Mind Pump: Raw Fitness Truth - 2791: This Simple Rep Technique Doubles Your Results

Episode Date: February 11, 2026

In this episode of Quah (Q & A), Sal, Adam & Justin coach four Pump Heads via Zoom. Mind Pump Fit Tip: Stretch, Pause, and Squeeze. (Make your Reps Twice as Effective!) (2:41) Not your traditional sweats. (21:43) Let's dance! (22:56) It's good to move. (32:43) The staff's to-go protein snack. (34:44) Is there a satanic cult that runs the world? (36:06) Feeling older and holding on to injury pain. (46:55) Welcoming a new partner for your peptide needs. (51:09) #ListenerCoaching call #1 – Needing insight on how to break through a plateau and achieve my goals of building muscle and maintaining longevity. (56:14) #ListenerCoaching call #2 – How would you recommend someone with a long training history and higher absolute strength best approach these failure days in Anabolic Advanced? (1:05:13) #ListenerCoaching call #3 – Trying to get to the bottom of why my testosterone levels have dipped since starting a prolonged cut. (1:17:44) #ListenerCoaching call #4 – Is there anything I should be cautious or concerned about when it comes to this reverse diet? (1:32:42) Related Links/Products Mentioned Get Coached by Mind Pump, live! Visit: https://www.mplivecaller.com  Visit Vuori Clothing for an exclusive offer for Mind Pump listeners! ** No code to receive 20% off your first order. ** Visit Crisp Power for an exclusive offer for Mind Pump listeners! ** Code MINDPUMP10 for 10% OFF. Give your snack game a serious upgrade. Crisp Power Protein Pretzels deliver super crunchy and delicious snacks that are up to 28g of protein, low carb, zero sugar, and high in fiber! ** February Promotion: Feb 1 - Feb 14th - The Couple's Bundle (Aesthetic, HIIT, Muscle Mommy, No BS 6-Pack Abs), $498 value, only $197!  Visit: https://www.mpvalentine.com  Mind Pump Store Mind Pump #2783: Which Rep Range Is Best for Your Goals? Physiology of Stretch-Mediated Hypertrophy and Strength Increases: A Narrative Review Mind Pump #1745: How to Pack on Muscle to Your Lagging/Stubborn Body Parts Watch Breakdown: 1975 | Netflix Official Site Mind Pump Hormones - Facebook Visit Pre-Alcohol by ZBiotics for an exclusive offer for Mind Pump listeners! ** Code "MINDPUMP26″ for 15% for first-time purchasers on either one-time purchases, (3, 6, 12-packs) or subscriptions (6, 12-pack). ** Mind Pump #2690: The NEW DIET Everyone Is Using For Fat Loss Mind Pump #2312: Five Steps to Bounce Back From Overtraining Mind Pump Concierge Coaching Mind Pump Podcast – YouTube Mind Pump Free Resources People Mentioned Peter Attia, M.D. (@peterattiamd) Instagram Phil Vella - "Philly" (@phillyvz) Instagram

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mugs, or training gear over at mindpumpstore.com. I'm talking right now, hit pause, head on over to mindpstor.com. That's it. Enjoy the rest of the show. Do you want to make your reps two to three times more effective? You can do that if you focus on a few things, the stretch, pausing, and squeezing.

We're going to talk about how to make your reps far more effective. Don't change your workout, change your reps. Watch what happens. Let's get into it. This is your training right now. This is why? Yeah, I feel like that's what you've been focusing on right now. Well, we talked in a previous episode about rep ranges and how you can change that.

And my headspace has been around simple tweaks to your program that can produce a nice change. Because, you know, programming can be complex. And we can go into, like, completely changing your program. But there's so many moving parts. Yeah. And oftentimes it's like one little change, you know, like how many reps you do. We talked about that. in one of our previous episodes.

How you do reps, that's another thing you can change that'll have a big impact. Yeah, I also think my point of bringing that up to that, this is you right now, is that you're probably near peak strength in a lot of your lifts right now, and I'm sure that you know that the risk versus reward of just adding more weight is not a good idea. And so moving in this direction

where you really focus on the pause, the squeeze, the stretch. Yeah, yeah. To just new stimulus without, Yeah, that's a big one is risk factor, right? Yeah. And earlier on, when you're really trying to build, develop this, like, foundation of strength, that's where, you know, it plays a big factor of, like, going for those bigger, riskier, you know, adding a lot of load and getting strong and hitting that max capacity where, you know,

as you age, it's really starting to kind of hit differently. Yeah, no. Good point. No, I see what you're saying, Adam. And yeah, Justin, that's 100% true. The other thing, too, is at some point, the benefits you get from getting stronger, you get diminishing returns. So when you first get started, if you're really consistent, okay, everything's dialed in.

For the first two or three years, just get stronger. That's going to give you the best games. Period. End of story. If you're doing your strength training, your goal is to get stronger. Now, of course, you change exercises, good technique, all that stuff. Don't compromise your form. But for the first few years, that's it.

That's all you got to focus on. After that, you start to get diminishing returns to where, you know, if I added 30 pounds to my max squat right now, I probably wouldn't see that big of a difference on my body. But my risk of injury went through the roof. Whereas you take someone who's only been lifting for a year and you add 30 pounds to the squat. And it's like big changes to their body. Yeah. And this is just the stronger you get, the more true this is.

And so this becomes more important. Now, that's not to say this is. important where we're going to talk about isn't important for somebody also just trying to get strong. Like this is this is key information to understand with your strength training because the stretch part of a rep pausing your reps, the squeeze party rep all have their own value. And before we get into them, it is important to understand full range of motion king. Okay. And your muscles will get strong largely in the ranges of motion you train them in. So this is very important to understand because as we go through these, we'll talk about portions of the rep that the data shows

builds more muscle. But if you stay there, you start to develop really bad movement patterns. You start to develop dysfunction. And you see this oftentimes with bodybuilders, where bodybuilders gets so focused on hypertrophy that they really don't consider function. And their ranges of motion end up being short because they focus on the part of the rep that tends to build the most. But then this causes problems with their bodies and the way they move. And we've seen this before. We've seen this with some of the models that we've had shoot for some of our programs where they couldn't hold a rep at lockout because they never trained at lockout.

And so you start to create this really big disparity with how your strength curve looks. Because again, you know, there's definitely carryover outside of the range of motion you train, but it's mostly in that range of motion. If you don't train a full range of motion, you'll get really strong here. and then you'll get the disparity between that and the range of motion note train becomes so large, at risk of injury goes through the roof. A little bit of a sidebar,

but there's been like a couple studies that just recently have come out about a quarter squat, half squat, and full squat for athletes. Which is interesting, but it does make a lot of sense deliberately targeting where, you know, obviously you're going to generate the most force. And so there's a little, not just bodybuilding, there is that in the performance world as well.

the only reason I bring that up. No, that's, I mean, we, we talked about this way back when, you know, the clip of LeBron James went viral. Yeah. Everybody's like, that's not a full squad. Yeah. And it's like, yeah, it doesn't serve him to do that. Interesting, you brought out the bodybuilders for the negative reasons because I was going to, as you were going through this, give them their flowers for, I think, bodybuilders are some of the ones that do this the best. The smart ones.

The ones that have longevity do, you're right. Yeah. Like Dexter Jackson, you ever watch him lift? It's like a full range of motion. Yeah. And also take advantage of all this, right? Like, you know, I lifted this way in the early part of my career where I just, I never cared about really trying to get that much stronger. It was always about form, technique, manipulating all these different things at the stretch and at the pause and like tempo.

And so, and that got me pretty far. Although the negative to that was, and I've shared this before that, because I wasn't focused on strength, I left a lot of gains on the table. I mean, I didn't get those until later on, whereas if I could go back and do it all over again, I would have laid the foundation for the first couple of years of like really pursuing strength. Then once I started to get pretty strong, then I probably would have switched to like all bodybuilder type of training. And I think that would have served me versus I was a, I was the reverse. Yeah. Because I, I would say I thought I was a bodybuilder, but I thought that that type of training is like was more what I was chasing was aesthetics. So I trained this way all the time where I never

trained like a power lifter or a strong man and neglected the low rep ranges and hitting PRs and going that direction. It was always just like, oh, the stretch, the pause, the pump, like that direction. So there's obviously benefits to both. And I think the best bodybuilders or the best lifters in general are the ones that learn to integrate both of those and balance and never fall in love with just one because I think that's where you lose out is when you identify with. one way of training, which I think a lot of us, if not all of us, are kind of guilty of that. Of course. Of course. You like something so much. That's what you do. By the way, back to the athlete thing. I got to say this before people get confused, the more elite and advanced an athlete

becomes as they age and as they continue on their sport, the more specialized their training becomes to continue to improve their performance. In other words, a young athlete should do full range of motion exercises. They'll get better performance in their sport, will full range of motion. Once they get to college and then the NBA, then it starts to get much more specific. This is true for all their training. The data shows you take a kid. This is the risk factor. Yeah. And it's also just overall mechanics and motor control and development. Like specialization. You look at, if you took a kid who was gifted at soccer, let's say you had an eight year old that you had

coaches come up to you and go, oh my God, that your kid is gifted. The worst thing you could is have your kid only play soccer from then on. The data actually shows that if that kid plays soccer, basketball, track, gymnastics, and then later specializes, he'll be better at soccer than if he only had played soccer early on. And this is true with strength training. Because he faces more variables and is able to overcome them. That's right. So if you gave me LeBron James as a seventh grader, we're doing full range of motion exercises.

LeBron James NBA? Yes, partial squats. So that's just so that people understand the disparity. That's a good point. Okay, so let's get to stretch first. So when you're doing a rep, the stretch portion of the rep is typically the bottom. And a good way to explain this, an easy exercise would be like a fly. If I'm doing a chest fly, when I'm at the bottom is when I'm getting the stretch in the chest.

And there's a lot of different ways to stretch different muscle groups. And some exercises are better at this than others. Here's what the data shows. When you compare different rep ranges, the stretch portion produces double to triple the hypertrophy. So of the entire range of motion, the stretch portion builds the most muscle. Okay. Now, this is good to know because a lot of people, when they're in the gym, they stay away from the stretch or bottom position because it means they can't lift as much. Yeah.

So you're doing a squat. You're not going all the way down. You're doing a fly. You're kind of cutting a short because you just can't use as much weight. But you're actually leaving gains on the table. The stretch is the best part for building muscle of all of the range of motion. Well, is that kind of because people avoid that full range where they get that statistic, you know, where they're getting, you know, in excess that much more?

No, the studies are actually pretty good. From beginners from start? They take, well, they take people who already lift. And then they take them and they say, we're only doing the stretch part. And then you're doing full of range of motion. And the stretch part, actually in the studies, if they just focus on that, slightly outperforms even full range of motion. Now, their studies are obviously 12 weeks, 16 week.

And I'm going to tell you this right now. If you only ever focus on the stretch part, like if you cut your rep short, just to do the stretch part, you're going to hurt yourself. You're going to really develop terrible movement patterns. You're going to have poor function. And that will eventually get in the way of you getting a better thing. I imagine, too, the eccentric emphasis on that plays a factor because we all know that, you know, the negative portion and controlling that deceleration really is what, you know, tears up the muscle. There's something about stretch under load that by itself also sends a muscle building signal.

And there's animal studies on this. Human studies tend to point to this where if you're in a deep static stretch under load, there's something special about it. in terms of building muscle. So that's the important part of the stretch part. So if you're avoiding that, don't. By the way, little caveat, you have to have good control and stability before you play with this

because some people don't have the stability, then they'll get in the stretch and they'll hurt themselves. So go lighter to kind of play with this part of the road. Well, I shared my journey on here years ago, when I, after working on my mobility, in particular my ankle and hip mobility to get a deep squat. and I had to reduce the weight, like, dramatically. But I remember long before I had caught up to my max weight of short squats or, you know, a little bit.

I was probably just around parallel, a little bit deeper than parallel when I first started. Before I even caught back up to that weight, I had gained significant size on my legs in comparison. And so doing a lighter weight in that deep, full range of motion, that stretch position, definitely. I mean, you can see the difference. And I'm comparing a time of where I was lifting for years a certain way. And then it's just a short period of time of lifting in that full range of motion surpassed all those years of training in the shortened range. Yeah.

This is especially like this is such a good tip for people working their lats. There's a lot of exercise. A lot of use really stretch the lats. Even your arms like triceps, for example, overhead tricep extensions seem to be really good at building the triceps because you're stretching the triceps. Incline curls seem to be really good at building the biceps because they're in a stretch position. So the takeaway with this is don't avoid the stretch part of a rep and make sure you include exercises that are good for this. And if you follow a MAPS program, unless it's a sports specific kind of MAPS program or whatever, what you'll find in our programming is there's almost always a lift that is really good for the stretch in the body part.

You can only do two exercises for your triceps for the rest of your life. What are the two? Overhead trisip extension and dips. Yeah. Two. I was to say close grip bench. Or close grip bench press or overhead extensions. Done.

You agree? Yeah. I like those. I just try to think of anything else. Yeah. But you guys... You only get two. You only get two for the rest of your life.

Yeah. Yeah. Those for sure. 100%. Yeah. Deep dips. My favorite. 100%.

All right. Now let's talk about the squeeze part of a wrap. So the squeeze is like when you're fully extended and you're contracting the muscle. Here's what that's good for. You come to me and tell me you have trouble feeling the muscle. We're going to focus on the squeeze. It's hard to feel a muscle really contract in the stretch position or mid-range.

If you have poor connection, like your glutes or your quads or your chest or your back, I'm going to have you hold the squeeze and you will feel the muscle in the squeeze. So that's the benefit right there. avoid that, especially for body parts where you're like, eh, I don't feel my chest, I don't feel my back. I don't feel this muscle when I do these exercises. Or when I do squats, I don't feel my squats. Squeeze the hell out of your quads at the top of a squat and then see how you

feel as you go through the set. Yeah, yeah. Or just isometrics, period. Even forget inside of a rep, I think isometric for that muscle group. Yeah, even priming it is such a, it's such a great idea if you have poor connection there for sure. Totally, totally. And you're right, you know, as I think about a bodybuilders are really good at playing with these different things. No, really good. I mean, I know we've had some

examples that you highlighted. We have had some bodybuilders that have come in and they have terrible range of motion. I think that's an example of like when you totally, when you only train that way and neglect that. I'm trying to think back to all my buddies that lifted with me that if they were like that. Like, I mean, you lived it

with Johnny last. Yeah. Oh, no, he's good. He's got great. Oh, yeah. He plays full range of motion. Yeah, yeah. And again, he's in a, he's 40-something. He's been doing this for long time. I think you start to figure it out. Yeah. I think, I think, although I can't remember, to be honest with you, if I would consider him the majority. I think a majority, majority of bodybuilders tend to do a pretty good job of kind of doing all of it. If anything, I think, what they neglect or we neglect the most is not training enough like a power lifter does. Yeah. Yeah. If that's the part that we probably miss out on is just. If you ever want to see really crazy,

of motion, watch the Golden Era bodybuilders. Yeah, a lot of times they were doing splits on the stage and... But just their ranges of motion on flies, like laterals? Like, we stop them here, man. Arnold's like, way up here, you know, upright rows, way up here, all the way down. They were, they were, they really played with crazy deep, full ranges of motion when you watch them lift. Yeah.

And, you know, they obviously built incredible physiques with minimal anabolic and compared to the, you know, the current ones. Yeah, yeah. And then lastly, it's pause, like pausing the rep. Now, a pause can happen at any point in the rep. It could happen on the bottom, in the middle, can happen at the top. Why would I want to incorporate pausing? This is phenomenal for improving stability.

Yeah. This is great for it. If there's a part of the rep where you suddenly lose strength or stability. Emphasize it. Then you grab a lighter weight. You get down in the hole or get down in the wrap and get to the point where you're like, this is where I lose stability and then hold that and stay tight and hold it for five seconds, six seconds, seven seconds, and then come out. Powerlifters love pause reps for breaking

through sticking points in their lifts. This I never utilized until I really started to train for like max lifts. And the first time I used this was on bench press because I just, when I got to the bottom of the bench, it was like, I just couldn't move it. If I got it up after three, four inches and I can move the weight. And I read Powerlifting USA, I think it was. was. Yeah. And it talked about one of the lifters how they, and I didn't know this,

but power lifts do this all the time. So I just started pausing my bench presses at my chest. And it was months, it only took a few months before that became the strongest part. Yeah. Of my bench press. Yeah. Before that,

it's like you don't realize how much momentum is incorporated in your lifts when you're just trying to get to the end result. And so like, yeah, I used to just bounce the bar off my chest and, you know, do all those things when I was young. Uh,

because the whole goal, was to how much I could load the bar with and get through the wrap, but then when you start kind of breaking it up, being a little more thoughtful, man, you realize, like, how much force you're not producing, how much control you don't have until you really, like, isolate it. This is another reason why I absolutely love the Z press, too, is because I think we are so weak and unstable in that full extension,

overhead extension. And I always Z press with a three to five second hole at the top and stabilize the weight way above your headlight. that. I think the gains, the stability you get from that to control, the overall benefit posture-wise, I think it's such a great movement for that exactly. You're just humbling. You have to, I mean, you could be somebody who shoulder presses easy, 185 and have to get down to like, 105. Or less. Or less. Yeah, a lot less. More like, you know, 60 pounds when you first start it. It's just doing the bar and some tens on there is work if you've never done it. Now that I think about it,

The next, the last time I played with pausing was overhead holding. Yeah. Because of Justin's influence. Because I didn't realize that I did. What's unstable. So my shoulder press would be like all the way up and down. But when I got up to the top, I'd bring it down right away. And we were doing, you know, because of Justin and his programming,

I was practicing walking with like a kettlebell or dumbbells. And I realized that like once I locked my arm out, I was unstable. Yep. And so I just started to hold my presses at the, the top and I got great progress, which brings us to this. If you suck at any of these, that's a hack for you. You do the one you suck at, you'll get great gains. So if you suck at the stretch, you suck at pausing, you suck at the squeeze, focus on that. That's always true. It's always true that if you do the thing you suck at and you'll improve the most.

Especially advanced lifters. When you've been lifting for a long time and you find something, you just have to reframe it that way, right? Because we all have a tendency to gravitate towards things we're good at, we like doing. But when you find the thing that you really suck at, that's where the real gold is. That's where the novelty is. That's where the gains are. And it's hard to get gains when you've been doing this 10, 15, 20 years. And so it's like, lean into those movements that you do.

And you're like, man, I really suck at this. Like, that's awesome. There's gains there. I got to tell you guys that the Fiore Sunday joggers have been de-thrown. It's a... D-thrown? Oh, yeah, because these new ones. Please tell me you have at least three to four pairs of those.

Because I see them on you. For the last three weeks, I don't think I've seen a different pair on you. I love them. I love them, dude. It's like the amount of Steve Jobs, the turtleneck. Yeah,

yeah. They're so... I better go to his house and see in closet like six of them. He's not wearing the same damn sweats. You know what it is? You know what it is that they're really comfortable cozy,

but they're like, the material is... They're thick and soft. Yeah, it's like thick and like... They're good stuff. How would you... How would you describe it? They don't look like traditional sweats.

They look like nicer. I don't know how to... Yeah, and they're not too heavy where you get like super hot. Like some of those like sweats, you just like, I can't wear sweats. But this is it.

This is totally, like Sunday joggers were at the top always. Now it's like second. Now it's always these. I know you got a couple of pairs. I feel you on. Oh, yeah, no. I have three pair.

I've got a blue pair of black pair. So I'll have one. I got to get different colors. Yeah. And I have the, I think my favorite of the sand color ones, the brown ones I want. I have gray in black. Yeah. Oh, yeah.

I don't have gray. I don't have gray. I don't know they had any gray. But I want another pair of black because I wear black a lot too. So I love them, I'm with you on. Love them, love them, love them. Love them work out with them, go out with them. They're great.

No. Justin, you just had your birthday. How was your birthday? Did you get what you wanted? I mean, I don't. I got stuff. You know, like, I'm just like, are we not all there in our relationship where we just buy our own stuff? I'm waiting because it's all, for me, I like, for me, I like experiences and going places.

Like, usually I'm just like, I tell Courtney, like, just take me somewhere, you know, and we'll do our thing. And that's like a gift to me. Like stuff is like, I'm not interested in, there's nothing I could like think of even right now. I'm like, oh, I need this. I want this. Yeah. If you want something, you just get it.

Well, it's also not your, it's probably not your love language either. Yeah, that's not what I, yeah, it's not what I do. What's your love language? Touch and time. Okay. So touch you for a long time? Yeah, touch you long time. Touch a long time.

So what did you get? Because you said there was a story about your birthday gift or something that happened. Did you say that? Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, so there was a part of the gift that wasn't like an experience. This is a different experience. Courtney kind of like, you know, gambled a little bit. Where were you? Well, no, I mean like on the gift. Oh, oh, oh, oh, I was like gambling. You used to go to Vegas?

I appreciate it. Happy birthday. Yeah. So. Thousand on block. She kind of took it upon herself to, she bought us like this, signed us up for this dance at home. So, like, an instructor. I'm going to learn ballroom dancing. That came to your house? Salsa. Well, yeah, you do it like with an instructor and then you also do it virtually.

Okay. So we kind of just started doing that and like I'm, you know, shaking my hips and doing the thing. But yeah, I was like, it's all new to me. I used to do swing dancing way back in the day. You did? I did. Where did that? So you were totally game for that being your birthday present.

I would be so mad if Katrina got me that for. No, I mean, like I said, she just thought of this and did it. And I was actually like, oh, that's a really interesting, thoughtful thing. Justin would like this. Of course you would. I do like it. I like it. I like it.

I like it. I would never. I would. If Katrina's like, guess what I got you for your birthday? I know. Swing dance lessons. So, so I thought you guys would make fun of me. Are we divorcing?

What's going? I would not like that unless Jess was like, and we're naked. All right. Yeah. At your home, I guess you could be. but I just, I look at it as, it's another way for, because for me, it's less of, I mean, we talk a lot and we have like opportunities for that, but like to just hang out. And it's not like something that's like, oh, well, tell me about your feelings and, you know, all that stuff gets boring. So like, let's, let's move, you know, let's do things.

Dirty dancing. Yeah, yeah. Hey, so, hold on, where did you do swing? Where the heck do you do that? Oh, I did that. I will say this. If I were to learn something, swing would be something I would consider it. It was cool.

Like I used to bust it out. I used to bust it out every now and then at like some of the dances in high school and people would be like tripping out. Oh, so it was way back then. He was way back then. And so I was like, it was kind of funny because I had this like other kind of identity for a while. I was like this rockabilly guy, you know, and like I had like flame shoes and like stupid clothes. You had flame shoes. I had like, I had a big old pompadour.

I remember the pompadour picture. And I had the chain wallet. Wow. The whole thing. I did a chain wallet. for a while. I had an old truck, had a 56 truck.

You went all in. I was all in. And so I would go to shows, and this was like when swing and rockabilly was like kind of popular for a while there. But yeah, I would go with my girlfriend at the time and then would just throw around and, you know, spin and do the whole thing, West Coast,

like swing stuff. Wow. Yeah. Wow. Yeah, I learned. I learned it. It was like we'd go down to this place down in Santa Cruz and it was above this

talkeria and we'd learn from this lady that taught us. Wow. That's pretty cool. I mean, you either like that or you don't. You know what I mean? I could see why she got that for you. I know you and it's like, yeah, he probably would like something like that.

Yeah, I just like, because she's not like that. I think it was like a stretch for her. Oh, that's nice. So that's interesting. So I really appreciated it. So that's not something that she would like totally be about. No, like, you know it's funny. Katrina would love that.

Yeah, because we would love that. We've gone out. And, you know, obviously, like, we go to, like, concerts and stuff, and we've danced together. But it's kind of funny because she has, like, a different pattern. And I have a different pattern. So we'll be at, like, weddings, for instance. And we'll be, like, dancing to something. And she's, like, kind of, like, like, bouncing a little bit, like, more than me.

And then so, like, we're, like, off sync. And we always laugh about it because I'm like, wait, you're way off. And so I'm hoping, like, you know, get us a little more in two. That's going to be great. So you meet with the instructor in person once, and then it goes virtual after that. Is that how it works? Yeah.

So this person's in Santa Cruz. We're going to meet with them. We're going to go through it. And then, yeah, we can do like follow-ups virtually. Okay. So, wait, Katrina's into dancing? Oh, yeah. So my best friend, Justin, you know, his wife, like Katrina,

when he used to live with me and they were before we were all married, yeah, the girls, this is. Justin and I would stay home and play video games and send the wives off to go line dancing and salsa dancing and yeah, they go do all that stuff. Katrina's dad, who's like 74,

go salsa dancing by himself at clubs all the time, picking up chicks. Wow. Yes. Wow. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, because you don't dance very well. I've seen any moves. I mean, I don't either. It's like the kettle call. I'm saying, easy guy. I'm not trying to say I'm great. Hey, man. I mean, you and I dancing is like,

Are you guys listening to music? According to Katrina, there's a very big difference in my dance moves, sober versus four drinks. She's like, four drinks, you can dance. Maybe she's had four drinks. She has beer vocals. She's got no problem telling me, I can't dance. You know what I'm saying? You know Jessica?

If she catches me dancing early, she'll come over and she'll start feeding me drinks. So you know Jessica and I've never danced together? Ever? What? Slow danced? We've slow danced. but it's such a wonderful thing we have in common. It's so wonderful.

I, you know... But you guys don't like to do anything? No, dude. I go to, like, you go to weddings and stuff and everybody wants to dance and have, you know, I don't mind slow dancing. I'll do that, but, you know, all the dancing and stuff. And, you know, if you're married to somebody

that likes to do that, it sucks. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Because you don't want them to go out and dance by themselves. You've got to go out there. But then you're out there hating life because you don't like... But my wife is like, no, I don't like that. I don't want to dance. I'm like, really?

So we'll just sit in the back and watch everyone else and have a good time by ourselves. Yeah, I mean, I don't like to. I will. I do, and I tend to need to be loosened up with some alcohol a little bit to really get into it. I mean, Katrina and I, that was, I tell the story of when we first got together, we went out dancing together. So, I mean, I'm not, but I don't like it like you. I prefer not to. If I'm out and we're doing something, like, I'm not, like, I'm fine sitting at the table.

You know who I like dancing with? I love dancing with my kids. But it's not, I'm not really dancing with them. I pick them up, I swing them, they'll stand on my feet, do the whole thing, you know, in the little. But you won't catch me out there. Yeah. No way, do you.

I didn't realize that. Like, I know something, and then I'll do it, like, just very occasionally, and then people trip out. You're the guy, let me guess. You're the dude that will go on the dance floor and just throw splits out there. I don't do splits, dude. But you know what I mean?

That's you, though. Yeah, but I'll do some, some moves. Like, you have a move. You have a signature move, don't you? I mean, it's kind of like performing on stage. I'll do stuff. What's your, what's your signature? You have a move for sure.

What's your signature? It's like a leg shake with a kick. Yeah. You got a leg shake with a kick? I used to do some Michael Jackson stuff for sure. I know it, dude. I'm doing. When Michael Jackson was on, it was like, dude, it was on like Donkey Kong.

I'd do all the Michael Jackson moves. I didn't realize that Courtney doesn't, I wouldn't. That's interesting that she's not, like, big into it. I mean, she's, she likes, you know, being around that, that scene. She goes dancing and all that, but she's not, like, super into it. She's not, especially the structure of it. Yeah, so she's not like, like Katrina will go line dancing, salsa dancing, all that stuff with, like, her friends or go, that's like they like to do that.

You know what sucks about all at them? It's like, well, I mean, we're okay. We're married now, but, like, dancing is very attractive to women. Oh, yeah. You can move? Her dad is 74 and you can still be picking up, like, girls half his age at 74 because he can, he can really dance. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's fishing a barrel, you guys.

It's a little. Shut up, dude. It's funny, because this is normal. Like, most dudes, like, they're embarrassed or they won't get into it. And so it's just like, it's easy, dude. Yeah, I just don't enjoy it. I'm not embarrassed. I don't care.

My buddy who, have you met my buddy Mike that I drive with? Have you met him? He's, like, kind of a smaller, smaller frame guy, blonde hair, blue eye, fair, pale skin. Like, he's, he's this really good of salsa dancing. Okay. And, like, that's, and I feel like when you're, like, the pale white skin dude that goes in there, like if you're a chick that's into white guys all you're mopping up bro you're the only you're the only pale-skinned white dude in there that's salsa dancing or so for sure for sure that's you're

picking up all day long yeah you guys got all this you know i need to make up for that so that's my move just they start talking to he's like hold a second let's go i'll just grab him out the Watch what I can do. Stop talking. Just watch. Watch the hips. Adam and I were like, oh, this music's loud. Let's go outside and talk.

Let's go have a conversation. Speaking of hips, all I can think about is on the elliptical doing my... Whoa. Yeah. So what's... So are you... So you're trying to do more cardio because you just... I'm not doing...

So I know. I did it. Because we're so sedentary in here. That's all it is. Terrible, dude. I'm pushing calories really aggressively right now. And to just to... Because I need, in order to...

hit like 220, 2.30 plus in grams of protein. I've got to be up there in calories. And I'm just not moving enough to not put body fat on with that high of calorie. And I'm not eating like super lean. I'm not like tracking. I'm like, I'm eating. I'm enjoying. I'm having ribby.

I'm doing stuff like that. Right. And typically, I think I shared this with you off air. Like when I reverse diet hit protein and I'm training like I am right now, I have this I end up kind of just naturally kind of hit this Goldilocks zone where. I'll lean out a little bit. I'll build muscle. And so I'm just getting bigger and just, and I'm building.

And I'm not really leaning out much. And so I think it's just because our inactivity. So inactive. Yeah. I mean, I could. So I have to. People know, we're in here all day. Yeah, yeah.

Oh, we go for one walk. It's literally, how far is our walk? That's embarrassed. Not far enough. It's not far enough. Because even when we do our walk and our daily steps on, I'll only hit like on a normal day, 5,000 steps. Yeah.

So I have to get on. on there for a good 45 minutes to an hour of like walking or elliptical to push eight to 10,000 steps. So that's what I'm doing is just to do that. Otherwise, I got to really tighten the diet up and I'm a must sudden the mood to do that. I'm, you know, I'm still. Plus you need, plus it's good to move. Yeah, plus it's good to move.

It's just good for you. Yeah, yeah, no. It's got facilitate recovery. It's good for my heart. It's all those things. And so it's not, I wouldn't, it's not cardio or it's like zone two type stuff. You know, it's, I'm walking on a, on a slight incline. I'm elliptical.

Just moving. Everybody can see how good you dance. I know, exactly. There's a taste. You're suppressing it, Adam. I've seen you on that elliptical deal. Hey, you know, my, oh, speaking of hidden protein, are you using crisp power to try and hit that?

Oh, yeah. No, those have become daily snacks for me for sure. In fact, I've gone through, I've got to see if we have more in the back because I've gone through all my favorite flavors. The only, I like, I love every flavor. I'm not the big fan of the cinnamon ones. Oh, sweet.

Yeah. It's because the other ones are all savory. Yeah, they're all, I like all the other ones. All the other ones I love. And cinnamon's not bad, because I've heard other people on the staff and stuff like cinnamon. It's just that when I have a chip, it's kind of, yeah. Well, no, I mean, it's, that's like a gram cracker taste to me. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

And I want like a salty sesame seed, sea salt, the, the cheddar ones. How do you keep the staff from meeting them? Did you put on the box from Adam only? No, what I do is I just grab like five, six at a time. I throw them in my gym bag. Because they're gone. Yeah. They don't last.

The team just crushes them. Oh, I know. Coal will eat like four. I know. I'll pair it with like that and like jerky. And I'm getting like it's like a high, you have 26 grams coming from the Chris Power. Yeah. And then some jerky and another 20, 30 grams.

Yeah, 50 grams. 50 something that can eat while I'm driving. Yeah. Well, I've been loving my kids like paying attention to all those numbers of protein. And then they'll see, you know, that there's 26 grams, something of protein. So they're eating all the bags. Like, and it's going. You got teenage boys, dude.

Dude, I just can't compete with it now. All right, we, are we going to talk about the Epstein stuff? Oh, God. Brough. What was it? 3,000 documents. Dude, can I just, it was like 3 million? Hey, I heard, wait, before you get into it, because I heard a funny thing.

And it was a comedian, though, so I don't know if it's true. That the, the government had used Word to redact a lot of the things. So all you had to do was, like, upload it to unredact it. I didn't know that. Yeah. I don't know if this was. true. Is that true? I don't know. I heard something like that.

Yeah. So I heard like something about the black. That's, that's, that's, that's, it was like, it was done in Word. And so you could just upload the file to Word and then, and then, and then, and then, maybe they did that intentionally. Yeah, right. You know, it's, dude, can I, it's all intentional. It's no accident. I don't want to get in too much detail because it's so dark. I can't spend too much time reading into some of the stuff because it's so dark. Yet you do, though. Listen, the conspiracy theorists. Well, all I got to see is, Wake up, dude.

Like, you know, stop calling people conspiracy theories. Listen, listen. It's, this is, it seems like there is literally a satanic cult that runs the world. How crazy does that sound that I just said that? Read the stuff. Here's the most powerful people in the world. And I don't care what side of the aisle you're on. Republicans, Democrats, it's religious leaders, it's billionaires, it's tech.

It's a black male. It's a black male economy. And they're not, it's like, not just sex trafficking. It's dark satanic ritual stuff. Yes, it is. It is. Epstein's bank account was named Ball. Did you see that?

Yeah. You know what Ball is, Doug? That's one of the ancient, like false gods of the Old Testament. It's actually a demon. You're actually worshipping a demon. He named his bank account that. It's crazy. So you need to still go watch the 1975 Netflix documentary.

Because that's what's given me balance to all this stuff, is that. is that this has been, what you're talking about right now is not new news. This has been happening forever. Since the beginning. Since the beginning. Yes.

But everybody's discarded it. Well, I mean, Well, now it's just coming out. To your defense, I agree. Here's where I'll get behind what you're saying, Justin, which is everybody needs to calm down with the calling the conspiracy theories.

People like, people that have been saying this for a long time. Like, I'm over that too. I'm over. I'm over. I'm more like chook. choke the snake's head. Stop like, you know, infighting. Like, it's, it's so, like, ridiculous to me what we fight about. And it's like, you see stuff

like this and nobody's getting arrested and nobody's paying the price. What do you do? It's everyone. I know. So what do you do? You, I exactly. Dude, this is, it's a conundrum. No, dude. Listen, you may, you may or may not believe in God and the devil, but they sure do. They sure do. You read some of the stuff that they talking about what they're doing and it's like it is wild it's crazy and it's like people people you wouldn't even think

or in there did you see there Peter Atia's emails did you see that? Thousand of him a thousand I wouldn't have seen that coming I had no idea he would do you want to talk about like rise and fall well that's getting crushed now that what makes me so curious about things like that is like especially

because that's I would consider that in our space yeah it is it's it's interesting to me, we've been doing this for a really long time. I'd like to think that we're, have a pretty good pulse of our space. It's always interesting to me when somebody like him comes up out of nowhere and is like, on 60 minutes, Uber famous out of nowhere.

And he's saying smart stuff. And he's saying anything different than what we've been talking about for 10 years. Like that's the part I'm always interested in these people that are saying a lot of things that we've been saying forever. Yeah. But all of a sudden, they're on 60 minutes and they're all over the news and they're on a number one podcast and they're like rubbing elbows with all these important. That's interesting to me.

And it makes me wonder about a lot of other people who we've seen that happen with. If it's all true, if it's all true, because there's some, like, big part of me is like it can't be true, but it keeps coming out. But if, if it's true, what you're looking at are the people that run Hollywood, banking system, governments, biotech, tech. So for you to succeed at the upper at the top level in any of those spaces you have these gatekeepers that are a part of this group yeah you got to fall 50 cent dude that's who i know you're gonna follow any rap stars that are dropping bombs where you got fall 50 cents been on this stuff he's gonna be making documentary after documentary after documentary after all this is said and cat williams have been talking about yeah what's crazy

to me is that you have this uh because we'll stay on the spiritual side again you can believe it or not but they see they definitely do there's a revival that's happening on the good side and it's one of the craziest biggest revivals we've seen in modern history. And it's very unique because it's young men in particular. Simultaneously, you have all this other stuff coming out. So if you believe in this stuff, there seems to be like a spiritual war is heating up. So where's it go?

Yeah. Yeah. I think for good balance, I think everybody should watch the documentary that I keep talking about. Did I just scared everybody? Yeah, I just think that the thing that is more unique today than anything else, in my opinion, is not any of the stuff that we're talking about right now. All that stuff has been happening forever.

Yeah, but nobody's ever thought it was real, though. Yeah. You think nobody has ever, of course there's always been. Not mainstream. Very small. It's only mainstream because everybody, everything is mainstream because everybody's on Twitter and social media now. That's, that's it.

It's the only difference. The only difference is the conspiracy theorists have a louder voice and can talk more about it. I mean, people have been saying this stuff forever. It's just that it's in our face, 24-7 on these feeds. And so everybody's an alarmist about everyone. every single thing. But if you just,

that's why that documentary was so good for me to watch it just went like, man, it was, I would way rather be here today than with all this crazy shit you're talking about than 1975.

With nuclear bombs getting ready to go off on us with freaking serial killers happening. It just seems like now we obviously know a lot more stuff. This is just crazy to me, you guys.

This is just wild. Since when did we ever see emails and documents that were this crazy between all these powerful people? So the, here's a positive, okay, the positive side of this,

is that it is much harder for these evil people to hide than it was in 1975. In 1975, it was much easier for these people to hide and not be known about and the secret societies and the control and the power was easier because there was only a few media outlets they had to control. We're now with this ability that everybody has their phone

and can be an investigator and like... It's almost more disheartening, though, because nobody's paying the consequence for it. Well, only because you know, ignorance is bliss. Well, that's why. Yeah, yes and no. Like, I think back then there'd be examples

they'd make of people and they'd get arrested, but it's like you had faith in your government. Yeah, but you don't have faith in your government now. I mean, in 1975, there was no faith in the government. I'm not a crook. This is Watergate. This is all the...

But there was sides that did and their side that didn't. Yeah, you were good guys. Yeah, but that was the narrative they wanted you to know. You're right, right. That's a narrative they wanted to do. They made you feel like you were getting wins. They made you feel like there was a fault. I think that's the point Justin's making is that you felt better.

Yeah. And my point is ignorance is bliss. The hope there's an outcome of like a consequence. So it's like, okay, so do you feel better with it all happening, but you being blind to it? And so you feel better and go to bed every night. And you think it's, or do you, would you rather be out in the open? It's so much like that scene in the Matrix. Remember that scene in the Matrix where that one dude, he gets on plug and he makes a deal with the machines.

And he goes, he wants to forget everything. He wants to go back in the Matrix. He wants to be rich. Yeah. Because the real world was just so terrible. Yeah. And I get it. I get it.

That's exactly what we're talking about right now. The curtain's been, you know, it's been opened up. And so, you know, we've got this insight now with how the real power dynamic works, you know. And who's really like pulling the strings? And so I don't know. Like, is that good? Is that bad? Like, it's, I'm indifferent to it.

It's just like, it's one of those things. It's like, it's nothing until somebody actually goes to jail. I mean, you can argue both sides. Like, Sal brings up the point how dangerous it is for nobody to trust government, right? That's a dangerous place to be. But then you could also say that if there's anything that was ever going to unify us, it would be things like this coming out that both sides are evil and bad. And then all of us going like, listen.

Power vacuums are never good. So it's like, you know what ends up happening when you, let's say, look at every revolution ever happened like this. Let's say for whatever reason, we just got rid of everybody in power, started over. You have this power vacuum and the people that will come up and take it, probably not good either. So, I don't know. That's why I'm like, I almost feel like every, this, the way that they're releasing these is to desensitize everybody and also to get everybody kind of frozen where you're just, there's inaction. There's an action. Like, what do we do with this? Oh, man. Yeah, it's a bit of a playbook, though, like to your point is to get people to not

trust anything, right? Like, that's, that's, that's a dangerous place for society. I mean, obviously people are calling for stuff to get done here, but are emails enough to incriminate somebody to, you can't, no, but there's a lot of stuff they didn't release. There's a lot of videos. Yeah, there's a lot more. Yeah, that was just, honestly, that was a retaliation. And, and you see what's moved, watch what's happening next and where we're moving next, you know, potentially for war. Yeah. Some people are saying that happens and you know for sure. Yeah,

for sure what that was blackmail. I would have never guessed. I'm super skeptical of like why these people, why this, why now, for that exact reason. It's like why not all of it at once? Yeah, because they know what they put out, right? They know what they're releasing. So what are they not releasing?

I just think it's crazy that. Had you told me 15 years ago, Alex Jones would be right a lot. I would have been like, get out of my face. I know. But he keeps going out to be. Remember that video? It was a long time ago where he filmed that, like, ritual group with those elites and they're, like, worshipping this big owl statue.

I mean, that's real. Hohen Grove, yeah. It was real. It is real. That was all real, dude. Agent provocateur is real, like, all that stuff's real. It's just fine. Again, these are all, like, parts of society.

People just don't want to acknowledge because it's like, it's, you just want to go about your day and, like, work and do the thing and contribute and just. hope things are working, but it's like, you know, once you see all this, it is a bit disheartening. Totally, totally. Speaking of disheartening, how's, you were talking about an injury you had earlier. I want to hear what you did from stuff. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I was, yeah, a couple weeks ago now, right? Yeah, it was probably two weeks ago.

And, uh, dude, I think that's the one thing that I've, I could pinpoint. Like, I feel older. Like, I do feel like it's different now. The way that, like, my body still holds on to this, like, injury. Injury pain. Like, I used to just. bounce right back and everything was cool. And the worst part is it wasn't like a real injury.

It was like it's like a deep core strain to where it's like, you know, I feel unstable around my hips and lower back. What'd you do? So it was a reaction. I was going really fast like because I was bored. All day I'm trying to teach my son to snowboard and like he just learned. And so I'm like going really slow and like on a snowboard, it's brutal. because like you just burn your legs up like going that speed and like having to stand and wait and all that kind of stuff.

So it was like one of the last runs and I'm going down this village run and it's like kind of flat and I'm just picking up all the speed because it's like ice and it's not like, you know, like soft snow at all. And I go off trail. And so I go off trail and then I'm going to kind of weave back and I saw an opening where I could weave back. and I didn't see that there was like all these mogul and jumps like in between to get back to the trail. And I'm like, boom, I'm going like really fast like right into it. And so I'm having to like, I don't know, have you ever seen like motocross where they go over those like, like, I'm doing that. But like literally I thought I was going to eat shit.

And like I was like, how am I going to crash? Should I roll? Like I'm thinking about all this as I'm like going over them because like I'm hitting it and I'm like, my body's doing all this and like trying to like over. I was like over correct. and tightening everything. And then I landed and then I'm like, oh. And I kept going back down to the end and realized that, oh, my God, I like strained

everything really bad. It was just literally like my body holding my spine together and like I heard it, you know. What muscles do you think you pull? Oh, my God. Like, yeah, erector spine, like everything, dude. Oh, God. When you get your deep core messed up, it's the thing you can't do nothing. Yeah.

Yeah, like I, like, I saw. I'm doing like hip bridges. I'm doing like bird dogs. The weakest workouts you've ever seen, dude. Now going into that, looking back, because I know, at least in my case, every time I've done this, because I've done this so many times, is I'm not training appropriately for what I'm about to go do, you know. And that's the big difference. It's less about that we're older. It's just that we just don't do any of that stuff anymore.

And then I... How do you train with... I put gasoline on it without... Not necessarily. You could do... He could be doing, he could be doing it. And that's why it's interesting to hear him do it because if all of us, he's the best when it comes to, like, rotational strength and core strength and, like, anti-rotational stuff. You and I probably would have herniated a disc or something.

Yeah, yeah. I've just learned. I just don't do it. I think I just over-corrected, like, so hard. My big, I'm so angry still about my peck tear because I did all the mobility work for my lower body because I was wakeboarding. And so I'm just, I'm not even thinking about my upper body. I'm thinking about my lower body. I'm jumping, I'm carving, I'm turning, I'm doing all this stuff.

Like it's, I need my hips, my ankles, my knees. That needs to be. And I didn't address my upper body. And so it was like on the weakest little fall, it just tore my peck. And I went, what an asshole move to, you know, do all the work in my lower body and to not address my upper body. And then to go out and tear my peck on like a weak fall. Are you doing like the BPC and all that now? Well, yeah.

So that's, I'm just, I just started that protocol. And I'm going to see if that. I'm sure it's going to play that. It helps it fast. Yeah. My cousin, I was just talking to one of my cousins who had an ankle, was just ankle mobility was bad and it was hurting. He started using BPCs like, dude, is this stuff like, like,

how does this work? Yeah. My ankle feels fine. Yeah, I think I actually might just go to dumbbells and suspension trainer and like, I might do a phase of that like for a month or so. That's good. Just get back to like. Well, I've got your, uh, your peptides finally handled.

15 companies later and having, conversations with so we're working with we're finally found a better company yeah no the thing that was uh the most difficult part for me was one the black eye that i felt like the partnership uh um with transcend and end up being for us as a brand to the point where you know there was lots of discussion about not doing anything in that space at all uh problem with that is that we have so many people that utilize peptides and in hr t and stuff like that that I feel also like obligated like we're doing a disservice to them to not find a good brand. And I went through it. So in our in our mind pump hormones, you'll see like just threads of people shouting out names and brands and companies.

And I went through all the biggest, most reputable companies out there and still was like, I didn't feel anything until we met Phil. And then when we met Phil and sat down and the thing that was so important to me was all the negative things that we got was the pushy the pushiness on the sales side the cost the cost right per everything that was on there was just like oh super expensive the delay to get medications uh the lack of communication to an actual doctor so these are all the things like i had to solve all of those if we were going to go with anybody and so i feel really good about um that now because all of those boxes are, nice, are checked. And so, you know, the official announcement will come out in the MP hormones, uh, forum. So I'll probably be doing that later tonight. Are we linked up to

them now? No, we're not. No, we're not. I mean, actually, by the time this episode goes live, yes, but I mean, if you want to know what that is, go to our, our Facebook forum, MP hormones. You'll see the official announcement in there where we'll have links and everything going on. Yes, mind pump hormones. Okay. The page, not MP hormones. But nphorones.com is our link To go, that'll send it. Oh, oh, oh. The Facebook forum is not MP hormones?

No, it's mind pump hormones. No, our link is mp hormones.com. If you go there, then you can get it. I thought our forum was labeled that also. No. Oh, I was just on there yesterday and said MP hormones on it. So that's weird. So maybe that the whole Facebook name and link is what you're saying, but on the actual

logo of it, it says MP hormones. So that's something that's. Yeah, yeah. Okay. Good. Well, that's all. Well, they're good. And their, their, their, their prices are.

are ridiculous. Yeah. Ridiculous. In a good way. In a good way. We recorded an episode with him and he told us the actual cost of these things. Yeah. And I can't believe how much they get marked up with other companies, which is kind of

astonishing. So, and they have no salespeople. It's only doctors. Yeah. Yeah, I love that. I love that the membership includes quarterly meetings with a doctor. Every patient meets with a doctor. It's not a, they have no sales rep.

the prices are way less. You're within 48 to 72 hours. You're with the doctor within 48 to 72 hours. The medication is at your doorstep. I mean, that stuff was just... Those were the things that I was just like more concerned about that. And for the audience that cares, I mean, this is by far one of the smallest offers to us. I didn't want any ties to commissions or sales or anything like that whatsoever.

The way we wanted to structure the partnership is that, listen, we have a huge audience. There's a lot of people that use this stuff. We do not want to be motivated by sales or tied to that whatsoever. And so there were a lot of offers on the table that were a lot more money, but there was no way we were going to do business unless we could solve those things. And so I feel really good about it. And I'm glad that, I mean, I apologize for the people that went through all the shit that they went through with Transcend and how long it took. but I didn't want to just sign with the first company. So I feel really good about what we're doing now.

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Go to Z-biotics.com forward slash mind-pump-26. That's Z-B-I-O-T-I-C-S dot com forward slash, again, mind-pump-26. Use the code, Mind Pump-26 to get the 15-1. 15% off. Back to the show. Our first caller is Darren from Ontario. Hey, Darren. How are you doing, Darren?

Hi, guys. How are you doing? Good. This is cerebral. How can we help you? So I'll start off with my email. Basically, I hope you're all doing well. I've been reaching out because I need some expert advice.

I'm hitting a really heavy plateau, 47, soon to be 48, and been working out for years. Lately, just, oh, geez, you know what? It's just basically that. 47, 48. I'm trying to figure out what to do. I've tried every routine I can think of, every supplement I can think of. And I don't feel I'm getting the gains. But I know for a fact that as you get older, it's more difficult, right? So I don't know where to go. I don't know what else to do. All right. Well, let's dive in a little bit and see what you're doing. So let's start with diet. What does that look like? I currently, I have gallstones. So the amount of food I can eat, how often I can eat is limited. because it just causes his pain. So I try to get the protein in.

I try to get at least 150 in a day, 150 grams, but it is not easy. And I don't know if it's just poor choice of food or whatnot, but diet does need work. Okay. And is just low fat, high protein okay for you? Or is it like what, because I know typically it's fat. Okay, so all protein bothers you.

It's not all protein. It's just it takes, it's harder to digest. Okay. So I try to do. Basic proteins. And you use digestive enzymes when you eat fats? Yes. Yeah.

Okay, good. Bile salts, I believe, is one of them. Yeah, good. Okay. So lean proteins are typically good with gallstones in my experience. And protein shakes, does those work for you? Yeah, those I have no issue with. Okay, good.

So what's your target body weight? It's like 190. Okay. Would adding another shake be okay? Like a 40 grand shake? Sure. Okay, so I would start there with your diet. Do you know what your calories look like?

No, I don't track macros that crazy. Okay. And the progress you're looking for is muscle building? Is it fat loss? For the longest time, it was muscle building. But like I said, I'm getting to the higher ages. So I just want strength gains and longevity. So I've done several tough mutters.

I've done the Spartan beast. I've done a lot of OCRs. So I need running in it as well. So I know the muscle gain. You guys had a podcast like beginning of January where you were mentioning about trying to stay a runner and big at the same time is almost impossible. So I'm kind of at the point now where I'm just like good enough to be healthy,

good enough to have some size, good enough to be in shape. Okay, so this would be a nice mix program. How many days a week are you training now and what does that look like? I do PPL right now and one day is a run. And that's four days. So four days a week of lifting weights plus one day of strength training? Three days lifting and one day running. Oh, that's only four.

That's not bad. Yeah. I can do more. I just, that's the. current routine. How's your activity outside of those exercise days? Like, do you ever see your steps? Like, are you active throughout the day? I work Friday, Saturday, Sunday, 12 hours, and I'm usually putting in 15,000 steps. Okay, you move on. Okay. That's good. And then tell me about the PPL. How long are you in the gym and what are you doing? Usually 45 to an hour 15. And it's your basic

AI generated routine. It's not the best. I'm going to be honest with you. Yeah. So two things I would do right out the gates is I would have you switch to a different program. You can keep the running. I would do something like Maps 15, which is daily, but short. And I would bump the protein. But tracking might be something you might want to start doing, tracking your calories or macros, just to see where you're at. Because otherwise, it's kind of a guessing game. Well, why this is so important, Sal, too, is that if you're doing things like Tough Mudders and Spartans and you're running and your low protein and your low calorie. This is like a recipe for a hard plateau because then the body is not getting enough of

the fuel that it needs to build and nutrients. It needs to build muscle. It's barely getting enough fuel to do all the activity that you're doing. And so it's just hanging on. And so that's and so figuring that out would really help because then it would be like, like let's just take your example. Like if I find out we actually tracked and we find out you're eating 130, 120 to 130 grams of protein a day and you're only eating 2,100 to 2,300 calories and you're

stepping as much as you are. We're at a hard plateau and we need a reverse diet. Like I've got to, we've got to back off all the volume. We got to slowly increase calories. We've got to try and get the protein up. And we've got to build some muscle if we want to speed your metabolism up. Otherwise, that's what's going on. And that's super common, by the way.

It's like somebody finds what, and I just gave some random numbers. It could still even be higher than that. we need to do that. But like, that's typically when I hear somebody who's doing all as, as active as you are training what you're doing right now. If we're struggling with protein intake and our calories are low, that is like a recipe for like just your body kind of staying right there. And I wouldn't be surprised if the, if a MAPS 15 protocol, actually I think that's probably going to, you're going to see some strengthings from doing that. Just that alone. Yeah, PPL. And adding your protein. PPL is okay, but you know, high volume once a week versus volume

spread out throughout the whole week. And with active individuals, these kind of small, short, daily strength training workouts seem to work a lot better. They just do. People just tend to get way better progress with something like that. So I'll send you that program and you can follow that. And you have a home gym or you go to the gym? I got a full home gym.

So I'm basically on my own. I don't have the group of people to help push. So some days it's difficult. But I just, you know, I do it again because I know I need to. Oh, you'll love it. That's better. You'll love it. That's better.

Yeah, it's two lifts today. You go in there and you do two lifts to get out every day. I honestly think switch. You need that. That's not an issue at all. Yeah, yeah. Maps 15 bump the protein shake in there. I think you should see a difference just from that alone.

Yeah. And then I would. I would track to get an idea where we're at calorie-wise. Darren, are you in our forum too or no? No, I'm not. I'm going to have Doug put you in our private forum. And then I love an update from, yeah. So we'll send the program over to you, get you in the forum,

and then just give us kind of an update. date after a couple weeks to follow in the program, bumping the protein, and then we'll kind of see where you're at from there, and then we can make adjustments. And, Darren, if you want something more individualized, if you want some coaching through the process, you can send us a message, and I'll get one of my coaches online with a much larger investment, but they're there with you the whole time individualizing it. And that's always, of course, the best option. But you let us know if that's something interesting.

Otherwise, I'd go math 15, protein, and you should see strength gains within two weeks. If it's working, that's what you'll see. Perfect. So double shakes and Maps 15. I can definitely handle that. Okay. I'll send that to you. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Check in with us in the forum, brother. I will. I appreciate everything you guys do. Been listened to you for a year. So thank you. Right on, Derek. You know, it's interesting, right? When you look at the data on strength training, even the one of the volumes controlled, doing it all in one workout versus two and three, you tend to see better gains, even in the controlled data with more frequent. Yeah, splitting it up. But in my experience, it's even better than that.

People tend to be more consistent. They tend to be less fatigued. It works with people's schedules better, builds better behaviors. And I believe as you get older, it becomes even more valuable. Because fatigue sets in so much, if I'm doing 15 sets and one workout

versus five sets, three workouts, or even, you know, two sets, you know, five workouts or whatever. I think really, like, our environment has impacted this a lot. I think back in the day, you know, it might have made more sense to dedicate this hour

to two hours at the gym, but now, you know, with everybody's lifestyle, like, this makes so much more sense to not impede on it. I bet my last dollar, it's what I said. Yeah. Protein. Low protein, low calorie. Probably. Lots of activity. He said the gallbladder stone thing, so yeah. He's not eating enough. Well, yeah, he says he tries to hit 150, which tells if, like, it's probably 120 or less many days, which means he's probably pretty low calorie, too. He's stepping 15,000 steps a day. He's running one day a week, and he's doing a push-pool routine that takes an hour long. Oh, yeah.

I guarantee he's that. And let's just say his diet is clean and perfect on those days. And then occasionally he has something over that's not good for him. And he knows that. And that's just a recipe for your body, just kind of staying right there. You're not leaning out. You're not building any muscle. You're not seeing any results.

But he's sustaining. He's able to do the stuff he's doing, but he's not, he's not. he's not getting the change he wants. I'm willing to bet he's landing in the lower 2,000 calorie range, maybe mid, or really low on the days he eats well, and then when he daze, when he kind of goes off. But it averages out to what you're saying. Exactly, exactly. Our next caller is Craig from Georgia.

What's up, Craig? How are you doing, Craig? Hey, how's it going, guys? How are you doing? Good, man. How can we help you? Doing pretty good. You know, first of all, thanks for everything you guys do.

I kind of think of myself as an OG. I've been listening probably since 2017 or so, maybe not original Kekster, but that's pretty close. That is. That is. There. And so, yeah, so I've written in a few questions. You guys chose this one after many years. It's probably the easiest one I've asked, but that's okay.

I have lots of y'all's programs. And so thank you for that because after many, many years of training, it takes the guess workout. And so y'all make solid programs. So I normally just follow them from anabolic to, you know, split to performance, all of them. And so I'm running through anabolic advanced right now for the second time. I probably got it right after you guys released it. And I have a question about priming for the failure days and warming up for those. So I've been training for probably 28 years or so pretty high absolute strength and strength endurance.

And so when I warm up and it says to do one or two warm-up sets, I find I'm not really warm after one or two warm-up sets. And so I've tried a few different mechanisms, either doing fewer reps with more sets to get to a heavier load before I hit my failure sets. I've tried just doing straight sets working up until I feel like I'm fatigued. But then the total volume gets really, really high. I normally leave out the optional exercises because the volume's too high, which I've learned over time in my 40s.

I should be doing less. And I'll just reiterate what you guys always say. 15 is probably my favorite program because that's what I find is the best. And so, yeah, I just want you guys input on how you prepare what your intent was on preparing for those sets. Yeah, no, good question. I'll give you a little context, Craig. Obviously, you're a big guy. You're strong.

I see some of the numbers you sent us if you don't mind me going over on. But, you know, like you're doing your dumbbell, chest press, you know, 100 plus pound dumbbell. Bells, back squats over 400 pounds. And so with MAPS andabolic advanced, you do a couple warm-up sets and then you go to failure, but you're so strong that it takes you longer to warm up.

I mean, you just jump into a back squats with 400 pounds go to failure. The risk of injury is always higher. It's always much higher when you're lifting that much weight. And so you do as many sets as you need to feel ready. And now here's the thing with the volume.

It's not a lot of volume if it's a warm-up set. What you don't want to do, are working sets. So sometimes a warm-up set looks more like a set. And so when I'm working up, let's say I'm going to do a set of failure to squats,

I just keep ramping up and the intensity is like light-moderate. And I just keep going until I feel like, yeah, I'm ready. And sometimes that takes five. It depends on the exercise. Squats, it could take as many as six. When I'm doing a press,

it might be three or four. If I'm doing a row, I can warm up real fast for some reason. So take as many as you need before you get to failure, but don't make them working sense. Yeah, keep the reps. So like when I'm working up to a heavy squat like that or a heavy deadlift, I'm going from a plate to two plates to three plates, right? But I'm only doing five reps.

Like I'm not going to do 10, even though I could do 15 reps of the three plates. I'm not going to do that. I don't want to get fatigued at all. But I do want to get my body acclimated to a little more weight, a little more weight. And then I get to my working. And so, Sal's right, like when we write these programs, we're thinking of the general population, not someone like you per se.

And so if I was coaching you, you would be like, oh, we could take a few more warm-up sets to get ready to put 400 pounds on our back. That's totally understandable. Yeah. And here's the other thing I'll say to someone like you, you're so strong. Instead of doing 405 for 19,

because that's what you wrote up there, which that's a lot. I would go 405 or 3.5. 75 and I would make it, I'd make myself fail way earlier by pausing, by going slow, because you're going to get minimal returns on getting stronger at this point. I mean, if you get your squat from 405 for 19 reps to 425 for 19, you're not going to see tons of gains, but your risk of injury went through the roof because it's a lot of weight.

So I'm just, you know, depending on the exercise, I'm like, I'm not adding weight. I'm just going to make it feel harder. And so I'm slowing down. I'm pausing at the bottom. I'm squeezing. Like, can I make myself fail at 10 with this weight? That's my mentality. That's funny.

I was just going to say that. But also, too, even in the warm-up and the warm-up sets, grip in the bar, extra tight, adding a lot more tension as you're going through those reps, like, all the way down the kinetic chain. So you're even maybe a little bit of a pause just to make sure, you know, you're getting everything really fired up. Like, there's a way to do that, like, intrinsically versus just kind of going through the sets and trying to.

work your way up to that warm up totally yeah like i like that i like all those ideas those are always good i'm always trying to mix things up there um so i appreciate you guys give me that insight sometimes it's good to just get in your heads and and see where you're thinking but i love all of y'all's programs yeah i appreciate that man yeah thank you thanks a lot i stopped writing my own programs probably about five years ago and so i just cycle through you guys and i'm pointing people to you guys all the time if you got a couple more minutes i have another follow-up question yeah yeah let's hear let's go um it's It's related to training youth, actually. So my son is in sixth grade.

He's actually a pretty high level power lifter for an 11-year-old. Oh, cool. Awesome. But I started doing a Bible and Barbell Club with him and his buddies. And so I was curious your thoughts, and this maybe goes more to Justin, because I know he's done some of this in the past. I'm doing like 45-minute Bible study, and then we do like 45 minutes of lifting. And so I've been playing around with rotating the major lifts, you know, one week versus the next.

But I wanted your idea. Is it better to do that? Or you think I should just say, okay, I'm going to spend four weeks focusing on squats. And we're just going to focus on squats and teach the squat. And then, you know, it didn't do a four week cycle of just teaching the deadlift and then teaching maybe bench press and just looking at the big movements. Because most of these kids just, I'm finding kids don't move well. I think your latter advice in terms of like, focusing just because just on one right yeah just one yeah yeah just so they can learn the

the mechanics of it and really work their way through that you can like to are you training them all as like a group or yeah it's a group it's like you know we have between four and seven and so you can't do too much in 45 minutes when you got a bunch of six graders trying to goof off and flip weights you know you guys get in line and and stay focused yeah exactly and you can work on tempo with that so you get them all kind of in sync. I found that, you know, with kids, like, just having them, you know, together and, and splitting them off in pairs really helps so you can kind of, like, empower one to, you know, reinforce what you're teaching and watch for these certain things in their movements.

That helps a lot, so you have an extra pair of eyes. But, yeah, that way you can kind of walk around, you know, you're kind of educating them all at the same time. and it's a lot more effective for them to focus on that versus like kind of jumping them to the next lift. How many times a week did you say you see them? Well, we started doing it at two times a week, but just because of other sports, we're transitioning just once a week. So we only have once a week that we're doing this.

It's really to get them, you know, really studying God's work, but then also have the most of them are youth athletes, too. So they're playing other sports. Oh, yeah. For sure. Baseball seasons for year for Episphine, for my son and like other kids play other sports soccer and so I don't want them doing too much I just want them really learning the movements and you're healthy yeah you're on the right try if you're only seen them one time a week the whole month would be about squats the whole month

every time they come in we're just we're practicing the movement so at that and like you said it's more really about the Bible study and introducing them to some a good movement you know what I'm saying this is so great so it's very weird idea I hope you know I mean you realize what an incredible impact you're making on these young men by doing that's incredible yeah I love But there's three things I've been doing for 20 plus years. I study in the Bible, lifting weights, and studying science. And so I'm a scientist as well. And so I try to bring all those things and try to teach some of these kids some of these things as well.

That's awesome. Yeah, the two things that consider with the workout is, you know, the big thing with kids is always, can I get them to enjoy this? Because if they develop a good relationship, I'll want to keep doing it. And so the challenge, maybe I'm wrong, but the challenge might be like, well, I want to keep them interested. so I'm cycling through the exercises because I don't want them to get bored. But really, they're going to get so excited seeing their numbers go up. I mean, if you squat every week, they're going to see gains in that. That's probably going to psych them up.

Yeah, they go through the roof. I mean, it's just the movement learning of that. Every week they're putting up PRs to them because it's just like they know how to move better than the week after week. That's so great. And so it helps my son too because he's, you know, and all, like a couple of them are starting to, one of his buddies is going to compete with him in a few weeks. weeks as well. And so they're all like excited about that. I mentioned like, hey, if you know, if you guys want to stick with it, we'll put the team together and, and go all go compete and youth powerlifting next year. And so they're all excited about that. That's awesome, man.

That's cool. So cool. Can we send you anything to help you out? Do you have our mobility programs? Is anything we can help you out with? Uh, I have, I have a lot of your programs. I have all the prime prime pro. All right. I, I don't have symmetry. You have symmetry? Oh, yeah. So my go-to programs are symmetry and 15. Okay. I've been hurt too much now, so I back.

So about once a year, I try to push it like you guys do, and then you end up hurting you're like, oh, crap. I'm glad I push it. I just need to go back to 15 or symmetry. I'm going to have Doug when we hang up. I'm going to have Doug message you and get your address. I'd love to send a package for all the boys. Oh, yeah, that'd be awesome.

They would love that. See if I can find a more flags. I'm also a youth athlete. My son's about to set all the American records for the third time in powerlifting. No way. That's so cool. Can I ask you what the numbers are? Yeah, so he's moving up a weight class to 48 kilos.

So that's like 106 pounds almost. And he's his best in the gym right now is 215 squat. He has a 105 pound bench and a 230 deadlift. Already at 11. He's a laughing. He has no idea that he's that strong. He always thinks that he's doing horrible. I'm like, dude, you've already set like a bunch of American record.

You're all right. He's going to be a monster. That's awesome, man. That's so cool. I'm waiting for puberty to kick in, and then it's going to blow up. Oh, God. Look out. Look out.

Look out. Good for you. That's great, man. Yeah, yeah. I appreciate it, guys. I love everything you guys do. Keep it up. I'll keep pushing people your way just because you can make solid programs and give solid advice.

I appreciate that, man. Thanks, Greg. Yeah, thanks for the sport. Thanks. That's the coolest thing ever. Yeah, yeah. You got to get his address and we'll send a cool care package to all the kids over there. That'd be cool.

That is so great, man. Yeah, really uplifting to hear all that. You know, with this training, I mean, I mean, I was easy, of course, easy, easy answer to his question. Just for people listening, when you get that strong, you have to figure out how to make the weight feel heavier because always adding weight to the bar. It starts to get. I didn't realize. I didn't realize until you said it. He said four.

I saw the 405, I didn't see by 19. 19, yeah. He's a beast, bro. If you're doing 405 for 19, you got like a 600 back squad. Yeah, yeah. You're strong. You're real strong. Strong and stuff.

What a great idea, Bible and barbells. What a great thing for young bands. Dude, I love that. Such a great way to do it, too. Just all month long, we're focusing on the squad. Every day we meet, we do 45 minutes. We do the Bible. Yeah, that's cool.

That's cool. Great to meet, dude. Our next caller is Billy from Alberta. Hey, what's up, ma'am? What's happening? Hey, guys, how are you? Good, man, how are you doing? All right, dude.

How can we help you? Good. I'm doing fantastic. Okay, I have to say right away, really appreciate you guys taking my question. Your health and fitness advice, it really resonates with me. You guys have so much experience, and I think people can save themselves so many years of trial and error just by listening to your show. Finally, I have to acknowledge all the non-fitness stuff as well, because I absolutely love the banter and all the conspiracy talk. It feels like I'm kind of just hanging out with the voice.

Oh, yeah. They got me, bro. They got me finally. We converted him. Yeah, it's good. Yeah, I'll jump right into my question here for the sake of time for you guys. So in my teens and early 20s, I developed a passion for bodybuilding, strength, supplements, all that fun stuff. At the time, my focus was more on gaining as much muscle as possible.

Never ate whole foods, but my diet was okay overall. I was super dedicated and it paid off because to this day it's still the strongest I've ever been. The early passion never really faded, but life got hectic when I started university and I became more of a casual lifter at that time. Didn't have a specific goal in mind. I'd lift with no set routine, get my 10,000 steps, play sports, that kind of thing, just really trying not to get that throughout the university years. So overall, I maintain my health, but I never really achieved the fitness.

and physique goal that I really had envisioned for myself. So at 36 years old, I was struck with a realization that I kind of wasted a bunch of my prime years, not really chasing that goal. That was super important to me. So last, well, in June of 2025, it kind of felt like a switch flipped, started lifting using the push-pull routine, push-pull legs, sorry, that I created myself, started tracking macros, and my plan was to cut to about 12% body fat, get to a point where I'm pretty lean and then reverse diet on that lean frame to pack on as much muscle as I could.

Some stats, I'm 510, currently 163 pounds cut down from 196. Calories started off at 2,400 and I slowly pulled that back to about 1950-2,000. Held that caloric intake for a couple of months until weight loss became pretty slow. And throughout that whole process, I monitored my strength and didn't see any strength losses. So I felt as if I preserved as much muscle as I could. So overall, I felt as if I felt pretty good throughout the whole process, never felt overtrained, never felt like I was starving myself. I legitimately felt okay.

Here's the butt. So at the very beginning of my jersey, or journey, I checked my testosterone levels because I'm curious like most other guys. It was 565, which I kind of felt like, hey, I can bump those numbers up a little bit by doing all the things. I did my lab work recently again. This is about six, seven months later, and they had dropped to 308.

I saw that result, and I figured there's no way that can be true after all this effort. I did another test 10 days later, and they were 118. And this is where I went to feeling good, not feeling great at all. I could feel the symptoms of low testosterone.

It kind of confused me because I felt like I was doing all the right things to increase that number, you know, exercise, eating whole foods, protein, lifting. Didn't feel overtrained. But I'm curious, is the long-term deficit the result for that drop in my testosterone? And yeah, almost certainly.

In fact, what would, okay, so if, I just reengaged on my kick, right? I'm coming up on two months right now. And definitely needed to lose body fat. But I never start that way. I always, even though I know I want to lose body fat. and lean down is where I want to go. If I haven't been dialed in, eating consistency and lifting, the first thing I go to is right away reverse diet.

Even though I want to be leaner, it's build that metabolism, build muscle, lean into that, and then come the other way. You went and went, let's cut, cut, cut, cut from a guy who probably wasn't training really consistent, wasn't really watching his diet very carefully, to all of a sudden cutting calories and getting leaner. And that's your body needs more. and you're lacking nutrients and that your testosterone levels are telling you that right there.

You would have been better off even at a higher body fat percentage saying, I'm going to go build some muscle on this, you know, thicker, chunkier frame that I have right now. I don't care. And not aggressively, but slowly increase calories and get to a place where you're eating more like 3,500 calories. And then go to a cut at like 2,800 calories and watch your body fat just. drop. That would have kept you at a healthier level testosterone. The low level testosterone tells me you went too low on calories for too long to get that body. And you got the body fat percentage down and aesthetically you probably look pretty good, but your body didn't like it at all.

A prolonged deficit. We'll do that. Eventually we'll do that. Yeah. Here's the other thing too. I would also look at nutrient levels. So 2,000 calories of food brings 2,000 calories of nutrients. most common ones that make a difference are zinc, vitamin D, and magnesium. Are you taking any supplements? Yeah, so I do creeteen, vitamin D, zinc, magnet. I do the ZMA stack. Okay, good. Vitamin K.

So, again, I thought I was doing all the good stuff. You are. You're set. Then it's definitely the definitely the calories. You know, being as active as you are, man, you know, like 2,000 calories low for a long time. So I would reverse diet, focus on building. You'll see your numbers bounce back up. Any prolonged, here's a deal.

Even if you're reverse diet, you can do it for longer with a reverse diet, but a sustained deficit almost always depresses testosterone in men. Now, somebody who's obese, who then goes on a healthy diet, will tend to see a rise in testosterone at first. But if they stay in a deficit for a while, here's the signal, let me put it this way, the signal you're telling your body is that resources are hard to come by. And your body is going to say, we don't want you to. reproduce. You're not going to be able to care for another mouth. You're not going to be able to feed

another mouth, I should say. So it's just, you're just, you're just, 2,000 is, is too low for too long. So bump up to 2,500, right out the gates. By the way, the symptoms of overtraining, when someone starts to feel the symptoms, they've probably been overdoing it for a long time already. So it's like, when you feel symptoms, it's like you've been, you've been there for a little while. And also in the context of where you're at, calorie-wise, like you may not be, you may not be overdoing. it if you were eating 2,800 calories. That's right. That's right. But a guy who's eating so low of calories and even though you, like in your head,

you're like, I wasn't kill. It was not like I was doing seven days a week or running like crazy. Like so maybe in your head you're not like, I doesn't feel like I'm crazy overtraining, but you are for a guy who's only eating 2,000 calories. Your body wants somewhere more like 2,500 to 2,800 calories to feel healthier. And so you doing that for a long period of time is overtrained, even though it may not feel like. It's more than you can support.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, just so you know, though, because again, at some point in your life, this more than likely will help in because most of us have these ebb and flows of when we're on our kicks and when we're not. When you start off, unless you, even if you were somebody obese, I would still reverse diet first. I always do that first. I always, I go, you know, clean up the diet. And I don't know what your offenders are. If your guy that likes a glass of whiskey here and there or you like ice cream like I do or whatever your offenders are, like I get that out. And I replace it with good food.

It's like I don't cut calories. I go, you know, 400 or 500 calories of ice cream I was eating now becomes a steak and rice meal. And I go after my protein. I try it in reverse diet, not aggressive first diet, but actually include good high nutrient foods and go build muscle. I'm right in the middle of that right now. I want to cut, but I'm getting my calories up to where they're more like 35, 3,800.

And then I can go do that. And I'm thicker than I'd like. And I started this journey knowing that I need to reduce body fat, but it starts with me building my metabolism first. Okay. Yeah, it kind of scared me a little, so I immediately flipped into a reverse diet, and my plan was to actually use anabolic to kind of repair that with a reverse diet. But it does scare me a little to start adding 500 calories, and I'm not sure where to go from there, because I don't want to pack on too much fat. I'm happy with my progress. No, no, no. You won't, you'll just get stronger and build muscle. Dude, put on, put 500 calories back

in the diet right away and just hang tight there for a couple weeks. And then I bet you're, weight will level out and you'll see strength go up and then do it another 500. You'll probably, here's what you'll happen. You might actually get leaner. Yeah. Because you're not because you're going to lose body fat, but because you're going to build a little muscle with the current body fat that you have. So your percentage might actually go down through adding 500.

In fact, that's what I would expect to happen with someone like you is I'd add 500 calories, a good strength training program and they actually get leaner through that process. Yeah. So what was your current, what was your routine like at 2,000 calories? What did your workout look like in your activity? So like I said, I would do a push-pull legs, which was a big change for me. So growing up, I always did the bro split for bodybuilding.

So that was a big change. And I try and divide it up. So I kind of break up the big heavy lifts. Like I wouldn't do squats for the deadlift day kind of thing. I'd try to break it up accordingly. I felt like it was okay. If I ever felt like I was sore, I wasn't ready for that day. I'd honestly just take an extra day off as a break.

I'm pretty in tune with my body now. way and that's why I felt as if I wasn't overtrained. However, I will say I do Jitsu, Jiu Jitsu twice a week as well. So hold on. Wait, wait, wait. How many days a week were you lifting? Three. Okay, so three plus two days of Jiu Jitsu? Yeah. Yeah, bro. 2,000 calories? 100%. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You're going to feel like a million bucks. Are you going to continue doing Jiu Jitsu? Not for a while because I have a double MCL terror right now from Jiu Jitsu. So I got a trip of free. And you're injured. So you're injured. So you're body. He definitely wants more calories.

Hey, listen, the risk of injury goes up in a prolonged calorie deficit as well. No, that's fair. Yeah, you were overtrained, bro. You're probably listening to metal while you're doing it too, right? Man, I always listen to that. That'll jump, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, you were actually overtrained. I would go 2,500 calories.

Right away. Yeah, MAPS andabolic. Yeah. You're not doing Jiu-Jitsu, which is great. By the way, when you get back to Jiu-Jitsu, MAPS-15 is your program. Yeah. Not MAPS adabolic, not PPL. It's going to be Mass 15.

Yeah. So I want to continue to increase my calories even more past that 2,500. How does the further steps look like? Do I keep adding 500? Yeah, you can. You can. I would go right to 2,500. I would probably hang you out there for about 2 weeks.

I'm willing to bet two weeks in there and anabolic, you'll see the scale stay the same, you know. And I don't really care what the number on the scale. I'm just looking for it to kind of level out and tell me you're kind of at maintenance now. And then once I know you're at maintenance, I'm going to go up another 500 calories. And I'm going to just keep doing that. Now, you can wait four weeks. Yeah, it could be four weeks. Like, yeah, like, if I, like, let's say, uh, week one, we gain weight.

Week two, you gain weight. I probably wouldn't increase you again. I want to wait until I see a week of like leveled out of the scale. So the scale is going to kind of do this. Because you're going to hopefully be building muscle, gaining strength, filling those muscle bellies up. So that's totally normal to gain a quick like five, six, seven pounds. So, but understand a lot that's glycogen, water, hopefully a little bit of muscle.

don't think in your head that's fat because a lot of people do. They go, oh my God, I'm putting on too much. No, you're not. You're going to gain a quick five to seven pounds. And then I want to see that kind of level off and then I'm going to do it again. And so that might be two weeks.

It might be three weeks. It might be four weeks. I doubt it. But it could take that long. And then once you're leveled off again and you're not gaining any more weight, now I'm bumping you another 500 calories. Exactly how I would do it.

But just so you know, guy like you, if you were doing three days a week of strength training, plus jujitsu twice a week, your calories probably should sit around 300,000. Oh, yeah. At least. Oh, yeah. 2000 is way low, dude.

Yeah, yeah. Okay. Yeah. And don't worry about testosterone. It is very reactive to your environment. So a man's testosterone can do this depending on your lifestyle. So don't worry about it. I'm pretty confident.

You'll see it bounce back up. No, you will. You'll bounce back up, which is exciting. I think within them, if we get you up to 3,000 calories, I watch your testosterone come right back up. So the goal would be, let's get the calories up. let's get the calories up there with minimal body fat increase. And I bet you see testosterone come right up.

Okay. Yeah, no, it sounds good. I'm going to go ahead and do that. I'm excited to bring the calories back up. And yeah, I'm going to get those testosterone numbers check probably in a couple months time just to kind of monitor. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Give yourself a couple months and then come.

I'd love to hear back from me, Billy. I'd love to hear after you take the advice and do this. I want to hear where your numbers go. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, really appreciate that. Yeah, yeah. Check back with us. All right. Thank you.

Yeah. Thanks. Yeah, I got to say this, too. People don't, they underestimate how much a sport like jujitsu is taxing on the body. Oh, I know. It took me. Very taxing. I did even when I did it.

And it took me a while to realize I can lift weights once a week. That's it. I can't do more than that. Otherwise, they end up frying my body. Yep. So. People have to understand, too, this is the classic mistake that I think almost everybody makes when, they put on body fat and they decide they decide they're going to make a change.

Is they go from wherever. And I don't care. I didn't even ask him where his body fat. He said he wants to get to 12 to 15. I don't care if he was at 19% body fat, 22% body fat or 30% body fat is irrelevant to me. He's 196 pounds. He knows he wants to lose fat. Okay.

The very first thing I'm doing is going after our protein and reverse dieting him. And the reason why I'm going to do that is I guarantee somebody who has fallen out of shape is not getting their body needs. They're not getting enough. They guarantee they're probably over-consuming carbohydrates and saturated fat and sugars, and they're not hitting enough protein. And so right away, I'm going to like get rid of some of those offenders, replace it with some good steak, chicken, all those types of meals, and try and build muscle. And then what will happen is he'll get somewhere between 3,000, 3,500, maybe more good calories, build some muscle. Maybe his weight stays the same thing. He's still 196 after a month of training with me.

but now he's eating 3,500 calories, hitting his protein intake, strength going through the roof because he's building muscle. Then I can cut him down, and we don't see that happen to his testosterone. Our next caller is Marshall from Idaho. What's up, Marshall? How's it going? How you doing, Marshall? I just want to say thanks for this opportunity.

It's really, really helpful. Yeah, you got. How can we help you? Yeah, so I'm 26 years old. I have a very unique work schedule, and it's constantly changing, which is kind of the challenge that I have. originally I was a 270 pounds so far I've lost 100 pounds over the course of three years originally I was tracking calories and started tracking proteins started listening to you guys about

two years ago started learning the importance of fats and tracking really at the majority of things in terms of fats and carbs eventually after about a year and a half I got down to 220 pounds hired a personal trainer and then in May of 2025 we decided to do a dexas camp I came back at 38% body fat, 202 pounds. Did another one on September, so roughly five, six months later. Came back at 31% body fat, so I lost a total of 20 pounds during that time. 19 pounds that was fat, one pound of that was muscle. That's awesome.

I started to do another pretty aggressive cut. I'm not going to lie. I was trying to lose that 100 pounds by the end of the year, which I did manage to hit. I did another Dexia skin and it came back at 23% body fat. I lost 15 pounds of fat during that time and actually gained three pounds of muscle. Wow, excellent. Full body split instead of the push-pull legs. Now, the full body split, I did create with my trainer.

It is two gym-focused days. And then because I have access to like a hotel gym, it is usually two full-body days and then kind of accessory movements on the third day. And then, but during that last. aggressive cut, it was on the workout days, 1800 calories, 190 grams of protein, 120 grams of carbs, and 60 grams of fat. On the rest days, it was 1,500 calories, and the entire reduction came from carbs. So it was a very aggressive cut. I did eventually, again, reached that 100-pound loss, managed to make it down to 170 pounds. And then eventually I decided I would part ways with my personal trainer and then was going to do a little bit.

a bulk. But I am a little bit afraid for that bulk. I'm not going to lie. Part of it's the adjusting work schedule. Part of it's the fact I no longer have a trainer. And then the other thing is I don't want to gain an excess amount of fat. Yeah. You're going to be all right. You're fine. You're going to be fine. You won't. You're going to build some muscle, dude. Yeah, you won't. It won't happen. Like, I think the fear is like, oh my God, if I start to bulk or reverse diet, then I'm just going to gain all this body fat or maybe it'll, it'll get off the rails and I'll just lose control the whole thing. It's typically, it's typically the, it's typically the, fear. So what I like to tell people, Marshall, who work with a trainer or a coach in a cut

is it's just as valuable to work with someone on a reverse. So that same kind of structure, that accountability, that guidance that's valuable in a cut that helps you from, you know, going back to eating the way you did or maybe not missing, or, you know, not missing workouts. It's also valuable on the other end. Well, especially with someone like you because Marshall, the biggest challenge here is going to be you get in your own way. That's right. Yeah. The fear of that weight that you carried for so long, like, that's still in there, right?

Yeah. And when you reverse diet, we just had a call with somebody else that I was, we were talking about reverse dieting, another young man. And he plateaued really hard and his calories were really low. He taint his testosterone. And I said, you got to jump, you got to jump 500 calories. And I said, listen, you're going to, you're going to jump. you're going to put seven pounds on the scale right away.

I said, I did. I knew that would happen. Yeah. I tried to kind of fight the urge on all of those things. You have gotten the blood work done. Everything is good even in the aggressive cut. Oh,

wow. You're going to be good. You're going to do good. Yeah. So the main thing I guess was the personal trainer, he abided by a lot of the things that you guys recommended, but not everything. There was definitely some junk volume,

increased cardio, decreased calories. And he wanted me to even cut fats and I wasn't really willing to go below what I was already at 60 grams. So there was definitely some challenges with the personal trainer, but I guess. How do you feel? Marshall, how do you feel with workouts on your own? Do you feel comfortable with that?

Yeah, for the most part. I mean, occasionally I have to ask for a spotter, but nothing more than that. All right, so it's the nutrition guidance that will help you the most. Okay. Okay. So we have coaches that work for us. If you want a coach to help you on the other end of it, then that's what they'll focus on with you is the reverse diet part of it.

Look, here's a deal. You're in a perfect place to reverse diet. And what's going to come from it is a lot of muscle. What's interesting to me, I'm going to tell you this, looking at your numbers, how little muscle you lost initially and then how you gain muscle, even through this whole process of losing weight, tells me you probably have really good muscle building genetics. Yeah. Okay.

I would have expected a lot of muscle loss. Yeah. Especially as you got down really low calories, the fact that you were able to still maintain that muscle and or gain muscle and an effect. That's incredible. What it'll probably happen on a good, smart, reverse diet is you're going to build a lot of muscle. Yeah. Which is going to be great.

That's going to be great because that's going to put you metabolically in a wonderful place. And what we want eventually, Marshall, is for you to be in a place where your maintenance is a lot of calories. Yeah. Then you got all this flexibility. You know, if you're walking around, your maintenance is at 1,800 calories, 2000, it's like, oh, man, if I go off on a weekend or go on a vacation, you're real careful. Yeah. This is going to mess me.

I can't really. I got to be real scared. I got to be controlled with everything. but I think I think you probably build muscle really well. So with a good smart reverse diet, we pack on some muscle, get you strong, which you'll,

by the way, fat loss gets way easier if you do this way easier. He had a push-pull legs and then he went to like a full body with an accessory. What program will we switch him over to right now? Well, if he works with one of our coaches, I think they'll be able to give him a real good idea.

So I think I have, I think it's anabolic, but I did kind of model my thing off of that. but like I said, I have, I travel for work, so I have access to a gym, usually two days a week, and then the third day is a hotel gym. So it's kind of just 50 condo dumbbells. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, yeah, you're good. You're good with that. Yeah, yeah. No, you're doing, bro, you're going to do good. The hardest part will be the mental part, literally. 100%. Yeah, yeah. That your testosterone's good.

You got all the way way down there. You got a good programming. Like, it's literally just going to be the mental challenge of fear of going that way. You're not going to do. And the scale is going to scare you, especially. Especially if you start gaining muscle and you're filling out with glycogen. It's going to freak you out. But I have a feeling you're going to build muscle really quick.

And if you just know, okay, listen, if you, if you increase those calories through good choices, where this goes wrong and off the rails is where someone's, okay, I'm on a reverse diet. If you eat good choices and you reverse diet and your strength training with a good program, you, the most of that weight is going to be good weight. It's going to be good weight. Like that you're going to be just fine. So again, that's a lot of the coaching sounds like that with someone like you is just reminding you like, you're doing good, bro. And giving you targets. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So realistically, if I was, so I just finished a week of 2,300 calories.

I planned up bumping into 2,500 calories. And again, all they go into carbs and fats. So I'm still hitting 190 grams of protein. Would that work if I just continue gradually increasing calories in that way? Yep. Yeah. You can even go more protein if you like. Yep.

Okay. Yeah. What's your target body way? If you digest protein well and you like it, I mean. What's your target body weight? What do you want to work? So this morning I waited in 176 pounds. I planned to bulk until March or April or until I hit 200 pounds, whichever happens first.

Yeah. And then cut back down. No, you're on point. You're on, but 200 grams of protein is great then. Yeah. You're on point. Okay. Yep.

100%. Yeah, you're doing good, dude. You're doing real good. I love to. Okay. And then in terms of, I guess, ensuring that it's a muscle gain and not fat, what's the best way to do this? Just dex scan every, you know, maybe 45 to 60 days.

Yeah. Also, strength. Strength is obviously, that's your weekly indicator. You're heading down the right path, right? If you're getting stronger, feeling good, like you're probably doing all the right things. But a check-in every 45 to 60 days with like a dexick scan, just like you've been doing, just to make sure. And again, don't freak out if you gain one or two pounds. That's totally normal.

Like, as long as we're moving in the right direction, you're building. more muscle than you are fat and you're increasing calories, that's a win. That's what we're trying to do. We're trying to add more muscle than fat and increase calories. And don't forget this, Marshall, because if you do it excess scan, it may say, I don't know, oh, you gained eight pounds of muscle and you gain three pounds of fat. You're like, oh, man, I gained fat. You actually, I don't know the numbers, but you probably leaner now because it's a body

fat percentage. So that's the, so keep that in mind as well. Not to mention you are now a body that's eating 500 more calories than what you were every single day, which is like this. Like my gate, like I care less as long as, what I don't want to see is you put 10 pounds on and seven of its fat and three of its muscle. That means that tells me we're bulking too fast. But if I'm putting on more muscle than you are body fat and I'm increasing calories, that's a win. Yep.

That means we are building muscle at a faster rate than we are adding body fat and increasing calories. You're doing pretty damn good. So don't worry about a couple pounds of fat here. if more of it is coming in muscle and you're in a calorie surplus. That's what we just don't want to see. A flip-flop to me tells me I move to, I increase too fast.

How do you feel that 2300 calories? I mean, I feel better. It's definitely, the energy is significantly higher with the increasing carbs. Yeah, yeah. We tell you to 28. But I am afraid to go higher. I'm not going to lie.

No, you're going to be all right. Well, let us know if you want one of our coaches to work with you through this process. But otherwise, I mean, you're doing great, do. That's what they would do, what they would do with you through this process because it is kind of inevitable. You're going to have those moments with those challenges,

slowing down the reverse, changing the programming up a little bit. I might, if I was coaching you, I might, hey, this week we're going to do a little mini cut. Let's interrupt the bulk for one week. Depending on what's going on. To give you a diet break if you're starting to feel, oh, God, I feel bloat.

So there's a lot of things that this is what a coach would do to help you through the mental process. But to be honest, you're doing a really good job, dude. You are. Okay. I was considering doing like a three-week, bulk, one-week, mini-cut. I was thinking about doing that, but I wasn't sure that was the correct answer.

You could totally do that. You can do that. But honestly, that's more for the psychological reason why I would do that. Not because you need to do that. It's just like if I was coaching you and you're constantly giving me this feedback, like, oh, my God, how am I feel bloated? I feel this. And like, I hear that a lot.

Then I'd be like, all right, come on. One more week. We're going to see these high calories. And then next week I'm going to cut your calories. And then I cut your calories, give you a diet break. And then I know what will happen. You'll get hungry again. And then I'll be like, all right, let's go back.

And so that it's more psychological than. it's like this, you know, perfect strategy to only put muscle on. It's like that. It's less to that. It's more that would be me hearing you out. You don't need to do that, but you can. Okay. And in terms of cardio, is there anything you recommend and just 10,000 steps a day?

Just keep your steps up. You're fine. Yeah, keep your steps up. Keep move, be active, but don't go out of your, you're on a reverse diet, so I don't need you going out of your way to get overactivity. Just be your active normal self. Okay. Yep.

All right. Appreciate it. You got it, man. Doing good, dude. I love to hear back from you if you don't. If you don't end up with one of our coaches, I would love to hear back from you anyways. Okay, what I just emailed back at the same thing?

We can have somebody reach out to you today. Yeah. All right. I appreciate it. All right, Marshall. You got it. Thank you. You got it.

Man, I'm shocked. Dude, I am blown away that he was able to go that low of calories and see a increase in muscle. That tells me. And keep his testosterone levels out. That tells me that he's got genetics. He's got good genetics. Yeah.

Because you, listen, I've known people like this. They go real low calorie and don't lose any muscle. Yeah. I don't know a lot of people like that, but I've known people like that. What is going on? Yeah. It's wild. Yeah.

My ex was like that. Yeah, you've talked about it. We used to have to like, like, dangerously diet her low calorie. And she wouldn't lose a single. And she wouldn't lose a single pound. Also, she made it hard for her to lose body fat. Yeah. Like, everybody just held on, like just held on.

But you could put her at such low calorie and just keep every pound of muscle on. Crazy. I was like, I was so jealous. I dropped calories. His muscle just comes off just as fast. It falls out of my pockets. Look, if you like the show, come find us on Instagram, Mind Pump Media. Thank you for listening to Mind Pump.

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