kind of maintaining, maintaining, maintaining.

You're like, wow, I've had a few days where it's been slow. You throw in that hard workout, but there's times, and I know this, right? You probably have times where it's like, oh, my God, it's like, I don't know what's happening, but this has been a lot. And that kind of serves as your training. Like, you're out there carrying the hose, and you're, like you said, you're in the fire, you're putting fires out. That's not the time to challenge your body with your workouts.

You're already getting challenged. Do you have mass performance as well, or? I don't. I was thinking about that one. I just didn't know what the layout look like. like including, you know, a cardiovascular type of workout. So phase four has has pretty intensive, like, cardiovascular type workouts in it. And again, this is, I would compromise and because, like, CrossFit, you could use, like, one of those met cons for one of those intense days.

Like, I know I could do, like, my intense workout now because I've had, like, you know, X amount of days where it's not, like, super stressful. But you're going to undulate your training based upon, like, you know, the stress that, work and lifestyle and everything else. And that's why MAPS 15, you know, the 15 performance, I think is a good compliment because you can kind of tailor that for your, you know, just microdosing. And then we hit like that hard, intensive day as it comes up. I would love to give them MAPS 15 performance and give them mass performance. Yeah.

Your base that you run 90% of the time to Sal's point is MAPS 15 performance. On the days you feel great, you pull from the full, MAPS performance program. Exactly. which is like a full workout. So when you want to get after it, because by the way, we built that to kind of counter the CrossFit philosophy. It's like our answer to what you get from CrossFit.

It's our answer to that, but better programming. So you pull from that. And that's kind of, if you haven't listened to the episode we did with, why is my boy's name slipping me right now, basketball coach for the son. Corey Slesinger.

Did you listen that episode? It's been, yeah, but it's been a while. Because you've relisted to that. I'll go back. Yeah, because all the science and the things we're talking about in that episode applies to you. Like, the way he treats his basketball players in season, your basketball player in season. You train like that.

You train like that. And then when in the off season, when Sal's talking about, when you get those weeks that might be total downtime and not crazy, then you can pull from MAP's performance and you run those workouts. That's when you can handle that. I had clients like this, and what I would do is I would judge it for them because people like you tend to be. Terrible, yeah. That's a good point. So I'd always ask him, like, hey, how's it been or whatever? Oh, you know, did you get any calls last night?

No, nothing's going on or whatever. So sometimes what it looked like was once a month, they'd have a really hard workout. And then most of the workouts were like mobility, taking care of the body. And then other times we'd have like one or two hard workouts a week, just depending on what work looked like. Because it's so unpredictable. Like your job is so unpredictable that you're going to have to kind of feel it out. But think like, like I said, like it's prevention most of the time. And then during those times, and you're like, oh, this is, it's slow.

I'm getting sleep. Everything's good. Then you can push it over when you're fully recovered. You will build more muscle and you will get in better shape training that way. It doesn't feel like it because it feels counterintuitive. You're like, oh, I'm doing way less, but that's what your body needs. Yeah. And you'll get better that way.

If you try and- Just grinding it can, you know, all the time is. Oh, you'll get fried. Yeah. You're just going to spin out. Yep. Yeah, and that's what I'm worried about. I feel good right now.

It's been about, what are we in? I started TRT about eight months ago. My levels were in the ground. So not just from the job necessarily, but life had a newborn, all that kind of stuff. And really, they've come up obviously huge and I'm feeling great right now. And so I've been consistently every workout's been solid, solid, solid. I also, they just put me on because we're trying for kid number two. And it's been a couple months and nothing should happen.

Uh, no. It actually, it's called it. Inchlamophane? Yes. And I started that a couple of weeks ago and I'm feeling even better. So it's like, I want to drive off that. So you have to be careful. You are getting an artificial signal right now. So that's the one thing I always tell my TRT guys is that you, uh, you feel better than what really is going on. You got to be careful. Right. Okay. So of course you feel better. Your testosterone was in the dumpster. And now it's, now it's optimal. all the time. And so that sometimes will make you think I'm optimal, be training hard all the time. And that's not necessarily true. So to put it differently, the pro of hormone replacement therapy is your hormones are always optimized. The con is that your hormones are always optimized, meaning they don't react and respond to your life. So what would normally happen in a normal situation is if you overstress your body, your hormones move in a direction that force you to rest because you feel like dog shit. But because they're always high, you're like, oh. I'm good. Yeah, I'm good. But don't do that. Yeah, don't do that because you can mess yourself up on TRT. In fact, I've seen more men go on TRT and overtrain.

For that reason. For that particular reason. Exactly. Because they're like, oh, yeah, this, you know. So you got to kind of look at things objectively because your testosterone is always going to be high no matter what, because you're taking testosterone. So don't necessarily just listen to that. I mean, I remember telling the guys this all the time.

off air about my experience with all the pro bodybuilders I'd be like do these guys train so stupid they don't know and I'd be and the reason why is because they have all these drugs in them they're like I feel great fucking on zero calories and I'm crushing these work it's like yeah because you have an artificial signal that's telling you

you're better than what you really are and yet it's not the more it's not the appropriate way to train there was there would have been a better way for them to train but because they could get away with it they keep doing it and this is why guys like that have so in spite of progress that's right so there's actually way better progress on the other end of this if you if you're a little bit more objective and and the fact that

you are on TRT man a beautiful dose of micro dosing maps 15 is going to be perfect for you bro that with a compliment with some endurance and stamina training on your days off you're going to be you're going to be good that's right yeah okay yeah cool yeah that works I appreciate you guys thank you for your time for sure man thanks brother yep that's a tough one yeah I'm glad he said he's on tier too yeah yeah because you know it doesn't just affect your muscle if affects your central nervous system, your mental capacity. And so then you suddenly are like, and now here's the thing. Oftentimes people will look at like soldiers and look at their training.

And what they got to understand is that they're not training in many of these positions, you're not training someone to make them improve physically. Mental, it's a mental. You're like, yeah, we're trying to beat you up so you can get you, you can be okay with getting beat up all the time because that's what's going to happen. So, yeah. Surviving. Yeah.

So he, you don't want to, I mean, if he's doing this as a job, and hopefully he does this for 20 years. You can't just survive for 20 years. You're going to break yourself down. Build yourself up. And getting on the TRT is a quick path for him to head the wrong direction because he feels, just like he said, like, oh, it feels so good. Like, yeah, definitely.

You're going to feel like that because of that signal you're getting. But the danger of that is that now you don't have those natural signals for the body to go, like, hey, today we should probably take off. But, yeah, no, less is more here. That's right. Look, if you like our show, come find us on Instagram. You can find us at at Mind Pump Media. Thank you for listening to Mind Pump.

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