Mind Pump: Raw Fitness Truth - 2838: Standing vs. Seated Overhead Press : Why You're Leaving Gains on the Table

Episode Date: April 17, 2026

If you've been doing seated shoulder presses, you're leaving real gains on the table — Sal, Adam, and Justin make the case for standing overhead press as one of the two best exercises you could ever do, and explain why it's nearly disappeared from gyms. Then they go deep on BPC-157, covering the animal studies that are almost hard to believe, where peptides actually fit in the hierarchy of diet, exercise, and supplements, and why even younger doctors still have hormone therapy stigma. Plus: California's new home kitchen law, rage rooms, the work-life balance myth, and four listener Q&As. Sponsors & Links 🔗 MAPS Push Pull Legs (NEW) — Men & women's versions, 40% off at mapsppl.com with code PPL 🔗 Eight Sleep — AI-powered bed cooling/warming for better sleep: eightsleep.com/mindpump — $350 off the Pod 5 Ultra, use code MINDPUMP 🔗 Organifi — Shilajit & Happy Drops (testosterone, mood, energy): organifi.com/mindpump — use code MINDPUMP for 20% off 🔗 Caldera Lab Hydro Layer — 5-peptide skincare serum: calderalab.com/mindpump — use code MINDPUMP20 for 20% off 🔗 Mind Pump Fitness Coaching — 1.9 CEUs with NASM: mindpumpfitnesscoaching.com 🔗 MP Hormones — Doctor-prescribed hormone & peptide therapy: mphormones.com   00:02:59  Standing vs. Seated Overhead Press — Why You're Leaving Gains on the Table 00:09:03  The Best Two Exercises If You Could Only Pick Two 00:11:09  Why Nobody Does Standing Barbell Press Anymore 00:15:20  Squats & Deadlifts Fell Out of Fashion Too — What That Tells Us 00:21:01  BPC-157 Deep Dive: Animal Studies, Human Studies & What It Can Do 00:27:17  Are Peptides Overhyped? Where They Fit vs. Diet, Exercise & Supplements 00:30:42  Hormone Therapy Stigma — Why Even Doctors Are Behind 00:38:06  Eight Sleep Review: How Much Does Bed Temperature Actually Affect Sleep? 00:42:33  California Legalizes Selling Food from Home Kitchens 00:45:45  Rage Rooms Are Surging — Especially Among Women 00:48:40  Work-Life Balance Is a Myth — Here's What to Think Instead 00:52:19  Organic FI Happy Drops & Shilajit: What's Inside & Why It Works 00:57:04  Q&A: Should You Skip Training on Bad Sleep, or Just Walk? 00:59:30  Q&A: How to Add Plyometrics to a Maps 15 Program 01:02:43  Q&A: Is High Cortisol Really to Blame for Everything? 01:08:07  Q&A: Best Advice for Someone Just Diagnosed Pre-Diabetic Find Us 📲 Instagram: @MindPumpMedia 💻 Programs, coaching & more: MindPumpMedia.com

If you want to pump your body and expand your mind, there's only one place to go. Mind Pump. Mind Pump with your hosts. Sal DeStefano, Adam Schaefer, and Justin Andrews. You just found the most downloaded fitness, health and entertainment podcast, literally in the history of the world. This is Mind Pump. In today's episode, we answered questions that we pulled from Instagram, Mind Pump Media, four of them. But this was after the intro.

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Try doing him standing. Watch what happens to your shoulder development and the rest of your body. Yeah, Stan. I know. You know who talked about this? First thought you were talking about peeing. No, while pressing. I know.

Thanks, Justin. Sorry. You know who. I sit down while I do. You know, I know. Come on track. You know who used to do, who talked about this for a little bit? Someone very unexpected.

Jay Culler. Oh, really? Jay Culler when he was Mr. Olympia. I didn't know that. Yeah, because, you know, at that level of pro-bodybuilding, these guys are massive. You're allowed to sit down. You're so big.

Yeah. You're so big and heavy and just overdeveloped. You know, sitting down might be advantageous, you would think. But he said that I don't remember who it was that convinced him to start doing some overhead presses standing. And he talked about how it really developed the caps. You know, it's a bodybuilding term for the roundness to his delts. but just from a functional standpoint,

standing, you're still working the delts, but you're really activating the whole body. You're totally grounded. You get real good core stability. And the real big one for me is that thoracic activation, that kind of upper back activation that's required to do a really good standing up. There's got to be more force output.

I mean, just based on you're stabilizing with your core, your legs a lot more, there's more contraction happening, all at once. So yeah, I've always preferred it. I wouldn't make the case that my shoulders look any better or different, but that's interesting. Yeah.

And you know what's interesting about that too, Justin? Because I think some people, like, I could press heavier, seated. But I think the heaviest presses overhead are all standing. Yeah. Right? Oh, yeah. Which, which you, which, all the records are standing. The ones I've seen, yeah.

I don't think we have a record of like an actual written record of like, how much people have done seated, but the heaviest I've ever seen, well, Olympic lifters. Well, because there's no real competition for that. Like, I don't think anybody's kind of put that as part of the exercise to compete with. But it'd be interesting to see if, like, somebody that can lift standing overhead like that, like if they could do more seated or less. Yeah, yeah. Well, you also get the benefit, even though this becomes a bit of a different exercise,

but you can't do it. Seated is, and Justin was the one who really got me to start doing this. because I was a long time shoulder press person who sat down always. I never did standing presses. It wasn't until I think I did, it started lifting with Justin, and I would do the push press. And being able to. You can't do that seated.

Yeah, and being able to throw a little English on it and actually use leg drive would put me in a shoulder press that I'd never done weight-wise. And so that alone blew my shoulders up. So there was some, just from that alone, there's like tremendous value. Obviously, until you learn how to strict pass standing and do that, you probably shouldn't be doing a heavy push press. But once you learn those fundamentals down,

and then you can actually put a little English on it and use some leg drive and really move some weight. And I think pressing that heavy of load over my head, stabilizing the weight in a locked out position too was incredible from our shoulders. You know, you're going to get people, because we'll get this sometimes when we do, You know, like we've done, this actually happened recently where we did a exercise ranking post, and we ranked pull downs low, but pull-ups real high. And there was some dude that's like, it's the same exercise.

It's not the same exercise. It's a, the same muscles are involved, but it's not the same exercise. And anybody who does lots of pull-ups versus pull-downs or vice versa will tell you that it's different, even though you're working the same muscles. But even, okay, so even if we. look at a seated overhead press and a standing overhead press, far more similar than a pull-up to a pull-down, right? Wouldn't you agree? The more similar. Okay. So let's just say that they were identical in terms of what they could do in terms of development of the delts. Let's just say that they were same. Same exercise, seated standing. They're going to build your delts

in an identical way. As a trainer, and anybody who's listening right now, whenever that happens, two exercises, aside from other factors like injury or convenience or something like that, right? Let's say everything is equal. And you want to pick a version, it's a good idea to pick the version that's probably going to translate to the real world more often. And being able to press something heavy while standing is going to give you much more carryover to the real world. Of course. Much more. What else would you press? Are you lifting something over your head while you're I'm trying to think if there was... Maybe your kid or something, but that's about it.

Oh, pointing around or whatever? Yeah, I don't know. Yeah, I'm trying to think if there, is there ever been a time where I was sitting down and I lifted something over my head? Right. It's always... Just yesterday, I was stopped by my mother-in-law's house. Her wine fridge went out, and so she had to buy a whole new refrigerator, freezer, motor, or whatever, he'd call it, or whatever. but it's this big, heavy thing that I had to press up over my head and then slide it in.

And it was hard. But it's like, makes me think like, there's never been a time where I've had to do something like that in the seated position where, you know, you would sit down and lift something heavy above your head. You would never do that. And you could, you could, I could make the argument that a standing overhead press is the ultimate upper body expression of strength. I could definitely make that argument. You could pick any other upper body exercise, not lower body, right? So we're taking out low body stuff. So a deadlift would be considered lower body as well.

But if you take all the upper body exercises, which one do you think would communicate this person's really strong the most? I think it would be the standing over head breast. And this was how strength athletes in the past used to compete. So back in the day, the bronze era, they would call it, of strength training, you would have these strong men and women. There were actually a few women that would compete as well. Very few, but there were some. And they would do these feats of strength. And there were a few lifts that they would do.

The one arm bent press was one, very unique lift. There was a hip lift that they did, which is, it's almost like a hip thrust. It's a hip bridge, yeah. Yes. But the most common was, was how much can you lift up over your head? And it was just universally known to be, this is what shows how strong you are. Can you pick something up and lift it up over your head? In fact, if you watch old cartoons, what exercise do they always demonstrate in a cartoon to show how strong the character is?

Lifting something over it. We know this instinctively. It's an exercise that displays strength. If you had to only do two lifts for the rest of your life, it would- squat and overhead press. Yeah, right? Yeah. that would cover the bases yeah i mean i mean if you just

if you had to if you were yeah exactly you have to pick just two okay if we were playing this game you're directly opposing gravity and and and and think about that for a second somebody who got really strong at just squatting and just overhead pressing it's going to have some pretty good just overall general strength everywhere right you're obviously missing a good pulling movement you're right and and that you would be a bit of a hindrance but if you add into that taking the weight up off the floor and then pressing up overhead. Sure. Now you're done.

Yeah. Now it's a done deal. Yeah, because you have to clean it up. Now you've got everything. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But it's an exercise that, you know, I still go to commercial gyms and I see a lot of

overhead presses. It's a very popular exercise, whether it's a machine or free weight. And for good reason, it's a great exercise. It's great for shoulder health, especially if you do a full range of motion, you're getting the scapula involved with the humorous and keeps your shoulders healthy. it's just a great exercise for aesthetics. So that's why people love doing them. But I rarely ever see a standing barbell overhead press.

It's actually more rare than a deadlift or squat nowadays. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Which is crazy to me because, yeah, it's a phenomenal. Everybody does. I see a lot of seated overhead presses. Yeah. But I wouldn't say that's even, even that's a little bit.

I see them way more than I do. Yeah, I agree. But, I mean, I tell you, lot, the military bench is probably one of the most empty pieces of equipment in the gym. It's one of them. Just shoulder press. Because most people that do shoulder press, either dumbbell shoulder press or machine shoulder

press. That's true. That's true. That's one or the other. But that being said, I'll see people doing seated military press with the barbell ten times more. Actually, I'm trying to think right now the last, as long as I can think, how often I saw standing overhead press.

I don't think I've seen one. Yeah, no. It's interesting you point that out because I, yeah, just going back to the commercial gym setting, even with all the squat racks and everything, you know, how it's changed. I don't see the overhead press a lot. Not standing. The barbell, yeah. No, and you know what's funny.

What's crazy about this is because here's some of the complaints that you'll get from some people. They'll say, well, why do you do it seated? Standing hurts my back. That's a very common thing that you'll hear from someone. So seated they could do it. Yeah. Now, why does it hurt your back standing? Well, it requires more stability.

Yeah. And that's not a bad thing. That's a good thing. It's the lighten the load. And I'm going to tell you right now, if you get good at a standing overhead press, unrack a weight even, don't clean it, just unrack it and come back. I think your strength potential is higher with the standing press, which we've added complexity and yet we can get stronger at it than the other version.

There's a lot of gains that are missing where that people are leaving on the table because they choose the seated version over the standing version. Yeah. I mean, I would argue that it's because this is why I think the prerequisite to that is a Z press. It's just, that's why I love the Z press so much. Well, that's for the four-inch. You're going to be seated. Yeah, do a Z press.

Yeah, well, especially in or the prerequisite before someone, because you're right. I think the pushback someone would give you that's listening right now. They'd be like, I tried it. And my low back is killing me because they don't, they lack the mobility, stability and the shoulder. And so. They can't lean up against the bench. Yeah. That has to be the big deterrent is just because of every day's.

everyday posture that people have and how protracted they are and how weak their core is. So those two things are very exposed. That's why I love that I think that if I, I wish I had the Z press in my arsenal as a younger trainer. That wasn't something that I found until much, much

later. Yeah, I don't I'm, in fact, same here. I don't even know what exists. Yeah, I would have, I would have had everybody. In fact, had I seen it, I would have disregarded it. It wasn't until we were taught it. Yeah. You don't realize how tough it is until you go to perform the movement.

It's crazy. And also just like how safe and good it is to like to teach somebody. Like I mean, that would be like if I was a trainer right now, putting somebody in a Z press and just doing the bar would be like. That's the qualifier. Yeah, exactly. I would just get them good. You get a client good at that, really good at that, and then they're ready for a standing

overhead press. Like they'll get, once they get good at that, that will prep their core, their shoulder mobility, the thoracic mobility. And then now they're ready to get up. Now stand and load. like let's press this thing. I think it's such a underutilized movement. I wish I saw more.

Every once in a while, I still, I see it every once in a while now. I mean, I don't know if that's our influence or not. Is he press? Yeah. I think so. Yeah, I've seen it before. What's interesting to me is, this is just true in the strength training space,

is that exercises fall in and out of favor. And it's, you would think that the ones fall out of favors because they're not effective. This is not true. I think sometimes what falls out of favor is just what's hard. Yeah. Like, it wasn't that long ago. So if you're listening to this now and you're, you know, you're younger than 30,

this isn't going to make any sense to you. But when we were running gyms in the late 90s, early 2000s, nobody squatted in deadlift. No, I'm not even a little bit. Never. Yeah. Deadlift, never, ever, ever, ever. Yeah.

Now, that sounds crazy to somebody who works out in gyms now because you see people squatting. and deadlifting all the time. But they just didn't do it. And it wasn't because those exercises didn't exist. They were extremely popular in the 60s and 70s. And then 80s, they started losing popularity. It was in the 90s that they, for some reason, lost tons of popular. And they're very effective exercises.

And the standing over a press, I've just noticed it. I was thinking about this recently. I'm like, nobody does a standing shoulder press, which is wild to me. It's such a great exercise. It develops incredible shoulders. that's a staple for me. Incredible core stability. Like if you could do a good, secure,

heavy standing overhead press, like if you've practiced it and you've got good at it, it's one of the exercises that will actually bulletproof your back, which is interesting. It's a shoulder exercise, but it'll bulletproof your back because you can lift something. I mean, that's why I said that comment when we first started this conversation

is that if you only did two movements, I think everybody would know squad is going to be one of those two. but I think the surprise to a lot of people would be the overhead press, standing overhead press would be the other one. Just those two movements and you take care of a lot. It's not perfect.

It's not ideal. But it's like, and the reason why I think that's so important to communicate is because if you had a week that you just were so busy, you didn't get to the gym, but you just went out to the garage and you lifted that,

lift that barbell over your head for three sets. you know, standing overhead press and you just squatted it, boy, would you keep yourself in a really good position? Well, those are the two, it's funny you say that because those are the two movements that get lost as people age. So people know the squat. Like people stop being able to squat.

This shocked me as an early trainer. I'd train someone in their 40s. So that's where I'm at now, right? But I would train people in the 40s who could not stand and do a full extension up over their head. They'd move their arms up, but their elbows. will stay bent. And then if I try and straighten them out, they arched back. They lost the ability to fully extend over their head. You take the average person over 50, and that's the rule.

It's more often than not. Over 60, for sure. You're not going to find people who can do it. Yeah, I definitely think it just gets uncomfortable over time because of the degrees that your posture affects that. And it's like each time you're out of track, you know, just that, you know, millimeter to then a centimeter to an inch and it's like it puts more stress inevitably to where you'll get like impingement or something you're fighting. When I had older clients and when I started to recognize this, like we do a shoulder press and their form would, you know, be real short or what's going on here? Yeah, it's like forward.

Yeah, it's like shorter. Yeah, I was almost like they were trying to do an incline or they'd arch or something. So what I used to do is I'd get a broom handle or a stick. I'd have them hold on to it and I'd push it up for them to hold them up into position. and then I'd slowly let go the stick and see if they could just support it and keep themselves straight. And we would slowly progress them to doing a shoulder press. And what I would get besides the aesthetic effects, right, their arms look nice.

They'd get this great development of the upper body. Besides that, they would always comment, oh, my God, my posture feels so good. My neck isn't tight. I feel so good. And it's like you lost something your body's supposed to be able to do. And when you do that, everything tries to compensate and tighten up. up and it doesn't feel good. And it's because you lost the ability to do something fundamental, which is a standing

overhead press. If you're doing seated, switch. Switch and watch what happens to your body. And you won't be able to go as heavy at first. You have to get used to it. No. But you'll get way better. Start light and just, in fact, start light and put the emphasis on the lockout over your

head. Yes. And so this is why I like the Z press because it forces that. You have to get that one. You have to, you have to figure that out. And so, you know, if you know, if you can't do the standing overhead press right now, start with the Z press, then work your way to doing that.

And yeah, just keep that going. Because it, you know, I'm thinking back to the clients, I wonder, um, you know,

did they lose the ability to squat first? Or did they lose the ability of overhead press first? They might have lost the ability to overhead press first before even squatting. I don't know. That's a good question. Because even squatting,

if you get up and down from the toilet, the chair, your car, we kind of always still kind of do that. Everybody still does that. Everybody stops pushing and putting things up. Yeah, but we design our houses.

We do. You really, unless you train that, there's not a lot of things in everyday life that require you to lift something above your head. No, the two things that help you do that are hanging and pushing things up over your head, which nobody does.

Yeah. We cut out all the monkey bars at schools and there's nobody pushing anything up over their head. We're at least squatting. We get up and out of chairs. So we may have lost the range of motion to go really deep and stuff like that. We still have that hinging pattern a little bit.

But overhead pressing is, is lost completely. I used to love doing that test with clients where you put them, you put their backs flat against the wall and you just have them raise their arm up. And I mean, they get right above their eye level. It's wild.

And they're already starting arch. Big compensations to get the rest. Yeah. One of my favorite things to do with that, too, is they'll say, I can't do it anymore. And I'll say, here, relax your arm. And I'll bring the arm back for that. This is where, look, your arm can go here.

You just can't bring your arm. You don't have access. You just don't have that access. Such an eye opener. I got some data on BPC, 157 because war yeah so do you guys remember that stuff said i brought up a study earlier uh let me pull it up here i had brought up a study in an earlier podcast on how they injected people um with knee pain and i think it was like 15 out of 16 of them uh had dramatic one injection okay and these

were all people with chronic knee pain no acute injury but like chronic knee issues um i think it was 15 out of 16 of them had like incredible relief that lasted a year from one shot Wow. Yeah, pretty wild. I pulled up, he does a lot of animal studies on BP. So that's a human study. The animal studies are crazy, dude. They're crazy.

So there's one where they took a rat's cornea and they made a hole in it with a surgical blade. Then they took BPC 157, dissolved it in water, and dropped it in the eye. 72 hours later, the hole closed. Oh, my God. 72 hours later, the hole closed. What a weird? They did another one. I know.

I just laughed because they were so mean. Because animals did. And like, why that one? Like, why that idea? Because they're testing it on different tissues, different tissues in animals. Okay. It's got crazy healing for like nerves and stuff like that. So they took another.

Cornea, huh? This is another one with rats where they compressed or crushed a rat's spinal cord for 60 seconds. They gave it an injection of BPC 10 minutes after injury. The paralysis reversed by day 28. So it was paralyzed. What? 28 days later from the BPC 157, it was healed. Yeah.

That is crazy. Yeah, dude. This is, there is, it is crazy. And they haven't done a ton of human studies yet. There are some human studies. They are. And when this thing gets promoted, when it gets, when it's able to be prescribed directly for these things, because right now you get it from a company.

So you can get doctor prescribes, right? So you can go to MP Hormones, Doctor. com and they'll prescribe you, they can prescribe you a peptide. Is this on the, it's not mainstream medicine? Yeah. Is it on the list? Do you think for WADA or for like, yes. Yeah.

Oh, it is on WADA. Oh, yeah. Oh, it is. Maybe double check that, Doug, for me. Yeah, just for athletes because it's just like, how are they picking that up? It sucks because it's like, I don't know how they would test it. And I don't think BPC is, so. Is it?

I think it is. I think, how are they picking that up? I think it is. I think so is thymicin beta. Yes. Oh, wow. You're right. Non-approved substances.

I don't know how they test for it. It's a peptide your body makes. How do you test something that your body does it stay in your, what's the half-life? How doesn't it stay in your- You gotta use it every day. Oh, wow. I need to keep athletes going.

That's so annoying that they would put that on the band-ness. I know. So here's some of the stuff that it's been shown to do. Okay. By the way, BPC stands for. Body protective compound. Okay. This is a natural peptide that we find in gastric juices in human.

So here's some of the stuff that it's been shown with BPC. It's been shown to reverse dopamine depletion and receptor desensitization caused by chronic heart stimulant use. So your dopamine system can get messed up through using lots of stimulants. Helps reverse it. BPC counteracts the toxic effects of alcohol in the liver, stomach lining, and brain simultaneously. It'll accelerate recovery of eye tissue. It counters insid-induced gut damage. If you use lots of non-starredital anti-inflammatories, like I'd be pretty much.

If you use them weekly, probably want to use BPC as well. It accelerates the closure of intestinal fistula's. It is good for overtraining syndrome recovery. Hair follicle vascularization. So upregulation improves blood supply to follicles supporting hair density. It's good for gum tissue and parodontal health. Nerve damage repair. Of course, we know this.

IBS and IBD symptoms. So really good for gut health. post-surgery, surgical recovery acceleration, scar tissue remodeling, blood pressure normalization, traumatic brain injury recovery, and then mood disorders driven by leaky gut syndrome. Wow. It's pretty. Any, this one, by the way, remember we had Dr. Seeds on?

Yeah. And we asked them if there was one peptide, you could take all the time. What do you say? Yeah. BPC. I know. It's pretty evident. Can you, can you take it indefinitely?

Yeah. You can. That's what Dr. Seed said. He did. Yeah. He's like, I use it all the time. Now the dose goes up if you have injuries or something like that. Yeah.

But he's like, yeah, that's the one I would take all the time. I mean, it's the one that I can feel. Like you can tell a different. I mean, you can tell how much faster you're healing from something, especially if it's an injury that you've had before or you're familiar with. It's definitely one of those ones. I have a buddy who got, I think I told you guys, he had a shoulder injury. And then it was taking forever to heal.

And he used it. and I saw him like the next week. And he's like, I don't know if I'm like imagining things. I'm like, what do you mean? He goes, the pain's gone.

I'm like, no, it works, dude. It definitely works. Yeah, peptides are interesting. That's like the,

and now it's like more mainstream, right? Peptide science is more mainstream. I saw a post of our buddy Ben, he had a picture. He's been since 2016. He's, he's a cutting edge, dude.

He was talking about Ben, there's a pig. Yeah, Greenfield. Yeah, I saw a BPC back in 2016. 2016, bro. Okay.

He's a picture of him And he's an early adopter And he's yeah He's holding the bottle And vial and syringe And he's like I've been talking about this For a decade

But it's mainstream He was a You know he was the first person I called So I remember right When we were first Kind of again Was this when you tore your Achilles? I think so

I don't remember I think so Yeah I think so Yeah so So it was quite a ways back And I I reached out to him And he was like

Oh yeah absolutely And I was asking him about injecting it in the site and what should I do and get and all the dosage and all the things. So, yeah, he was my go-to source. It's now, like, they can't ignore the effectiveness of peptides for lots of different reasons. So, like, for healing, for brain health, gut health, sexual health. There's peptides for that. Hormonal health.

There's peptides that help regulate sleep. Do you think they're being oversold? No. No. I think, well, okay, let me back up. Yes and no. Yes, because that's what our space does. So they sell them like you're going to take peptides and it's like, yeah, you get all these magical results. Yeah, like you're going to become Mr. Olympia or something crazy. But no, because as interventions, especially safer interventions than traditional drugs. Like this is a huge future. You know, I feel like we need to add a category to the pie chart, right? For the longest, time we've had these like pie charts that would show like you know diet is 75% you know your workout is you know 20 whatever and so and supplements would only be like 5% or something like that like where is where do you think peptide if you were building a pie chart of nutrition exercise recovery it goes like sleep uh for medical interventions it goes hormone replacement

therapy first peptides right underneath So if your testosterone's off. Oh, well, that's like life change. Right, right. If your hormones are off, go hormone therapy. Peptides are next underneath that in terms of what they can do for you. So, okay, yeah, but what I'm trying to close the gap on is it in comparison to supplements. Because supplements are also.

No, you can't. Yeah. No, you can't compare. More effective. No way, dude. Yeah, you can't compare. You could take growth hormone releasing peptides. And if you're healthy, you know, you're a 40, you're a 40.

year old woman and take Samarolin or something like that, you'll start producing growth hormone like you when you're 18 from a peptide, naturally. So, yeah, no, you can't compare to supplements. So if you had to put a number on it, supplements are 5% of health and fitness, you know, 5% of your results when it comes to health and fitness. I hate to say that because I don't think they're necessary. I don't think peptides are necessary.

I also don't think supplements are necessary. In some cases, they are. I know, but it is. But it is in terms of what they'll contribute. Yeah, exactly. What they contribute. When I say five, because supplements have tremendous value.

Someone under eats protein and you supplement with a protein shake. It could be a huge thing. But generally speaking, when you talk about if someone's diet is dialed and they exercise, that is your 80% of the way, 90% of the way to your ultimate physique or ultimate goal. So from a percentage standpoint, if you were comparing it to supplements, and I know you said it doesn't even compare it. But yeah, but it also doesn't even, but you wouldn't compare, you wouldn't say it's, more important than diet. No.

You wouldn't say it's more important than exercise? No, I wouldn't. Okay. So where does it, where does it fall in the category or in the- It's definitely more important, more impactful than supplements, less impactful than exercise and diet and sleep. So somewhere in between. Yeah, somewhere in between.

Yeah. So it would be- Well, even, I guess if I was to compare just from cognitive benefits, like neutropic supplements versus peptides, it's like, I mean, exponentially. more benefit with the peptides I've experimented with. I did I tell you guys, so I went, I told you guys, right, I went to, I recently went to the doctor because I had some heart palpitations for a few days. And so I did a regular checkup thing. And the doctor there is asking me like, oh, you know, what do you take?

What do you do, what do you do, what do you do, whatever? You're like, hold on, let me get this list out. He's like, you're like, you're like, today or like, yeah, or like since I got here or. Do you want all my supplements? Yeah, you have, do you have a half hour? No, no. I told her, I told her on hormone, you know, hormone therapy, right? Yeah, yeah.

And, you know, what I'm taking. And still, still, because I was still like, okay, come on, your young doctor, I'm sure you realize, like, this is like hormone therapy's fine. But it says it's with the doctor. I'm not going to black market and do all this stuff. Right, right. Yeah. And her face was like, what?

Why do you take that? Why do you that? I'm like, oh, it's with a doctor. You're like, I'm almost 50 years old. They monitor my hormones. I do labs every three months, you know, you know, this and that. You're some young guy. But if you're not, like, if you're not, like, if you're not.

like if you're not really deficient, why would anybody take? And she's asking me all these questions. Like that's, she's like, let's just test you. Let's just make sure. Like she was concerned with me. I'm like, listen, I go through a doctor. In fact, their expertise is hormones. I know your expertise is not.

Yeah. I didn't say that to her. But I'm like, you know, but it's interesting still. It's still interesting. Yeah, there's still that bit of stigma. I didn't expect it too because she was a young doctor. Well, yeah, and Courtney experienced some of that even from some of her doctor friends. She was, you know, was a nurse forever.

like is, you know, on some hormones and thyroid and, and they were like, very concerned, you know, because it's like they don't, they don't study a lot of that. They don't look into the research, you know, it's just not part of their curriculum. No. That's so funny to me with like you, because I get that the regular MDs may not have all the schooling and up to date on the newest research, but you would think someone, I mean, your age, I would, like, if you were 30 and you were. doing that, I think if the doctor would be like,

what are you doing? You're a young man still. Well, there's a difference. So they're almost 50 years old, dog. Yeah, I know. The view, maybe she's thought it was. Jack. Yeah. You know, what it is, there's a, there's a, there's a, there's a view with hormone therapy

in traditional medicine that's, it's getting outdated. It's starting to change. But the view is, unless you're so, unless you're way out of range. Yeah, unless you're in dangerous zone, like a hundred something. Like, if you're, like if you come in as a man and your testosterone, your total testosterone is below 250 because that's the bottom of it. Yeah.

Okay, well, then maybe we'll consider testosterone. But if you come out at a 350. Yeah. You've got to be like rock bottom. With all of the, all of the symptoms of low testosterone. Yeah. So you've got the low drive, the low libido, you know, you're just not feeling good. You lose a muscle mask, getting body fat.

But you're in range. They're going to be like, no, no, you're fine. Same thing with thyroid. same thing with you see with women with testosterone. They'll come in and man, you know, I got low libido. I got low drive. I just don't feel good. They'll look at their testosterone and say, well, you're within range,

even though it's at the bottom of the range. And then they're more likely to be like, you know what? We got an SSR for you. Yeah. Yeah. So crazy. We got an enzolytic for you. That's the go-to.

I mean, that's what led me to a, it's crazy. Long before we were ever working with any companies, what led me to going through a hormone specialist was I first tried to go through my general practitioner. And I was like 275. So I tested a few times, 275 to 325 was like the highest I test.

And I had all the signs of like feeling terrible. And your general practitioner wouldn't, wouldn't prescribe me testosterone. Do you know how many? And then I go to a hormone specialist. And they're like, oh yeah. And they're like, oh, yeah, right away. Like, in fact, and they stored me on a very mild dose.

And then monitor and then inched me up. inch and they would inch me up like 10 milligrams at a time. It was like very slow. Do you know how many women, I'll be careful when I say this, right? Do you know how many middle-aged women who start to suffer from anxiety? Because anxiety spikes in middle age for women, paramedopause, menopause, sleep issues, like, you know, all the classic stuff, right? Do you know how many of them do hormone therapy or will use progesterone?

And they're like, I don't have anxiety anymore. Yeah. And you know what the traditional. methods were, if you're middle-aged woman, sleep issues, I'm having anxiety, here's a benz-o, or here's an SSRI, that'll fix you. When you can go on bio-identical, meaning the exact same hormones your body's making, so not the birth control crap where it's like different, but actual bio-identical hormones, you could take a woman, raise her testosterone, however take some progesterone before bed, maybe a little thyroid, if her thyroid

isn't optimal, and then boom, I feel great. And all I'm taking are hormones I already make. Yeah. And they're within, they're still within range. Like you're, you're, they're taking you out of range. Also, now you're in this youthful profile again. Yeah. Yeah.

And your quality life goes up. Right. And then, which also promotes that person has motivation to go work out. Their libido and sex drive is now up. And so they're having sex with their partner. Whereas it all fits. And the SSR does the opposite. Whereas an SSRI, you have sex.

Okay, my anxiety is better, but I can't get orgasm. Or I don't have a libido. Oh, yeah. or I'm gaining weight as a result of their SSR. And you don't get any highs or lows anymore. You're just kind of there. Yeah. So I don't know.

You know, talking more about the peptide market, I'm curious because especially since you categorize it as so much more effective than supplements. If it's had a negative impact on the supplement industry. Hmm. I don't think so. A big part of supplement industry is a big gap in fat loss and muscle building and stuff like that. And if there's products out there,

you still buy supplements all. over the counter. If you want peptides, you still, if you want to do it, the legit route, you still go through doctors. So they're still over the counter.

There's still this part, Adam, which is always a block for some people. There are oral peptides. So there are peptides you could take in capsule. Yeah, a lot of them are injectable.

Yeah. Because they're not, they're not bioavailable. And now you use a tiny little insulin needle. It's like a little hair. But a lot of people, like the GLP's. Oh.

The GLPs are injectable. Oh, just getting my dad to, Yeah, that was a deterrent. You know, come on. Be a man. Which one was he trying? Was he good?

It was a BPC. I was trying to get it because he had knee surgery and a knee replacement surgery. Oh, yeah. Did he take it? He started to take it, yeah, but I really had to convince them that it's, you know. I gave my dad BPC, but I go there and give them. I wouldn't be surprised that's all the people that choose the antidepressants are probably for that same reason too. I'm sure that some of the people that choose antidepressants versus taking all those hormones are probably similar to.

Maybe. Yeah. Well, with hormone replacement therapy, just so that people know, if we're just talking to hormones. So an MPHormones.com that the medical professionals have access to this, you can use injectable testosterone. They also have... Creams. Yes. In fact, if you're a woman and you do full hormone replacement therapy, progesterone, testosterone, and thyroid, none of it is injectable.

Yeah. The progesterone's pills. The testosterone is a cream. You apply it vaginally. And thyroid is a pill. Yeah. There are no injectives. Yeah.

It's the peptides that are often injectable. Yeah, yeah. Speaking of all this and things that affect health and stuff, I want to ask you about, because you've been tracking sleep so much. Yeah. How big of an impact, now that you're tracking and really paying attention to all this. Yeah. How big of an impact does eight sleep have on things like your sleep quality, sleep score, all that stuff?

Everything. It's one of the most impactful things that I've ever done for sleep. Now, I've had that locked in for quite some time now, like because we've had eight sleep for a long. But you've slept in other places without. Oh, yeah. Oh, I mean, one of the, you run hot, right? Yeah. One of the worst parts is I'm so aware of that.

And I'm sure I get in my own head when I know I travel now and I don't have that. Like, I know that I'm going to have a talk. Like, I, the first thing I do, I mean, you've been with me before. Very first thing I do when I get to hotel room is drop it as low as I can. Because I've got to get that bed cold enough. for me to get a good night's sleep. And even then, by the time I get in those sheets, I hit it up, it ain't the same as like when I have my eight sleep.

The eight sleep controls that. It's so crazy to me too, like how wildly good the AI is on it. Like, once it has, I've been, once it figures it out, like we moved this last year, right? So I've now, it's now been transferred from, you know, bed to bed like three times now. And I actually, I upgraded it on one of the times, too. So I've now switched it out. was it three times now, I think, that I've switched it out. And so each time I switch it out or have moved,

and I had to reset it and reaclimate the temperatures. And so you go through this kind of phase of like a week of like, oh, I want it a little bit colder, a little bit warm, like messing with the temperatures. And then after it's been about a couple weeks after that, it just knows. And like, it doesn't matter if it's winter or summer. Because it'll cool or it'll adjust on the floor.

To me. And it doesn't matter the season. So we could be in the things. a summer, winter, once it's calibrated, and it has all the metrics like an aura ring, so it's tracking all your restfulness. It tracks your snort. Does it have to warm you up to wake you up or? No, no. I've never used. I mean, I've used messing around with that, but the way mine is set, like when I look at what it's calibrated to me, again, I kind of set the original parameters and then it actually ends up adjusting. So when I go back and I look after a couple months and I

It's different than when I actually originally said it. It's figured out what is optimal. It gives you the best. Yeah. And it's a trip because it just, and I can feel how good it feels. What's our discount code on that, Doug? We have a big,

I think that's one of the ones where we offer a huge discount, uh, to our partners. That's a good question. $350 off. Is that really? Yes. Yeah.

It's substantial. Yeah. The pod five. So our link, uh, eight sleep. com for slash mind pump. The new ones are so sick.

We have $350 off. Yeah. That's a big discount. Yeah. I was just going to, going to comment too. My house right now is around 75 degrees. Crazy, right? And I sleep with this, and I don't have to turn down the, you know, turn on the AC. So saves you money too. Saves me a bunch of money. I gave eight sleep listens to this ad. Somebody on your team

needs to do a cost comparison. Yeah, because then you, you justify the cost. Exactly. Like the selling point to me would be, of course, great sleep. Everybody knows anybody who listens to this podcast knows the importance of sleep. And so that's, but it can be an investment for some people. Like, oh, okay, they're not cheap.

But if you actually pay attention to what you keep your AC, I have to keep my AC before eight sleep. It used to be 65 at the highest 68. It had to be in that range. It was always like a, like I wanted 65. Katrina's like,

I can't go lower than 68. So that was like the big thing back in the days. I can let my house get 72, 73 degrees and sleep with my comforter and sheet and quilt over me. Because the key. keeps me that cool underneath it. I can imagine people that live in states, especially during the summer,

where it's real hot or humid. And the AC, you've got to just blast it all the time. It'll be a life saver. Yeah, that could probably save you a ton of money. Yeah, that's why I'm like, to me, somebody on their team needs to do that

because I think over the course of a year, if you can keep your house at five degrees warmer, that has to add up over the course of a year. And it'd be really interesting. And knowing what PG&E costs, I know it ain't cheap, so I'm sure that that would negate the price of the actual cover. So a change of subject. Did you guys see, this is actually really cool.

Did you guys see what California is now allowing? So you know how we have like lots of apps that allow you to like share rides and share things, whatever? Yeah. So these are apps that allow people to sell food out of their kitchens. Interesting. And they legalize them. What? Yeah.

So it's called a micro-enital. Enterprise Home Kitchen Operation Permit. So you can, L.A. County is accepting these. You can sell 30 meals maximum per day, 90 meals maximum per week. And your gross annual sales cap is 100K. And so you get an inspection or whatever,

not a big deal. You can't sell alcohol. You could deliver it, but it must be direct to consumer. So you can't do like DoorDash and stuff. But dude, somebody who like is like really wants to cook or make meals. Uh-huh.

You can start your own business at your kitchen. Wow. And they'll let you do it. So there's a, there's an app. Maybe Doug knows about this. I know San Francisco does this. Oh,

or you could dine at somebody's place. So like going to a restaurant, like you have somebody who loves to cook. And so thinking about, like you can go to people's houses and they prepare a meal, a dinner for you. And you just like you're paying for at a restaurant. Somebody's grandma make you some awesome meal.

I've always wanted to try it out. I always thought it would be kind of cool to do something like that. But what comes to mind when you bring this up right away is kind of what I used to do. This was a hack for me as a trainer. This was back when I was doing private and I was going to people's houses and training some people at my place and wherever, right? And I was so big on meal prepping. So a lot of my clients would pay me to meal prep for them after I'd try. So I'd train them and I'd stay there for another two hours and I would cook for their week.

and so and I charged a pretty good price for that. So they had to obviously provide all the groceries, all the things. I give them a list of stuff. But this is like, this is a whole other thing. Oh, yeah.

Stack on with that kind of like accessibility. But this is so cool. This is like your own house, your own kitchen, you want to make food, you get this permit, and you could just, you can make food and deliver it yourself.

Well, that's how, and they allow you make a hundred brand of year. What I would do is I would make that a part of my training service. I would sell people on their personal training, and it would be like, I also have a meal prep service that I run out of my house. You know what I think of?

I think of like a stay-at-home, like a parent, like stay-at-home mom who wants to supplement their income. And she's like, you know, because they set up to $100 grand a year. And she's like, you know what I'm going to do? I'm going to make some meals. I'm going to service the neighborhood. I'm going to talk to Courtney about this because she makes the best sourdough out of anybody ever had.

I've tried it. You brought it here. It's so good. It's incredible. And I'm like, we got to monetize this. It's so funny when I heard this, though, when I read this, I'm like, They've been doing this in San Jose for a while. I've had tamales out of somebody's car before.

Here in Samozy. Homemade tamales so much better. Yeah, dude. I've had that all before. The illegal ones. Did you guys? Yeah. Whatever, dude.

It's best ones. Those are the best ones. Drive by East San Jose. Is that what it's called right there, Doug? Yeah, Eat With is an app you can get. So you can go to people's houses and try out their fair. That's kind of cool. It's super cool.

I like it. Yeah. Have you guys heard of these rage rooms? Have you heard of these? Rage rooms. Doug, look up rage rooms. Yes, they break stuff, right?

Is that what it is? Oh, I have heard of that. They put goggles on and give you a bat, like an old car. Smash glass. I guess there's like a huge demand that's growing and it's women. It's surging in female customers who want to go in and break stuff. Well, see, that makes sense because I remember when I was training and I would introduce some clients just to like, you know, as a change of pace, we do some boxing and we just like, you know, as a change of pace, we do some boxing and we just like, cold mitts and it was just like,

like I just opened up a can of worms. Yeah. I just wouldn't stop. I had this one lady hitting me forever. They have some here in San Jose. It's down the street. What? Yeah, right down the street. Oh, I want to do that. 30 minutes sessions, 45 bucks. Who is, who is raging for 30 minutes? Yeah, that's a long time. That's a long time. You got some demons to deal with a good

five minutes and you're probably done. Bro, 45 bucks and you go in there and you just break stuff. Yeah, but how satisfying is that, dude? Especially with glass, like when you hear broken glass, when you're smashing through. I feel like blue-colored workers are so satisfying. I got so much trouble. When we were kids, my uncle used to, his dad used to collect recycle.

And he in his backyard, he used to just keep all the bottles. And just like a bunch of kids, we started throwing rocks. We started shattering all of them, just dumb, you know, just not thinking at all. Oh boy, he got whooped bad. So bad when he got his dad got home for that. It shattered all these glass bottles. You know, it's really satisfying to break? Really satisfying.

Like long... Mears. No, incandescent lights or whatever. Oh, those that shattered. Bro, you throw those? Yeah, those are a good time. Don't inhale those fumes. Yeah, that was my favorite when I would go to work with my dad

and we would go do a demo, like he'd go redo a kitchen. And he'd give me a sledgehammer. And he'd be like, all right, here, break, you know, break the countertop. break, whatever. Yeah. Until you get exhausted, because it is exhausting. That's what I mean.

But at first it's like good time. Can you imagine 30 minutes in a break room thing? You would not go more than five minutes. You wouldn't go. I bet three hard minutes and you would be done. Yeah. Yeah. It's like a boxing match.

Everybody's like, yeah, I'll go fight boxing. You'll write one round. I remember a demo of like a few houses and like you'd go for like an hour and you were just torched. Yeah. Yeah. Oh my God. Yeah.

The first couple swings are fun. Even if you use a jackhammer. You ever use a jackhammer? Yeah. Oh, God. your whole body. Oh, dude, afterwards, too. Yeah, you're just numb and, like, your arms just raise up.

It looked easy, right? Uh-huh. Forget it. I was earlier this morning, I was working out, and I saw some posts on balance. You know, you have balance in your life, whatever. And I think it's a, it's, our idea of balance is such a myth. Yeah. I think what we mean by balance, because I know what people mean.

I think what they mean is that your priorities are in the right order. I think that's what they mean by it. Because if priorities in the wrong order, that's when things kind of get messed up. You can't really divvy that up, like, equally. No. It's just, yeah, whatever you think is, your priority is where you want to spend the most. And the idea that I thought of or the, just the topic around this I thought of was like, like, this is a common one people talk about, like work and family, like work and family balance, right? And if you place work too high on the priority list, you end up sacrificing your family for work.

But work is really important. And sometimes you do place work high on the prior list to serve your family. It changes. Yeah. So the idea of balance, I think, is some people think it's like 50, 50. It's always moving. I also think that we tend to look at it through this lens, like this 24-hour window lens. Yeah.

Where it's like you don't have balance in like a 24-year. Now, maybe when you, when you zoom out over the course of six months or a year, kind of to your point, there's time, there's definitely weeks of work where work is taking a very high priority. And I'll even bring some of work home. And it's just like, and I don't get the same amount of playtime with my son as I don't do. Depending on the projects or whatever's in front. Yeah. And then, and then, then it gets a little bit slower and easier. And then I immediately get to spend more time with my son and do those things.

And so it's like, it doesn't look. like this perfect even pie chart balance every day. But when you zoom out over the course of a year, I'd say, yeah, I definitely prioritize my family as number one. And yes, work is really important. Yes, I do spend a lot of good time with my friends and stuff like that. But I go in these sprints. And I could go three months and not see my best friend because it's just, we're so busy.

But again, I think it's really balance is the wrong word. I think it's, you have to, are things in the right order? because you can spend more time at work than you say, let's say spend with your family, but it's in service of your family. So I think it's more about where it is in the priority list and the time spent doing it doesn't necessarily say what you're doing. That's a good point, Sal, because there's also, and I think...

Because there's some people that work a lot of hours to serve their family. They have no choice. So it doesn't mean that work is more important. No. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's that they're doing it for their family. And the same is also true.

there's a lot of people that work very hard that don't, they're not doing it for their family, doing it for themselves. Or they're escaping from their family. So I don't think it's a time thing. I think it's really, you have to examine importance. What am I serving here?

Because whatever's at the top, everything underneath it sacrifices, you sacrifice the priorities that are under the top priority. Top priority becomes like a god and everything else gets sacrificed to it. So if you really do prioritize work genuinely more than your family,

you're going to sacrifice your family for your work. But I don't think it's a balance as we understand it because I don't know if that really exists. At least not the way we communicate. Not the way we communicate. Yeah, yeah. No, I agree with that. I think it's one of those things that it's misleading and tough to understand.

But you, and I definitely think people use the, use what you just said on both sides. Because I definitely think there's people that, oh, I'm working all these hours doing this thing for my family when your wife might say something like, hey, I'd be happy if we lived in a trailer. That's right. me and you. And it's like, so then if that's true, then you're probably not really serving your family. It's more something to do with yourself than it really is that person. Versus if you're, you are grinding, do so at that. And so you can now offer the opportunity for your wife to not work or to be with the kids more often or that you guys can take that vacation that you want to, like, I think, I think you have to really examine that.

You know what I haven't seen in here in a while? Is the Shillijit family? Or the happy drops. Yeah. What's going on? Why are we short on both those? We don't have any in stock. That's why. Did they sell out? No, I don't think we've received any recently. I know Shilajit and the Happy Drops are the two of the most popular products that organify cells. They crush and people repeat by them. The happy drops, people love, they feel them.

And then the Shilajit, I'm seeing messages from people saying that they do feel athletic performance boost. I like when we have them in here. I don't know why. I haven't seen them in a long time. Yeah, it's been a while. It knows the long stretch that we've had. I thought one of you was hoarding them or someone was taking them home. That's why I looked at Doug and asked him.

He did it. His desk are over there by Justin. Yeah, I know. It's usually a good too, especially the happy drops for me because, yeah, it's just one of those. Especially middle of the day. It's like, oh, grab some of those before the podcast. What's the main thing that's inside the happy drop again? What's that flower called or whatever?

It's a, what's it's a flower? Saffron. Saffron. Is that it's a flower? It's part of the flower. Yeah. It is part of the flower. Yeah, there's studies on it for,

depression and anxiety. And in women, there's also some libido studies. And they're legit. Saffron has got some legit studies. It's an herb that actually has some pretty interesting effects. And that's one of the main ingredients. Just like the main thing that's affected.

It has other stuff, but I know that's the name. And it's got the type of saffron that is the one you want. It's sourced very, very well. Which is the problem with herbs is how is it sourced? But Organify, you know those guys. Yeah, where would something be poorly sourced? So there are companies.

that specialize in producing a particular ingredient. For example, creatine, creipure is well known for being a high quality source of creatine. And so you could buy different companies of creatine. Look on the back and see it's made from the, the shillajit. Their shillajit is prima v. So this is a company. They have to go to the source to get it as opposed to growing it in elaborate. Yeah, no, no supplement companies growing their own stuff.

they get it from other companies. Okay. So Prima V is the best, Shilagy. This is the stuff you get. This is what you see in the studies. The saffron that they use is from suffractive, I think, is the name of the company. Okay. That provides it.

So they've got the best source of these active agreements. Got it. So when you say sourcing, it's not like the company, like organifies it. They've gone out and they found who is the best at getting, sourcing that. And that's what you want. That's the company itself specializes. Right, because you know that they're probably paying a premium to get that versus of course.

through some company that is. Unless, because look, there's two ways you could work in the supplement industry. One is you sell single ingredients and you can source them well or not. So you get the bulk ingredient. So you can be like a company from China that sells bulk, whatever. Or you can be a company that's like, no, no, no, check out our stuff. Third party tested constantly. We're known for our quality.

If you want to sell saffron, you get it from us. We're the stuff that's in studies, you know, type of deal. So, yeah, suffractive. So they use a really, really good, well, source saffron. And then like I said, prima V for their shrily. Oh, ginger's in there too, huh? Yep. That's right.

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That's C-A-L-D-E-R-A-B.com forward slash mind pump. Use the code Mind Pump 20 and get 20% off your first order of any of their products. Back to the show. First question is from Brett Richards 87. Instead of skipping a day of training because of poor sleep, I walk instead to get steps. How many days can I skip in a row before strength training becomes predominantly cardio? Okay, I don't know what that second part means, but we'll answer the first one.

Yeah, you could, of course, still move. In fact, if you have poor sleep, you can also still work out. Just moderate intensity. Just really low intensity. Yeah, yeah. Now, really, now here's when you don't work out when it's like unbelievably terrible sleep. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But if you get like a night of bad sleep,

and you're supposed to work out the next day, just drop the intensity. Just work out at a lower intensity. Just contracting the muscles will help you recover and all that. It's invigorating. It'll probably wake you up, make you feel good. The problem is when people go super hard after a day of poor sleep,

the injury risk is really high with something like that. And just so we're clear, you know, five days in a row of not weightlifting and just doing lots of walking doesn't mean you're training your cardiovascular system. There's a cardio threshold, meaning there's a point at which your heart elevates to a point where it then is in the cardio place. Walking doesn't do that.

You're far from that. That's a low intensity, steady state keeps the heart rate below that. And you're not like in, so in like in other words, if you're fearful of like if I walked every day 10,000 steps on the treadmill and I didn't lift weights of that, do I all of a sudden go into that? I'm now going to pair muscle down and lose muscle. like you're not going to now if you uh ran uh for two hours every day and didn't lift weights uh for five days in a row you're just trying to become an endurance machine yeah exactly and so then then that could but walking no you're not that's not going to happen yeah that's going to be good for you but i'm with sao uh you know maybe i take a day off of it's really really bad but the

second day is even if it wasn't the greatest sleep i might just go through the motions and just back off my intensity that's right yeah typically what i do because i'll have nights of bad sleep and I rarely miss workouts. I go in and I do probably half the volume, and it's just a lower intensity. I'm just feeling the muscle, feeling good. Instead of doing four exercises for an area, I'll do two or something like that.

Or instead of doing four sets, I'll do two. Yeah, I usually start with body weight or bands and then kind of work into weights if I feel like, okay, I could probably handle a little bit more. Next question is from Stas Adamovic. How do I add pliometrics to my Maps 15 style program? That's a good question. So a couple of things, we need to understand what pliometrics training looks like.

Because a lot of people are very misused. Also what you want it for, right? So like, do we want to increase our vertical? Or are we trying to? Or are you trying to practice? Maybe practice jumping. Maybe they want to maintain the skill of jumping, but yeah. Yeah, so pliometrics are, what you're training is the ability to contract muscles explosively or move in an explosive manner.

Okay. You don't train that when you're fatigued or you don't train that too fatigue because you're not training what you're trying to get better at. Right. So just jumping back and forth, which a lot of people will do that, or use jumping exercises or pliometric looking exercises in a circuit. they're not training pliometrics. They're just getting tired. Okay. So if you want to train pliometrics,

an example, we use jumping as an example. There's a lot of ways to do this, but we use jumping. You would warm up real well, so make sure you're nice and warm, and then you would try to jump as high as you could, and you would do that once or twice, and then you'd wait for three minutes,

and then you repeat it. Because the goal is to see if you could jump higher each time, and you don't want fatigue to get in the way. Where you would install this in your MAPS-15 style program would be at the beginning. Maybe you didn't work out. Yeah.

You could do this. Your focus. Two or three times. I mean, Maps 15 is low enough volume that you could easily do. So, and that's why I want to know a little bit more about this. Like, okay, is it jump boxes that we want to do? Is it ice skaters that you want to get into? Like, are there certain pliometric movements that you want to get good at?

And then I literally would only do three sets of twos. And just like you just recommended before my Maps 15 workout, two or three times. week. Yeah. If you do that, you'll get good at those, like, you'll get really good at, you'll get really, you'll increase your vertical or you'll get really good at ice skaters, uh, or whatever pliometric movement, uh, you want to get into, um, but you can do it first before you work out, warm up the body a little bit and then just do it.

And you would do like a few sets. Yeah, three, three, three. I love broad jumps for. Yeah, broad jumps. Yeah. Yeah. I think it's just, it's one of those things. I think people undervalue it.

But again, this is like the, the, all the prerequisites and. training. It all depends on like what your joints and everything you can handle. But it's definitely a valuable way to train. It has to be done in a very smart, efficient way. Like you don't use fatigue as a metric with this at all. Next question is from Bammer for life. What's your take on the high cortisol thing? It seems that high cortisol is to blame for everything these days. Doesn't cortisol naturally rise during exercise? They've taken a hormone. They've, oversimplified the stress response and then they've turned it into a way to sell or market or communicate something that's way more complex. So cortisol, they call it the stress hormone,

but it's also the wake up hormone. It's an energy hormone. Your cortisol is supposed to rise in the morning. Yeah. If your cortisol doesn't rise in the morning, that sucks. Like you wake up and you feel like a zombie all day long and you need a lot of coffee to get your butt moving. Cortisol rises in the morning and then it slowly starts to drop and it gets low in the evening because that's when you're trying to go to sleep. When people have a inverted cortisol, you know, system, when their cortisol is low in the morning and starts to go up mid-morning and then is high at night, this becomes a problem because you're wired but tired. And what this looks like behaviorally is coffee and caffeine. or stimulants throughout the day and alcohol at night or cannabis at night to wind down. And so this is what behaviorally, what it tends to look like.

What they're trying to do is pin this hormone on the effects of stress management. So, and then stress management is a lot different than the way it's communicated as well. So we're often communicated like you need to reduce the stress in your life. Okay. So people look at their life and like, okay, I guess. I just like, like move out of my house, don't live with my family.

Like, do I, like, not work anymore? Like, what do I do, right? What the actual data shows is that if you have purpose behind the stress,

it's not stressful. So people who have this wonderful sense of purpose with their new child that they have, they're still tough. They're still getting poorly, but they just don't suffer from the stress like somebody who's like, I don't want to deal with this right now.

If you go to, a job that you enjoy versus one that you hate or one that feels purposeful, you can work more hours with the job that you feel good about and it doesn't have the same effect. Exercise is a stress

on the body because and that's one of the reasons why your body adapts to it and get stronger or while you build endurance. So it's far more complex than this cortisol thing and cortisol is not the enemy. Too much cortisol at the wrong times is the problem. But we need cortisol.

It reminds me a bit, too, of like inflammation, how they vilify inflammation so much and how we need to change and structure our diet completely to get it rid of inflammation. And it's the signal for, you know, a real growth of muscle growth. And so it is a vital part to that, but obviously, you know, need to time it and balance it. But it's the same thing. It's like the timing of, you know, the cortisol is dependent on whether or not it's beneficial. This is a really hard question to tackle virtually without knowing who we're talking to because I think the way I would communicate this is dependent on who I'm talking to, right? Like to your point, if I had a client who's like, I'm hearing all this stuff about cortisol

this and should I be worried about that and they love their job, they eat well, they sleep well, they get good training, it's like, yeah, yeah, we're not really. Ignore this. It's noise to you. but I also, you've probably maybe have heard us talk about what we call cortisol junkies, which were these clients that were very common with my female clients that love group X classes. They would be type A personality, high stress, either jobs or just stress person, low calorie intake, love high intensity classes.

And that gives them this cortisol dump and it makes them feel, really good in the short term. And they would be addicted to that feeling and that training is not. And then they couldn't lose weight, right? They couldn't get in shape and they couldn't figure it out. And they were taking this class five days a week and eating 1,500 calories and doing all the steps and doing all the things. And it's like we call them cortisol junkies because they're constantly chasing that

next dump of cortisol in their body to give them that short term high. And so if I'm talking to that client, this is a conversation. This is a conversation about how do we manage that through stress management to the point that you made. Change the way you exercise. Right. Eat more. Right. Increased calories, reduce the intensity of their training, give them longer rest periods.

And that comes to the, so the cortisol conversation becomes a very important conversation or to this, that person in particular. So it's tough for me to answer that without knowing if who is asking that question. are you that person? So if anything I just said about lower calories, having a hard time losing body fat, high stress, love circuit training type classes that you like to work out in, then maybe that conversation is for you. But if you identify more with Sal,

what he said, which is, you know, you have a lot of purpose behind your heart. You work hard, but you have a lot of purpose behind it. You love what you do. You're well fed. You're well rested.

You have a nice balance to your strength training program. You have long rest periods. you follow a Maps program. It's probably not. The conversation is probably not for you. Next question is from Tanya Garcia. What's the best advice for an adult who just got diagnosed as pre-diabetic? Someone close to me just got this news.

She's going into her late 50s and has arthritis. Generally speaking, the advice looks like this. You're going to eat a high protein, lower carbohydrate diet with a decent amount of fiber in it. That's what the diet's going to look like. So for this person, I would have them eat their target body weight in grams of protein. That's the goal. Okay. And you're going to eat it from whole natural foods.

You're not going to eat a ton of carbohydrates. You can have carbohydrates, but you're not going to have a ton. Okay. So your meal is going to look like protein fats, a little bit of carbs, and some vegetables. And then you're going to strength train. Strength training is incredible for insulin sensitivity. Building muscle does miracles when it comes to. working with people who are pre-diabetic.

Like miracles. You build a little bit of muscle and you see dramatic improvement. Because muscle is one of the places you store sugar. Big a gas tank for you. It's where you store glycogen. And muscle is very insulin sensitive.

By the way, too, this will also help support the arthritis, which is autoimmune. That's right. So somebody who gets like the flare-ups from autoimmune who's also pre-diabetic is probably a lot of times when they over-consume calories, i.e. sugar and stuff like that, they're going to have those flare-ups.

Whereas if they have these big gas tanks, muscle for their body to store that glycogen, they're less likely to overspill and have those autoimmune issues. And you don't even have to build a ton of muscle. You could just, even the current muscle you have just becomes better at storing glycogen. It becomes more insulin sensitive because you're stronger. So I would have her strength train one to two days a week, high protein diet. And then the last thing you would add would be to do five minutes of movement after she eats that has a really good effect. And if you just did those things, generally speaking, I wouldn't be surprised if this person within six months

so I radical shift in their diagnosis just from doing those things. Look, if you like Mind Pump, come find us on Instagram. It's Mind Pump media. Thank you for listening to Mind Pump. If your goal is to build and shape your body, dramatically improve your health and energy,

and maximize your overall performance, check out our discounted RGB Superbundle at Mind Pumpmedia.com. The RGB Superbundle includes Maps Anabolic, Maps Performance and Maps Aesthetic, nine months of phased expert exercise programming designed by Sal Adam and Justin to systematically transform the way your body looks, feels, and performs. With detailed workout blueprints and over 200 videos, the RGB Superbundle is like having Sal Adam and Justin as your own personal trainers, but at a fraction of the price. The RGB Superbundle has a full 30-day money-back guarantee, and you can get it now, plus other valuable free resources at mindpumpmedia.com. If you enjoy this show, please share the love by leaving us a five-star rating and review on iTunes, and by introducing Mind Pump to your friends and family.

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