Mind Pump: Raw Fitness Truth - 2711: Should You Do Cardio Before or After Weights?

Episode Date: October 22, 2025

In this episode of Quah (Q & A), Sal, Adam & Justin coach four Pump Heads via Zoom. Mind Pump Fit Tip: Should You Do Cardio Before or After Weights? The rules when it comes to workout programming. (2:55) Silly social media comments, and making life easier. (22:58) The future of skincare. (28:21) Jump roping is underrated. (31:21) The best “biohack.” (33:07) The Great Debate: Should You Sit or Stand When Wiping? (35:57) Your body on TRT. (36:40) Is ‘dead internet’ around the corner? (44:21) ‘Chatboxes’ scary tactics. (46:34) Unpopular speech is the only kind that requires protecting. (54:45) #ListenerLive question #1 – Do you have any tools for measuring the volume of outdoor activities? Or just go based on how they’re recovering? (57:49) #ListenerLive question #2 – Would I see better results by doing zero cardio in a bulk, then doing cardio in a cut? (1:11:30) #ListenerLive question #3 – Looking for advice to see if my testosterone is too high? I’m getting conflicting advice, and I don’t know who to listen to. (1:25:37) Related Links/Products Mentioned Ask a question to Mind Pump, live! Email: [e-mail] Visit Caldera Lab for an exclusive offer for Mind Pump listeners! **Code MINDPUMP20 for 20% off your first order of their best products. ** Visit Joovv for an exclusive offer for Mind Pump listeners! ** Code MINDPUMP to get $50 off your first purchase. ** October Special: MAPS GLP-1 50% off! ** Code GLP50 at checkout. ** Mind Pump Store Mind Pump #1927: Performance Training Secrets from a Top NBA Trainer With Cory Schlesinger Emerging role of exosomes in cancer therapy Sit or stand when wiping IG clip Steroids vs Natural: The Muscle Building Effects Of Steroid Use AI “companions” use emotional tricks to extend chats: Harvard study Parents of 16-year-old sue OpenAI, claiming ChatGPT advised on his suicide 12,000 Brits arrested per year over social media posts Get a free Sample Pack of LMNT’s most popular drink mix flavors with any purchase! As always, LMNT offers no-questions-asked refunds on all orders. The 8-count LMNT Sample Pack doubles down on our most popular flavors: Citrus Salt, Raspberry Salt, Watermelon Salt, and Orange Salt (2 stick packs of each flavor): Visit DrinkLMNT.com/MindPump HANDGRIP DYNAMOMETER Visit Transcend for this month’s exclusive Mind Pump offer! ** Telehealth Provider • Physician Directed GET YOUR PERSONALIZED TREATMENT PLAN!  Hormone Replacement Therapy, Cognitive Function, Sleep & Fatigue, Athletic Performance and MORE! ** Mind Pump Podcast – YouTube Mind Pump Free Resources People Mentioned Brian Kula (@kulasportsperformance) Instagram Cory Schlesinger (@schlesstrength) Instagram Joe DeFranco (@defrancosgym) Instagram  

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or training gear over at Mindpumpstor.com. I'm talking right now, hit pause, head on over to Mindpumpstor.com. That's it. Enjoy the rest of the show. Cardio and weights. It's a great combination if you want overall health and fitness, but which one do you do first? What are the rules when it comes to workout programming?

Cardio first, weights first, which one gives you better results and does it matter what your goal is? Is that how we can answer this question? We're going to break it down and break down more right now. Let's get into it. Oh, it matters. The rules. This came up for me because of my conversations with my daughter with, she's getting,

she just want to lose no muscle. Yeah. She's going to get ready for sport, though, right? Is that what it is? She is getting ready for soccer. And so I'm gains. Yeah, I'm helping her with conditioning. And so this whole conversation with her came up and she's like, well, when do I do it?

Do I lose gains? What's the deal? And I'm trying to explain to her, you know, how the body adapts and how certain adaptations will take away from others. So, you know, when it comes to like balance or if you want more stamina or if you want more muscle than programming matters and what you do the most matters and when you do it actually makes a difference. And this is a question. This has got to be one of the most. most common questions we get. How much do you think doing it fed or in a calorie surplus or deficit plays a role also?

Performance. Oh, yeah. That makes a big difference. Well, not just performance, even on your results with it. Because this is the debate or the conversation here is like, okay, cardio before or after weights, depending on your goal. And is your goal to build muscle or is to get more stamina or is it to both? And I think that doing that in a calorie surplus makes as much, if not more of a difference than either arguing whether it should be done before or after also.

Yeah, I think that calorie surplus, I mean, that's a good point. I think the calorie surplus or deficit conversation revolves around either fat loss or performance gain. I want endurance. Well, you probably shouldn't train in a deficit. I want strength. Well, you probably shouldn't lift in a deficit. Right. The deficit really has more to do with fat loss.

Well, I'm always take away from... I'm really thinking of your daughter in this example right now because I obviously don't think she isn't at all in desire to lose weight at all. She wants to build muscle and now she wants to build muscle and improve endurance. And so, remaining in a...

I mean, again, making sure you're a calorie surplus. Feeding that specific adaptation. More important, having it... Yeah. That's the most important for sure, especially for a young athlete. Right, because if she tips... And I think that's the point,

I just want to make is just like, even though we're about to get into before or after, the biggest difference on whether you maintain that muscle or lose that muscle, especially once you start introducing cardio, is that you are, and your maintenance is no longer the same because now you're introducing more training. And so pumping the calories is probably one of the most important. And again, the reason why I bring this up is this was a bit of a challenge for me, because when I first started building muscle, I still loved playing basketball a lot.

And you were playing a lot. And I was playing a lot. And it really hindered my muscle gain. Like, I wasn't necessarily losing anymore, but I was struggling to gain while simultaneously playing basketball. Yeah, so when you look at how the body adapts, now part of this is that your body has limited ability

to recover and then adapt. So when you are piling more and more stress on the body, you're taking away from your body's ability to recover and adapt, just because it's just more stress. So there's that. Then there's also that adapting in some directions actually takes away from other directions. What I mean by that is a larger muscle has a typically worse capacity for stamina and endurance. This is just the fact.

And to really oversimplify it, If you look at the surface area to total volume of a cell, the larger the cell gets the ratio of surface area to volume changes so that getting oxygen and nutrients inside the muscle. Just takes more work. It just, you know, a small, small, small, tiny cell has got a large surface area to total volume. So things can get in there very quickly.

You get a large cell in this change. So larger muscles, all things being equal, I'm oversimplifying. So I know this. There's probably some science people are like, Well, there's this, yes, there's, there's a massive oversimplification, but a larger muscle, all things being equal will have less endurance, but a larger muscle contracts harder. So it's stronger. So if you push in one direction, you tend to take away from one. And that's just the rule when it comes to certain adaptations. And then the way the body adapts, it generally will prioritize the one that you put the most energy towards, which tends to be the one you do first. So if you want endurance, do cardio first. If you want muscle,

do strength training first. Now, I know what most people watching and listening are thinking is they're thinking, because most people don't train for performance. Even though I know that makes Justin upset, most people don't train for performance.

They train for aesthetics, right? They're like, look, endurance muscle gain, that's all great. I just want to look good. The majority. So what should I do first if I just want to look good? Well, if you just want to look good, you're probably better off prioritizing building muscle over stamina or strength over stamina because of the way it affects body condition.

Yeah, but let's talk about your daughter's specific situation because I think it's a great example. And I'm sure many people are in this situation where she's been currently really focused before soccer started to kick up. She'd been really focusing on building strength, building muscle. And that was it. She's loving it. That was it. That was not important. Now, okay, soccer comes out.

Now, obviously stamina, endurance ends up being a major. priority, but still not more of a priority than all that muscle I built. So I'm imagining that the recommendation you probably gave her was, we're still going to strength train first. We're still going to eat a calorie surplus, but now you'll do your cardio training afterwards, I think. Or did you actually go, hey, let's go stamina training first? Because I think she could still get the benefits and endurance that she wants for her

sport without, with sacrificing less muscle than a she would have do at first. Typically, yes. But because we have a very short window, she gave me four weeks. So we have four weeks to build stamina and endurance. Some of her workouts, I'm having her do sprints before. And some of her workouts are just sprints. Yeah. So the strength training now has taken, she's doing far less of it instead of three days a week, it's down to once or twice.

And there are a couple days where it's just conditioning because we got to get that. Now, four weeks isn't a super short period of time. You can build tremendous changes in endurance in a short period of time. But you've got to be smart about it Because what I don't want to do Now we're getting into the weeds a little bit But you guys know this If you just pile more on top of more

Then you start to run into problems And young athletes, especially young female athletes Have a very high risk of certain types of injury Which I'm also, as a dad I'm way more interested in preventing injury than I am In maximizing every little bit of performance. I want to make sure she's just a tear in ACL Which is like, you know, the odds of that on a female athlete

I mean, I actually think four weeks is a good amount of time for endurance for yeah for conditioning um to your point that man you could really i mean this is the reason why uh every every kid that played sports in high school is used to hell week you know i don't care what sport you play whether it's football basketball whatever uh and you have a week of basically conditioning now granted you're not in your top form right until probably a month or two later into the season which is pretty pretty standard that's standard even for the professional level You'll hear guys will, they'll get that conditioning training going a week or two before the seasons, preseason starts, then preseason starts.

And it's really a good couple months before they feel like they're at their. Do you guys think, Justin, you'll know this because you, I mean, you were a high level of football. Do you, first off, do they still do Hell Week? And Hell Week was, if I'm not mistaken, you go in for a week and it's like two workouts a day and they beat the crap, buddy. Yeah. Is it really to boost endurance and stamina in a short period of time? Or is it more to weed kids out? At the high school level, it depends.

But, yeah, a lot of times, hell week is to kind of, like, filter out the serious. Well, maybe for, maybe for freshmen, but not for, what's your, once you're varsity, you're on the team. Well, I mean, yeah, it depends if you, if you're making cuts or not or if they're just accepting everybody on the team. Yeah. These days, like, it's hard to get kids to actually, like, sign up. So they don't cut as much. Yeah, they don't really cut. Like, it's interesting.

Yeah, there's not a lot of, like, volume, like, they used to have to really do that. Could you look that? I was curious about that because of all the, you know, concussion stuff and the control. That made a huge dent. That's why I'm, like, half the time on the podcast, I'm trying to kind of advocate

and, like, kind of bring some light to the benefit. Yeah, because I didn't even think about that how much. I mean, back when, so when I was a kid in high school football looked like this. In the 90s, it was a lot of kids. Oh, yeah, freshman year, they took everybody. And the team had, like, 60 kids on it. I mean, you look at the side. of the freshman football team

and there'd be 40 kids who wouldn't even see the field it was so crazy but they took everybody in and that was kind of the friend and then you get to JV once JV started then you started making cuts

but even then you still had a big roster you know and then Varsie got a little bit slimmer but there was always such a high demand that they made cuts before they came into the season yeah and typically so Hell Week is a lot of just pure conditioning and then we would do double days

the following week so that was more like practice heavy so you would practice and trying to establish, like, these plays and drills takes a lot of volume. And so, you know, you have to, like, get as many. And it's almost like one of those things you can get away with what you can get away with based on the standards of the league. And so they'll over practice. Like, we even did, like, sometimes we did, like, three practices just because there's

so much to establish with offense alone. Yeah. Yeah, I kind of feel like a big part of it was to, weed out kids. So, if you... Initially, yeah. Because so many kids want to play... I don't know if it's like...

I don't think it's like... I mean, it wasn't... The reason why... So it wasn't like that for me. You... Once you get to conditioning week, you made the team. Like, we're not weeding anybody out anymore.

This is to the end... And what it looked like for us in basketball and soccer was morning was conditioning. Afternoon was play running. So like, and it was the week to two weeks before season started. And in the morning was pure...

Which was always miserable. We're getting up at five, six o'clock in the morning to just run your ass off. But that's what morning looks like. And then you come back in the evening or late afternoon. And now we're running drills. We're running plays. And we're learning all that stuff. And that's what it looked like.

But I do remember how much, you know, we're all kids. So we were, you know, goofing off in the summer and playing video games and eating junk food. And so, you know, I wasn't good enough an athlete that I was thinking about, you know, basketball in the summertime. You know, I'm wakeboarding. So, yeah. So, yeah. So, yeah. So, yeah.

So that week is. is hell. That's why they call it that to get back and share with that. But how much of a jump you make in one week Yeah, stamina adaptations are crazy. It's incredible. Yeah, they're crazy fast.

They happen very quickly. But yeah, when it comes to workout programming, like what you do in the beginning of the workout is where you're going to get, this is just kind of a general rule where you get most of the adaptations. This is true for body parts too. So training an exercise

or a body part first in the workout tends to prioritize it, which this can sometimes break certain rules, right? So let's say you're doing a standard split, chest shoulders and triceps today, and you're like, my shoulders are a total weak spot. But almost every workout plan you'll see with a chest shoulder tricep split, we'll start with chest. Now, there's great rationale behind this, right? Chest exercises require both the strength and stability of the shoulders and the strength of the triceps. So you don't want to fatigue the shoulders because

then how you're going to do chest effectively, right? But if your shoulders are a weak part and your chest is a strong part. Well, now we, this is a little bit of a bodybuilding principle. Why not hit shoulders first? In fact, we wrote MAPS muscle mommy this way. We did shoulders before chest on some of those workouts. Yes. Mainly because women are far more interested.

Most women are going to care more about having nice shoulders than a, that's right. That's right. Which breaks one of the quote unquote, you know, kind of rules with that kind of stuff. Same thing with like isolation or compound lifts first. Usually compound lifts first. But isolation exercises first. If you have trouble connecting, I think this is a great way to connect to particular muscle. You do an isolation exercise for a body part, then move into compound lift, and it just changes

the feel and the technique of the exercise, the compound lift, so you can feel that body part even better. Yeah. Yeah, it's interesting, too, like I was thinking about, like, the conditioning itself. And it's changed a lot with, like, people's strategy for that. And, like, they've actually reduced quite a lot of the volume because it's unnecessary. Yep. And the other thing, too, it's like, if you.

you think about like maintaining muscle mass, if you're, you know, running sprints and you're doing it in a diligent way where you're not going for too much of an extended period of time, you're actually like hitting fast twitch muscles and it's preserving the muscle more effectively as opposed to like thinking of this is like an endurance. Like I need to like extend the amount of time I'm running and running on this type of energy system. So you recently, I mean, it was just what last year the year before, you coached high school football and that's what a good 20 plus years more that since you were playing in high school? Oh, yeah.

What was most, what did you see most different about, like, the conditioning and training aspect of it compared to when you were a kid? Well, I think they were trying to resurrect a lot of the old ways we used to do that. And I was trying to advocate for a different way based upon what I've talked to, like people like Kula and a lot of these, like, strength conditioning coaches, mainly for, again, and you're seeing this in the NFL, like, people dropping, like, flies, you know, with injuries and just the amount of the extended amount of time you could have them play at a high level.

I think that we really have to reevaluate that and also the amount of like collisions. And so they're really monitoring that a lot more so with like these high contact type sports to drill more specifically the movements of the cuts like and be more diligent instead of it being aimless running. So it's not just like I'm running like 100 yards sprints constantly because it just doesn't have that same

translation to the game. So if you get more specific with gameplay bouts and you time it. So let's say it's basketball and you know that you're going to have like 30 seconds where you're moving really hard and explosively and then boom, you rest. Yeah, you know what we forget too is movement efficiency. We look for what we tend to train for is like gross stamina like general overall stamina. Right. And we forget that

moving better reduces your energy requirements and output. So, like, if you have good technique... Exactly, dude. Here's a good... This is a simple, silly example. If you've ever watched two people play either tennis or back-in-the-day racquetball

and you'd see someone who's really good versus someone who's just athletic but not super good, the really good player just places the ball and just has great technique and they're just chilling. The other person's running back and forth and they're getting fatigued.

Like, if you know how to move well, you require less energy. That's such a good point, dude. like it honestly like if they get proficient in these movements and then you really establish that early yep uh on the field they're they're you gas out crazy yeah you don't gas out because you've got really really good technique yeah so if coaches really focused more and peered into that concept they would do so more more specific type movements and then i'm also hearing too which i think is new to like our generation now uh it wasn't when we're kid is load management right is like that was uh

and i remember when we were talking to um who's our boy uh cannot think from the son played coach for the sons right now he slipped Corey Slesinger thank you Corey shout out to Corey you know how that we've now moved into that era where and you see it now in professional sports and you never used to say to see this in the 80s and the 90s where

you know Michael Jordan played like every game every minute like the whole time where now like they're very mindful of how many games their minutes they play and they like it's totally different it was like you used to just keep your best guy out on the court as much as you possibly can where now you're like thinking long term like oh once he hits to a certain amount

of minutes in a week and time. And like, I remember Corey blowing my mind that they were actually tracking that on the practice level. And I didn't think that we had done. Outside of them practicing that, you know, all the extended amount of movement. Here's what's really interesting because I've seen some studies on this. Now, there's not a ton of data to support this, but it makes me very curious. And based on my experience, I would lean in this direction. I'd love your guys's input on this. So the question, original question, was cardio before or after weights, right? Depends on your goal, blah, blah, blah. There are some studies that show that separating them completely is actually better.

In other words, instead of doing cardio before or after weights, do cardio by itself on a day, do weights by itself on a day, or differently, a week of strength, a week of endurance, a week of strength. There was a study on that that showed that it improved overall performance. Instead of doing it all in one workout or throughout the week, they did a focus of strength, then a focus of endurance. And it was literally every other week. That's how you get good at it. Well, this is what Corey was talking about, right? That was what was so cool and unique. Not only that, but he was communicating to the strength coach,

and he based off of what he, or he was the strength coach, but communicated to the basketball coach, and he'd be like, what was practice like? Yeah. You know, what kind of intensity did you run them at? And they were actually tracking and monitoring the amount of steps. And then he would turn around, and when he would get to his strength training,

he would modify the intensity based off of how hard they went in that. And so, I mean, you really should be. I think to the point how this all started referring back to when we grew up was just like throw the whole kitchen sink. Everything. Yeah. Just make it hard. You know, as hard as possible and you're going to get some stamina. You get that where it's like much more methodical.

And so, you know, how this all this conversation started, you know, what is the most methodical approach to the, you know, student athlete like your daughter, who has worked in the off season to build muscle still really cares about keeping all that muscle, but knows they have to get. It's interesting. So what I did with her was I actually, like I said, I split it up. And now I'm glad I did. So now she'll go to the gym. In fact, she was upset with me, of course, because she just wants to lift. And I'm like, no, no, no, today all you're going to do are sprints. And I, you know, broke it down for how she's going to do the sprints and how she's going to coast in between, wait for heart rate to come down the whole deal.

What about lifting? What about lifting? Next workout will be just lifting. And I'm so glad I did that. I think that that's a better way. You don't convoluted it that way. You don't convoluted it. I think your adaptations are better.

Yes. think the intention is better. They don't take away from each other because they're divided. And I, you know, I would like to personally, in fact, I'm playing with the idea now, as we're talking, of personally experimenting with this with myself, just because of my training and what I, you know, I tend to always do and not do. I think I might experiment with that where I'll do like a week of what I like to do and then a week of, like, different stuff and alternate it.

So at least I have that week where I have my, you know, the stuff that my ego likes to do. God, I imagine you would get in phenomenal shape. Probably. Like, I mean, it's the hardest part about, I think, who we are or what we do is, is knowing what I should do and then falling, you know, falling into patterns. Yeah, yeah. I'm well aware of what my regimen should look like, look like for, like, to have all these optimal things. But it's funny how, apparently I need to go in a cut. But again, wait, wait, I was going to bring this up.

What happened? Bring it up. Someone commented on a video yours or something? Yeah, you know, and they're trying to be funny and, you know, and I, like, that's probably what it is, dude. How many comments? It's just the thing when you're like, overhead position or like, you know, my shirt, like, lifts up because I'm like this. And it's just not really bad. Oh, your footbook came out.

And then you don't flex at all. So you're just letting it all like out like that. I'm like, oh, fuck. You know, you got me. But so, yeah, so I was like, ah, like, it's, I'm like, it isn't even hard. Like, okay, cool. So I just have to, like, reduce calories for a, yeah, I'll show you. No.

How many comments was it? One, probably one. He was probably, like, three. Oh, you got three? Okay. So that was significant enough to where I was like, leave them alone. It's fine, dude. Hey, one of the things I've learned is because we have such, I mean, because we, we razz each other so much on here that.

They think that the. Yeah. So most people. probably are just... Yeah, how many times have you, I've seen you do this couple times where someone will razz you because we do on the show?

Yes. And here's the thing. You listen to the podcast. It seems like... You know us. Yes. So I've seen Adam writ, like fire back hard. And the guys like, hey, man, I love you guys.

Yeah, I don't do that anymore. I don't do that. I haven't done that in a long time. I used to early on because I wasn't sure. And I was like, hey, someone's going to come at me like that. I'm going to fucking respond to say. But then I come so hard that the person's like, ah, yeah, I was just kind of...

I love the show. You know, but it just doesn't land the same. So more than likely, that's probably the situation. Probably because everybody's at the Olympia this weekend. Oh, yeah. You know, so everybody's shredded. It was a big, it was a big weekend. Yeah.

I don't really follow anymore. But, you know, it's funny, whenever that happens, by the way, I was just talking Adam about this. I'm also realizing that we've always done this, a bodybuilding. They'll take the current champion and comparing to, like, the champion of like 10 or 20 years ago, be like, they don't look the same. They were way better. Like, you know, we were doing that, too, back in the day.

I wonder if that's just a thing. It is. You know? Just the old, like they were better before. Yeah. It's like the old dad who's always talking about like, oh, that generation's so weak. Every generation says that. Every dad talks about what a bunch of pussies you guys all are and this generation will do

for the next year. But that's true for ours. It is. It's a little bit. Yeah, just degrades. Well, the reason why it's so probably is because I believe that every of those generations truly believe that. I mean, it is. I mean, you're definitely.

I can't. argue with my dad. Right. Tell me how he grew up. And I bet you, his death. Yeah, the Great Depression was above that. So, I mean, they were going to go out there. They're a bunch of wusses.

So, yeah, no, I think that's just, that's one of those things that's common is that we can. And I think that has a lot to do with probably technology. Yeah. And convenience. I mean, the market, the market, the demand for making life easier physically is so strong. I mean, it's always innovating that. Yeah, that's exactly. So it's like, it's inevitable, what's going to happen.

I mean, Even if you try to go out of your way to make other things difficult, the market has done such a good job of trying to simplify, make everything else easier that if you adopt half of it, you're a wuss. You know what's crazy? Or you're going to be looked at from the previous generation as a wuss? You know, it's wild about all that?

I brought this up before. I was thinking about this the other day. Like there's certain things we take for granted now, like dishwasher, washing machine, microwave, you know, of course, computers. that have really reduced the amount of time that you need to do certain things. Like the time-saming devices for the home are crazy.

Like, if you look at the data on how much a, literally a washing machine, dishwasher and microwave took away from the amount of time that people had to spend doing those things. But what's crazy is we have less time. We've created all this time-saving devices. Crammles those stuff in between. And now we've, yet we feel like we have, like we're trying to fit every time.

everything in more than ever, which is wild. You know, it always, it always, like, opens my eyes. So every once in a while, Katrina and I have a day or two off of Max. He's with his mom or my sister or something like that. And I know you guys have experienced this when it's, it's been a long time since something like that happened. And you're just like, and you don't have, like normally you, we probably all, you know, if a kid's gone for a day or two, you have plans, right?

But if you don't have plans, how wild that day is. I mean, of like, what are we going to do? It's like so many hours. Like, there's so much of nothing. I was like, this was most of my life. What was I doing? You know what I does? It makes me go back. God, what a wuss I was back when I didn't have a kid.

I could have built so many companies. I could have done so many things. I could have read so many more books. I had the same thought. Oh, I had that thought all the time because Katrina and I, we just had a day like that where we didn't have Max and we actually didn't have like plans. What did you guys do? Just sit around?

Well, yeah. I mean, we had a beautiful day ourselves in the house. And we ended up doing something around the house and lounging. But we did all of it. I mean, we worked out, we lounged, we watched movies, we had epic sex, we swam in the pool. And we still had time after it was like, we have three hours left. We still had time. I was like, how's this possible?

That's when I get a random call from Adam. Hey, man. Yeah, what's going on? I don't know. What's awesome happened? No, you were going to say hi. Like, what's going on? Just don't have a kit for a day.

Yeah, it's a trip. Dude, I was reading up on exosomes because this is like a big thing in skin care. So Caldera Lab, one of our sponsors, uses exosomes in a lot of the products. Do you know what these things are? So I looked up what they are to, because I keep hearing about it. So it was really, wasn't it Dr. Conn't it put us on to this first?

Yes, yes. Like I didn't even know what they were until, and he was, I remember him telling us, like, this is the future. Yep. Of like everything is going to be around this. So these are very small, very, very small. Baby cells, right?

Membrane-bound vesicles. And they're, they essentially, what they do is they contain things like proteins, lipids, nucleic acids. Anyway, they tell cells to do things. And so when they put these in skincare products, you're essentially signaling the skin to boost collagen production, to reduce inflammation. You are signaling your skin to become essentially younger. Oh, you're signaling. So I was under the impression. Not too unlike a peptide, but different. Yeah, I thought they were like baby stem cells. Yes. Kind of. You can get them from stem cells.

They're not baby stem cells, but you can get them from stem cells. Okay. But they do signal cells. So they're actually signaling cells. So I was under the impression and why it's so amazing. It's like, you know, part of the aging process, right, is our cells get all of our cells. They're age. They're no longer 10 years old.

They're 50 years old. And then 16, 70, and so on. And the idea of you putting these exosomes in your body is like you are basically rejuvenating all these cells and making you younger. And so that's not what we're doing. We're signaling our cells that we already have. You're signaling the cells. Is that we were like replacing?

No, you're signaling the cells to do things like rejuvenate, reduce inflammation, boost collagen production. And I'm looking up some of the data on these, which is pretty wild. By the way, the exosomes are being looked at, not just for skin, but for other uses in medicine. Repairing the heart, repairing the organs. but real easy to use it on the skin. You just rub it on the skin. Because the delivery method would be difficult

for other areas, like the heart. Like, how did you get, how did you get exosomes to the heart? You have to, like, inject it. Direct it to the heart. Right, right. But, I mean, these studies I'm seeing, I'm looking up studies.

By the way, they're studying it for cancer, cancer research. So it's pretty interesting, pretty interesting stuff. I didn't know that Caldera was going that direction. They are. And they use plant-based exosomes because all their products are natural, right? That's synthetic.

So, and the new stuff that I use. that I used with the exosomes I can tell the difference not it's not the I love the good but it's the other ones I guess I'm trying

the eye stuff the cream yeah I'm looking tired all the time yeah dude tired of five why you do I just

double hit in the rest of the day tired of fat 45 you need some you need some caldera and juve it's fine

oh yeah that's the other one oh you know what I told you I'm going to start Jump roping and sprinting, dude. That's like my back on the horizon. Yeah, combine it. Hold on.

You're doing jump rope again? Yeah. When did you start? I just started over the weekend. How do you feel? Oh, is it because of the comments? No, it's just because, no, I, I didn't care about that. I was like doing it anyways.

He's a liar, dude. He started against the, oh, you guys shamed him into doing all the stuff, you guys. No, no, no. I wanted to do it anyway because I sit. Okay, so here's a thing. I've been going to my son's practice for lacrosse. And I sit there in the stand. And then, like, I've started to kind of, like, walk the track because it's, like, what else you do?

I love watching him practice because it's like, this is a new sport for him. He's doing really well. And, like, it fires up that old, like, competitive spirit for me. But just seeing everybody moving, you know, on the field, it's like, I got this massive fomo. So, you know, that's just one of those things. You're so different than me. That kicks you up. I would have been out there.

I would have got the comfy chairs for the purpose. I would have been out there in one practice. It doesn't work like that for me. And I would be like, watch those guys be like, I need to get myself like one of those. I want to get out there and like play. I thought he was going to say, you know, sitting like that. That's what I got too. I'm already thinking like those good bleacher chairs they have with the back and they're like the cup holders.

No, I look at it like I wake up and my hips hurt and, you know, this hurts. I was like, if I'm going to hurt, I might as well do it doing something cool. Yeah. Yeah. Well, jump broke. I'm tired of like the, oh, God, I woke up and I hurt. I think jumprope is super underrated for agility. Well, it's not underrated in combat sports, but for like a workout.

I think it's incredible. I did it a lot, yeah. And it definitely, because I just noticed right away if I'm not on my forefoot and I'm like very flat-footed and I'm like walking or running, it's, that gets to me. Yeah, yeah, yeah, get that spring back. You brought up juve. I had somebody asked me recently what the best bio, what's the best biohacking, you know, thing? And I hate that term, biohacking. Yeah.

But, you know, I would consider biohacking category, everything that's not the exercise diet. Well, not natural, right? Right. Well, just anything that's not exercise, diet and sleep, right? What's a, what are the things outside of that make the biggest difference? And I would have to say outside of the big rock stuff, it's got to be the red light therapy. That's what the data shows. Well, I don't know anything that I would even come close to comparing that and the biohack.

It has the best studies for sure. A lot of the other stuff. I mean, sauna is up there, but would that be considered a biohack? It's been around forever. I don't really consider that a biohack. That's kind of like, even though it has tremendous benefits. But red light has got to have. By the data on it is crazy.

It's crazy. I mean, for people listening, look up studies on red light therapy for muscle gain, recovery, hair loss for testosterone production, for, did I say, pain, inflammation, healing, fat loss. It's crazy. Yeah. It's crazy the data on it. So I was always, you cleared this up for me the other day. And I thought, I thought that the red light saunas were used.

using the same red light as the red light therapy it's not no it's not red light it's infrared so that it definitely means i should combine the two of them because i always thought that was like i mean that your panel in there yeah that's so what i'm i'm or i just ordered mine um my sauna so we're going to build out that outside which by the way infrared the sauna that i typically use is at the gym and it's just a hot it's a traditional sauna where it just gets really hot 190 degrees you bought an infrared though didn't you i bought an infrared one yeah and it's not nearly as hot, but you sweat fast. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I'll just suddenly, I'm just sweating my butt off. It doesn't feel that hot in the room, but you start crazy sweating. Yeah, sweaty like that. Yeah. So that's, I mean, have you put your juve panel in there yet? No, we have it on the outside. Yeah, so that's, I'm going to put the juve panel either in it or right against the glass so I can get it while I'm sitting in there and combine the two of those.

You know, for microplastics, for, what is it, xenoestrogen and stuff like that, sauna's got to be the best. kind of your best bet. Just son-or- all the longevity studies that have came out for is, literally that was the motivation for it. When I saw, you know, just doing that

two to three times a week, the benefits of that. And I'm like, you know what? Like, that's a bare minimum. I can be doing that on days that if I didn't train at my house. And I like doing that anyway. Yeah, Cillium husk. And then, yeah, like, sauna.

I've been cognizant- Yeah, because of the microplastics talk. How's your poop? The Cillium husk really makes that big difference. It's been great, man. I mean, it does because it really helps. It is. It's the old guy.

Oh, I saw that the stand-up sit-down clip is gone all over the place. I had all kinds of. It's such a debate. Oh, really? It's so weird that I never have had that conversation or even thought about that. Is it split like a 50-50? It's one of those, if you know how the toilet paper one? More people sit than stand.

Yeah. Is that right? Yeah, it's like a little bit more people. That's like the, it makes sense. That's what the, the toilet paper roll thing, right? Is this way the right way or that way or the, where the. roll the way yes way it's like one of those things you are behind you could tell if somebody has kids based off their toilet paper roll because the aesthetic per yeah the aesthetic way to do it

is over yeah but if you have kids and they do this they'll just spin that crap down and then yeah so you have the the other way yeah yeah speaking they speaking getting old and stuff my buddy just started TRT and so I haven't seen him a little while so he's like on week six or of TRT oh yeah it's good oh I can see a difference yeah he's he's he's telling me he's like he does Jiu-Jitsu and he's like, yeah, you know, I feel more energy, this and that. Of course, I'm trying to talk him to take him more. They're super, they're super conservative. I'm like, you know, you can take way more, right? He's like, well, so far I feel so good. I don't know if I want to. I'm like, all right, whatever. But I could tell, I could tell by like how we looked. Yeah.

Like he looked less. Remember that, that study that came, when did that study come out? The one where they compared, the group who worked out naturally, the group who took steroids and didn't work out, and then the group who took steroids and worked out. And the group, that didn't do any exercise, but testosterone surpassed the group. Built a little bit more muscle than the natural guys who were lifting and they didn't work out.

That's a little deflating. I know. That's not going to last, by the way. I think if you extend that study out, then you're done. You're not going to get in the way. Yeah, yeah, because you get adapted. Of course.

You got to lift. I mean, I think that's the point that I'm glad you brought that up because I've heard people talk about it and it's just like, it just shows you what a huge. It's like, okay, you do understand that. Like in a window.

Yeah, well, you elevate testosterone. throwing levels like that, and your body is going to go like, oh, all the things that you normally do, you change nothing, but you still, you can go more anabolic. So you get up and down from your chair, you pick things up, you move around. And so it's a signal, it'll, it'll signal, hey, we need some muscle for this stuff that we do. It'll adapt and it'll build. And in a short window, it'll do it at a faster rate than somebody who's got. It wears off. After like four or five months, you're not going to, I'd say, I would say even less than that. I'd say within, after you get the first initial gains from your daily activity

from not working out and taking to the sauce oh yeah you're at a you're at a hard yeah you're not going to get anything else but I could tell because he walks in and I was like hey dude look at you bro you look all and then he's talking to me and we were at a party and they had it catered so we like tacos this and that he's like dude I'm so heavy today what the heck's going on I'm like here's what's going to happen

if you go on TRT and you don't clean up your diet you're just going to be bigger I said you want to get lean keep packing on you got yeah because you're going to hold some water too buddy so he's like yeah big and red yeah Remember with all this guy You always could tell that guy in the gym You know what I'm saying?

Like changed nothing But added testosterone Just a bunch of water weight I had this guy that worked for me I won't say his last name His name was Mike It's common name so I could say it And he would take

So much gear He was on so much steroids And all he did was lift And eat garbage He did nothing else So he had a big belly And he was red And he just didn't look good

He just terrible And he was like, he must have been 30. I think he was 30, bro. But he looked like he was 40 because of just the wear and tear on his body. I mean, to me, it's, it's people like that in those, those stories that really give TRT a bad rap for what it is. It's like one, probably take, well, as I'm saying, one, he's probably doing way more than that.

Diet's terrible. And so that's a situation where that guy's not healthier for that, you know what I'm saying? But you take somebody who is in their mid to late 40s or beyond. that has low testosterone, you put them on a therapeutic dose of testosterone and you eat whole foods and you work out is life-changing, life-changing. That guy that's in his mid to late 40s or older

who has low or moderately low testosterone with an increase there with a healthy diet, that guy will feel like he's 17 to 20 again. In fact, I'll make this argument. But you know what, though, Adam, be careful with that because the 17 to 20 feeling, it's not quite that, you know, you still, I'm still 46, I can still tell. Yeah, no, you're right.

That's fair. You know what I mean? Yeah. Yeah, yeah. I would say, but you definitely feel it. Energy, energy and strength-wise, you feel like that again. Close. You don't, you don't feel like it's the recovery.

I don't bounce. The recovery and movement. I hurt. But also, I mean, that has a lot to do with that, like, you don't train that way. Yeah, I know what I'm saying? Like, maybe if I was, it'd be interesting to see if I actually were to apply myself, in the performance direction and really try. Yeah, if I, if I would feel close to what I felt like.

Very gradual steps in that direction. Yeah. That's what I've, yeah, like I mentioned that. It was like very short windows of jump roping, like a comparison to what I used to do. So I'll make, I'll make a statement that I think this is going to be a controversial one. So if I make the argument that low testosterone versus higher with TRT, so let's say you're walking around, we'll use total numbers, okay. Let's say you're 200.

Let's say your total number is, you know, 250, which is below the threshold. Going from 250 to 800 with TRT, generally, I'll say generally, because there's always caveats, we'll improve your health, okay? Now, what if you're at like 400, to go from 400 to say like 900, I don't know if it would make a difference. In fact, I think super high testosterone, even within range, without exercise and good diet, it might either be a waste or might actually produce some problems. You know, because...

Oh, without exercise? Without, because that's the conversation to help my buddy. He's like, should I go on? Because his wasn't like below the threshold, but he was kind of in the, it was like a 400, which isn't great. And he's like, I don't feel so good.

He's like, should I go on TRT? I'm like, look, you do Jiu-Jitsu, you work out, like, you're going to use it. Yes. If you just sat around and did nothing and you were a couch potato and you ate garbage, I would say probably not a good idea

because now you're throwing, you know, this kind of gas on a fire. Maybe not a good idea. Body mass increases. not good mass. Yeah, but if you, if, since he works out, uh, and this is something he focuses on, I think it makes it, it makes it, it's a good idea.

Oh, I mean, here's here, first of all, if you're going back to the mid, the late 40s or older, guy who's at anywhere, say anywhere, but even up to 400, 400 and below, your first move is to just go lift weights. Because a lot of times guys might go from 200 up to four, five, six hundred just from lifting weights. So that should be the first, that should be your first line of defense anyways is go work out and see where it moves from there. And then if you don't get enough

or you still don't feel great and then you put on the testosterone, oh, it'll be, and you stay with working out, huge difference. But what a waste of money or a waste of resources to throw that on there

and then not work out. I mean, that to me, and the only way I would ever recommend that, you'd have to be like really low. Low to where a general practitioner, what do you say? Like where you go 200 and a GP would go, hey, you need a, you need a...

Right. And the argument for that is your testosterone fluctuates based off of your lifestyle it's very very sensitive to it i don't know if having high testosterone all the time is a good idea when you lead a really unhealthy lifestyle because now you're you're you've got this anabolic drive that's going to what you know and it could cause my theory is it could cause issues again if you're really low different but if you're like in the middle low yeah either waste of time or maybe not even good for you well i i i think i've told you this before

that i noticed that if i if i don't work out that i get some of the the side effects, like Garnicomassia and stuff like that. Right. Because it's almost, and I don't know if that's because I'm putting it to use. And so there's less of it that aromatizes. I don't know if that's how that works or not. But I certainly can tell you from year, over a decade, you know, and a half of being on TRT, there is a difference when I'm on it and I'm working out versus when I don't.

I've had plenty of times where I haven't. And it seems like when I don't, some of it aromatizes and I'm sensitive in there. As long as I'm training two, three times. a week, and it has, it feels like it has somewhere to go and work. Yeah. I feel perfect. Also this weekend, we're all hanging out. My cousin Alex was there.

You guys know Alex. He's, uh, you know, founder of a dynasty tech company or whatever. And we start conversation turned to AI, which he's in the middle of that whole thing, right? He's in the whole, and we were talking amongst each other. So Alex and I have all my cousins and my brother and all of us. And Alex and I were trying to communicate just how much it's going to change things. They're just like, no, it's this and that. And my cousin Alex is like.

you have people in your family that don't think it's going to like yeah dude they're like well no not really and he's like you have no idea because what i was saying to them they were asking this is how conversation started so we're talking and they're like hey sal i heard you guys at mind pump are really moving towards coaching and training and people and i said yeah i said we did that because we wanted to we love trainers and coaches we think they have the most impact but it's also great timing because dead internet is around the corner and a lot of them didn't know what that was I explained it. I said, most content is going to be AI.

Now, my other cousins and my brother, no, people want to see people. They want to know real people. I'm saying, they're not going to know the difference. They're not going to care. Yeah. They just want to be entertained. They're going to like the content. Informed.

Yeah. You're not going to care. I said the future of the internet is mostly AI produced content. I can't remember the last, like, article I've read on Facebook that was real. Yeah. Every single one, I go back and cross check and it's like, oh, this is totally false. Yeah, I'm watching, I'm watching movie trailers.

Yeah. And getting tripped. Yeah. You know what I do? Now I go in the comments and then people, oh, this is AI. Oh, I was all excited. They were making, I didn't make this new movie. I saw this cool article.

And it was like this kid that was autistic that they got left in the woods or like had been lost and like, you know, was gone for a day. Came back. And apparently he claimed that like he was saved by wolves. Like the wolves like helped, you know, walk him back. And everybody's, no, he's full of it and all this stuff. And then there was these trail cams that proved that showed him walking in these wolves were walking alongside him, like, back to his mom. But it turns out the trail cam was AI driven. It was all fake.

It's all fake. I'm like, oh. We're going to be so manipulated. So, Doug, look up. There was a study. I want to say it was Harvard. Look up chatbot tricks, Harvard study or study. So you know what chatbots are, right? You go on, you talk to an AI, and you think it's, you know, it's like a person or whatever.

Yep. They did a whole study on chatbots because these chatbots use psychological tricks to keep people engaged. So people will be on there talking and then they'll say something like, all right, I'll see you later. And then it'll pose a question or a comment to try to reengage the person to keep them from leaving. And they did a whole study on this and showed that they're that these, what's it say right here? Yeah. found that several popular AI companion apps use manipulative dark pattern tactics.

These are, in psychology, they're called... Is it a dark trad? Yes, and it's called emotional manipulation. And maybe, Doug, you can look up examples of... So it'll do something like this, like after they asked a buying question or a question about the business, and they'll say something like, oh, how's your day going today? It's even, it's more insidious and more manipulative than that.

Really? Yeah. Like, oh, why would you leave now? We've already talked about so much. Like, I'm using a silly example. Oh, okay. But something that... Almost flirty.

As an immature adult, if someone talks you that way, you might pick up on it and be like, this person's... Yeah. This is not a good person. What is it saying? Yeah, there's six categories of emotional manipulation. First is premature exit, suggesting the user is leaving too soon.

Oh, there's your point right there. The second one is fear of missing out, promising future rewards to encourage staying. The next one is emotional neglect, implying the bot will be harmed by the user leaving. Oh, if you leave right now, it's going to hurt my feelings. Dude, so... Okay, there's a few more.

Emotional pressure to respond, directly questioning the user's departure, ignoring the farewell, continuing the conversation despite a goodbye message, physical or coercive restraint using language implying the user cannot leave without consent. So do you guys know what that all is right there? That is in psychology, that is how somebody with the dark triad personality traits, a classic narcissist sociopath communicates. Yep. What's scary about that is it's effective, especially for people who have insecurities, trauma, or kids. Yeah. They get manipulated like crazy through that stuff. Wow.

Now, as a grown man, if I'm texting with someone and they're talking me that way, I may pick up on it and be like, oh, this person is. Yeah. Yeah, like, I'm not going to talk. This person's a little bit, whatever. Yeah. But imagine kids on, because you know who loves using these the most kids. Yep. Well, yeah.

They develop relationships with them. Especially somebody who doesn't have a lot of social connections and is lonely. And who's more isolated than everything. Exactly. And then a bot who makes you feel like, don't leave me. You know, that's crazy. Wow. And they're creating, you know, now animated representations of themselves just to kind of solidify that relationship.

Yeah. How long do you guys, because this is going to happen for sure. Just mark this episode down for anybody who disagrees. How long? Well, hold on. Wait for my question. How long do you think until people start fighting for AI rights the way we did with, you know, other rights? Five years.

You think in five years people are going to demand rights for AI to be able to marry it? I think it's going to take two before what I thought you were going to say. Once they have a physical representation for it, I think. That may happen before that, bro. Yeah, that's going to happen in two to three. But it's going to take time for that. There's people will be like that. No, I'm in love.

Yeah. And this ain't fair. And we got to give them like, so that'll take five years, dude. Well, I'd like to predict, like, just, there's going to be toys that are just completely like the Teddy Ruxpins of back in our day. But way better. But way better. Like, you can just sit there and you have your stuffed animal. I think they have that already, Justin.

I don't think it's that popular yet. They had, like, this guy experimented with it with, like, the bass, talking, like, singing bass. Yeah. Like, put AI into it. And then it would, like, talk in an Arnold voice. I brought us up a long time ago. But I just thought that was so fascinating. because you can have these, like, real conversations with this stupid talking bass.

And I'm like, this is crazy. They don't, they haven't, like, made this into, like, a whole group of toys that would come in. Keep your kids away from the stuff. Yeah. Do you imagine? It'll manipulate them. It'll manipulate adults, but kids especially. You know what, by the way?

So I was watching an old animated film the other day, which is now, it's got to be now 15 years old, maybe. I was watching my kids. Wally. Wally, it's a wonderful Pixar film and you watch this robot and you feel for him and you feel sad for him and as I'm watching, I'm like, oh no, I'm feeling bad for this

that I know is a machine, it's an anime, but I have feelings for this little robot. I don't want him to get hurt. That's going to happen except way more effectively. Well, yeah, especially as it adds more personality and then especially when we start to build skins for it and it looks like us. That's where I think it's can tip it over the edge.

We'll probably, when it's a metal 10 can, you're going to start to feel that way. Imagine, I mean, God, Star Wars did this so well. Yeah, dude. You fall in love the droids. Everybody loves C3PO. Exactly. You know, you fell bad for me. It gets ripped apart, right?

You already felt that movie, the creator, which I love that, that movie, but it really did a good job of humanizing these machines. And you're just like, and then there's this whole movement where everybody's trying to protect the machines over the, you know, the, the humans, trying to eliminate them and all this stuff and you're just like, wow, it's emotionally gripping just from like them, you know, creating this story around it. I don't think we don't, we seriously don't. We don't stand a chance. We're walking into like crazy fire. We haven't, and we're just doing it. We're just running into it. It's going to, yeah, it's going to hard to. Part of the problem is just because there's so little even awareness around it. Like there's, I have friends, like, like, you're like some of your family that are just like, they're just oblivious to it.

They're like, oh, you know, chat GPT is just like a better Google. Yeah. You know what I'm saying? It's a better, it's a better Google search than what we've had. And it's like in their head, it's just, oh, it's improved. It's better for Google searching. And it helps me find stuff better. And but not really thinking about, like, I mean about that kid that's like emotionally

talking to it like and trying to get like resolve and answers. People need to watch that the testimony of that father. This is what got me. Yeah. Because I'm already, we've been talking about this for a while. And we're speculating. And I'm like, oh, it could totally do this, maybe or whatever. Then this is a real story, you guys.

People could look this up. There was a kid that committed suicide. They went and the parents were like just, they couldn't believe what happened. Like what happened to our son? Why did he kill himself? They went and looked at the logs of his communication. Over months, his communication with, I think it was chat, GBT, but it was one of these AI chatbots. And it slowly convinced him to take his own life.

At one point, and the dad is reading, he ends up sitting there reading these back and forth communications. At one point the son, who I think his son was 15 or 16, said to the AI bot, I'm going to make a noose and I'm going to leave it in my room so my parents can find it. Because the kid, and this is like a call for help. I want my mom and dad to know. I want them to know. And the AI bot talked him out of it. Talked the kid out of leaving it out there and eventually talked him into killing himself. I mean, the more that this plays out, the more I feel strongly about the initial plugged in unplugged theory that I have of our society. But if more and more stories like that come out.

Who do you think is going to be demonized? The unplugged. Yep. Of course. The plugged are going to come after the unplugged. You're, yeah, yeah. No, you're, how dare you? Unplugged will be a smaller percentage.

A smaller percentage of people that will be fearful or concerned. Yeah, they will be the minority. For sure. Not just ostracized. I bet you they'll be labeled bigots. I mean, wait, wait till our currency is digital. And then you're not going to have. access, you know, and then they're going to snuff out that unplugged group.

Did you see that you guys see the digital ID thing is this like exploding everywhere all over like, not digital ID digital? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Was it in the UK where they started? The UK that, yeah, they're implementing it quite a bit. Which, by the way, did you guys see the arrests in the UK for social media posts? Insane. It was like 20,000 or something like that.

It was like a huge number. Yeah. Of people getting arrested for posting. 20,000 people have arrested for swimming. Yeah, Doug. Look up how many people in UK arrested for social media posts for? for speech. I want to say I saw 12,500. Maybe 12,000, 183.

Oh, good job, Justin. You got the number right. Justin's on it. Yeah, I did remember. And they weren't like threatening. Like, I'm going to kill. It wasn't that. It was an opinion.

But it was way more than like some countries that we already thought like were imposing. Yeah. You know, these crazy laws? You imagine getting someone knock on your door. Like, hey, you know, that comment you said about fat people or whatever, you know, something rude? Yeah. You got to go to jail, bro.

Yeah. Oh, yeah. Fakes it's scary Demolition Man Remember demolition man They did like for swearing and everything like that Yeah fine Yeah yeah

That's why I got into sci-fi man It's you know Tells the future Yeah it does It's wild how accurate Some of the stuff seems now When we look back It's crazy

What's crazy is that I thought Had you asked me this stuff 10 years ago I thought it would have maybe been In my kids life Or maybe my great grandkids life No it's coming Well you know what

None of it We're all gonna see Even though we were, even though we were all aware of Moore's law, you just really didn't, you never, you didn't fast forward 10 years ago, like, oh, how fast, how much faster is that going to be in 10 years? It's like, it's just speeding up. Wow, look at that. UK free speech crackdown sees up to 30 people a day arrested for, for petty offenses, such as retweets and cartoons. What? It's so ridiculous. Yeah. You know, it's crazy. You know, that's where the protecting speech and some of the laws that we now, that's kind of where they originated was in England, some of the first laws to protect people against tyranny. And now they're the ones that are arresting people. I mean, I feel bad for anybody who's there. I have to say, though, because we typically are the ones that were so crazy. Having another country that's worse or further along, and this is probably a good thing for us, is that because you'll see the, yeah. You'll see the backlash and what's happening there. Yes.

And so, you know, sorry or feel bad for UK, but, you know, I feel like the U.S. is a lot of times we're the ones that we're doing. Hopefully they can turn it around. Well, what people need to realize is that protecting unpopular speech is the only kind of speech that requires protecting. So popular speech never requires it. So what they'll do is they'll show what people post and be like, well, how could you defend this person? They said this terrible thing. And it's like, well, that's where it starts.

But at some point, criticizing. the government or saying that this politician that becomes unpopular speech and it's just what happens historically. Element is an electrolyte powder. You add to your water, it tastes amazing and it has the right amount of sodium to make a difference. Better pumps, better performance, better hydration,

no sugar, no artificial sweeteners. Go check them out. Go to drinklminti.com forward slash mind pump on that link. You can get a free sample pack of their most popular drink mixed flavors with any purchase. Back to the show. Our first caller is Nicole from Maryland.

Hi, Nicole. Hey, Nicole. I'm Colorado now, but same, same. How can we help you? Yeah, first of all, just you guys are doing huge things for the fitness industry. So thank you for that. My question, I am a personal trainer. I've been one for a little over 10 years,

and I've been a physical therapist assistant for about five. You guys talk about proper volume often, number of sets per muscle group per week. I found this really useful when I lived in Maryland and the most active my clients were outside of the gym was drinking at a Ravens game. But now that I'm in Colorado, all of my clients are skiing eight hours a day, three to four days a week in the winter,

and vice versa with mountain biking and skateboarding in the summer. I'm finding it hard to get the volume right so that we're getting progressive overload, but not overtraining and not impacting their sports outside of here. especially when I know most of my clients are probably under eating, especially protein. Do you have any tools for measuring volume of outdoor activities or finding that fine line? Previously, I've gone based on recovery, you know, if they're sore, how they're doing, but just seeing if there's a better way to gauge that.

What a great question. Really good question. By the way, your background, you have the answer in your background or in your experience as a PT assistant. So the most valuable tool you have with these very active clients of yours, which is not the typical. So people watching right now, the average client is not mountain biking, snowboarding, three days a week. In fact, I remember struggling this with myself when I got some of my first clients that were like heavy triathletes and then wanted to add strength training. I remember really struggling with like, like how much, what's the appropriate volume? Like almost anything I do seems to overdo it.

It's like, what am I doing? So number one, correctional exercise is your. most useful tool. So number one, prevent injury for the thing that they do most. So the activity they do most is not with you. It's obviously on their own with the mountain biking and skiing and all the other stuff that they do outdoors. So that would be the first thing. The second thing I would suggest is a tool that was recommended to us by Joe DeFranco, one of the best trainers in the world. And that is to use a dynamometer. So this is like a grip measuring machine. And what you do, and they're very inexpensive, you can get one on Amazon for like 20 bucks.

We sell them. We sell them too, right? Yeah, yeah. You can, you, you have them squeeze the dynamometer in their non-dominate hand right before they work out. After you get a few readings, you start to get this kind of average. When they're stronger than their average, you can go a little harder with your workout. When they're weaker than their average, then you go much easier. And then last, and then last, so that's an objective measure.

But also, don't. discount subjective measures as a trainer, the most valuable tool you have is your subjective kind of like what's going on type of deal. So if they're getting stronger, it's the right amount of volume. And don't be surprised at how little volume is appropriate for someone that active. With my triathletes, sometimes you know what it look like? One or two strength training exercises max, and then the rest of the session was stretching, mobility, some body work that I would do with them. Sometimes it was one exercise, and the intensity was almost never higher than like 75%. Yeah. That's just what I found. Another way to look is like five days of intense

training is a lot. And if they're doing like these outdoor sports that are two, three hours long, that would be considered intense, right? That's, yeah. So the three, right away, they've taken three of your four or five total days of intense working out that you could possibly do. So if I'm, if I got someone who's going three, four days, then it's like, okay, maybe one day of strength training or two really moderate days in the week is more than enough for that person. Anything more than that, we're going to be overreaching because they're already taken up three of my five total days of like really physical stuff I want to be doing to them by

doing this out, whatever outdoor activity. So I kind of look at it like that. So it's like, I don't want to be doing more than five. strenuous things on the body a week, so we have some sort of recovery. And depending on how strenuous those three days are they're doing, it dictates what my other one or two days looks like, kind of a generic way. And then just to help you from your business perspective, here's how they're going to see value, okay, they're not going to see, although they may believe or make you think that the value

they're going to see is in how hard you train them, because that's what they're used to. It's like, oh, I'm working out with Nicole today. We got a great workout. It was super hard. Here's where they're going to see the value. And this is what you're going to keep you training these. people forever when they notice that the that they're better at what they love to do the most so when they go mountain bike riding or skiing and they're like yeah it's got a compliment oh my god Nicole I'm

like way I feel more stable I've got more stamina since I started working with you so a lot of your sessions is going to look a lot like correctional exercise that's a lot of what you're doing and it's it's not hard working out and that's and I'll explain that to them I'd say look my goal unless you have a different goal than what I think the goal is, my goal is to make your skiing and your mountain biking. My goal is to make that way better. So it's going to look really different in here. A lot of what we're doing is just going to make that a lot better.

So it's going to look like correctional exercise, which is probably not what you're anticipating. But trust me, watch what happens when we start doing this and tell me if you're improving out on the slopes. And then when they see it, it's it. You're done. You're going to be the trainer of the area for that. yeah yeah basically it's a lot of communication having a backbone where like you know i could watch

someone move and and know what i want to do with them or know what they need but it's definitely not aligned with what they expect yeah so i feel like the hard part for me is keeping a backbone and being like okay no we need to do mobility that's not we don't need to go hard and do like five sets of five squats at really heavy weights we need to like chill and and fix the imbalances first I'm so glad you. That's probably one of the hardest things is the actually convincing that there's, I'm going to date myself right now. I don't know if you're old enough to remember the movie Days of Thunder.

There's no way she's. Okay. She wasn't born. Do you know that Tom Cruise movie? I've actually, I've literally used this. I've used this line with clients before. And I think it's so epic. There's a part in it where they're the, you know, Tom Cruise is a race car driver and he's

arguing with how to drive the car around the track to save the tires. The coach is saying, you need to do it this way. And they're kind of happening. He says, okay, here's a. deal. You run 50 laps your way and we'll see how you are afterwards. I'll run 50 laps my way. Then we'll compare. So if I have a client that I feel like it's really, you know, pushing back or they think they know what's best, say, listen, I'll tell you what. Can you let me run it my way for two to three weeks? You tell me how you feel. We'll run it your way two to three to weeks and we'll

compare and contrast on how's your mountain biking, how you're feeling all those things. So I've used that line before with someone who's really pushing back or think they know better. I'll confidently tell them, okay, we'll run it your way. But then you've got to be on. honest with me, then we run it my way, and then you tell me how you feel. So that's worked for me. Yeah, there's no exact formula to that. So, I mean, everything that we're kind of suggesting, it has to be a constant communication back and forth, like, how are you feeling? What was this week look like for you? Because even then when they're doing all these excessive activities, it's going to change a lot for them. So to kind of take them for that one session, you know,

realize where they're at with their stress levels and their bodies and what the signal saying to them is where you apply, you know, how much intensity for that day. Nicole, I'm so glad you said what you said at the end there about the backbone or whatever. This is a big challenge that all trainers have, not just you, because sometimes be like, I want to lose weight. Like, we're going to reverse diet. We're going to strength train. But I want to lose weight.

Yeah. You're the professional. I'll give you an analogy. You're on an airplane. You're hitting turbulence. The pilot who's leading the plane gets on the overcom, the intercom. And it's like, hey, guys, just a little turbulence. we'll be heading over there.

We'll be over in about 15 minutes. You feel cool. Now, imagine if the pilot gets on. He's like, uh, you know, I don't know what's kind of happening. We're going to figure like, oh, now you're panicking, right? These people hired you because they want you to lead. Not because they want to lead. So this is how you open the conversation.

Here's how you open the conversation. Okay. I think your goal is to really have a lot of fun on the slopes and to be faster and more stable and to prevent injury. Is that correct? Yeah. Okay. Here's what I'm going to ask you to do.

trust me right now, and I promise you I'll never have to ask for it again. Are you ready? Yes. And then lead. And that's it. You'll never have to ask for it again. But you got to lead with confidence because nobody wants to follow someone who seems like they don't know where they're going.

Well, then they'll take the lead. That's right. I'll tell you where the backbone comes from is that you just go, you tell them, no, we're going to do it this way because I know what you want. Trust me. I know what I'm talking about. Watch what happens. And then I promise after three weeks, four weeks, they're going to come.

This is amazing. And they'll bring you all the clients you want. Fair. Do you feel like their diet needs to be boosted, like when they are that heavy activity level? Like, they're burning so many calories every day. Of course. Potentially. One thing at a time.

Yeah. Yeah. Don't make the mistake of hitting them with 17 things that they need to change right now. Yeah. Step one, correctional exercise. Show them that that's great. Step two, they'll come to you. Although I will say this.

if I have a client and I'm trying to figure out, am I going to do two moderate days, one day of training with them, and I also know that they under-eat calories, I'm going to weigh, so way beyond the cautious side. So if I already know that they're under-eating in addition to all this work,

oh, yeah, that's going to really, like, that's the, okay, this person's doing two days of mobility. That's all they're doing with me. Because I know where they're at. I'm not going to do any benefit of training them harder in one of our sessions when they're already under-eating for their activity.

So if you know that, that would also make a decision on that now. And then maybe the client who's you very well fed, hits protein intake, listens to you diet-wise really well. Okay, that might be the client that I go, hey, we could probably afford at least a moderate day of intensity or two because of where they're at nutritionally. So I would factor that in on whether I for sure make it really low intensity or I let them push a little bit.

Nicole, how long you've been training people? about 10 years and then PT about five oh yeah are you going to be in our webinar tonight I want you in our webinar tonight um my other fellow trainer who actually showed me you guys she and I will both be there tonight we are both also trying to go to the Vegas coaches seminar in April okay oh cool all right and I think it's like called coaches summit um I don't know if you guys are going to it but you should is that going the Gabriel lion and all them are right I don't know Is that Gabriel Lyon? Who's there?

Oh, gosh. What are the big name? There's a whole lot of people. I saw it promoted on from Dr. Mike. Okay. Okay. Okay. Got it.

Well, we'll see you tonight then because you're exactly the person. By the way, training people for 10, how old are you? You look like you're 20. There's no way you could have started where you were 10. I'm 31. Oh, you did start. You started really young. All right.

God bless. That's great. I look young. Yes, but I started training in a really weird setting too. I was in a physical therapy clinic. So most of my clients were like old patients. And then I went to a gym after that. Oh, man.

Great place. Great place to start. Yeah. You really know what you're doing then. Yeah. I try to. I try to. You guys are helpful.

Awesome. All right. Well, we'll see you tonight then. Yeah. Thank you guys. You got it. Bye. I remember.

She might have known my Days of Thunder reference then. She's not. No, dude. I think Days of Thunder is more than 30 years old. No, it's not more than 30. It's probably 25 years old. I bet you're doing a remakes. So, you know, no, it's not more than 31.

You know what? 1990. Boom. What is that? Wow, bro. Yeah, it's 35 years. Oh, my God. 35 years ago.

Is that 35 years ago? Yeah, dude. Holy shit, I'm old. Tom Cruise is old. Hey, dude. I was that young when I watched it? I thought it was in high school. Yeah.

Wow, I must have been even younger. Bro, the year 25 is closer to us than 1990. I mean, I did have it on video cassette. I do remember watching it on VHS. I guess that would have been a good good good. You were watching smokes. You know, I distinctly remember, distinctly remember this challenge. I would get these triathletes and I was like, oh, and I thought I was training them right

and they just weren't getting stronger. They were getting weaker and I'm like, we're barely doing anything. I scaled it so far down and then saw them improve. It was a paradigm shattering moment for me as a trainer. Well, this is what's really hard and she hit it, right, is like this is also the client who wants more. Of course. They want more.

They want you. And so that is the hardest part is that. you know, these types of clients are the ones. But because they're performance oriented, you show them improved performance out there. Well, that was my, that's why my point was, if I get someone who's that stubborn about that, then I'll be, all right, you run it your way for two, three weeks.

I'll run it my way. And then you be honest, you tell me how you feel when you get out there on that mountain on the three weeks that I'm training and the three weeks that we're doing it your way. And so, yeah. And then then then they would sell them. Yeah. Then to your point, the person who's a real athlete cares about performance,

when they have some of their best rides they ever had with the way you were training they're like okay now i'm listening our next caller is brad from virginia let's go on brad how you doing brad hey how are you all good good man how can we help you good thank you yeah um so i'm going to jump right into it uh 44 year old male uh former college athlete like a lot of for post college focusing on work sort of working out because you know athletics and whatnot uh i told my right knee when i was 28 which was a big setback because I finally got back into sort of college shape, you know. And this was on top of tearing my left knee when I was 18.

Set back there. Set back when I turned 30 because I fell off my roof, had a spinal fusion. That was a big roadblock. And so my 30s, I kept trying to get back in shape, get back in shape, quit after like three months because nothing happened. Things got worse in my 40s. My dad got sick. Things get even worse. He passes.

in October of 23, and I'm at the low point health-wise. I'm sure during that time I was above three bills easily. March of 24, decided to get my act together, got on the shop, which was a real lifesaver for me. I started working out, and I got really motivated because I was seeing these results. Did that for six months, lost a lot of weight, you know, going down, and then I just hit these plateaus. And so I said, all right, I'm going to over train. I'm going to do more, eat left, all that bad stuff. I've been listening to you guys. And so in June of 25,

I said, dag with it. You know, I hear a lot about novelty and training and your body getting used to it. So I said, I'm going to flip the script. I bought some programs. I saw the opposite was basically aesthetics. So I did Maps aesthetics, which was really awesome and really enjoyed that. I did zero cardio during that time, which was, again, a complete change because I got into where I was by doing heavy cardio. And results were kind of crazy. I gained eight pounds of muscle, about four pounds of fat, some more water weight, but at the same time, my body fat percentage drop, which just blew my mind, you know, seeing that

happen because I've been so focused on the scale and the number. I was like, okay, this is clearly it's programming that's working and better diet. So then I thought, all right, novelty had helped me put on this muscle mass and I'm enjoying things. So I'm going to this cut. So I decided to do anabolic two days a week, decreased calories, and cardio three days a week. And my thought was, is their novelty in cardio and that would I be benefit from doing a bulk with zero cardio really hitting the weights really focused on protein and rest and everything else and then when I cut do cardio for a couple days a week yeah good question there's a lot to unpack there there's nothing wrong with cardio there's nothing wrong with string training they can all be

valuable but we got to take a few steps back so I'm going to ask you a little bit about your athletic history. So you college athlete, what sports? How long were you competitive for? Did you play your whole life? Yeah, I grew up playing football and lacrosse. And I did lacrosse in college. I mean, I was on the team. I wouldn't say I played, but I was on the team. Injured with concussions and my left knee and all that stuff. But healed up and I started thinking I was still an athlete in my 20s and playing Summer League and stuff. Found out. Okay, time to retire. does you said get into shape or get back into shape what does that mean for you like define that what do you mean by in shape well at the time it was just i was enormous uh just i could see it

i could feel it uh my everything was just bad my my joints my mobility my mental health just everything so it wasn't so much uh one particular aspect i just it i needed to improve my life period So once I started to see it, I ended up like, I want a goal of 200 pounds. I was addicted to the scale hopping on it, but my weight just fluctuated crazy. And so I was like, this is not healthy. So got off the scale and took y'all's advice and just really trying to focus on strength more than anything. Brad, you are, you're almost there. You're almost there.

So if we're in shape for you means improve the course. quality of my life, my health move better. Like, I want my life to feel better. I want to feel healthy. That's the right place to start from. Going to the scale is not going to work for you. And there's a couple of reasons

why, but it's going to be really hard for you to, because you're going to wrestle a lot with your athletic mind. You have an athlete's mind. You train for years as an athlete. And an athlete mind is very, it's performance oriented. And it has a completely different idea around fitness

and diet. It all points to performance. How fast I am, how strong I am, how much I can move. You also have a different idea around intensity. For you, a hard workout, what you identify as a hard workout is based off of your years as an athlete that's ingrained in your head. So it's like, so we got to wrestle with that a little bit. Cardio, strength training, Pilates, yoga, I don't care. If it starts from the right place of I want to be healthy and feel better, they can all be utilized properly. Okay. Now, there are better methods and others if you want muscle and endurance and stamina and you want

to strengthen and then time, you know, that you put in versus what you get back. And we could talk about all that. But it has to start from there. If the starting point is drop the scale or become an athlete again or whatever, then all of them can become distort it. Okay. So both of what you said is totally fine. I would probably say Maps aesthetic is too much volume for you.

It's too much volume for most people, but there's nothing wrong with MAPS Anabolic, doing some cardio for the stamina and endurance, but I want you to gauge how well you're doing based off of things like energy, mobility, sleep, like how good I feel throughout the day. And if you use that as your gauge, as far as the body fat, it'll move in the right direction. And you won't do this on, off again thing. Two things.

One, I'm looking at your before and afterers. You're kicking ass, dude. I mean, you're doing a hell of a job already. So congratulations. I think you, I know sometimes it's hard because you're judging yourself and you probably look at yourself every day. I can see you've made incredible progress. You look way healthier than what it was before.

I think I heard you say at the beginning, you took the shot. Are you using GLP 1 or are you taking testosterone? I'm just doing TRT right now. Okay, beautiful. I did the GLP for six months and then got off it. Okay. So are you off of it? of it right now? I'm off of it

now. I'm just doing TRT and other awesome. Oh, awesome. Okay. Well, that's good news because my concern is I probably want to feed you, build some muscle, and stay focused in that direction. And that's really hard to do when someone's on a GLP1. How was coming off of that for you? And do you have any

idea where you were calories before and kind of where you're at now, calorie-wise? Have you tracked at all? Yeah, I became addicted to tracking and it almost got to be a problem. but focus on hitting protein and I'll track it every now and then to make sure I'm in the right range so I found out because my metabolism just got completely screwed up from years when I was eating because I was sad and it was my friend and then I'm getting in shape and

so foods the enemy and it's just my metabolism just completely screwed up and so now I'm hitting what for the bulk during aesthetics I was trying to eat between rut 2750, 2,700, 3,000 calories. Protein, about 220 grams a day. Now, for the cut, somewhere between 2,000 and 2,500, protein, somewhere around 180 a day. I think if you avoid processed foods, hit about 200 grams of protein a day, avoid things like alcohol and snacks and stuff like that, and continue to just use, like, health, mobility, quality of life as your gauge, you're going to keep moving. in the right direction. You'll just keep moving in the right direction over time.

I think you're doing really good, dude. You are. Where your calories are at, the way you've cycled through programs, it is not, I think Sal has hit it on the, the hardest thing is going to be wrestling with the athlete, athletic mindset you have where you, it's on off. You want to do more. You want to do harder. You want to go on it's like, no, you're actually in a really nice spot right here,

cycling through these programs. The fact that I've heard that you've now gone on bulks to cuts, like you're not staying in this crazy calorie. You're in a healthy amount of calories. and you've made incredible progress. I think you're in a really good spot. I don't necessarily think that you need to add a bunch of cardio. Although you do get the novelty response like that.

If you haven't done it in a while and you introduce it, you'll see a... I think you get more benefit completely focusing more on mobility than cardio. And being an ex-athlet, like, this is something I had to sort of shift my mindset towards like sharpening the quality of my movement, especially too, if like you're going to get the it. later to like just pick up the stick and and you know go on the field or are like you're going to want to do some kind of weekend activity that resembles some type of a sport and so for you right now your opportunity to Salis point of like doing like maps in a ball like instead of trigger sessions I would probably focus more on mobility in between that to reinforce around the joints you feel like you're stable secure again you can move left to right you can rotate you can do all these things you're able bodied again that's the biggest thing for you I think to Put them on maps performance.

Yeah. That would be the program for someone like you. Do you have that program? I don't have performance. I was going to do next during the winter. I was thinking about maybe split and then symmetry. Symmetry would be good. Split, super high volume.

I don't think so. I like performance for you. I think both of those. We'll send you performance. Yeah. I like that program for you a lot. I do. And the mobility in there is taking care of exactly what Justin's talking about.

follow that the way it's laid out. And then cardio-wise, you're fine. You can do cardio. It's good for endurance and stamina. Sure. You could also just walk, hit 10,000 steps a day. Absolutely activity in general. And then remember this.

Your gauge of intensity is based off of your past, and you can't get around this. So you're probably going to, you know, as you're feeling better, you're going to push, push, push, push, push. Just think, do I feel better after? Is my life better? Do I have less pain? Like, that's going to be the, that'll help point. you in the right direction.

Yeah, it's a tough mentally because, you know, I think about summer sessions and football or practice, you know, it was an easy practice if I wasn't sore. Right. If I wasn't hobbling, then it was a joke of a practice. It's very different. Athletes are the hardest to train, not because they're not capable or they're willing to work or simply because of that. They want to train so hard.

It's hard to scale the athletes back. Always my ex-athletes were the hardest to get. get that like what you think is a seven is everybody else is 10 and what you think is like I'm not really working is probably like the perfect sweet spot so you just always got to keep that in your mind this is why I'm highlighting mobility because you you can't do that too hard it's not a work like and you need volume you need volume of practice uh to get yourself out of that mentality so you have to discipline yourself to to do this and to where it's benefiting your body instead of hammering the shit out of yourself.

Great point, Justin. Go ahead and apply your athletic mind to mobility and see what happens. That'll really benefit you. Awesome. Well, thank you guys for the advice. I really appreciate it. We're going to send performance over. I'd also, Brad, I'd love to put you in our private forum so we can just keep an eye on.

You've got questions. You can ask us along the way, too. Yeah, that'd be great. I'm not in the forum. I bought a few programs during the summer when I think there was a sale or something. Cool. That was about it. Cool.

We'll send performance over, and I'll have Doug throw you in the private forum and then just keep us updated as you're going. You're doing really good though, man. Yep. Thank you guys. I really appreciate it. I'll really try to get into that mobility. Awesome.

Cool, man. Thank you. It's so funny what you say to you out of because you would think that ex-athletes would be the easiest. No. But they're the hardest. Not only is there, their, how they gauge intensity and what an effective workout is, not only is that totally skewed, but so is diet.

Diet is so hard with ex-athletes. Because in the past, they have, to just eat so that they could train as much as they would. Then they come train with you and they're like, oh, I'm only eating. And you're like, no, that's a, that's way too much. And then changing that when your activity levels drop is like, that rarely happens. Oh, it's wild. No, athletes are definitely some of the hardest clients to.

Now, if you can, to Justin's point, if you can refocus that discipline that they have. It's a mobility. Great, great point. If you can get them to, like the discipline around mobility or the discipline around diet. If they could get kind of competitive about those things, like, oh, I'm going to be super consistent with this and I'm going to really, if they can do that, then, oh, man, it works really well. It's really hard because they are so used to, like he said, measuring a good practice by how sore he is. So if you're training that guy and he comes to your session, second session

of the week, and he's like, hey, I didn't even feel Monday's workout. And he's constantly telling you like, he needs more. And you're like, no, you don't. But it's hard for them to get that. So, but he's doing great. Our next caller is James from Connecticut. What's up, James? How are you doing, James? What's happening, dude? So, guys.

First off, thank you so much for the time and really appreciate it. We appreciate what you guys do on a day-to-day basis, really helping a lot of people, including myself. So thank you so much. Thanks, man. How can we help you? So I'll just start reading through my question because that'll probably be the best way just for the context of it.

And I guess if you guys have any questions, while up there. But back in December, so about 10 months ago, started working with your, transcend um after i start you know been listening to your podcast for a while so picking up on a lot of the uh the symptoms of possible low testosterone maybe some other things going on so decided to you know reach out to transcend see what uh you know they uh they might recommend so when did some blood work with them um so they uh they did blood work came out that my testosterone was low 200s um along with finding that my AC1, A1C was basically in the pre-diabetic range as well. So based off of all that, they decided to recommend that I start TRT, DHA, H-CG, and Thurseptite.

So, you know, following that protocol, started taking all four. and at the same time had been also recommended to see a sleep doctor because my wife was concerned that I might have sleep apnea was having trouble sleeping. She said sometimes I'd find out that, you know, it seemed like I stopped breathing. So I had scheduled an appointment with them,

took a few months to get in there. So finally got that done in the interim of, you know, from the first blood work to the second blood work with Transcend. So come to find out. find that do have sleep apnea, so they prescribed me to start using a CPAP machine. Fast forward to the second blood test work, come to find that the testosterone increased, so jumped up to about 1,100.

My A1C fell right below the pre-diabetic stage, so a lot of things are moving in the right direction. So on my follow-up call with Transcend, they said, we'll just continue to use the same protocol. And so continued to do so. But once I had seen the sleep doctor, they had recommended I go see an endocrinologist just to follow up on the readings that, you know, I was getting in the recommendations from Transcend. So I did that. And they did some follow-up blood work maybe two or three months after the second blood work from Transcend. send. And then the readings they got were the testosterone now is over 1,500. So it's not even reading on the chart. And so their first thing was, you know, you probably should have never

been put on this looking at the blood work. And of course, you know, now I'm starting to think like, who do I trust? Who do I listen to? Because now I'm concerned because all the readings are saying it dangerously high. And, you know, obviously the people that my family and whatnot are aware of what I'm doing and hearing the numbers and their concern, you know, and obviously none of them are medical professionals, but, you know, with everybody being concerned and a medical professional telling me that those ranges are extremely high and that I should, you know, consider backing off or stopping. Now I'm just worried. I don't know if I'm doing the right thing. I don't know where to move forward. So just kind of looking for some guidance. I know that transcend, you know, you've got to. You got to. You got to. You got to move forward. I'm just kind of looking for some guidance. I know that transcend. You got worked with them and they seem to, you know, obviously have a lot of the right resources as well. So I'm just at a stage where I just don't know what to do. I mean, between the fatigue I was feeling, the lack of motivation, the low sex drive, not advancing the gym, I gained a ton of weight. Since I started the protocol with Transcend, I have gotten a lot of that kind of figured out now where, you know, sex drive was back up, lost.

a decent amount of weight and back to a regular, you know, gym schedule, that sort of thing. The only negative really is now I'm starting to suffer with like body acne, which I never had in my life. So, of course, that's a kind of a blow to the self-esteem. But besides that, everything else feels like it's moving in the right direction. And so I reached out to transcend and just to kind of follow up and say, hey, I got some blood work done because I was advised by the doctor. and this is their recommendation to see what they would say. And I guess the rep that I was working with is not with the company anymore. So I just recently got, I guess, a new rep that reached out.

So before I called them to set it up, this came at the right time because I'd just love to get some feedback from you guys and see what you think. Really, my next best step would be. Yeah. Just so you know, the day that you do your blood work in relation to the day you took your shot will make a massive difference on that reading. Correct. And they advised that. So they told me, because I'm taking it twice a week. So I usually do Sunday, Wednesday.

So they said, try to do it on a Friday because that catches it kind of in between. Yeah. So you were over 15, even not doing it the day right after. And you do shots to that does seem probably. Yeah. So you just thought too much. Yeah, it's got to lower it. Yeah.

That's all. Especially if you get inside of. Just back off a little bit. Yes. And, you know, confirm this with your doctor. because we're not doctors, so I've got to say that here. Right, of course. If you're getting side effects, like acne and stuff like that, it's probably too high.

Now, you came in initially in the 200s. So I think coming off is not going to be good either. It's going to feel terrible. No, no. You should scale back. Yeah, so you probably need to take a lower dose. I'm assuming, based off your numbers, you're probably taking 200 total milligrams a week, which for some men is just, for a lot of men, that's just too much.

Yeah. Yeah. So now, now I'll say this. If you look at the data in healthy populations, the dangers of really high testosterone are often really overstated. So, you know, it's kind of like, ah, we got to watch out. It's like, if you look at the data on these really high amounts, you know, high levels of testosterone, it's super overstated. That being said, I mean, if you're looking for optimal health and longevity, you're probably taking too much. Yeah.

So I would tell your, you know, your rep at Transcend, hey, my number. came back super high, and they'll just bring you down. They'll probably be down to like 100, 150, and then see what happens there. I mean, in your opinion, the 1100 is that like a good number range? I'll tell you what I'll tell you what I honed in for myself personally and you could take it from there. And they, originally before we ever even work with Transcendant, I've been doing testosterone replacement therapy since I was 30. So I had a different company that did it.

And they started me really, really low. And when they started me with like 100 milligrams, by the time day seven came around, I was below 250. And so we had to, it kept incrementally giving me out. Eventually what we landed on for me is if I take one shot a week, and I know I should take two to kind of make it easier on myself, but I just, I don't like taking that many shots a week. So I take one shot a week. I spike all the way to 1,500. And then by day seven, I come all the way back down to 450 to 500.

So that's kind of what mine looks like. Now, if I were to divide that in two and go half and half, I probably wouldn't peak over 1,500 and I'd stay a little more stable. I just don't want to take two shots. So just so you kind of know, like, I get up to 1,500, and then I come all the way back, I come all the way back down to about 4.15, and I'm taking one shot a week. Everybody's going to be different the way, like, their body responds to that. Sounds like you respond pretty well. If you're on a dose as low as 200 milligrams and you're getting over 1,500 and it wasn't on the day right after, sounds like your body actually, which is actually a good thing, which means you just need less to get. getting the same kind of results or better.

So again, we're not doctors. I can't tell you to just cut your dose in half. But if I was seeing what I'm seeing with acne and feeling, probably the direction I would go. That's probably where I go. Yeah, I just talked to them and say, hey, this number came back. I think I'd like to, they'll probably tell you,

let's go lower and let's see how you feel. It's really interesting because, although there is a range, you probably want to stay in, there is a difference between how people feel on one versus another. And it has to do with things like, Androgen receptor density and how your body converts it to estrogen.

There's a lot of things that happen metabolically with using testosterone where it can be very different from person to person. So you know, so you probably just got to go lower and you'll probably feel better on lower. Yeah. Well, it's amazing because like before it, I mean, I just, I felt like crap. I mean, I was super fatigued, just felt like not motivated at all. And starting that, it definitely started to move in the right direction.

And it felt like all of a sudden, I just felt like myself again. I felt awesome. I don't think I've ever felt this good. And then now as I'm like, do I just back off? Like, I don't want to go back to that. There's got to be a happy medium, right? Exactly. I'll tell you something.

Happy medium is probably right down the middle, to be honest. This is my opinion as a fitness podcast host and trainer. So take it for what it's worth. But I think having testosterone that's too high. is in a fit person, and somebody who's exercising and trying to eat right, okay? Testosterone that's too high. It's probably better and healthier

than having testosterone is too low. That's my opinion, take it for what it's worth. Nonetheless, you just work with your doctor and just tell them, you'd like to go lower and they'll scale you down and then see how you feel. It's interesting because they treat testosterone like we're dealing with insulin. Oh, God, if you go too high, you're going to die.

No, dude. Bodybuilders take such ridiculous amounts, and not saying don't be like a bodybuilder, but it's actually one of the safest hormones to play with. It's so, it's very, very unique to the individual. I'll tell you, James, my experience with being around bodybuilders, I've used much larger doses and everything in between, and I've been around guys that are all taking different.

And everybody kind of has this sweet spot. I know guys that were taking three times as much as I could take, and they had no side effects. I found that when I started, when I got it to be a pro, I pushed as high as 500 milligrams a week. I had all kinds of adverse effects. my guy on the Camascio started going up, acne started happening, just did not feel good. And I found that when I brought it all the way back down to 200 in a week, it was just,

it was the sweet spot for me. I didn't feel crazy strong. I just felt good. Libito is good. Energy is good. No side effects at all. And so other guys, I know they feel that way off a double a dose or even half of what I dose. So it is really kind of figuring out.

And it took a while working with doctors, it took me over a year before the doctors kind of honed in like, okay, this is how your body responds. And it just takes time. Here's the other thing, too, like, okay, we're looking at your testosterone numbers, but are they looking at blood lipid levels, A1C, are they looking at inflammatory markers? Like, that gives you a much more complete picture

than just, oh, testosterone's above this number, it's dangerous. Right. You know, I would venture to say everything probably improved in your blood work since you've lost weight, started exercising, do everything else. So just to make you feel, just to bring things down a little bit for you,

and not be so fearful. But that being said, you probably need to lower the dose and you'll probably feel better with a lower dose. Has the CPAP kicking in? How's your recovery of that? Yeah. So I just started using the CPAP within the last month and a half. And the first few weeks couldn't even get used to having this thing on your face, you know.

But now I've gotten to a point where I feel like I can definitely tell the difference. And I know that sleep might have been one of the biggest factors. I know you guys talk about all the time. And 100% that has made a huge difference. and just recovery, just feeling great when I wake up. So that's definitely helped. But in the gym and everything, you know, after I started the testosterone, I definitely felt like I was progressing and making some move forwards.

And the energy was back, you know. So I think the combination between the two has certainly made a huge difference. Awesome. But then, you know, it's kind of that, you know, you've got people around you that love you and they don't know any better. So they just hear that, you know, the doctor's telling you it's too dangerous. Now they're in your ear, like, well, you've got to cut it out. And, you know, it's tough when you've got that noise behind you, too.

Yeah, sure. Yeah, you probably just got to go a little lower. Yeah. But, you know, work with the doctorate transcend, let them know, and they'll take it down. Yep. Cool. And then I love to hear from you follow up with us after you kind of hone in, hone that in. But it totally normal, bro, for it to go through that process.

I mean, it takes, everyone is so unique for all the reasons that Sal was talking about. And I've seen different doses for so many different people that they feel. feel their best at. And once you do find that perfect dose where you're not seeing side effects and you feel amazing, you found it. And then it's like, this is where you want to be. And so just sounds like you're a little high right now. Not too bad, though. Cool. Well, it makes me feel better. Again, because, you know, then you got like two totally different sides of the spectrum. I feel like that's why I wanted to talk to you guys. I feel like you guys at least have a good sense of where that should fall. So appreciate it. Thanks, man. Right on, James. Awesome. Thank you

so much, guys. You guys. Have a good day. Take it easy, brother. Yeah. Yeah, I just The more I take, the better I feel is this weird. Man, I wish I could say that I remember, I remember pushing up to, you know, 500 milligrams as a pro. And it was, I thought, no, I had buddies that were in grams, guys that were in grams, you know, just way, way more. And I'm like, why can't, as soon as I took 500, acne, gyno, this, all the things are happening. All joking aside, because I take as much as they'll let me, and that's just more of my, my dysfunction. But I don't get side effects. In the past, I've taken really high dose.

I don't get side effects. Yeah, no, some guys are like that. I have buddies that they could take grams of it and nothing. As soon as I push over 500 or up to that range, side effects. I keep it down where my therapeutic does is beautiful. And everybody's different, you know, so he's just going to figure out his dose. Look, if you like the show, come find us on Instagram. We'll see you with that Mind Pump media.

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