Mind Pump: Raw Fitness Truth - 2702: 5 Obstacles to Being a Strong Dad

Episode Date: October 9, 2025

5 Obstacles to Being a Strong Dad The challenges faced once becoming a dad. (1:11) 5 Obstacles to Being a Strong Dad #1 – Time. (5:17) #2 – Diet. (12:08) #3 – Sleep. (16:03) #4 – Pain. (20:45) #5 – White or Blue collar worker. (22:16) Related Links/Products Mentioned Visit PRx Performance for an exclusive offer for Mind Pump listeners! ** No code for 5% discount gets automatically applied at checkout. ** October Special: MAPS GLP-1 50% off! ** Code GLP50 at checkout. ** Mind Pump # 2684: Do ONLY These 8 Lifts to Achieve an Amazing Body Mind Pump #2572: Only 15 Minutes a Day to Build Muscle & Burn Fat Visit Brain.fm for an exclusive offer for Mind Pump listeners. ** Get 30 days of free access to science-backed music. ** Use the 3-2-1 Formula for Best Sleep Results | Cabral Concept 2526 Mind Pump #2402: The 5 Reasons Why Walking is King for Fat Loss (Burn More Fat than Running & How to Do it Correctly) Mind Pump Podcast – YouTube Mind Pump Free Resources People Mentioned Doug Bopst (@dougbopst) Instagram Alex Hormozi (@hormozi) Instagram

If you want to pump your body and expand your mind, there's only one place to go. Mind Pump, Mind Pump with your hosts. Sal DeStefano, Adam Schaefer, and Justin Andrews. You just found the most downloaded fitness, health, and entertainment podcast. This is Mind Pump. Today's episode, five obstacles, things that get in the way of being a strong dad. We break them down for you. By the way, this episode is brought to by PRX performance.

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That link will get you 5% off. We also have a sale on Maps, GLP1. This workout program also has nutrition advice, lifestyle advice. It's designed for people using a GLP1 like Ozempic or Wagovi. This program maximizes fat loss, minimizes muscle loss, helps keep your metabolism where it's at so it doesn't slow down. Go check it out. Go to Maps at glp1.com. Use the code gLP 50 for the 50% off discount. Back to the show. You're a dad. You want to be a strong dad. Of course you do. You want your kids to think you're awesome. You want to be able to start the lawnmower with one pool. You want to be awesome.

Heck yeah. But there's five obstacles, five common obstacles that get in the way. Suddenly you have kids. It's hard to be strong. Strong. What do you do? We're going to talk about that in today's episode and give you the solution. Is that not the universal measure of dad strength? That are the chains off. Can you start the mower chains? Yeah, any sort of pool. Anything. Yeah. Yeah. Can you start it in one pool? That's the ultimate flex when you start your neighbor. Or like one wood chop with just one stroke. Yeah. But yeah, no, this is, so I want to do this episode because we get a lot of guys at Cole M. And either they're becoming fathers. And so like, okay, what do I do with my workouts? Or they just became dads. and a lot of, you know, when you look at the data on, like, what motivates men to work out, this is actually one of the top ten.

One of the top ten things is I became a dad. And I thought, you know, I should probably be fit so I could play with my kids or at the least take care of my health. But you've got lots of new responsibilities. And so, objectively, it's more difficult. It definitely is. I mean, it's different when you're a bachelor, especially you're not married. You have no kids. Like, it's your schedule is your schedule.

There's nothing in there. Now, being both of you guys were in your 20s having kids and also in the fitness space, did this cross your mind or was this just, was this an afterthought because it was already your profession? Good question. It wasn't, you know, there's always that initial phase when kids are real young, but because I worked in gyms, I worked, my work had weights, so it wasn't that hard for me to be consistent. Yeah, it just brought on a whole other level of hustle. And so, yeah, I threw the, the workouts definitely ramped up for me. uh just because i just felt this like compelling urge to do everything at once uh but yeah i think i think for me i always wanted to maintain a level of strength um you know as my kids got older

just to make sure i kind of led the example of that yeah i know that you know i'm i'm the one who waited right so weighed my mid 30s before or late 30s even before having uh max and uh i do think that it played a role in the whole mobility kick oh ever remember you became more motivated for it yeah i remember being buff and jack guy and then thinking like how uncomfortable it was for me to even get down in a seated squatted position and thought man and i could just picture being down with him as a baby and thinking like you know this is gonna be i'm gonna be all jack with him like oh getting down and so i remember that being in the back of my mind like okay this is this is a good enough reason for me to go down this kind of rabbit hole of mobility so it did play

a role for me that but i figured just you guys were probably in your prime and your 20s and He's already in fitness. Well, I put on some weight, dude. Oh, you did? And then I had to, yeah, then I was on the hustle to get rid of some of that weight. But, yeah, it was one of those sneaky things. You look back at pictures. You're like, oh, wow, did I put on weight with her?

Well, if you look at it on baby weight, huh? Yeah. A lot of men do. I know, it's, I think it's, what is the average, Doug? I want to say it's 15, 15 to 25 pounds. I think the average man puts on when his wife gets pregnant. Yeah, they start eating the same foods together. Yeah, yeah.

Guy starts just, yeah, I'm eating for two also. Yeah. I know you're not good for business. Well, I mean, again, to be objective, it's just, it's just more challenging. You have mouths to feed, so the job becomes much more important. You have, your schedule is now more limited. It's just more difficult to maintain a good level of fitness. Food now, you know, it's harder to plan.

You start to eat more, you know, processed foods or eat out more. So the average man gains weight after he becomes a father. the average guy his fitness level drops after he becomes a dad so what does that say there Doug yeah so some don't gain much but some may gain 10 pounds or more

I mean it's very general I know all of my buddies that are not I mean you're admitting you're a fitness guy even all my buddies that were non-fitness guys I think you're lying and put on a lot more in 10 pounds I remember

let's talk about some of the challenges let's talk about that so I'll say the first challenge is time you know getting away for sure going to the gym taking an hour at the gym you know 30 minutes drive time all this and that the other but now you have a kid or more uh and you know you got a wife that you want to also support um it feels it's it is objectively more difficult to find time it's also feels kind of like wrong to take tons of time it's it's not even just that either there's it's also

the other factor that justin kind of alluded to which is this this new internal drive to like provide more. And so you now actually, you kick up this work kick of like, I've got to make sure retirements now said, I can feed all these mouths that were like, you're starting to think differently.

And I remember you guys telling me this, that you'll see, you'll find a new level of work ethic when that happens. So now you have this new dedication to work more than what you already had. So regardless if you were already a hard working dad, you become a harder working dad. And then it becomes this kind of,

like, well, I'm already sacrificing this time with my kid, like, okay, do I want to go to the gym and do another selfish act? Forget it. I'll just, I can handle not being in shape right now. So we tend to let that go. Yeah. And I mean, I don't think I need to make the case, but a fit, healthy version of you is going to be more productive at work. You're going to be have more energy at home. You're going to be more often than not in a better mood versus if you're not fit, not healthy. You're less likely to be anxious, depressed. And I'm sure your family wants you fit and healthy as well. So the challenge is how do I fit this in my schedule? How do I keep this consistent? Well, there's this myth out there that in order to be, and we'll talk about

strength training, because that's the form of exercise that's going to give you the most ROI. So there's many different ways to exercise, but strength training gives you a very high return when it's done right at least versus the time spent. In other words, you'll get the most muscle, fat loss benefits, metabolic benefits, you know, health benefits, hormone benefits, from strength training on a time for time basis in comparison of the forms of exercise. So let's just start there. There is this myth with strength training that you have to go to the gym at least a few days a week and it needs to be like an hour workout. Now, I'm not saying that's not good. You know, you can go to the gym three days a week an hour each time and

that'll probably be as long as it's a good program, decent. But for a lot of men, it's just too difficult to be consistent three days a week to take that time away because it's not just an hour at the gym, it's going there and back. So you're really looking at an hour and half two hours, is there another alternative? And there it is. And it literally looks like this. Every day, you do one or two lifts. That's it. So every single day, you do three sets of an exercise or three sets of two exercises and you're done. This will take you 15, 20 minutes a day, especially if you have some pretty basic equipment at home, like just a basic barbell, squat rack, or even just dumbbells, you can do this on a daily basis and get tremendous returns. So you're actually

getting phenomenal gains and strength and muscle and all these things from what seems like very minimal effort. And that's because you're doing it every single day. This would save me back in the day so much. I was under the impression even back then that I had to make sure I got like at least 45 to an hour's worth of work in for it to be valuable. And then on top of that, it's like I'm working two jobs and then one I added on because my wife was out of work. And so I got this added stress and then no sleep on top of that. So it's just like, and then you're increasing your calories and your cravings. Wow. So yeah, if you're just focused and dialed in and you don't add too much excess of stress with exercising, you match it

so it's actually beneficial. It's huge. This completely saved me and changed the way I thought about home gyms. If you guys remember, those are an anti-home gym. That's right. If you listen far enough back, I was the gym rat guy and I'm just, oh, I could. I don't see myself working at home, and I was kind of not a fan of it, never had done it consistently. When we moved to Marina, when Max was a newborn, we was the first time I had built. I'd put the PRX gym inside of our garage, and this is how I train. And this is how Katrina trains. So we both trained this way.

And it was so great to have this newborn baby that I felt so present to be with. She felt so present. And we just kind of would alternate, like, I'm going to go do a set of squats. And I'd go in and then she'd come out and we were like taking turns, playing with them and going back and forth. And just we'd set, we'd even take like an hour to do two of these exercises, just taking turns on sets and just kind of trained and worked out that way. And it was so great. I felt so good. Yeah, this, we're going to give you the exercises that you could just rotate through.

And literally, if you did these exercise, if you did one of these a day or two of them in a day, you're going to get good results. You're going to get stronger. You're going to see results. and you'll be pretty consistent because it's not a big time suck. Not only that, but if you miss a day, you just pick right back up. You just literally pick right back up. Here's what the exercises are. And you can just rotate these.

Just make sure you do one of them almost every week. You have a squat, a deadlift, you have an incline press, an overhead press, a row, a lateral drag of some sort, or a lateral slag drag or tube walking, a windmill, and a perfect sit-up. if you did one of those a day for three to four or five sets every single day you're looking at 15 minutes a day you have yourself a complete strength training routine a lot of people listening might be like is that really going to work try it yeah try it's part of our grade eight right I mean that's the great eight this is the great eight exercises that we talked about just recently and they're very balanced everyone I named if you did all of these is very balanced you're working your whole body different planes of motion

you cover the swath of function of the body that's right that's right and if you just did this you're going to get like 80 to 85% of all the results you could ever expect from strength training. And I don't say that lightly. So, yes, you could squeeze out more results by more working out. But think about that. 15 minutes a day. There's a baseline, though. This is so perfectly simple.

Amazing. I even like looking at it more like the month than even like a weekly thing, too. Or it's just like you said where, you know, even if you had a rough day or two or a bad night of sleep up night, all with baby. And so you didn't train that day. You just pick up where you left off. So you just follow these eight in a row and just keep repeating it over. for an entire month and don't worry so much about this three day a week split or four day

a week like splitting your week up. It's just like, hey, try and get in there every day, try and do this one of these main exercises and work through them consecutively. You'll get stronger each time. And even if you get a day missed here or there, you just keep following it like that. At the end of the month, you'll have hit these all several times and I guarantee you'll see good results. That's right.

The next challenge is diet. Now, I think there's a couple of reasons why diet is so challenging. One of them is we just, we tend to overcomplicate the heck out of this. It's like, oh, God, okay, what do I eat? How many calories? How do I cut? Like, okay, am I eating enough to build muscle? What about body fat?

Do I got to track? No, no. Here's some simple rules. Follow simple rules. And literally, if you just do these rules, we're about to say right here, there's three of them. Your food intake will be pretty appropriate, meaning you'll eat enough to build muscle. you'll also eat enough to start to help yourself burn body fat. You'll get body composition change just by following these.

Here's the rules. Number one, only whole foods. So this is the one thing you stay away from. Stay away from processed foods. Anything that comes in bags or boxes or wrappers, things with lots of ingredients, just stay away from those. They make you overeat. They're engineered to make you overeat.

Trying to eat an appropriate amount of food. Unless you track every calorie when you're eating processed foods is almost impossible. They just make you overeat. all the data shows this. So just avoid those. The next thing, aim for 50 grams of protein for each meal. Eat it first. That's it, 50 grams.

For most men, this is appropriate. That'll be about 150 grams a day. If you're eating three meals a day, you're a big guy, four meals. That's 200 grams of protein. Eat it first because it has a natural appetite suppressing effect. Protein typically comes paired with fats. You're getting your essential fats along with your essential proteins. And then if you want to eat a little more in that meal, go and eat the rest of the food.

Eat the carbohydrates, which in the vegetables and the vegetables and stuff that comes after. But just eat the 50 grams of protein first, breakfast, lunch, and dinner. And last, drink a gallon of water a day. That's it. If every man listening to this right now just did those things and was good with those three rules, your body fat percentage would eventually fall to around 15%, give or take a few percent. You'd build muscle and strength with the routine that we listed. That's pretty much it. I said, so I just got interviewed last week by our friend Doug Bops, and this was what he wanted to talk about was, is he hearing me respond to an Alex Hormosey thing about being ripped and I'm in the comment of like actually

most women want men between 10 and 15% a peak of them actually being 12 to 13% and so the whole episode was about dieting to get down to 12 to 13 and like what does that look like and literally this is the steps I took the only difference is I said for just one month just focus on the whole foods I wasn't even I was like just there yeah if you're somebody if you're a man in your mid 20s or 30% body fat trying to get down to this the mid teens 13 to 15% and I'm like, just telling them for a month to eat whole foods will shift them several percent just by doing that. And then the next phase after that would be, okay, now go get protein.

I'm like, and he was like, what? No weighing, no, no, no weighing, no, no calorie counting, no weighing, no measure. The only thing that you're going to track is protein and follow that and lift consistently. And I said either a three day a week or like a MAP 15 type of routine. And I said, you would be surprised how far that will take the average person. It will take you at least down to that 12 to 15. You may not get on stage and win a body. No, you're not going to get shredded on this.

No. But you don't want to be shredded. You'll fall in the category that the opposite sex thinks is the ultimate. You're not going to have a belly. Yeah. You'll have flat, you know, relatively flat midsection, good muscle. You'll look fit. This is typically what women are attracted to.

It's easy to maintain. You just do these rules and you'll always fall right around there. It's a nice, slow progression. So if you follow this, your body will just nice, even change month after month after month. It's not such a low cut that you lose and sacrifice muscle mass or testosterone. You'll build muscle doing this as well while you're hitting the grams of protein. You're going to feel satisfied. So you're not going to feel like you're starving yourself.

The only thing that you're not doing or trying to take away is the processed foods. Otherwise, you're kind of chasing things, right? And you're going to feel great doing it. And it's very, very simple. That takes care of the diet part. Next step is sleep. Sleep can be a very difficult one, especially when you have newborns. But I will say this.

So when you look at dads, you're like, okay, what's the thing that gets in the way of sleep? There's two things that really get in the way for fathers. One is my mind is racing. Yeah. So I go to bed and my mind is resting. So I got to figure out a way to get my body into a parasympathetic kind of relaxed state. The other one is you're watching TV or you're on your phone. These are just sleep killers.

Okay. So I'll start with the last one first. Where blue light blockers about two hours before bed. Or better yet, turn off your electronics a couple hours. before bed. I know that's hard for some people. So wear really nice dark blue light blocking glasses that'll help reduce the the wake signal that the light ascending your brain. And then for the parasympathetic, do slow, deep, static stretching for 10 minutes before you go to bed. Breathe through the stretches. Don't hold your breath while you're doing these stretches. That'll actually do

the opposite. Breathe. Static stretching literally sends a signal to the central nervous system that says chill out and relax. And what you'll find is, especially if you're in bed and you find yourself to be tense or tight, where you get that feeling in your legs, like this solves that. And you'll go right to sleep. Well, yeah, two of you especially

include breathing techniques alongside with that to really enhance, you know, that parasympathetic state, like getting those deep, long, expanding type of, like, inhales and then a slow exhale. It's really hard not to be in a calm state after you go to that. You know what else has kind of helped me? And I've, like, really noticed the patterns of when I do it, when I don't do it in regards to getting a better night's sleep.

When I, and it's become kind of a family tradition now when we sit down for dinner, we turn it on in the background. And having like easy listening dinner jazz. Chill music. Yeah. Or Brain FM, if you like what they have on there. Classical music. Yeah, there's something about that playing in the background. It's not distracting because there's no.

it's all instrumental, so there's no words or anything I'm singing, too. It's just this soothing. It's very soothing. And I feel it like shift me from this kind of like thinking about the day, working with that, to like, oh, it's like time to relax. I'm with the family dinner that's playing in the background. And it sets the tone for winding down and all the other things you guys are talking about for bed. I've noticed a big difference with that. Yeah.

Yeah. Getting your body into this parasympathetic state before bed, even if you're only going to sleep six or seven hours because you're like, oh, my God, I'm going to bed late or I got to wake up really early. you'll get more restful sleep. And it's a very easy practice. It's like you're going to bed, 10 minutes, get on the floor, do these stretches, breathe real deep. The areas you probably are going to want to stretch are your hips.

Hips really have a lot to do with parasympathetic. So stretch the hips, stretch to hamstrings, stretch the hands a little bit, get into bed, and it makes a huge difference. Well, it's even a good practice to figure this out, like how to calm your body down, even after like a really grueling workout to get right into parasympathetic state, your recovery rate increases substantially.

You know, I think it was what a great point, Justin, is just, I think one of the things with this is, I've met different people, like maybe your jazz is not your thing, right? So I'm not telling everybody they got to listen to that. But finding what is it that gets you into that calm state. Like, and maybe it is the stretching. Maybe it's reading. You know, maybe it's just shutting the electronics off. Maybe it's having switching the lights to kind of the red light.

But it's like, I think the most important thing is literally just awareness around trying to create that. We put so much energy and focus on waking up, right? The cold plunges and the get up by five and these morning routines. We have all these routines around the morning to set the tone for the day, yet sleep is more important and we don't really put any energy and effort. I think simply making an attempt on what really does calm me down at night and what helps that process and leaning into that, I think, is the sweet. You know, it's crazy.

You said reading, reading on paper. A paper book. Tactile. Puts you to sleep. Yes. Reading on your phone wakes you up. Try it. Try it.

People read before bed all the time to wind down. This was a practice for, well, for probably for hundreds of years where they read by candlelight or have a nice soft light next to you. But it moved from that to reading on our phones, which is stimulatory, which does the opposite. So I'm glad he said that. Every time I read a textbook for college, it was like. Yeah. No, there was time.

I remember figuring that. out and I'd be laying in bed and if I was tossing and turning my mind was racing I'd get up and just open a book yeah open a book and then give me about 15 minutes of reading that late I'd be so awesome all right next up is pain so uh pain can be an issue back pain knee pain shoulder pain so here's what you do here's your resolve this pick one or three one to three mobility movements that are good for you so the ones that you know help you the most so some guys with hip pain they do the cross-legged mobility movement where they're sitting in their chair It could be something for your shoulder.

Pick one to three of them, and you just practice them throughout the day. So when you find yourself with a couple minutes, get in there and stretch and do the mobility movement, and you do that two, three times a day on a daily day. This is, by the way, this is the way to get rid of pain, whether you have time. This is how trainers, good trainers, get their clients to solve pain, is to do mobility throughout the day.

And it doesn't take much of time at all. I'm glad you prescribed a number. I think the mistake that I see some people doing, say they go through prime or prime pro and they get overwhelmed by all these great mobility moves and they try and implement a bunch of them and you you're far better off picking one or two that really give you relief and doing them more frequently than trying to do every single one in the book and only doing it occasionally and so it's like find that one or two mobility drills that make the greatest impact and then do them more frequently instead of doing more

exercises. That's right. And then there's two supplements that can help with pain, high EPA fish oil, take it with meals, and then Bromelin take it in between meals on an empty stomach. They're actually extremely effective at reducing inflammation. Finally, a recommendation for activity that benefits both white collar and blue collar workers. So both people, both avatars, have different challenges, right? White collar, you're not moving much. You work at a desk, in front of a computer, you're lucky if you get, you know, 4,000 steps a day. Blue collar, you're moving all day long, you're, you know, swinging a hammer or whatever, and your body hurts, and you're just, so one's inactive, one's very active.

What would benefit both of them? That's the same thing, walking. Walking is great activity for the white collar worker. It's also recuperative for the blue collar worker. And so what you do with the walking is try to take a couple, 10-minute walks a day. The best time to do this is after a meal to improve. improve insulin sensitivity. This for the blue color worker actually helps with pain, stiffness, stress.

For the white collar worker, it gives you the activity that you need. And that's it. Two, ten minutes a day, maybe three, and you're good. It's crazy how profound a ten-minute walk is in regards to like an energy spike too. That's right. I mean, we do it here every day and it's always a difference. We get in this studio. Before our second podcast, we have to.

And it like makes such a different to just get out. side like that. It's a short walk. We're not walking very long, but just moving like that, out in sunlight, out in fresh air, and comes back to work, it's such a huge difference. That's right. Look, if you like the show, come find us on Instagram. We'll see you at Mind Pump Media. Thank you for listening to Mind Pump. If your goal is to build and shape your body, dramatically improve your health and energy, and maximize your overall performance, check out our discounted RGB Superbundle at Mind Pumpmedia.com. The RGB Superbundle includes Maps Anabolic, Maps Performance, and Maps Aesthetic.

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

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