Mind Pump: Raw Fitness Truth - 2693: The Fastest Gains You’ll Ever See

Episode Date: September 26, 2025

In this episode of Quah (Q & A), Sal, Adam & Justin answer four Pump Head questions drawn from last Sunday’s Quah post on the @mindpumpmedia Instagram page. Mind Pump Fit Tip: Eight Ways Isometrics Will Give You the Fastest Gains You’ve Ever Seen. (2:00) New partner alert! Crisp Power. (26:12) Being too thin can be deadlier than being overweight. (30:46) Mini Sal. (38:52) The welcoming lacrosse community. (42:25) Melatonin, pre-workout? (46:58) Phantom Ferrari driver. (48:58) Ashwagandha to mitigate stress. (53:29) #Quah question #1 – When limited for time in the gym, should I prioritize more sets, less rest (per exercise), or fewer sets, more rest to maximize muscle growth? (55:52) #Quah question #2 – What's your advice for overcoming injuries? The mental and physical side. I recently tore my Achilles and had a great recovery, but the mental side was harder than the physical! (58:12) #Quah question #3 – What's the best way to get back into working out after a surgery that put you down for 2+ months? (1:02:41) #Quah question #4 – How can I grow an online nutrition and fitness business if I hate doing social media? Help! (1:04:23) Related Links/Products Mentioned Visit Crisp Power for an exclusive offer for Mind Pump listeners! ** Code MINDPUMP10 for 10% OFF. Give your snack game a serious upgrade. Crisp Power Protein Pretzels deliver super crunchy and delicious snacks that are up to 28g of protein, low carb, zero sugar and high in fiber! ** Visit Organifi for the exclusive offer for Mind Pump listeners! **Promo code MINDPUMP at checkout for 20% off** Flash Sale: MAPS Performance 50% off! ** Code ATHLETE50 at checkout. ** Mind Pump Store Muscle Building Secrets of Isometrics - Mind Pump Media Lunges, Squats and Holds for Stronger Tendons and Ligaments Being too thin can be deadlier than being overweight, Danish study reveals Sal Di Stefano’s Journey in Faith & Fitness – Mind Pump TV Impact of Melatonin Supplementation on Sports Performance and Circulating Biomarkers in Highly Trained Athletes: A Systematic Review of Randomized Controlled Trials Mysterious driver of phantom Formula 1  car who has been 'fleeing police for six years' is caught... wearing full racing gear Can Ashwaghanda Help Your Anxiety? Science Weighs In Visit Seed for an exclusive offer for Mind Pump listeners! **Promo code 25MINDPUMP at checkout for 25% off your first month’s supply of Seed’s DS-01® Daily Synbiotic** Trainer Bonus Series Episode 1: The Successful Trainer Mindset Mind Pump Podcast – YouTube Mind Pump Free Resources People Mentioned Mind Pump Fitness Coaching (@mindpumptrainers) Instagram

If you want to pump your body and expand your mind, there's only one place to go. Mind Pump, Mind Pump with your hosts. Sal DeStefano, Adam Schaefer, and Justin Andrews. You just found the most downloaded fitness, health, and entertainment podcast. This is Mind Pump. In today's episode, we picked questions from our Instagram page at Mind Pump Media to answer, but this was after our intro. Today's intro was 53 minutes long in the intro.

We talk about building muscle, burning. body fat, improving health and fitness. We also talk about family life. Again, if you want to post a question that we may pick, go to Instagram at Mind Pump Media. Now, this episode was brought to you by some sponsors. The first one, it's a brand new one, crisp power. These are protein pretzels, like 25 grams of protein, 10 grams of fiber per bag, and

they're really delicious. These are some of the most delicious snacks. We've tried. They're high in protein. Again, it's a great healthy snack. Go check them out. go to crisppower.com. That's C-R-I-S-P-P-O-W-E-R.com.

Use the code Mind Pump 10, get 10% off. This episode is also brought to by Organify. Today we talked about their green juice. It has Aschamaganda in it. So if you want your body to adapt to stress better, you want to build more muscle and strength, and also get lots of micronutrients from greens. Try it out.

It's their green juice, Organify. It's Organify.com forward slash mind pump. Use the code mind pump, get 20% off. also right now flash sale maps performance is 50% off half off one of our most popular maps programs head over to mapsperformance.com use the code athlete 50 that's athlete 50 for that discount all right real quick if you love us like we love you why not show it by rocking one of our shirts hats mugs or training gear over at mind pump store.com I'm talking right now hit pause head on over to mind pump store.com that's it enjoy the rest of the show

All right, all of you that like to build muscle and strength and look awesome, I'm about to blow your mind. The data shows that there is a particular type of contraction, a particular type of lifting that produces the fastest gains, the fastest gains, and I guarantee 99.9% of you are not using them. We're going to talk about it right now. Eight ways, isometrics will give you the fastest gains you've ever seen in your entire life. If you're tired of us,

talking about these. Anytime we can bring it up. Hey, listen, until we go into commercial gyms and see a small fraction of people doing them, then maybe. But it's like, we're going to continue to beat this drum, to scream from the rooftops

like how impactful and valuable isometrics are because you still don't see it. It reminds me, did you imagine 25 years ago being the person that's trying to convince everybody to squat? Like, you've got a squad. It's so valuable. It's so valuable. So many benefits. It's just like, come on.

25 years ago, the squat racks were dusty and nobody was doing it. It's obvious now everybody gets that. But it's like, here's your other hidden gym, isometrics. It's not just a hidden gem. If you look at the data on isometrics training, in particular, the overcoming isometrics, the type where you're pressing or pulling into an immovable object, they produce the fastest gains in strength in a short period of time in comparison to any other form of strength training. They're faster than reps that are positive, faster than negative, faster than explosive.

Like, there is no form of strength training that compares if you were to do this for like a five or six or maybe eight week period of time in terms of strength. This is the fastest way you could possibly gain strength. And what's beautiful about this is that nobody's doing them. Nobody's taking advantage of them. The least amount of damage, the safest to apply. Oh. the easiest way for you to ramp up and, you know, maximize your recruitment, muscle recruitment process. So it's like, you know, to be able to have, you know, more force output, like there really isn't another method that does that as effective.

No, and now the question people always ask is, okay, cool, the data shows that it's the fastest gains and strength. But what about hypertrophy? Comparable. So what you get with isometrics is very, very, very. quick ramp up in a short period of time of strength or force output, and the hypertrophy gains are similar to traditional reps. In other words, you're not going to lose gains by doing a five-week block of isometrics. You're going to gain, just like you normally do, except your strength is going to go

through the roof. And then, I don't think I need to make the case, but I'll just spell it out for you. With those additional, with the new additional strength gains that you made in that five-week period, let's say, now you can go back to your training. traditional lifting, and you blow the doors off of what you would have been doing before. Yeah. It's incredible. By the way, this is, this was a favorite way of training for old-time lifters.

Back at the, you know, during the, the, the bronze era, you know, these are this like the turn of the century, right? Late 1800s, early 1900s. Sandow and all them. They were competitions. There were people. There were men, mostly. There were some women that would go around and they would, they would do these feats of

strength. And this is how they would make money. Some worked in circuses. but many of them would do these feats of strength on their own. And it was all about what you could do. Remember, this is before steroids. This is before supplements. They just had weights.

That's all they had. In fact, they didn't even have benches. They had barbells and dumbbells. And that was it. And they would go and do these incredible feats of strength. Eugene Sandow, I believe, one arm bent pressed over 250 pounds. There's something ridiculous at a body weight of like 180 pounds. They had incredible looking physiques, especially when you consider.

that they were as natural as natural could be. They also oftentimes had hard labor jobs. It wasn't their full-time profession. And this was a favorite way that they were trained because in those days, if you wanted to be a successful presentation competitor, if you wanted to be a successful strongman in those days, you had to put up or shut up.

And they would oftentimes challenge each other. So they would meet up and say, okay, let's see who could lift the most weight. So it was like, look, it's all about what you can do. And what they found was isometrics were super effective. They were so effective, in fact, and so popular that some of the first strength training books revolved around isometrics. And now they fell out of favor probably for a few different reasons, like modern equipment came into play. Bodybuilding became popular.

And by the way, there's nothing wrong with full range. emotion. If you had to compare all of them, that's the best, right? But what's happened, which is a total travesty, is that nobody does this. Nobody does this. We have no patience. Not only does nobody does this ever. Nobody even plays with this. I don't think, in fact, if I did a poll of all the millions of people that could potentially be watching this, I bet you less than 0.01% have ever done a training block. No, definitely not. Of just is asymmetric. It almost never happens. Sal, we don't even watch movies anymore. We watch TikTok reels.

I mean, talk about a major hurdle for us to get people to try to do this in a time where instant gratification and faster, quicker, everything, isometrics is slow and boring. It's just a fact. It's not. It doesn't have that built-in reward like after you. Well, like, what are you doing? If I made a video of it, it just looks like I'm doing that. Yes, you're just boring. You're sitting still.

You're not moving. It's almost as if you're not doing anything, although you are doing something. it looks like you're doing nothing and the discipline, the patience required to actually run a full training block so you could actually reap the full bit of events. I mean, I could see someone

doing it one time in their workout like, oh, let me try this. It's like, but to do a legit block, I mean, I remember when we were writing symmetry and I remember Justin wanted to make the whole first phase asymmetrics. And I remember my pushback on it was like, I just don't see

anybody committing a lot. In fact, I believe if we could just get them to do two weeks, they'll see enough benefits from it that they'll understand why we did it. But if we do a whole block of four weeks, these people are going to... They won't even follow it. They won't follow it.

No. No, which is why we have to sell it. So let's get into selling it. So, and this is all backed by data. If you don't believe me, look it up. So this isn't just our opinion. This is like, it's actually a well-studied form of strength training. There's lots and lots of studies on it.

So number one, it will really, recruit the most muscle fibers. So whenever you're doing a lift, there's a certain percentage of muscle fibers in the muscles that are being worked that get recruited. And as the exercise becomes more difficult, you recruit more and more muscle fibers. Training to failure tends to recruit more muscle fibers than training at 50%. Okay. Nothing recruits more muscle fibers like a hard isometric against an object that you can't move.

Like, what does that look like? well, it would be like me getting under a bar, you know, towards the bottom position of a squat and trying to squat it up, except the bar is anchored to the ground. It's not going anywhere. Because you're putting maximum intensity and because the muscles aren't actually moving, they're not going through a range of motion. They're just pushing. The body recruits more and more muscle fibers because it thinks you're...

There's no limiter. It thinks you're trying to do something to protect yourself. weights are a natural limiter you're only going to recruit and generate enough to overcome the load and when you remove that part of the process like really it's the limiter is just your own effort and so to to really squeeze you know that that extra bit and you know produce more effort it's going to stretch your capacity now to recruit even more muscle fibers then and so it's it's an interesting thing because i don't think people will realize how powerful that is when you go back to actually lifting weights. You keep that ability. You keep it. I remember, I don't remember what we called it or, you know,

like how it came to be other than I was hanging out with these older bodybuilder guys. And they used to take, like this was back when I couldn't even bench two plates. They would take three plates, you know, and lift it over. You said to hold it. Yeah,

I said to hold it. And we, I wasn't going anywhere. You know, it wasn't taking a negative or anything like that. It was just like, just hold it, hold it there. And I remember being scared to death. Like, I can't even do two plates.

What am I doing with three plates? Just trust me. But I do remember the, how I felt afterwards. I mean, then two plates felt controllable. Like, it was crazy how I, how I, they did it to me in squats, too. I felt like those two things really got me over a hurdle in those two big lifts in my early 20s that I just couldn't imagine getting past that. And, you know, looking back now, understanding now the science more is like,

like, oh, now I understand what I was doing and why it benefited so much from it. It's the closest you could ever get to 100% muscle fiber recruitment is with an isometric. And here's the beautiful kicker. This works for everybody. So the thing with muscle fiber recruitment is more advanced you become, the easier it is for you to recruit more muscle fibers. So an advanced lifter, they've trained their body to be able to recruit more muscle fibers

just through adaptation and practice than a beginner. But with an isometric, everybody gets pretty damn close. As long as the effort is there, everybody gets pretty darn close. So, again, like, there is no type of muscle contraction that will induce this type of muscle fiber recruitment, regardless of how experienced or inexperienced you are. Which takes us to the next thing. Rarely, rarely, rarely, rarely, do you see something that is super effective and super safe? High benefit, low risk. It's almost never that way.

The most effective exercises typically have a high degree of skill, so that puts their risk factor quite high unless you perform the exercise really well. Like squats, barbell squats, like phenomenal lower body exercise. It's like one of the best, if not the best. It's also very technical. Like a leg press is way easier to do. You know, this is true for almost every strength training exercise. Well, guess what?

With isometrics, you have simultaneously extremely effective type of movement that's also very safe. Now, why is it safe? You're not moving. So long as you maintain your position and drive, you're not going to hurt yourself or your odds of hurting yourself are very, very low

in comparison to other forms of exercise. In fact, isometrics are how, oftentimes how you rehab people with joint issues. And then again, you take someone who's advanced who's never done these. They're like, let's do these. And they get incredible gains. Like, rarely do you see that combination,

but you do see this with isometrics. Great tool for trainers, too, with clients with an advantage. advanced age. Like, you have, or rehabbing, right? So to your point,

rehabbing or advanced age clients, you get massive benefits and super safe to do it. Now, here's one of my favorite things about it is it can target

weak spots of a rep very easily. We all have these. Think of your favorite lift. There's probably a sticking point, right? Once you get it past that sticking point,

then the weight moves up. So like in a bench press, it might be near the bottom, with a squat, it might be near the bottom. Maybe it's a lockout with your deadlift. Some people pause there, have a difficult time there. Maybe it's just coming off the floor. Well, guess what?

You set up your isometric in your weak spot, and you're going to blow past that week spot. You will make that weak spot a strength. Within weeks, within three or four weeks, your sticking spot with your squat or your deadlift or your overhead press or whatever, within three weeks will probably become a strength. Then you go back to do your lift, and suddenly...

Train your central nervous system. respond at those like weak points it's that's right that's right and power lifters by the way have done this for years they just pause uh they do a form of isometrics where they pause and they'll pause at the bottom or the pause of you know particular part whatever um uh and then some of them do these uh you know where you're overcoming isometrics which is the most powerful version but yeah if you look at your rep and you're like man i can't get my deadlift to go up really it's not that you can't get your deadlift to go up it's it's more like i can't get it to go up past this point once get past that point, I'm all good. And you're talking mainly about performance too. Like,

I mean, this is where, like, mobility really shines as well. Like, so if you have a range of motion that you can't achieve because you have a weak spot there or a pain, you know, signal to now, like, take that point of, um, where you either lose connection or, you know, you're, you're just about to get that pain signal and you just stop and pause and apply an isometric hold and recruitment there, watch you all of a sudden immediately get pain relief or immediately gain new access

to range of motion. I didn't even put that as a point, Justin. For pain relief, isometrics shine. I used to do this with my elderly clients all the time. Knee pain.

I would put them in a position either fully contracted or either fully contracted or even fully flexed depending on the person. I'd have them drive while I pushed so they just create resistance, no movement.

Then they'd stand up. Pain's gone. Look at the data on this. Isometrics have this incredible analgesic effect and strengthening effect for pain. This is, and Prime Pro is all about isometrics, by the way. You go through our prime pro program. Oh, it's incredible. Here's a great selling point that I know people will love.

You have a lagging body part, nothing better than isometrics. Part of the reason why you have a lagging body part is you just can't connect to it very well, especially when doing compound lifts. you're doing a squat or a bench or whatever, and there's a target muscle that's just not doing the work. Get into that position, that hard position, drive into something that's immovable, focus on the target muscle and drive for 20 seconds. Try this for a few weeks.

This is your chest workout, let's say. Go back to your traditional way of training. Suddenly, lagging body part no longer is a lagging part of it. Especially in the contracted position, right? This is a Ben Pekulski, remember the first time I talked to him about this, like he made an argument that he believed, especially if you actually train those muscle groups, right? That if you had a lagging body part that was really weak, he said always that person was not

very well connected in the contracted portion. And his experience is like, if you just focused on that, that you brought that body part up so much. And so if it's a lagging body part, think about doing isometrics in the contracted position on whatever muscle we're talking about. Yeah, it's so funny too, because I think we knew this instinctively. these trainers, you know, you get a client, it's like, I don't feel my butt when I do squats.

Like, what would you do? You put them at a top of a hip bridge. Yep, hip bridge and hold the top and squeeze the hell out of your butt. Yeah. And then suddenly, when doing squats, they can connect to that area. Yep. Uh, next up, it translates very well to traditional reps. The strength gains you get in isometrics, when you go back to your traditional reps, there's the strength. It's not like you get stronger with force production in an

isometric and then you go lift weights and you don't see that translate. you will see strength gains across the board, especially if you target the weak parts of your work. Why do you think that is? Because it kind of flies in the face of like the said principle, doesn't it? Because it's not specific to what you're doing. So why is it that we see that with isometrics

and not really anything else? If you focus in particular on the weak spot of your rep, so whenever you do an isometric, there's about a 20 degree both directions that you'll see it carry over. So let's say I'm at the bottom of a bench and I'm under a bar, and it's loaded with, you know, 600 pounds,

so I can't lift it. So I just drive into it. I'm going to get strengthened. The position that I'm pushing in plus 20 degrees above and below. Yeah, both ends. So if you target the weak spot of your rep, you know what your weak spots of the reps are. Yeah.

And you focus on this. Then you go to your traditional lift. And that, because whenever you can't do a lift, I'm going to say this again. Like whenever you can't do a lift, it's almost never the whole rep. There's like one part.

And if your buddy's spotting you, they help you out of that one part and then suddenly you can lift the weight. You get stronger in that one part, the entire rep becomes much easier. Yep, that's it, 100%. Next, it doesn't require as much recovery. It doesn't cause a lot of damage. You don't get very sore doing these.

This allows the adaptation to really take place. Another plus with this, and I'm going to say this, I think it's better if people just do a whole block. I want people to really feel the power of this. But you could, if you're not on the border of overtraining right now, if you're doing pretty, if you're pretty smart with your training, you could add some isometrics and you're not going to really tax yourself that much

and just see some benefits. So you could add a couple of them. By the way, at the beginning of your workout would be the best place to do it, not at the end. People tend to do them at the end, do them at the beginning. Next, everybody knows about this. When you try something novel,

you just get great gains. I can't think if I had to, if I thought of the entire fitness community, people who worked out consistently. And if you had to pick, Sal, what's the most novel thing they could possibly do to build muscle to be isometrics. That would apply to

almost everybody. Well, yeah, because for that... Because nobody doesn't. Oh, yeah, the reason why I brought this all up where we started this is that, you know, go walk into a commercial gym and point out how many people you see doing isometric. You rarely ever see it. And so it's going to be a novel stimulus for most... The truth is, you know,

and we wrote symmetry this way. So if you're inspired by this, symmetry is such a good program to follow if you've never followed that. But knowing what I know now about isometrics, and the value of it and seeing how we programmed it in symmetry, I probably as a trainer

would have really benefited from starting most my clients all in a isometric phase. The challenge of that is those clients who don't understand this, don't know, and they're just like, wow,

I'm paying this guy for me to just stand here I squeeze it hold on. Conveying the benefit, really getting to buy into the concept. Yes. Well, the problem, the big problem is this, Adam.

I think Justin tried to solve this when he had created his tool is, When you're driving into a bar that you can't move and you get stronger week over week, you can't tell because the bar doesn't move. You don't get feedback. You don't have like a tangible metric that you're sort of like...

Nothing tells you, oh, you produce 50% more force. The time you can tell is when you go back to your traditional lifting. If only anybody created like... I mean... Someday it'll be irrelevant and like everybody will be like... Oh, wow, yeah, a good idea. Remember we talking about this is at one point when I expect to be good. They will come in favor.

Eventually, the people will know, and then it'll become popular, just like squats. We're just, you were 20 years ahead of your time. I was way too early. And the thing is, too, like, you can apply this without anything. You don't need tech. You don't need, like, and so if you have, and what I love to, if nobody's ever seen this before, it's just a chain that's bolted to a board.

And so you could do this on like a, like, let's say it's a deadlift platform. And, like, you step on top of this board and you bolt a chain. Now you have a handle grip and you can adjust the chain. to whatever height so let's now work let's say it's a deadlift and i'm i need to work on you know the lowest part of the deadlift and and you know you could set it up and and really you know get so much out of that by by applying like this torque and effort old school gyms used to have that yeah yeah my old school gym that i used to work out used to have a setup like that yeah if you have a home gym even what you could do if it's like it's in your garage is you could bolt you can put

two anchors into the concrete attached chains to it and then you could put your bench underneath it you can stand there and it depends you know you can make the change as long put the safety bars on the squat rack you could also load it up real heavy and just yeah yeah yeah you can use the safety bars on the squat rack and do the same and you could raise those and to your point

with the deadlift you figure this is your sticking point this far off the ground you put the safety bars there and you put the bar underneath it you know it's funny because uh I mean I might have told you guys like I got to the point even with this invention where I presented in front of Apple you know and I'm in this big meeting and uh you know

They have all the tech and stuff with, like, the closing the loops. And so they were all, you know, privy to try and, like, work on human behavior. And, like, how do we get them engaged and all this kind of stuff? So they were somewhat mildly interested in it. But one of the guys was, like, kind of compared it to Bosseball. Like, here's a thing. Nobody knew the value of, like, balance training. Like, that had to be something that you build and develop into, you know, the consciousness of society first.

Like, they have to, like, understand. like this is something that is really beneficial and is something that like people have seen it before. And like, you know, so it really has to be a cultural thing for people to really buy in to that type of train. Because it's just so like, well, why? That's right. As soon as some people do it and then get blown away and post the results, then it's going to start to fly. That's 100%. It will.

I believe it will. I mean, 25 years ago, we all talking about squats. Nobody was questioning why nobody was doing in the gym. It was just kind of the norm. It was just like, oh, yeah, nobody really does them. You know, we leg press instead. We hack squat instead. It's like there's stuff.

They're like, yet we now look at how many people tout the deadlift, the squat, and it's just like, so I don't know. I think there, I think there'll come a time when, you know, all it takes is the right famous person at the right time to share something like that. You know, imagine Phil Heath during his, you know, eight championship run or something like that, attributing it to his isometric training. Yeah, it would have blown up. I mean, then every magazine pick it up. Yeah, yeah. So it's just going to take that.

And then when people go actually truly apply it, I mean, it's like what we see with symmetry, when the clients actually go through that phase, they're always blown away by, oh, my God, it was like, I can't believe how well that worked. It's like, yeah, it's pretty powerful. And last, the data shows this is where I, isometrics really blow the doors off of things. For tendon strength, it's the best. Yeah.

It's the best. Now, why tendon strength? Why is that so important? So I don't tear a tendon or whatever? Yeah, but let's talk about strength for a second. When you see an athlete or a strength athlete, and we've all seen them, right? Where you look at them and you go, how is it on earth that that person can lift that much weight? They're not even that big.

You know, that's like a 160-pound guy. He's deadlifting 550 pounds. Or that, you know, how is it that some people just... Yeah, we used to call it wiry. Are so much stronger than they look. There's a few different reasons, but one of them is their tendons are incredibly strong. It's like steel cables.

Oftentimes, what limits your strength isn't your muscles. It's your tendons. Because if your body senses that the tendon cannot support the muscle... This can be a governor. There's no strength. There's no strength there because you're going to injure yourself. Tendent strength, dare I say, is more important the muscle strength when it comes to performance.

Oftentimes, it's the limiting factor. And if you have tendons that are like steel cables, you are strong. You are very, very strong. And again, the data shows it stiffens and strengthens tendons like nothing else. And do you think that also plays a role in the point that Justin made that you added,

which was what it does for relieving pain too? You think that has a factor there, too? The analgesic effect has more to do with literally releasing pain relieving chemicals in an isometric. also with how the central nervous system then starts to communicate with that joint. It provides security around the joints, so that's the feedback it's getting.

But yeah, it does release chemicals. Yes, yes, yes, pretty cool. All right, we got a new partner I'd like to talk about it. I saw this and want to talk about this. Yeah, because... Doug, pull them up so we can look at the macros. So I... Okay, first of all, if for the audience, it doesn't know this,

we've shared probably maybe a handful of times in the past whenever we've had a new partner. So the process in which a new partner comes on here is ran pretty much by cell. Like Justin and I have just opted out. He's the gatekeeper for sure. Yeah, he's the gatekeeper when it comes to the science and does it align with our values and everything that we do. And so he normally approves. Then I go with Katrina.

We negotiate contracts. It's kind of how they're. So we got these protein pretzels that came in. And I loved them. The staff loved them. Everybody was eating them. Well, staff was gobbling them. And Sal kind of poo-pooed him at first.

And I was like, oh, man. And I get it because I know that they have gluten in them. And so, but I was so bummed because I really liked them. My son liked them. Like, they sent us cases over. We ate them all up. I saw the staff eating them. And then now I see them on there.

So something has opened your mind a little bit to allowing them to be a partnership with us. And so I want to hear what was the change of heart. Did we just guilt you enough? No, no. They offered a lot of money. I know it wasn't that either. I'm the one to negotiate the contract. It wasn't even a big money deal.

No, we've turned down a lot of partners because it didn't work. So it does have gluten. And one of the main ingredients is wheat. And I'm sensitive to gluten. However, they source their wheat from Australia and they hydrolycise the gluten, which for many people allows it to be tolerable. Plus, not everybody's sensitive to gluten. Okay. So a good majority of people are actually not sensitive to gluten. There is a sizable minority that has to stay away. But a lot of people can eat gluten, especially if it's well-sourced wheat. So that was my argument on why I felt like, come on, we have to be open. I get that you can't. And so understandable. But I had a bag. I had a bag. I felt okay. It didn't feel like I ate a bag of bread or something like that. No, I didn't feel like that. I didn't have more than one bag. They tasted really well.

They were really delicious, you know, snack. I mean, like, they're lower on the calorie for 26 to 28 grams of protein. Okay, so what does that say, Doug? This is a bag of their protein pretzels. I haven't had those, the flamen crunch. Yeah, looks good. Yeah, so it's 200 calories for the bag and 26 grams of protein. Of protein.

Yeah. Of protein. And how many grams of fiber? Let's see here, 10 grams of fiber. 10 grams of fiber. Yeah. So it's a high fiber. high-protein snack.

Now, here's the thing with snacks like this. Like, they taste good, hyper-palatable, you know, could make you want to eat more. We've talked about that many times. But it's so high in protein, so high in fiber, I think it's a, if you're going to grab a bag of something, it's a good choice. Even two bags, two bags is 400 calories.

Now you're eating a 50-gram, 50-plus-gram protein snack with 20 grams. Like, I mean, that, macro-wise, taste-wise. So if you're not gluten intolerant, this is an incredible snap. And even if you have a mild intolerance, I'd say try them because of the... So you've heard people say this before, right? They're like, oh, I go to Europe or I go overseas. I have the gluten and it doesn't bother me. It's a little bit of a different effect.

I think there's difference. I definitely think there's a difference. So anyway... I'm just glad that you were open-minded enough because I know originally it was like one of those... Well, what sold me is I had the staff try it. I put the whole box out there. Yeah. And I told all the trainers to say, you guys try these.

let me know what you think. They're big fans. I came back the next day and they're like, it's delicious. It's really good. They're awesome. I'm a fan. So I'm glad we'll see how our audience receives it.

I hope it's something that they all like as much as I like. But I thought it was pretty cool. It was actually connected to somebody too who we interviewed, I want to say, in the first 100 episodes. Was this his handle head or something? Yeah, it used to be his handle. I don't think this is handle anymore. Ketohead?

Yeah. Do you remember? Yes, I remember. It was at the Spartan race. Yes, it was at the Spartan race when we were doing all those interviews. I don't remember what year that was early on. Oh, like seven years ago maybe. Oh, at least that.

Probably 2017. Oh, wow, even longer. Oh, yeah, yeah. It was early mind pump. It was well before this studio. It might have been at the last studio. So it was a long time ago when we did that first Spartan thing. So I got a study.

I'm going to change direction to see. I got to study that. And I'd love, I think you guys are going to know the direction I'm going with this. But I'll tell you guys about the study. This was a large analysis. There was a lot of people in this study. And what it found was that individuals in the underweight category were almost three times as likely to have died than individuals with the BMI towards the top of the healthy range. But here's the crazy part.

Individuals with a BMI of 40, so now you're obese, okay? People who are categorized as severely obese had a lower rate of death than people who were underweight. For what, though? And just in general? Overall, that overall. So overall mortality. So people who are underweight have a higher mortality rate, slightly higher, which you wouldn't expect.

I wouldn't even expect it necessarily to be the same as people who are obese, severe obese. Well, I mean, okay, so these are all going to be, or mostly, predominantly advanced age people. Somebody who is carrying themselves, you know, underweight, malnourished, is at a higher risk than somebody who's carrying extra body factors they have extra sources of fuel and energy yeah i don't think it's that that crazy i mean this is one of those situations where you can look at a study and you can get it kind of twisted on what you're really reading into that's what i how i'd read into is that you've got uh you know let's just say for make it easy a hundred people 50 of them are and they're all old they're all 80 plus and you've got 50 of them are um obese

and 50 of them are underweight, I'm more afraid for the underweight 80-year-olds than I am the overweight, 80-year-olds. Yeah, I mean, so this is what this points to for me. So when I see this, we're so, people are so aware of the dangers of being obese, and rightly so, there are lots of health issues with being in that upper, upper category,

that I think we don't, although naturally when you see someone that's underweight, It's like, oh, man, you don't look very healthy. I think it can push some people in the wrong direction or at the worst, or at least I should say, they're just not aware of their own mortality risks because they're underweight. So it's like, oh, I'm not obese, you know, but it's like, well, you're under underweight. Well, okay, so take that 100 people again, too. You know, what happens when an equal percentage of each of them get a cancer? The people that are underweight and malnourished are going.

They're going to die so much faster than the person that has Because cancer is going to eat away at the body You have so much extra body for them to eat at So you're going to sustain a little bit longer Than that person also It's even this is all cause mortality Meaning they had heart rate heart attacks Right they're all in there right

So what we're looking at is undermuscled That's what we're looking at What we're looking at are skinny undermuscled people You're better off by the way The data is clear on this You're better off being overweight and strong Yeah Then you are being underweight or lean

Now, there's a bit of a very positive narrative from that, though, which is even if you've never mastered diet or got a hold of your habits with eating, if you just lift weights. That's right. If you just lift weights two, three times a week and get strong. Huge difference. Huge difference. That's right. So to me, it's actually really exciting good news is positive. It's that because the diet part is by far the hardest part.

Oh, yeah. Every client you've ever had that's ever been challenged. with weight loss or getting in shape is always the adherence to diet, to figuring the macros out, to being consistent with protein, all the things. But getting them to show up to my appointment that they paid for was never that difficult. In fact, most clients always showed up. I rarely ever had people know show me. So if you just made an effort, whether you just show up and live.

Yeah, show up to see your trainer and lift weights two times a week and greatly increase your chances. That's it. 100%. But here's the part that it points to for me. We are entering into this dramatic culture shift with the power of GLP drugs, right? The first generation, second generation, third generation. And what's happening, and there's people reporting this. They're going on them, under eating, because their appetite's destroyed, right? It's crushed.

That's part of what they do. And then they're coming back with sarcopenia or osteopenia. And I'm going to tell you right now, guys. I'm not preserving muscle. If you just lose a bunch of weight and you don't strength train, you may be trading one problem for another. So, and we, in some cases, glamorize being underweight because we're so aware of the negatives of being obese.

But I got, you go on these, if you go on these medications and they crush your appetite, which sometimes they will, especially if you go on a high dose, you've got to lift and you got to not under each of the point where you lose lots of muscle because, yes, you're losing weight. And here's the other part of it. Your blood work may actually show you're healthier. This is the other thing. If you look at diabetes and heart disease, there's a substantial minority.

I say substantial because it's a big percentage representing millions of people who seem to have good blood work, but then suddenly they get diabetes or they get heart disease. And it's like, what's going on? I'm not overweight. I'm skinny. What's the big deal? you don't have protective muscle. You don't have protective muscle,

and that's part of the problem. So I get strong and be active. That's like number one. That's number one. Well, this is why we have so many trainers in the fitness space that are, you know, screaming from the rooftops about GLP1s, to a detriment, in my opinion. Like, I think that this is, this thing has a tool,

it is a tool and has value. And the right person, using it correctly, I think it can be life-changing and super beneficial. But like anything else, when abused, when not used properly, now it becomes dangerous. I think if you use these... I still stand by my original stance on this, was if you go back far enough when we first got introduced this and we were all kind of talking about it and debating it, even when we knew very little, I believed it would be a net positive.

I think that, I think it will be. I still believe that. that there's more people that are suffering. Now, what makes me worried about it is that if the thing that we talk about is that is so scary and dangerous, obesity, is less about being obese and it's more about being under-muscled, well, and that kind of flies in the face of my thought process, and I might not be right. It might be a, you know, net negative in this situation, because if you're, if we are

mostly under-muscled, and that's more of an issue than us being. obese and a majority of these people because that's what will happen a bunch very very rarely will the people do it correctly and endure a majority of people will do it incorrectly which means a greater percentage of them will abuse it won't hit protein won't lift weights and they just lose a bunch of weight well they just lost a bunch of muscle too and so we'll be in a worse situation than what we were before that's right because what you have is you have doctors prescribing them which I get it's a medical intervention uh but uh Doctors don't understand exercise.

They're not training it. They're not supposed to, right? They don't understand exercise. They don't understand nutrition, especially when it comes to building muscle. And, you know, they take, I think, a semester of nutrition. And it's just like a one-size-fits-all still. I think if you go on a GLP one, you need to work with a trainer, period. If you're somebody that I know and you're like, hey, Sal, I'm going to go on a GLP one,

I'm like, only do it if you hire a trainer. Yeah. Otherwise, I don't think it's going to be a good idea for you. Yeah. You know? No, I agree with that. Yeah. No, I totally agree with that. Anyway, I'm going to give you guys a little update on my, my daughter's lifting.

Remember how I had that debate with her? Oh, yeah, yeah. What's the latest. Over my program. Yeah, yeah. She's like, this is not enough. How am I getting any gains on this? It's not getting enough all you.

Imagine that. Imagine that. Debating. She's getting stronger every week. Oh, that's, yeah, dude. Is she, like, loving it or like? Oh, yeah, dude. Turning to a believer.

I'm calling her mini-sal right now because she's getting all into it. I mean, just last night, we were. at home and I took her phone away from her for a separate reason so she didn't have her phone with her and but she doesn't miss her workout dude so she's like I see her get her headphones get everything go back there she's like hey can I at least listen to the music on my phone I'm like all right you know she goes back there and she's lifting and I'm like are you tracking how much you're lifting and stuff are you getting stronger every time she's like yeah and I could see it too on her I could see that she's building some now is there you know interesting that

interesting that you're getting a front row seat of that while you're simultaneously doing this series that you're doing on YouTube right now, is there any part of you that is reluctant to her excitement around this? Oh, she's going to go, she has to go through the journey of developing a relationship with it. That's proper. Thankfully, you know, I'm there to help guide her and I got to be real careful and smart or judicious with how I try to influence her. Because, again, with your kids in general, like it's very hard. to influence them because the more influenced by their peers. Luckily, however, some of her friends listen to the show.

And so they're the ones that are like, oh, your dad is, you know, and so that's helping her be like, oh, maybe I should listen. Okay. But she's seeing the evidence now. But yeah, Jessica and I talk about this. And she's like, I think she might be, is she going to get obsessed? Is she going to, like, she probably will. She probably will go too far, you know, get a little obsessive.

I remember there was one point where she, this was weeks ago, she got sick so she couldn't work out. Then she went back and her lifts went down and she was like so mad. I can't believe my, you know, she's like super pissed off about it. And so I was in there with her talking her through it, talking about muscle memory and this is normal and this is what happens. And you don't always go forward, you know, progress. But she's going to go through that process. And I'm just going to try and be there for her when she's open to the conversations around it. But this is a journey, but you guys know, I was like, you guys know.

I was it, you get into this, you're going to go through the process of like, yeah, I mean, that's why I was so curious to how you hang. Because obviously, when, you know, the tendency that a parent can do sometimes when they is to over-correct, right? You do that way, so then you go to the other extreme with her. And so I feel like you have a level of awareness around that, that you won't do that. So I was just curious to, like, how you're navigating that of, like, the balance of standing back, letting her have her own journey, but then also knowing, like,

keeping a close eye because it's like, I want to be able to insert myself, or be there for that conversation when that does happen, right? So it's got to be probably. Yeah, and it's cool, too, because we'll be hanging out. And then she'll, like, she'll look at me. She'll like, blah, watch this. And she'll flex. And my heart just smells.

Like, oh, this is so great, dude. You know, I always had this dream that I'd have, like, these lift sessions, you know, with my kids one day. You know what I mean? So we're not there yet. But I'm sure at some point, you know, it'll be fun. I mean, I can only imagine that'd be like Max coming out and wanting to shoot the ball around.

with me. I feel like that's like I still wait for that. And you're trying to hold in the excitement. Yeah, I don't want to overdo it. Totally. I could totally see how it's rad when it finally happens. It's so fun. Yeah, we I just had ever, he just started his lacrosse this weekend.

And so it's his first real like practice and just like learning the skill of it and everything. And I get the one thing that stood out to me was just how inviting and friendly that community is. Because I think it's because it's like not a thing here really oh so they're trying to make it

popular yeah like it's like an east coast kind of sport such a dope sport it wasn't around like i totally would have got into it when i was growing up but um it's just it's so what he needs like he puts on he's like he has all the pads and everything and and he's he puts his helmet on and he's like dad i feel like a weapon i was like oh no oh no he's so my kid yeah and i see him out there and it was great was the coach is like it wasn't just like you know i thought you know they'll probably work on their handling stick handling and like you know passing and you know some shots on goal whatever but they did that but they're like teaching them defense and they're bodying up against each other and they're like already the physicality of it was like oh it's so great because it's hard

to find that uh at this age range as well and like for it to be you know something that he's like involved in. So I was like, stuck just watching. I'm like getting exhausted, you know, and just like physically, you know, smashing into everybody else. That's so cool because at his age now, most places have converted over to flag football, right? Yeah. So like contact football at his age is not even a, it's not really a thing. Yeah, yeah, a lot of the, um, and I looked into it, like Pop Warner and all that. And it's just, yeah, it kind of died off in our area. I really didn't want to, I didn't get to do it. Like I, I played football when I was a freshman. That's what I mean, my first introduction and so I was playing soccer up till then like like getting red cards and yellow

cards yeah I just want to hit someone just yeah it's just this weird drive like you just I don't know like it's a it's a violent tendency you know I can't wait I can't like to hear how he does it if he's into it like because I think it's a cool sport yeah yeah yeah it looked like he really enjoyed it aren't the roots of lacrosse Native American wasn't a Native American game yeah I believe is that right I believe so yeah if I'm not mistaken it was like a native I mean, it's like football meets hockey. I mean, it's super cool like that. I mean, I think that's...

It's harder than it looks, too, because my daughter played it. Of course. And she's like, here, try to run with it. And I'm like dropping the... Yeah, exactly cradle in it. It's a fast game, too. It is. I mean, it's pretty exciting to watch.

I wish we had something like that. We didn't have that in our neck of the woods. No, and it's hard to find other schools that play. Yeah. North American indigenous peoples as early as 17... What was that? 110080? Wow.

Known as what? Stickball. Yeah. And didn't they, like, High-E-Lye was, like, from Mayans, right? I don't know. Something like that. Like, I know it's like it's down South America. It's a big sport.

But that's like where they throw the ball like, it's like crazy, like, I don't know if it's like 150 something miles an hour. Like insane. What's that sport where they have that? It's like it looks like a long hook. There's a scoop and you throw. And they whip a ball. It's like the fastest. That's High-Lie.

Yeah. Yeah. How fast is that the ball go? Yeah. I mean, I think it's like. Is that what you're talking about? Yeah. It's like crazy fast.

It's like 150 miles. It's more than 100 miles. It goes fast. It's maybe faster. I think it's the fastest ball sport. Yeah. Oh, that might be right. It is.

I mean, they definitely throw faster than a pitcher throws a ball. So it's like. Yeah, look at, oh, it's spelled J-A. J-A-L-G-A-L-E-G-A-G-A-E-G-A-G-E-G-A-G-E-G-E-G-E-G-E-E-G-E-E-GY-E-E-E-R-E-E-E-R-E A-190-0-0-0-0-0-0-0. Can you imagine getting hit with that?

No. That would kill you. Isn't, is the ball too kind of like a lacrosse ball? Is that what they? It looks like it. I don't know. With their weapon. Like somewhat hard.

It's an Olympic sport, isn't it? I don't know. It feels like a wealthy sport. I always feel like it's like a rich. Yeah, it's like really up there with like polo. Really? It doesn't look like it to me. Okay.

Well, tell me. Where is it popular in Brazil? But I mean, it's not like a, maybe Spain. Like polo, polo is that. I mean, it's a club and horses and like, okay. That's a lot. That totally does to me, you know what I'm saying? Or like, you know, fencing, you know what I'm saying?

That's up there. But I wouldn't have thought of that as like a really... I think it's a wealthy sport. I think it's considered a sport that, like, upper class, whatever. Originated in Spain. How'd you know, Doug? You know, I said Basque region. So he knows things.

He's got to Google. I have the Googles here. I found a study that is getting popular on social media. So I can't wait to talk about it because there was a... a study in 1993 or four that came out about this. And of course, when I was a kid, if I saw anything that looked like it would build muscle, I'd try it. So what this, and this, there's a new, there was a newer study.

And so people are circulating. So taking five milligrams of melatonin before a workout will dramatically boost growth hormone production in the workout. Something like 150% higher. Okay. Really? Yes, because melatonin, melatonin, uh? Melatonin down regulates something.

Is the body fighting against it? No, there's something that, I can't remember what it was, but it lowers something that controls growth hormone. So when you work out growth hormone spikes, anywhere. When you take melatonin, you get this much larger spike of growth hormone. So now as a kid, you know, in the 90s and anything that said hormone on it, because I'm like, ooh, it's going to make me jacked. It sucks.

If you want to be sleepy and work out. I was going to say it seems like that would be awful. What's crazy, too, in the study, they're like it didn't affect performance. Bologna, I've tried this so many times. You take melatonin before you work out sucks. They made me so like, ugh. It sounds like, I mean, it's the opposite of what we do, right? Like, you take caffeine to get jacked on my, like, take some melatonin.

That sounds like a terrible idea. Yeah, I don't know who could be stimulated. It's like, oh, trust me. I've tried the same people smoke weed before they lift weights can do that. No, it's worse than that, dude. Trust me, it's what I've tried it. For stretching. I've tried it so many, I was stubborn about it at one point.

So my growth hormone, this is going to make me huge. This sucks, dude. So what's the new study? Is there a new study? Yeah, the study came out and showed it raised growth hormone like 150%. Oh, okay. So this is, you remember this back in the 90s? Yeah, so I saw the study.

And so it's making its way. Yeah, and I saw people sharing it. Of course. Oh, my God, this is crazy. And I'm like looking at. Yeah, you go apply it. Try it, bro. See what you feel like.

Take your melatonin pre-work out and gummy bears afterwards and let me know how it works out. Go right to bed. Yeah, totally sucks. Oh, so did you guys see, I saw some, since you're talking about funny stuff. this uh okay there's the i don't know if you saw this we obviously we all kind of follow different stuff uh this is in the car world there has been a guy for four years now that has been documented driving an f1 car on regular highways what yeah it's like it's like an instagram phenomenon too that people of somebody who owns an f1 car actually has one of these is driving on main roads

and has been for like four years four years he's gotten away for four years oh yeah And so they, you know, but it's been this kind of phenomenon that everyone catch, everyone catches it and posts on Instagram and then sharing it. And so, uh, just recently, he's been arrested and he was, he was, they finally caught up with him. And I, and I think they had like a big standoff where like a, you know, helicopter and like they cornered it. And it was a big deal.

Oh, there you go. Doug's pulling it up right now. Phantom Ferrari driver. Yeah. Fifty one year old guy does it. Yeah. Wow, dude. Have you guys ever, is that hilarious?

Is that hilarious? Could you imagine like on the freeway on one-on-one over here and it sounds like an F-1 car? pulls up right next to you. That's so dangerous. And so expensive, aren't they like $10 million? They are really expensive. What? That much?

F1? Yeah, I don't know about $10 million, but they're, well, no, they're... Look up how much an F1 car price. No, he's probably right. 10 million is probably right. I think they're like, I know they're million. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah, no, you're right.

10 million. Maybe more. They might be 20 to 30, actually. The engineering that goes into those cars is like a fighter jet. Yeah, put up average price of an F1 car. Yeah, I mean, they look like it. 12 to 20 million. What's even crazier.

I was talking about a used one. What's crazy is they've always got two of those on hand, and they wreck them all the time. And so you're like, I mean, you want to talk about expensive sport. Oh, God. That's the... Have you guys ever... You know what, you know how, speaking of since we're talking about F1, like, how unique that is, too. There is, there is...

Name another sport where there's only 20 total athletes in the world. Oh, yeah. It's the only one. There is only 20 F1. How about the one where they jump with the squirrel suits? Oh, yeah. That's probably... Yeah, there's a lot of them, but they die.

Those numbers. That's the highest, the highest desert. But there is only 20 F1 car racers in the world. You know how skilled you have to be? You have to be the most skilled to even get there. Like, you can't just go, oh, I want to drive F1 cars. You have to work your way all the way up, all the cars. All the different classes.

Yeah, the classes to be coming. Or the classes like, is it like F10, F9? Is that what the F1 is? No, it's different. Yeah. I'll just guess. Yeah, yeah, no, it's different. It's different.

But you have to work your way all the way up before you're even. a possibility to make that. So it's literally, there's not a lot of sports to say if you're actually just playing in it, you're top 20 in the world. Have you guys ever been in a situation

either personally or seen it? You don't have to give yourself, you know, write yourself out where you saw someone literally outrun a highway patrol or police officer. You ever seen that? I saw, you know, it's hard to say

is if I've seen it for real or I just watched so many clips of somebody doing on a bike. I saw a guy in a Hayabusa. Yeah, I think I've seen it on. And I saw the lights turn on and he was gone. Yeah. The car, the highway patrol turned his lights on.

That guy was gone. Yeah. Gone, dude. Those street bikes is going to be the easiest to allude. I mean, I bet you there's a pretty solid percentage, I bet, if people run on those bikes. I bet a higher percentage they probably want to admit and talk about. You know, like the bank robbing thing is like an undercover thing. That's what I always think about.

Like the bank robbing thing is something that you don't want to ever put the stats out there. They act like it's so rare, but it's like, oh, that's because 50% of them get away with it. So they don't want to talk. Is that the stat? Yes. Half of bank robbers get away Yeah, but here, there's caveat to that. Listen, the average dollar amount is like chump change.

What are they pulled? Because they only keep so much in the registers. So that's including everybody just does a quick stick up, give me what's in the cash, and then they run out. So that guy gets away, but he gets away with... They don't get the vault. He gets away with five grand. You know what's something like...

It's crazy when you hear like what some of these bank robbers get away with. Like, you risk that for that. Like, that's crazy. Half my family works in banks. And a couple of them have been in a bank that's gotten robbed. That's how frequent it is. But it's never like the movies, like where they come in with the mask.

No, it's never like that. It's always like someone comes in, they hand them a letter. It's really my commute twice. Like there's been people at Rob Bank here in San Jose and then drove up through to get to Santa Cruz and they've like taken all the side roads and they're like closing it off.

This is happening twice. I was like sitting on the side of the road like waiting until they've caught them. All the time. It happens a lot and they just don't report them. They don't want people to know that 50% of time they're getting away with it or else more people to do it. or else more people would do it. Yeah.

So I got to mention one of our partners again because oftentimes we get people on the show who we're talking to who are on the borderline of like too much stress. And so the workouts aren't working. We're talking about them about their sleep. We're trying to find a way to get them to apply the right amount of stress to induce adaptation, but not too much. And so oftentimes I'll recommend, well, not often, sometimes I'll recommend a supplement that'll help with that.

Oshuaganda is always at the top of the list. It's the most supported by the data. It does, I mean, literally does help your body adapt to stress. If your total stress was at 100, using Oshwaganda with the same amount of stress, would lower its impact on your body. I'm going to use arbitrary numbers, but down to like 85 or something like that. It actually does make a big difference. It's why when they do studies on Oshwaganda,

athletes will gain strength and muscle on them. Not necessarily because it's like this muscle builder, but rather their body can adapt better to the stress. And Organified green juice has an efficacious dose of aschaganda. Plus all the other micronutrients. And I don't know why I don't think of recommending that specific. Because it's green juice. I forget it's got aschwaganda in it.

Yeah. But it's one of the best supplements of all of our partners. If you're like one of those people, it's like, man, I keep feeling like I'm over-training. I'm burnt out. Like, what can I take? That'll help. The green juice.

I remember I told you guys just the other day. The last time we talked about Organify, I brought up the green juice because I took it as, you know, trying to be preventative before getting sick. And I just forgot how good it feels to do that. Like I want to get in the habit of like making that like the first thing I drink. In the morning,

I've made a habit of drinking caffeine, coffee or Celsius or whatever. I'd like to see the difference if I make an effort to do that and see if I notice the benefits. Because I noticed it when I drank that day. I was like, oh my God, that feels so much. Yeah.

I'm implementing it again in my routine, too. Probiotics have documented data-backed benefits. Like they improve your gut health, obviously. They reduce inflammation. There's also some fat loss effects. It helps your skin and mood. You probably know this already, so you're probably wondering which probiotics should I go with.

Seed. It's the world's best probiotic. Go to cede.com forward slash mind pump. Use the code 25 mind pump, get 25% off. Back to the show. First question is from R-L-E-1987. When limited for time in the gym, should I prioritize more sets, less rest per exercise,

or fewer sets, more rest to maximize muscle growth? You know, it depends on the person I'm talking to. Often, you know, oftentimes, so this is a general answer because it really does depend on the person, but oftentimes focus on the big lifts and leave out the other ones is what I would say, generally speaking. Now, that being said, none of the things that you asked are bad. Sometimes speeding up the workout is great.

Sometimes doing just a lot of sets of one exercise is great because you don't have to switch movements. Other times you do less of the total exercises so you can maintain the rest periods. It really depends on the individual. But generally speaking, if you're the kind of person that's super, super, super consistent and pushing it all the time, then just focusing on the core lifts and cutting out the others is probably beneficial. I'm glad you went this way

because I totally agree and the way I was going to award it was they're all tools and ideally try and use all of them. Yeah. Now, what we don't know is the rest of the story meeting, let's say the same person

asked his exact same question and depending on the context, i.e., what are they currently doing in their life? That may look different. Like, for example, the underslept you know, does it hit their... Like, why do you have less time? Exactly, right?

So the underslept, overworked, high-stress person, I'd say, oh, well, let's just do less exercises and focus on a couple of the big lifts and get out. Like, that's all you need to do. That would be more appropriate. But let's just say it's just a random... This is a random day because... But your stress level's good.

Your sleep is good. You eat well. Hey, like sometimes there's a huge benefit in shortening the rest periods and doing a kind of faster-paced workout. In fact, this is how I've always communicated this on the podcast. I've never intentionally did these like circuit type training, but I've definitely circuit train. And when I do it is like when I'm limited on time, when I have those random days that,

oh, man, I got to go to this appointment. Yeah. And so I only got a half hour to work today. Oh, you know what I'm going to do today? Today I'm going to no rest periods. I'm just going to keep going through my workout. And because that's novel and I don't do it all the time, what a great idea. So it really depends on the context to give precise.

But the truth is both are valuable. Yep. Next question is from Becca Fit. What's your advice for overcoming injuries? the mental and physical side. I recently tore my Achilles and had a great recovery, but the mental side was harder than the physical.

The mental side's always hard. You guys remember this when I shared this? Yes. Remember how hard it? Remember I told you that would have... You're like afraid to like stress it or push it. Yeah, and I didn't realize how difficult. This is actually what got me back

into listening to music again. Also got me back into listening to audiobooks. What I had to do personally, so this may or may not work for you, But I definitely, and it was an Achilles tear that actually threw me for a loop like this. I had to find something else in my life that I could kind of focus on that I knew that I loved. I love reading audiobooks. I love music to occupy that space.

And to make the books made me feel like I was progressing and growing and moving forward, even though my body physically couldn't do it. The music was something that was a passion that I loved to do that was entertaining me and kept me in good spirits. and so I found attaching myself to two things like that that didn't require my body to like I didn't need a healthy body to do either one of those things and made me feel good I and I didn't realize that this was going to hit me the way I did but it made it took a toll on me and I remember how powerful it was to find

Yeah like working on your relationships like work on other things going on in your life that you can kind of redirect your focus because yeah I mean it's you'll feel like you're at least like being productive. I know that's the hardest part is when you get down for the count and it's like this injury is really limiting you from like feeling that you're moving forward when in fact there's so many, I mean, there's so many aspects of progress, you know, spiritually, physically, mentally that you can address. I think that it will open up a space for that.

So it's great advice. Yeah. So a lot of people don't realize this until you go through it. It's like you have. I didn't know until it hit me. You have a major injury and you heal and you have a great recovery. So for all intents and purposes, like, wow, my knee is back to normal or my Achilles is fully healed. But what we don't take into consideration is the fear, the mental trauma that it left.

And I use the word trauma. People like, oh, it's not that. Yeah, it is. I mean, you blow out a joint, especially doing an exercise and it's unexpected or doing something that you love doing and it's unexpected. there's a memory there of what that was like. And so then you get fully healed and then there's a fear there. And I've heard this so many times from clients, like, I'm scared to push it. I'm scared to go fast again.

I don't know what's wrong with me. I can't. And that mental side is just as connected to the injury as the physical side is. So when you look at the data on overcoming these kinds of fears or any fear in general, one of the most effective strategies is known as exposure therapy. And you'll see this with people like scared of spiders or scared of balloons or whatever. So this is what it looks like for an injury. So you tore your Achilles, full recovery.

For all intents and purposes, everything's back to normal. You slowly expose yourself to movements and exercises that challenge your Achilles. You expose yourself mentally to these movements and slowly rebuild confidence in the fact that you can go back and do what you did before. But it's frequent exposure. Okay. Because if you don't do that and you're expecting to just jump back in, that fear will hold you back. That fear will hold you back from really pushing yourself or worse, the fear changes recruitment patterns actually makes an injury more likely. So it's very slow.

So you tore your Achilles. Okay, now it's fully recovered. You start with calf raises. Then you start with heavier calf raises. Then you start with jumping. Then you start with light running or whatever, right? To slowly move yourself towards the point where you're going. you can then exert yourself fully.

But you have to rebuild that confidence. And again, the process is known as exposure therapy. And it does work. And it does take time. There are people afraid of balloons? Yeah. That's a real fear. That's a real fear.

Attached to clowns? No, it's like, there are people that you'll put a balloon. Terrified of balloons. Because they, for whatever reason, when they were a kid, it exploded in their face. Oh, the exploding part. And they're just scared of balloons. I had a client that was allergic because of the latex. Oh.

So she got crazy. for that but that's funny next question is from the matthew holcomb what's the best way to get back into working out after a surgery that put you down for two plus months slowly yes kind of similar to the last month yeah slowly you slowly ease yourself back in to the routine for the physical purpose is to rebuild muscle and stability and strength um and then for the mental reason to rebuild confidence. So it's just a slow process. There is no such thing as too slow. Yep. So take your time. Technique. That's it. Slowly work in. Completely. Slowly challenge yourself. And before you know, you'll be totally fine. But the key word here is slowly. It's safe. And if you have muscle memory,

because you used to work out, muscle will come back very quickly. You know, the challenge is the same psychologically, but the opposite of what the last person that we're talking to, It was like, and I remember this is this was when I had my knee injury, I was so, so ambitious. And I was so, like, as soon as I felt better, I was like, each workout I was trying to progress, you know? And it was jump boxes by like two months later. I'm like, and then I re-injured myself. And it was so stupid because I was like, I got competitive with how fast I was trying to come back. And that was such a terrible strategy, the better strategy, what you're saying, you can't go too slow.

You know, if you are progressing. Yeah, if you're being consistent and you're slowly progressing. you're perfect. Like, this is the, like, trainers, this is common. Even some people with athletic backgrounds where they have the opposite problem where they are healed. And now they think they're going to go right back to where they were, where they left off. And it's like, that's a recipe for an injury again. Next question is from real life wellness with Jess.

How can I grow an online nutrition and fitness business if I hate doing social media? You know, it's funny is people forget, especially with fitness, okay, you can build, an incredible nutrition and fitness business in the real world. Yeah, without ever being on social media. Yeah, you can. I actually think this is going to make a comeback. Doing it without social media?

Yeah, no, yeah, yeah. Yeah, I think that we've moved so much in this direction that it really opens the opportunity for the person that wants to do this old school. Just go to your local community. So I suggested this. So we have a new trainer who was coming on board with us and she was talking about her hometown.

She has a one street, one light, you know, hometown, like, you know, a couple thousand people living the whole town. And she was just like, you know, how do you build a fitness business there? And I'm like, you know what I would do is I would start a walking group at 7 a.m. every Monday, whatever, pick your day that you can do it and do it for free and walk downtown where there's only one street where every car that goes through that,

they got to go through there, everybody's down. And they start seeing this group. and maybe it starts with four or five ladies and when you first get it going and then it's 10 and then it's 20 and 30 people are walking with you. You get a movement going on, right? And it's a free service

so it's easy to convince people to do it and you're helping you're doing a good thing and then it'll just create this buzz in the town and then I'm going to go work with the, you know, the hobby shop, the local hobby shop and the locally grocery store and, you know, and start networking with your community and doing things that, I mean,

and you could become the fitness guru of the town and that's just if you have a small town. I have a big town. You have lots of opportunity and lots of these things you can do. But I do think that there is more of an opportunity today than there was 20 years ago because that was the only way you built a business back in the days. And now Instagram and YouTube and Facebook is the way everyone tries now. It's like, dude, go. It's funny. It actually say that because Gary Vee was asked like a similar kind of a question. And it was mainly like he was he was talking about the need for people with human connection again and that what he like thought might actually

be an opportunity was to create like just a walking business like like I will walk with you for this amount of time like they'd pay for them just to like chat with somebody and walk through the city and whatever and he's like and it's already happening and it's just it's interesting because like you like you can see how disconnected we've been and how how you know human connection people are craving that right now. And so to add a bit of a fitness element to that, I would feel it would be an easy combo. Look, if you, it's created social media can be a powerful tool. So get me wrong. But it's created the illusion that that's the only way you could build your business or that's the best way to build your business even is a bit of an illusion. If you took two trainers

brand new that needed to build their business and one of them hit the pavement, one of them went outside and talk to people. And the other one only stayed online. I would bet all my money that the one who hit the pavement will build their business faster, much faster. Now, that's not to say you shouldn't do all of it, because if you're smart, you want to use all of it, but you'll build a faster business. I mean, when we started mind pump, I remember Adam would get on me about starting a social media something because I had nothing. Yeah.

In fact, my business had a website that didn't even work, and I built a six-figure personal training business just being in my community. That's all I did. I would just go out and talk to people and do body fat test booths and, you know, do stuff like that. It was, it works and it works faster. In fact, when I talk to trainers now, I say start there, when you start building something there, then do the online stuff to support what you've already built. It's actually a better strategy. Way better strategy is to go hit the pavement and document that process. But you don't have to. If you're trying to do this with no social media,

you don't have to. You absolutely can go build this without social media. But the easy way to do both is focus on the pavement, document some of that process. And when you meet people and you in real life and train that one, the only one client that you have, the things that you post about on social media is related to helping that one client. And then it becomes two clients that you're helping. And so the two things that you're posting about are to help those two clients. And so your content online is really to serve your handful of people that you met in real life. And then you start attracting people virtually.

That's the way I would build if I was building this thing all over again. Look, if you like the show, come find us on Instagram. We'll see you. It's at Mind Pump Media. for listening to Mind Pump. If your goal is to build and shape your body, dramatically improve your health and energy, and maximize your overall performance, check out our discounted RGB Superbundle at Mind Pumpmedia.com. The RGB Superbundle includes Maps Anabolic, Maps Performance, and Maps Esthetic. Nine months of phased expert exercise programming designed by Sal, Adam, and Justin

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