Mind Pump: Raw Fitness Truth - 2861: If You're Not Building Muscle, You're Probably One of These 5 People | Mind Pump 2861

Episode Date: May 20, 2026

In this episode the guys break down the 5 types of people who just can't build muscle — Confusion Karl, Easy Stevie, Too Much Mike, Stay Shredded Sally, and Weekend Warrior Wally — and why each archetype is failing. They also get into a wild twin study showing red light therapy produced 15% more muscle growth than training alone, the latest UFO disclosure news and their theories on what's really going on, creatine officially going mainstream with non-fitness people talking about it at dinner tables, BPC-157 viral cancer fears debunked, and an ivermectin study showing 84% clinical benefit in cancer patients. Then they coach live callers submitted through mplivecaller.com — Jonathan from Northern Ireland on low testosterone as an ex-pro rugby player, Lindsay from Georgia on reverse dieting as a sleep-deprived nurse and mom of two, Rob from Connecticut on off-season strategy as a pro basketball player in Italy, and Charissa from Pennsylvania on building muscle without a traditional bulk and cut cycle. MAPS 15 BOGO — https://maps15bogo.com Buy 1 get 1 FREE — limited time (all 7 MAPS 15 programs same price) Sponsors: Eight Sleep (Pod 5 Ultra) — https://eightsleep.com/mindpump Code: MINDPUMP — Up to $350 off the Pod 5 Ultra. Memorial Day Sale running May 14 – June 12. Kion (creatine monohydrate) — https://getkion.com/mindpump 20% off — automatically applied at checkout, no code needed Joovv (red light therapy) — https://joovv.com/mindpump Code: MINDPUMP — $50 off your first purchase Submit a live caller question: https://mplivecaller.com  Mind Pump Store: https://mindpumpstore.com  Maps Fitness Products: https://mapsfitnessproducts.com  Instagram: @mindpumpmedia 0:00 - Intro 2:23 - 5 types of people who can't build muscle 3:22 - Type #1: Confusion Karl — why muscle confusion kills gains 9:39 - Type #2: Easy Stevie — the person who never pushes themselves 11:19 - Type #3: Too Much Mike — the overtraining fanatic 14:01 - Type #4: Stay Shredded Sally — eating too little to ever build 18:09 - Type #5: Weekend Warrior Wally — perfect Monday–Friday, disaster on weekends 23:34 - Red light therapy twin study — 15% more muscle growth in 12 weeks 29:26 - UFO disclosure — government releases star-shaped craft video, interdimensional theories 36:05 - Kansas basketball player blames creatine for cramping — debunked 39:15 - Creatine is now mainstream — ER doctors, nurses & non-fitness people talking about it 46:44 - BPC-157 viral cancer fear — is it actually dangerous? 51:33 - Ivermectin + Fenbendazole cancer study — 84% clinical benefit rate 55:09 - Importance of Sleep 56:17 - Caller: Jonathan (Northern Ireland) — ex-pro rugby player, low testosterone, overtrained 1:09:40 - Caller: Lindsay (Georgia) — nurse, postpartum, 1600 calories, scale creeping up 1:20:30 - Caller: Rob (Connecticut) — pro basketball player in Italy, off-season strategy 1:33:24 - Caller: Charissa (Pennsylvania) — building muscle without traditional bulk & cut

If you want to pump your body and expand your mind, there's only one place to go. Mind pump, mind pump with your hosts. Sal DeStefano, Adam Schaefer, and Justin Andrews. You just found the most downloaded fitness health and entertainment podcast. This is Mind Pump. In today's episode, we had callers call in. We got to coach them on air through their health and their fitness journey. But this was after the intro.

Today's intro was 53 minutes long. Now, in the intro, we talk about muscle gain, fat, fat, loss, diets, supplements, current events, sometimes family life. It's always a fun time. Look, if you want to call in and get helped by us, send your question to nplife caller.com. Now, this episode is brought to you by some sponsors. The first one is Juve. This is Red Light Therapy that works. Today I brought up a study, a twin study that showed that when they both worked out, they both worked their legs out, only one of them used the red light like you find with Juve panels. The guy that used the Red Light panel had 15% more muscle growth.

This stuff works, by the way, studies on red light therapy goes back decades. Go check them out. Go to juve.com forward slash mind pump. That's j-o-ovvv.com forward slash mind pump. Use the code mind pump, get $50 off. This episode is also brought you by Keyon High-quality top shelf supplements. Today we talked about their creatine. It's pure.

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Hit pause. Head on over to mindpustor.com. That's it. Enjoy the rest of the show. There are five types of people that just can't build muscle. There's confusion, Carl. It just changes up exercises all the time, doesn't practice one enough to get good at it.

You got Easy Stevie. Stops the exercises way too soon. Doesn't push himself enough to trigger any muscle growth. You got too much Mike. Lots of exercises. Lots of exercises. of sets, lots of volume, always in breakdown, never rebuilding. You have stay shredded Sally.

She just won't eat enough to allow her body to build muscle. Does everything right? Just eats too little. And then you got weekend warrior Wally. Monday through Friday crushes it on the weekend, doesn't sleep great and has a terrible diet. Those people just won't build any muscle. I feel like I've been all of these.

At some point, I think I've been all, for sure, confusion, Carl. I think I was stuck in that trap. Lost too much Mike over here. Well, let's break them down a little bit. Let's get deeper into why these people don't build muscle. Well, yeah, Confusion Carl is like a muscle confusion guy, right? Yeah, yeah. It was popular as we were coming up, and the thought process was...

The beach body method. If you were constantly confusing your body with different movements and exercises, that that was the way to stimulate growth. And I fell for this trap so much that I used to brag about never repeating a workout. So that was my idea. Now, to your defense, Adam, the more experienced and advanced you are, the more you can get away with something like this. So I'll explain, right?

So this might make it sound easy. When you look at an exercise, there's a potential of results you can get from that exercise, let's just say. So let's say that there's a chart and you've got a barbell squat on there. And the barbell squat can produce anywhere between one to ten. in terms of results. But in order to get to the 10, you have to be able to perform the squat really well.

You have to have good technique, good skill. You have to have your central nervous system will have to fire in a way to where you can really maximize leverage, biomechanics, safety, so that the muscle fibers actually get the stimulus. It's not just learning the exercises. Now I'm at the point where I'm pushing my muscles in a way to where they're going to grow. That doesn't happen if you go from exercise to exercise to exercise,

you don't give yourself enough time to get good at the exercise to reap the benefits. Now, with people who are really advanced, this is less of an issue. It's still an issue, but it's less of an issue because you're so well trained that you can perform most exercises pretty well. Maybe the more skillful ones might you still need to practice a little bit. But you know, when you were competing as a physique competitor, you've been working out for so many years, you can pretty much hop on any machine. Yeah, but they do it well. That's not when I was confusing, Carl, though. I was confusion.

Carl when, and where it didn't serve me was I missed out on getting really good at movements like the deadlift, like the squat, like the overhead press. And they would intermittently make it into my workouts, but they would never be in there consistently for three to five weeks, ever. I mean, it would be once every, once every couple weeks, it would make its way in there at best. And then I'd be moving on it. And I was constantly doing, you know, one arm, you know, bowsoo ball, chest press, and then do it. You know, just doing stuff that was wild and different at every workout that was challenging. And I'd say it kept me in, it kept me in shape. So I was, so that, that would be the plus of it was.

We're still moving. Yeah. I was functional. I was relatively strong, but I wasn't really strong. But I, I really had, what I wanted at that point in my life was more muscle. I wanted to, to build more muscle. And I wasn't building much more muscle. You just kind of maintaining.

Yeah, I was kind of. of maintaining a good shape. Yeah, I would say too, like the orange theories and like some of those classes, they kind of bank off of that mentality where it's like we're going to introduce you with, you know, like these wild exercise or we're going to do this experience version of workouts. And it's like we keep them coming back that way. So it's like a hack to kind of get, you know, people to stay interested. But at the same time, you're not really moving forward at all.

Yeah. I thankfully have a lot of these. I had a lot of challenges. Thankfully, this one I figured out early because I had the privilege of working out next to a group of power lifters who taught me like the dead lift of squat, the bench and kind of hammered into me

in one workout, how important it was? Because they were so big, of course, as a kid, I'm like, oh, you must know what you're talking about. And I saw incredible gains in my sophomore year of high school focusing on just a few lifts. I built all this, more muscle than I had built before. And so, and then from there, I never had access to tons and tons of machines,

especially later on. I had a studio with basic free weights. And so I was limited anyway. And so this never was an issue for me or it wasn't for a long time. But this was an issue for my clients. What I mean by that is as a trainer, I always did this with them. Yeah.

I would do all. Now the reasoning wasn't necessarily that I thought would give them better results, but rather I thought I had to entertain them with different exercises and stuff all the time. That was like the first half of my career as a trainer. the second half of my career as a trainer when I was way more effective. My clients got way better results. If you watch their workouts over the years,

many of these clients I trained for years and years and years, they were the same. Very pretty boring. And my clients loved it because there's so much you can do within complex movements and working on technique and all that stuff. And they got the best results. Well, you just had to learn how to entertain them

while they're doing the same mundane things. Or you had to learn how to communicate why we were doing. And I failed at that early on. I was, you know, I fell to the client telling you, can we do something different? Like, we already did this. I don't like, can we do something else? And like, okay.

You know, and then picking up quickly like, oh, when I challenge them with these weird dynamic movements, they like it because it's hard and it's different. And they've never had. And then it made me feel like, okay, I'm valuable because they couldn't, they wouldn't know how to do this movement if I wasn't here. And so that's, so I went through that phase as a trainer of training all my clients. with all this weird shit. I'll use an extreme example. If you had somebody who wanted to develop their legs and their first year of training, let's say you could split them into two versions of the self.

Version one does 50 different exercises, so picks one each time they work out. So over 50 workouts, it's a different combination of exercises for the legs. The other person just does squats and Romanian deadlifts for the first year. That's it. You're just going to get good at squats and Romanian deadlifts. Do you know who's going to build way more muscle on the strain? Oh, yeah. The squats and Romanian deadlift.

As boring as it's saying. And so this confusion Carl person misses out on so many gains because they forget that exercises are skills. And they just go in and try to feel the burn. No. And that's it. The next one, Easy Stevie. This is the person who is afraid of intensity. They work out.

But then when the set gets kind of hard, they stop or the workouts tend to look the same in terms of the same amount of resistance. This was common when I would get a new client who would come to me and say they weren't getting great results. asked them how long they've been working out. Oh, I've been working out for years. What does your workout look like? And then they would proceed to list the weight that they used for every exercise. Oh, I start out with five pound dumbbell presses. Then I do 15 pound rows. I'm like, wait a minute. Is that what you always use? Oh, yeah, that's the weights that I always grab. Yeah, of course you're not comfortable. Yeah, you're not training yourself with any intensity. Pressing yourself. That's right. This was, I have like, as you went through these, I like, I could picture like a client.

Yeah. You know, and I, the client I picture is, and I had a couple clients like this that did a lot of the at-home workout videos. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. And so there was like a series of, those were huge for a thing. Yeah, yeah. But I remember getting them and them being like,

you know, they were, obviously they hired me because they were trying to change and see a difference. And they hadn't, and how long have you been lifting weights? Oh, I've been lifting weights for 35 years. I'm like, whoa. Like, but how long have you been consistent? I've been consistent. You know what I'm saying?

Three days a week, this and that. Same video. Yeah. Yeah. And then you ask like what they were doing. And then they would day exactly like you said, they would name an exercise and they would be able to tell you the weight that they do. It's like, oh, you've been doing that same weight, that same exercise.

Yeah, I think we're pretty well adapted to that. Did we really miss the infomercial era? Yeah. And we just missed it. That would have been a good time. Yeah, it would have been fun. I think I could have done that. I would have loved it.

Yeah, but I think, you know, what they were tapping into was daily activity. Yeah. So movement, every day is good for you. But what they were missing was what your body needs to progress or build, which is stress. Yeah. And stress. You got to risk it. Intensity comes or intensity contributes to that.

So next, though, was too much Mike. This one's really common with our listeners because we have a lot of fitness fanatics. And this is just that if some is good, more is better. We probably address this the most, I would say. Yeah. And it's, I mean, it's definitely hits home for me because this was my mentality.

And that was really infused from coaching because a lot of the disciplines that, you know, you think will make you a great athlete. But it doesn't really translate once you, just put that to weight training. It's like you got to let your body adapt and recover. And like, that's a whole science of that that,

you know, coaches just want to blast you through the whole thing with the most intensity. I'm not sure I ever trained an ex-athlete that wasn't challenged with this. Oh, yeah. Athletes in particular? Yeah. I don't,

I don't know if I ever trained somebody who was an athlete for at least a portion of their life, through high school even, that didn't apply. Well, that's because when you're competing, you're going, like, you're not,

you're supposed to go hard. You're supposed to go to your hardest. Yeah. And so that's the gear that they live in. Yeah. That's right. Yeah. And it doesn't, that's not how you exercise.

Sometimes you exercise really, really hard, but most of the time it's got to be appropriate. Yeah. And people who are in this category would be shocked at how great the results they would get from cutting their stuff in half. Yeah. In half. In half. I'm not even saying like cut it down a little bit.

Well, I think that I, I find us, we communicate this a lot on the podcast, probably because there's a bit of a bias. if you choose on your drive to work to listen to fitness dorks, you probably are pretty into fitness, right? So we have people that are kind of, we're not, very rarely do we probably get introduced to somebody who's like not into fitness. It's probably maybe a referral or something. Most people are choosing to listen to this,

which means they're probably already hardcore. They're skewed towards the too much. Yeah, so they are skewed in that direction, which is also why I think all the whole, you know, all the MAP 15 programs that we've created have done so well. There's, I think, so many people, finally, after hearing us beating that drum, go like, okay, I'll try it. Did you?

And they try it. Did you see in the forum? In our forum, there was somebody that posted, they did MAPS 15 power lift. So for people aren't familiar. I did see that. And they hit PRs. I saw, I just read that. Yeah, so MAPS.

Our 15 style programs essentially are like two lifts a day. It's what it kind of breaks down to do. So it take you about 20 minutes or so, 15 to 20 minutes, maybe 25 if you have really long rest periods. That's it, right? And the person commenting was experienced. They've been working out for a while. They've switched to this program and they're like, yep, I hit PRs.

Yeah. PRs. And they did our power lift before that. Yes. They did the traditional power. Traditional. And then this one actually gave me the way reduced volume. And most people will be shocked how well they respond.

The Stay Shredded Sally. There's a reason why it's a female name. This is much more common among women than men. But it's just, yeah, I want to build, but I also want to see my abs. or yeah, I want to build, but I don't want to gain any weight. Yeah. Yeah, I want to build, but, you know, I'm scared of getting fat. Sort of the conflict of interest.

Yeah, and you're just not, you're not going to build. If your calories are too low, I don't care what you do. You can take steroids. You can take all the steroids in the world. Nothing's going to happen if your calories are too low. And what's shocking with this is I've had this happen a few times where I'm meeting with someone, female fitness fanatic, wants to build. And I talk to them about this.

they get a Dexas scan and come back and their bone mass is really low. And they're shocked because they've been lifting weights for years. Yeah, they've been getting after it. And so you've been starving yourself for years. Even though you've been lifting weights, which builds bone, you don't need enough.

You won't build muscle and things start to weaken. Would you say that one of the main reasons for that is because in the process of building, almost everybody has to go through a little bit of an uncomfortable stage of feeling heavier, feeling water retention. Yeah. Yeah.

And I think that, and I think why a lot of my female clients struggle with that because very few clients that came in wanted to be bigger. There's an occasional client that I have, but very rarely did I have a female client come in and says, I need to be bigger. I need to weigh more. But yet, they would want body parts to look better. I want a better butt. I want better legs. Yeah, I want my arms, shoulder, whatever, which requires us to be in a calorie surplus to build, i.e. bulk. and a lot of times during that process,

there's a bit of an uncomfortable state, you increase calories, so you're eating more than you're used to. You're now up probably in carbohydrates. You're up in water. All those things start to make you feel like you're more bloated or you're carrying extra weight and feels. Muscles are big.

Yeah, you're, how many time you hear pants fitting tighter and stuff like that and they start freaking out because they want to be in that same. It's just like you, I think it's that uncomfortable phase that's kind of required to do that. You know what this reminds me of Adam? Because I know you can relate to this.

Because I was on the other end of the spectrum. I was always trying to get bigger. Yeah. And so what always prevented me from really getting lean was feeling smaller. Yep. So I'd start to get leaner, but then I'd feel smaller in my clothes. And I'd reverse gears all the time. All the time.

What's happening? It's like, well, you are losing body fats. You are going to shrink a little. I mean, through my 20 or late teens, early 20s, every summer, beginning of the summer was a, quote, unquote, cut time for me. and it would only ever last a few weeks. Yeah, totally. And then I would bail because I would, again, so insecure with how I looked and felt like, oh, my God, I'm losing so much size. I'd rather be a little softer and bigger than I'd rather be treaded and lean and just.

It wasn't a sticker, but it was like a saying that was over our little weight room. And it was like, get big or die. And we all like, we all had that mentality. Wow. I never let that go. Was this when you played football? Oh, my God. Yeah, so it's like, you know, yeah, I was never like into the whole cutting thing.

Yeah, that's probably, you know. Yeah, 100%. And what's funny, what's ironic about this, by the way, is as a kid, when I finally did allow myself to get really, really lean, the comments I would get would be, wow, you look so much bigger. And then with my female clients, when they would let go of the feeling and I'd have them not weigh themselves on the scale, they'd come back to me and be like, okay, here's what's weird. I feel bigger, but people at work are telling me like a lost weight. That I look like a lost weight. It's like, well, yeah, your body composition is changing. So it definitely feels different.

You know, I feel like that, I mean, you just gave the example of how we are the opposite of this, but we're missing a name then. We're missing a name for the person that's like you or I in this situation. So it's not stay shredded Sally. It's like stay big something. Yeah. But see, those people don't have issues with building muscle. They have issues we get more.

Stay big. Okay, that's a good point. Okay, that's a good point. And then we got Weekend Warrior Wally. And so this is the person who their diet is good, Monday through Thursday or Friday. Their workouts are pretty consistent. Friday night, Saturday night, I'm going out. I'm enjoying myself.

A weekend, I eat whatever. I go to bed late. That's okay because I'm sleeping in. And they can't figure out why they're not building any muscle, even though almost 50% of their week is dedicated to not being consistent and eating like garbage. So three out of seven days is, I mean, it's not half, but it's a significant amount. And you'll throw yourself off enough.

on those three days to make it so that you're just kind of maintaining or getting no progress. You know, we talk about how much I like wearables. This is where this came from. Oh, yeah. So when the body bug first came out, I mean, I loved it for my clients, but it was so eye-opening for myself because I was definitely this person at this point. Like, I could not figure out for the life of me. In fact, at that time of my life, I, I, I, thought for sure is because all the guys

on the covers of magazines were on steroids and I wasn't. I was like, oh, that's why, you know, that's why they look like that. You can't get like that until you get on steroids. Like this, this is the best you can look, you know, without that. That was like, I was convinced because I was a trainer. I understood macros. I knew how to train. I was doing all these, and I was

super dialed. Money the Friday. Yeah, Saturday and Sunday. I wouldn't, I wouldn't go crazy. At least I didn't think I was going crazy off the rails. But if I went out and had some drinks on a night or two, I would. if we had pizza, that would be the time. Sleep in.

And the body bug really shed light on what a dramatic difference Monday through Friday. Activity-wise, macro-hitting-wise. And Saturday and Sunday was enough to erase all the great work that I was doing. You probably high-calorie, low-protein. That's right. That's right. High-calorie, low-protein, no activity. I'd sleep in until 10 o'clock in the morning, lay around.

watch TV or football, order a pizza, do my whatever. And the opposite on a training, you know, Monday or Tuesday, train 10 clients, you know, starting from 6 a.m., not stopping to 11. I mean, I would be burning 5,000 calories. So to burn 5,000 during the week and nail my macros and then on Saturday and Sunday to only burn like 2,800,000,000 calories, but then over can eat like I was eating all week long. It's a whole other discipline, too.

It's a lot easier if you're, like, regimented throughout your week. I can go to work. I got to do this. You're on the move. And then, you know, the weekend is like, well, you know, I'm going to kick my feet up. And then, like, it kind of your plan throughout the week goes out the window. This was the, the birth of the term when the weekend for me came from was just, and I realized that a lot of people were in the same trap. Like they could, it didn't.

And it doesn't, if you're, if you're in it, you, because you would, the way you would convey this, clients have conveyed this to us before. Like, hey, how would you say your diet is? Oh, I got a, I got a pretty diet. I'd say, you know, 80, 20 or 90, 10. And they think of it as money through Fridays, 80%. And then the weekend's only like 20%, right? So I'd say I'm 80%, I'm 100% dialed.

And it meant 20% I let my. And so it doesn't make sense to you how much that can set you back. And I swear that's been a huge shift for me is to realize that. This one, this for me, the big one for me, figuring this out was sleep because as a kid. That too. Yeah, because as a kid, in the summers, oftentimes I would go to work with my dad. And when I would do that, we'd have to wake up early.

So I'd go to bed on time because otherwise I'd be dead, right? But then if I didn't have to go to work the next day with my dad and it was summertime, I'd stay up super late, sleeping. And it wasn't until I had a summer where I was real consistent with sleep that I saw this progress. I was like, does it really make that big of a difference? Yeah, it makes that big of a difference. Well, you add that factor into what I just said, too, of, you know,

overconsuming on bad calories, underconsuming on what I need, like protein, staying out Friday night at the club or something like that. You know what I'm saying? So throwing myself off the combination of all that, I don't care how dialed imperfect you are or money through Friday. It's enough to throw it off. Well, here's the thing with building muscle. It's hard.

It's a slow, hard process. You're telling your body you're going to require. more nutrients and more resources to maintain. Your body doesn't want to do that unless it thinks all the, it can, unless it has the right signal, the right food, and the right environment. And if you don't create that, it's just not going to happen. Building muscle is definitely not an easy process. It's funny just looking at all the names like you chose for all this,

like how long that took. The last one kind of triggers me a little bit, I'll be honest, because of that one dude who's like our rival quarterback Wally. All I can think of is weak-ass Wally. That's what I want to call He just can't help He can't help to throw the chest Screw that guy

Hey can I tell you something Adam Yeah I picked the name on purpose I did I did I did I was like In my hey this morning This morning I wrote this

I'm working out I'm like Oh I'm gonna write Wally down This is It triggers Justin I did Oh you triggered me You totally did

All right I got to bring up an old study I brought up once And I read it again It's the craziest It's actually a wild study That And there's been some other studies

that kind of supported this. I've told you guys, this was done in 2016, the twin study that was done on red light therapy. Did I tell you about this? You guys remember this? No.

This is so crazy. No. A twin study on it? Yes, dude. So one of the... The best study possible. Yeah, dude, one of the gold standards, of, um,

whenever you're using some kind of intervention is if you have twins. Because it's so hard to control for genetics. Now, it's not perfect. because twins can have different lifestyles and all that stuff. But when it's a simple intervention, like red light, red light's very simple. You're going to come into the lab.

We're going to shine red light on one of you and the other one we're not, you know, type of deal. It's beautiful because now we can look at, we can rule out genetics and just say, what did the red light actually do? And they also controlled the workout. So they took identical twins and they did a 12 weeks, 12 weeks of strength training. one of them got the red light therapy on their quadriceps post training the other one got a placebo so they just shined a light wasn't red light therapy the the one who got the red light therapy uh had 20% muscle growth versus 5% in the placebo so 15% more yeah in 12 weeks better performance lower muscle damage markers reduced delayed onset muscle so favorable gene expression changes so upregulated hypertrophy genes down-regulated inflammatory atrophy ones. It was just the red light.

What did the 5% come from the placebo? Just the fact that you believed in it. So that's the typical results would just be 5%. Yeah, dude. So 15% more. So to me four or four times, right? Four times the results by being, which is, I think that's being actually effective. Yeah.

That's wild. So it's for people to know, what does that look like? Well, I guess we would have to put it in strength terms. It'd be like you'd be able to do two or three more reps than the other guy. That's not nothing in 12. weeks, that's a big deal. Yeah. You guys.

Stretch that out over a year. Yeah, yeah. So imagine if you had like a juve red light and your structure was after I train whatever body part, or I would say this to make it more realistic. I have a lagging body part. I have a body part. I've been focusing on every time I train that body part, I'm going to go to the red light therapy and shine the juve light on it for, you know, 20 minutes.

Yeah. And you're going to see better games. It's so crazy. Was it Asprey or who is it that we know or grain field? was someone we know who did, who tested it where they, they shine it on like one leg only to recover. People have done that. And they said, like, boy, it's like, you can feel a huge deal.

I know Mercola's done a bunch of studies on it too. But yeah, I think it was Greenfield. Dude, it's, it's wild because it's one of the few things that'll build more muscle. That's not like a hormone or a peptide or like, do the same things that you're doing now. Well, that's an easy way to test it to what I just said. It's weird. Like, if you don't, like, because, I mean, that's the hard part is like. Or maybe put it on a body.

a side that you need to bring up. That might be a good idea. Yeah. So I mean, you go do heavy squat. Like I know how I'm going to feel when I do heavy squats, like on a day or whatever like that. Like, okay, I know how swarming. Like, you shine on one side and not the other. Like, you'll feel, you'll probably feel a big difference from left to right. I mean, that's enough to start hobbling a little bit. I mean, you don't want to do that all the time. But I mean, enough to get like, okay, this is, definitely working. I think if you have a garage, you know what I would do. Because I have this in my bedroom. But if I put it in my garage, you know what I would do is I would do it. I wonder if this would work just in between sets.

So you don't have to spend an additional... I'm waiting for the... Every... Every minute. Three minutes or two minutes in between sets. Boom, shine it. Go work out. You know, people sent me...

You know, I brought it up about the shower thing, right? So there's all these, like, knockoff ones that do, like, showerheads. And it's not the... No. I looked it up. It's not the same power lumens and whatever. It's, like, it's nowhere near. There's a certain intensity frequency that you see in the studies.

That's the one that you see in the studies. uses. There's a lot of red light therapy panels and stuff that are out in the market. And it's not only is it, they're different, which means they don't work. Yeah. So it's not like they work less. They just don't work. It's just like Christmas lights. You're just literally putting a red light. Yeah, I want to, I want, I'm waiting for like the first like contractor who would build it into your like bathroom ceiling. I think that would be cool. I think it'd be cool. You come in. I could hit a switch and my whole bathroom just glows. Just turns on. Yeah, because I mean, you're in, you're in there naked, you're shower and getting ready and stuff like

that. I'm in there for at least 15 to 30 minutes every day. Be so much easier to just get hit like that by like consistently. Yeah, I wonder like if you had like in a gym, you have like your locker room and all that, but then you just had like stalls boost with just like all red paneled out. I think they've done that. A lot of gyms are now corporate. Yeah, I was in. I think there's some gyms that have done that.

I've seen some like group X type rooms where they have it where it's like when they're doing yoga and stuff like that. Oh, wow. Oh yeah, yeah. Or they do it like that too. Are they the legit ones? I don't know. Yeah. It might just be ambiance.

Yeah, who knows? Put red bulbs in the... Yeah, I don't know what brand they're using and the quality. So for people aren't familiar, the real red light, there's, again, there's a certain radiation and whatever. By the way, it's not bad because well studied. Like, well studied, the studies go back decades. But the way it works is it ramps up mitochondrial function.

Yeah. So for whatever reason, whatever cells it shines on, the mitochondria, works better. And so better working mitochondria means whatever your body's trying to do, it does better. Heal, skin looks better, hair grows back, skin, you know, you get less stretch marks. And then if you shine it on a muscle, because it penetrates through. Doug just brought up around the most effective red light therapy uses specific wavelength, primarily 630 to 660 nanometers and 8, 10 to 850 nanometers for an ear. for 10 to 20 minutes, three to five times per week. Yeah. Yep. Yeah. Interesting. Anyway, I got

some, you guys want to talk about UFO stuff? As your beliefs changed this week or whatever? So they're trickling. So are you guys seeing what they're releasing? Well, I know that there's documents just released, right? Yeah. Yeah. And it's like a... What is in there? So here's what's interesting to me. Because a couple things. One, I think we could pretty reliably say that the government doesn't release anything. It doesn't

want us to see. Of course. And there probably is some kind of a narrative or ulterior motives. They're not just like, hey, guys, we just want to show you cool things. So you're on, that's what page I'm on. Yeah, I mean, that's for sure, right? I think, because I was having this conversation with my friend and we're going back and forth. I'm like, when's the last time that it didn't have?

And anybody that can legitimately explain any of it that, like, have disappeared. Oh, that's the crazy thing about those scientists? Yeah. That's weird. Anyway, so, so some theories. So one theory, I heard this today and I thought, that's interesting. They said the only reason why they'll trickle information out is to prevent people from getting too, like, too excited, too much, what's the word I'm

looking for? Pandemonium? Yeah. So they're going to slowly trickle it out, get people used to each piece and then make more and more. And they said the reason why they're doing this is because they know we're going to see more of these things in our neighborhoods and over us anyway. And they're just trying to get us from to stop to not freak out. Because guess what?

We're going to be seeing a lot of this stuff. And so they're just trying to prepare. Do we freak out? I just, I'm sorry. I think we'd freak out if people just started seeing them in their neighborhoods all over the place. I mean, okay, if it's able to travel light years away to get to us, which I think we'd all agree, right, unless it's living in the ocean. It's interdimensional. Yeah.

Or, yeah, or, yeah. Interdimensional. So if it's, so they have to be a pretty evolved species, more evolved than us. The likelihood that they're here to hurt us or attack it, they could have done it if they wanted to. So I don't think it's that scary. I think it's, I don't think it's, if it is, and they're capable of doing that, and they're that evolve. And then even if they are, I feel like if they're demon. They're not just trying to kill you, bro.

They're trying to take away your salvation. So they got to convince you. I'm still sticking with that thing. I'm not on the demon theory, dog. I don't think that's what it is. I don't think it's that at all. So, anyway, that was one, that that's the deal. So, yeah, dude.

So, I don't know. I thought that was kind of interesting. Like, are we going to start seeing more of this stuff? And are they keeping us from freaking out? Yeah, well, the precursor being over in what the East Coast, where they had like a few of those. What they say they were like the size of like a VW bug or something like in the sky? Yeah.

So, I mean, obviously they did it intentionally. So it just started to kind of socially condition everybody. Did you guys see the star one that they released? It looked like, Doug, maybe you could look it up like UFO star. Did you see the one they released, the government released? It looked like a star, but not like an actual star. It was in the shape of a star. and it was like floating around and they were yeah dude it's that's that's the one resembling an eight yeah

that one right there yeah that's the government released that cool star-shaped UFO uh video that's weird yeah yeah well yeah how do you make movies now yeah it's like everything's already happening in real life that bottom left one dug is a clear picture that not the bottom uh on your yeah right there look at that picture of it like what is going on dude and they're releasing this kind of stuff It's like a Christmas ornament. Yeah. And they're, these officials are coming out saying,

oh, nothing, you just wait. We got stuff. It's going to blow your, just wait for the probes. No. Leave us load.

Yeah. I don't know. I'm not even watching any of it. Dude, I honestly, I've turned off like so much of this stuff, dude. It's so lame.

It is. And every day, too, something hits me now in my feed. And I get pissed every time it does this. Like, something catching. me. I did it this morning. Yeah, and then it sucks me in and I'm watching it for a minute and then I realize I'm watching

AI. You know what it's like for me? You know when you read a really good book and then like you watch like somebody that directs the movie of it and it sucks balls? Yeah. Like that's what reality is now. Like I was like all excited about aliens and like Bigfoot and now it sucks. And now it's just like super lame.

Like they made the lamest version for us to check out. What could be, okay, this whole alien thing comes out, what would be like the lamest story? Like, what, what makes it like just, wot, wwop, wamp? Oh. They're not your demons. It doesn't fulfill that.

I don't know. They're just stopping by. You know what I'm saying? Yeah. I mean, what, how are they going to convince everybody other than, like, with some kind of crazy force, like, to scare us? Yeah.

Scare is, like, scaring people's, like, a go-to. Maybe if we came out and found out that they made it all up? Maybe that the government came to me, that's the part that I think is coming. I think that it's made up. I think, what if this, what if this, I'll just, I just think, I'm thinking out loud, what if this is the government's way of showing the world, the technology that we have without saying it's our technology? So it's like, how weird, look what this does.

You could totally just go in and out of your airspace. I mean, I lean more towards that than I do that there's these, you know, demons or aliens that are, you know, flying around and all these, you know, it's weird to me, why are all their spaceships differently designed? Why are they all? One's like a VW bug. One's like a Christmas tree. One's like, why are they all so different?

The only thing I'm excited about is the lizard people. Like, if that's real, that's awesome. There's more people are coming out and saying that. Here's what I want to know. Like, no way. Why is it the U.S. just has information? Is the rest of the world, like, left out? Another thing that's weird.

They're just dealing with us? Yeah. You know what I mean? Is anybody else, like, yeah, do they have all these? Yeah. Why aren't other countries come up? Citing's, yeah, dude. I don't know.

That's why I don't buy it, dude. They're not trying to distract everybody from corruption. Hey, did you see, sorry, switch gears when your alien talk, but did you see the, I sent over an article. Our buddy, you know, Casey, he does the, he does the, he's got that great sports YouTube channel. He's been on the show a couple times. He's called in with his wife at one time. He sent me over an article. He's like, hey, you guys might enjoy this.

And he goes, I'm curious to hear your opinion. And there's a. a college basketball player at Kansas. Oh, you sent this to me. Yeah, I sent it over because I just, I wanted to hear your opinion on it, right? So it's Darren Peterson and blame. So he's been getting full body cramps so bad he locks all up.

And tested his blood afterwards and instead of like high creatine levels with that. And so blaming that. And his whole life he hadn't really taken creatine. When he comes to Kansas, part of the, you know, sports nutrition guy and stuff puts all the athletes on high dose. of creatine. And so the claim is that it's creatine's fault. This is happening.

So the theory was... Which it hydrates your cells. So that kind of... So here was... That's an old... It's actually an old myth. So the... It's well-hydrating.

I'll break it down. So what they... The theory was when creatine first hit the scene in the mid-90s, there was a lot of fears. It's going to harm your kidneys because your kidneys have to process creatine. By the way, it's been studied

thousands of times and well-done studies. It's good for your kidneys. It does not harm your kidneys whatsoever. It might even be protected, but there's zero, zero evidence, zero, that it'll harm your kidneys. The other one was cramping because when you take creatine, you have more ATP, and so ATP molecules need water molecules. And so your body actually holds, your muscles hold more water. And so they said, oh, it must be drying water from other areas and it could cause dehydration as a result.

So that was a theory. So they've studied creatine and muscle cramp. A lot. This isn't like a little bit. This is like a big area study around creatine over the last you know few decades and here's what the studies actually show They tested it on a call in Division one college football players and in hot human conditions by the way People who took creatine had significantly fewer cramps So less muscle cramps They also showed that people with

Homo dialysis patients so people who are prone to cramps Cratine reduced cramping frequent can see by about 60%. So not only does creatine not cause muscle cramps, but all the evidence shows it actually reduces it. Yeah, the incidence of muscle crows. So we've, I thought we talked. So he just, he just, he just, he just, yeah, his electrolyte balance is off.

Electrolate balance. Yeah. It's the same. Manage it well. Yeah. Not blaming creatine. No. Like, creatine.

That's why, that's why I figured I'm like, this is something that we've talked about before. And it's interesting that it's making, I mean, New York Times making headlines over it. And I don't know, maybe that's because the New York Times knows that, I mean, Creatine is, for the first time ever, I feel like creatine's become a household name. Like, I never felt like that before. It's always been a sports performance supplement. We've known about it forever as like the gold standard of best performance supplements out there.

But your average person hadn't thought about that. Like, I have my family and friends that are like totally not working. That's because the longevity benefits are pretty clear now. By the way, they've been clear for over a decade. It's just now getting to the mainstream. Which maybe that's why New York Times takes this article. right and runs what that is because it'll it'll create headlines. In other words, creatine isn't just good for building muscle, athletic performance, and strength.

It's actually good for your health. It's good for longevity. It's good for your organs. It's good for your very good for your brain. It's a pro-laugivity, pro-health supplement, not just one that improves athletic performance. So I think that's why it's making headlines. But it's just not true. It's been well-studied.

So it's not like it's a little bit, it's been well-studied. And when the evidence doesn't just show it doesn't cause cramps, but actually does the opposite. then you know that he's tripping. I have friends right now who are not fitness fanatics who are using creatine because they've seen the data. Then they asked me about it. We're talking. So one of them is an ER doctor.

Another one is a psychiatrist who also works long, hard hours. Another one is a nurse. Neither one of them is a fitness fanatic. Now they do some exercise, but the reason why they're taking creatine is because the hours that they work and the stress that their job entails, especially the ER doctor and the nurse.

Oh, yeah. They're like, would it really help me with like sharpness? Yeah. Calendative offense are great. Yeah, will it give me energy? Life changing is what they're telling me. Life changing. Oh, wow.

I mean, the nurse is coming to me and she's like... They're doing like the 15 to 20 gram. Yep, like five grams, like a few times a day, right? Like the nurse came to me. She's like, I feel like someone turned the lights on just from taking caretings. Wow. Yeah. It's had a significant benefit for them.

So, again, they're not fitness fanatics. They're just regular people who have kind of stressful lives and don't get a good sleep, you know, quite often because of their jobs. And they're like, this is the most, this is the most. Are you the one giving it to them? Or did you set them up or why? I'll give them first and then they'll go and buy it on their own. Yeah. I thought was it creatine that has somewhat of a, like, a neuroprotectin?

Yes. You know, for like even like trauma. Yes. Injury. Yeah. Yeah. I wish I would have known all that. You know, like, I'm glad to know it now, at least for my sons and whatnot to kind of pass it on.

But it's like, yeah, thinking of it. about that even with athletes. Yeah. Yeah, I didn't take it until I was like 20. It was after playing sports as a kid. I didn't, it wasn't popular yet. I don't, at least I don't remember. Dude, I've been taking it nonstop since I was 15.

I mean, if you've been taking it since it's 15, that means it was, it was around then when I was in high school. I just don't remember. It was expensive back then. The cell tech was really. No, it wasn't cell tech. It was before cell tech. It was. That's what I remember.

It was whatever, what year did, so you just did the monohydrate by itself? Yeah, so EAS had, was the first to make, really put it out there. and it was... So Bill Phillips owned it. And it was 90... I want to say 94? Dollars? No, no, no, no.

1999. But it would cost 40 bucks back then for 30 servings. It was a tiny bottle of powder. So... So 1998. Okay, so that's true. That's...

No, no, I asked him to put that. I wanted to see... Because that's when... That was when it came on the scene for me. Yeah, so it was like four years later. Yeah. That's when I started taking it. So 98...

Yeah. Great flavor. Doug, say, yeah, well, When did, there you go, 93. Yep. That's when I, phosphagen. That's when I started taking it. Yeah.

But people often ask, so my friends will ask me, creatine is everywhere. How do I know if it's good or bad? Which one should I take? So I'm like a creatine monohydrate. But then you want to look at where the creatine is sourced or look at the company because, you know, supplement companies notoriously.

Yeah, there's some shyness. Yeah. And so I point them to a couple of our. partners Kion in particular because Kian is just top top level. Do they use Kriapur? Is that where they get it? I believe so. But Kiann is their their stuff is just, it's like top top shelf or whatever. And because creatine is not super expensive, it's not expensive anyway. Yeah. But you're going to get like real creatine money. It's remarkable to me when studies, third parties go out and or investigative journalists go out and take a bunch of supplements and test them. It always makes me so angry.

It's like heavy metals in there and fluff. Bro, it's like it's either half or more than half or terrible. It's not like 10%, 5%. Might as well be sawdust. It's like most of them. Well, especially stuff like that the margins are so slim that it's the way to make the, that's how you make a lot of money in it. I mean, if you create enough popularity through brand or marketing and you're selling

tens of thousands of bottles, it's not a lot of money unless you're doing something. Especially creatine. Creatine is not a high margin supplement anymore. It used to be. I mean, this was the thing I think that a lot of fitness people don't even realize. I think every fitness person thinks that they're going to get popular and then, you know, sell supplements is the, like, way to make money. And it's just your best supplement brands are 10 to 15 percent margins. I mean, so you got a million dollar company.

You make a hundred grand a year. It's not a lot. It's not a lot. You have two avenues to go, right? You either skimp on quality. So maybe it's good. Maybe it isn't. Oftentimes it isn't.

And so what happens is you have a cheap product, but your margins are high because you're getting it sourced terribly. Or you go the super quality route and you really have to convince people that your creatine monohydrate is pure and good versus this other guy. And yeah, you're going to spend another 10 bucks. But hey, here's all of our analysis. This is good. Or our studies that we had to pay for.

to show the proof of how good it is, right? Because that's the problem. The problem with the supplement company is that, or the supplement industry is that it's not, it's not regulated, which is not about, I don't think I want it regulated, right? I don't think it's a good thing for us. No, but it's buyer beware. But exactly. Because it's, because then it's like, you know, you have to pay for the, and the people

that go through the third party testing, they have to pay out of pocket. So they have to. So not only you, they, the purely source, but then also if they're getting third party tested, they're paying for the third party testing. So you're paying for higher quality stuff and you're also paying for a third party testing. So for you to, you're going to have to, you're going to have to, charge significantly more than the people that are pixie dusting the the product. And Keon is like, this is like what they're, this is their whole deal.

Is quality 100%. So that's why I pointed them for creatine. But I love to hear, it's so cool to hear from people who are not like fitness fanatics, you know, come up to me in church and she's like, it's like the lights turned on. I mean, it's just in, I'd say the last year is when I've noticed, you know, non-fitness people talking about creatine. I can't remember. It was just like a month ago.

was in a oh is that our buddy jays house and he had all of his family and you're talking like none of them look like they work out or anything like that and that the dinner table everyone's talking about creatine i'm like this is such a weird this is weird this is weird this is weird it's new multivitamin like you called it a long time ago i remember it was like it's true 10 years ago yeah i'm pretty sure they've incorporated it they have yeah there's companies that have it in multivitivitin's makes sense i i'll tell you this right now i'm not saying that this is what I'm advocating for. But I think in the future, you can write this down.

I think they're going to give it to kids. I think it will be part of the protocol for people as they age. And I think they're going to give it to pregnant women. Again, I'm not advocating for kids and pregnant women because we're not allowed to say that. So that's not what I'm advocating. I just think probably 10, 15 years from now, they're going to be like, this is part of your prenatal or this is what you need to get. Yeah, there'll be studies in that direction.

I'm sure. This is what you need to give your kids. Yeah. Interesting that we haven't. I guess it's just the risk factor, right? Why they wouldn't do something? Rush, I'll do it sooner or later. Well, here's the deal.

You can't do studies on kids or pregnant women. It's, it's, it's, uh, it's, there's no. It's unethical. It's very unethical. You can't take a group of pregnant women to be like, we're going to see if this. That's why I said, Russia will do it. Yeah. China has already done the studies.

That's terrible. That's terrible. I want to talk about peptides for a second because there's this viral video that's going around where this doctor is talking about BPC, 157 and how it it spurs angiogenesis. Oh, I'm glad you brought this up. Did you see this? Yes, I did see this.

I wanted to, oh, I'm so glad I forgot about this. I wanted to bring this up. So this woman, this doctor, says it triggers angiogenesis, which is the formation of new blood vessels to cell. So if you have an injury, more blood supply, more nutrients to the injury is going to mean it's going to recover faster. That's not the only way that BPC-157 works, but it's one of the ways, right? Yeah.

And so she said, you don't want to take this because it doesn't know the difference between cancer and a normal cell. And I get the rationale. I totally do. But what people need to understand is there is a normal physiological state and then there's a pathological state. So to use a different example, eating a high protein diet, builds more muscle, burns more body fat, contributes to better lung. With all things being equal, your healthy exercise, all that stuff is better. Can protein feed cancer? Yes. Carbohydrates.

Carbohydrates produce energy, well-being that can help with hormone balance. Can carbohydrates feed cancer? Yes. We can go even deeper. MTOR, which is a marker or trigger for muscle growth. Mammalian target rapamycin. If you boost that with a cancer cell, cancer cell grows. Does that mean we shouldn't lift weights?

Because every time you lift weights, you boost mTOR. No. fact, in a healthy state, building muscle, spiking them toward reduces cancer risk. Yeah. So testosterone, testosterone sensitive cancer. That was the first thing that went to my mind when it was the fearmongering that was around testosterone, same angle. Yeah.

So you have prostate cancer. Yeah, if you have cancer already. Well, so again, you have prostate cancer. It's sensitive to testosterone. It could drive the growth. But what we see in data is that men with really low testosterone have a high rate of prostate cancer. So there's a healthy state and then there's the pathological state. What they find in the BPC is that it doesn't contribute in some of the data that we have to cancer or cancer growth. It actually shows anti-cancer effects in many of those cases. So I think the worry, what they're looking at is the mechanism and they're forgetting that there's a lot of other things that are happening with that and not just to look at. Now, the other argument that I think that Dr. May too is that, you know, we have very little or

no studies on humans, everything is on animal studies. So that's her big. There isn't a ton of human studies, but humans have been using them for a while. And there are studies out of Russia that we like to discredit. But peptides are really interesting on how they work. They're all the same, but some of them seem to be regulating, meaning they can boost inflammation when necessary or reduce it when necessary. It's not like a drug that just forces its way in your body.

Yeah. So it's very different. Not saying you shouldn't be... Like adaptogenic somehow? Yeah. And I don't say you shouldn't be careful, but they're not, they're not, they're typically not in the same category as drugs. Well, really is the big concern is the quality of where you're sourcing it from because

you don't really know, you know, from some sources like what's actually in there, which could exaggerate. Yeah. Yeah. Underlying problems. Yeah. Yeah. because the gray market is research chemical peptides,

and then you don't know what's in there or they're coming from, versus like when you go through, like we have partners at nphormones.coms, and they're, those are medical professionals, and they prescribe the peptides, and the peptides are from FDA regulated compound pharmacies. So they have those standards.

I remember when it, when it was first getting popular. I mean, we were doing the podcast, and I thought originally it was, it fell in the same, categories like SARMs. No.

And so, yeah, I was totally like not a fan of it at all and thought it was very similar to that. I'm sure that there's still a lot of people that feel this way. Like, you know, do you inject it? It's probably like a hormone or it's like a SARM. Like, this can't be good for you. You know what's interesting, too, about just to go to hormones, because there's, there's the fear with hormones, right?

If you use too many hormones, because some cancers are hormone sensitive, it could cause higher rates of cancer. We have a wonderful kind of self-study group of people that we can look at to see, does that actually happen? Bodybuilders. And let me tell you, they are not using appropriate levels of hormones.

They're going crazy. And the cancer rate with bodybuilders is lower than the average population. So not saying that you should do what they do because they die from other things. But I think that a lot of the fear mongering around some of the stuff with cancer. There were those studies with women where they saw women who were on hormone replacement

therapy at higher rates of certain cancers. But when they went back and they said, oh, you know what we threw in here were a bunch of women who were on birth control forms of hormone therapy, which is not bioidentical. It's like synthetic, you know, versions of progesterone or whatever, which don't act the same as actual progesterone or actual testosterone or actual estrogen in the body. That's crazy. Anyway, one more cool thing. Do you guys see the study that's going viral on Ivermectin and Mabendazol?

Have you seen this, Doug? I think you saw it. I've seen some of this, yeah. No, no. They're going to look deeper into this, but I'll pull it up. There's a lot of... Some relationship with, like, parasites and cancers on some level? Yeah, there's a lot of...

There's a lot of speculation on these two old antiparcytic drugs and their potential effect on cancer. Good old Ivermectin. Yeah, so this was a product. Perspective observational cohort. So you got to take it with a grain of salt. Still interesting. I think it points this in a direction.

There was a 197 patient perspective observational cohort with a telemedicine platform that went viral. It reports that 84% clinical benefits rate at six months follow-up. So in other words, 84% of the people who were using, who had cancer, who used Ivermectin, Mabendazol, had a positive effect. The problem is it's not a randomized control trial. We don't know what else they were doing. but it is kind of interesting. And there are mechanisms that they can point to and say these have anti-cancer effects.

It's ironmectin and what, what did you say? Babendazole. Is it combined? Are they two separate? Oh, is it? Two of them together. Okay. Yeah.

And they've been used for a long time. See, Doug's pulling up some interesting. In lab settings, both drugs have shown the ability to inhibit tumor growth, trigger cancer cell death, and target cancer stem cells. There's clinical data early. It's limited, but observational studies that show that they seem to help with breast cancer. Or in some says no, no help. They're pretty relatively safe drugs to take. But I think it's pretty interesting.

I have a friend who's, I won't say too much, because I don't want to encourage anybody going this direction. But this person is. There's lots of antidotes I've read too. There is. And I went down this path. You guys know this years ago. I had a family member who had cancer. And she was terminal.

And so you're left with like, what do we do? Yeah, right. And so I know somebody that is kind of going down this path and the traditional methods aren't working. And so they're going to probably go down this path because what else you got to lose? You're already kind of going there. But anyway, interesting area research.

So it'd be cool if we find anything. Wow. You still have, you keep that on hand, don't you? I remember. You keep the other one too or no? I have them at home, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I do too.

I mean, I do too. You know, fuck. Stockpiling. Is everybody still? People are actually privy now that it's not like just a horse dewormer, right? There's like all kinds of stuff that benefits to it. Yeah, there might be some effects. Yeah, dude, for sure.

I got a few things at home. Yeah. That I won't share here. There's a lot of crossovers veterinary medicine. It's kind of hilarious. Let's talk about the single variable. Everybody tends to forget. Sleep.

Look, you can dial on your training. your diet, mobility. But if your sleep is off, even if it's not off by that much, you're not going to build muscle and it's very difficult to burn body fat. It's true, sleep makes a huge, huge difference. This is why we work with eight sleep.

So eight sleep has a device called the pod. It's a smart cover. It fits over your existing mattress. Now, what it does is it actively cools or heats each side of the bed independently all the way down to 55 degrees or up to 110 degrees. There's a huge range there.

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Go check them out. Back to the show. Our first caller is Jonathan from Northern Ireland. Hey, Jonathan. How you doing, Jonathan? Hi. Hi. Thanks for having me along, lads.

I really appreciate us. and all the stuff that you do have only recently. I found you just sort of short clips online and just sort of delving into the podcast. And I don't know if you've got to see my email, just a few things going on and thought I'd reach out because it's just sort of a confusing situation.

I thought I was doing the right things and it sort of maybe led to my detriment in a sense. But just a bit of background, played professional rugby for probably over a decade or so, had to retire due to concussion. And then obviously carried a bit more weight back then. I played hooker and lost a bit of weight. But just like there recently,

it was just about all over the place. So I would have obsessed over training and dad and, you know, cut down quite a bit of body fat. and then obviously sort of got, you know, a bit better or whatever, but a friend sort of suggested just sort of the physical and whatever mental or what sort of deal with me. You said to get your testosterone tested and I didn't really take much heat or think about it and got it done and it's came back very low and got a retest there last week and it's even lower again and I just thought I'd reach out and sort of ask. you know, your opinion or your thoughts on it because it's, obviously, it's a lot more prevalent today, but I'm not quite sure. I feel like I've been doing the right things with my lifestyle and training and looking after myself. So it's a bit confusing with it coming back so low.

Yeah, yeah, good question. So there's a few common reasons why a man's testosterone may be low. Sometimes it's mysterious, but there are some common reasons. One of them is overtraining. being underslept, too much stress, or nutrient deficiency or diet. Many times it's all the above. Yeah, or it could be all the above. With a guy like you, okay, your ex-pro athlete, okay, your concept of appropriate training, or should I say an athlete's concept of appropriate levels of training is so skewed, so skewed. Oh, yeah, that I agree.

I'll always do too much than too little and probably when I was playing harder obviously we have our S&C coaches and they sort of guide you and you of your downtime whereas probably since retirement I've just sort of kept the grind and just more the mental side

yourself getting into the gym and it's a sort of an escape and that's sort of just an outlet so probably guilty of that but, you know, I feel like my diet's pretty good and I look after my body and sleep well and I am very active. I don't know if it would be diet or, you know, stress because obviously life throws a lot of shit at you.

I sort of trying to balance everything. But I'm seeing my general practitioner again on Friday and they refer me to a hormone specialist, but it's something I don't want to just like jump to conclusions on if it's something that can be avoided. But I do know, like, I don't want to walk about the rest of my life, feeling, you know, like I'm dragging myself about like a 90-year-old. Are those pictures you just sent?

Are those current? Is that you right now? No, that would have been me. I'd say mid-November or so. Like that's the lightest, earlyness I've ever been. Okay, I guess just a second. Your testosterone level will come back, low when you're that lean. Even when I was

on testosterone and I'm to get that shredded for a show. You feel like it? Yeah, your testosterone levels will come down like it. So being that lean is is not ideal for testosterone levels. Yeah, yeah.

I'm up to about 83 KGs. I've probably about 5 KGs on since I've heard of like so. Okay, okay. Definitely in a better spot, but there's still, they came back. The second test was 5.4 nanomones either.

So I think that equates that. It was about 150. Yeah, that's low. That's low. So, so, there's also this stress too, Jonathan. How long were you professional, did you say? Decade. Ten years?

Yeah, but obviously you come through, like, I know it's different in America, like college, sports and stuff. You'd have, like, academies here in the UK and Ireland. So came through, like, Academy. but like fully professional training, you know, with the senior team, like over 10 years. So I was lucky to do that. And then before that, you were very competitive even in your youth probably. Oh, yeah.

Just just plan whatever, whatever got me out of class. Yeah. And just playing sport like almost. Okay. So it's very stressful to have something become your identity and then to snatch it away. So they've done studies on this where somebody, retires and they identify very strongly with their job, especially if what you did brought you a certain level of glory

and a certain level and identification. If you identify strongly with being that athlete and competing and now you're retired, it's very stressful. It's like, okay, who am I? What am I doing now? I'm lost. And so that's a stress as well. So you got that.

Plus, I'm going to ask you what your workout looks like, but I'm going to guess it's a lot. So tell me what your training typically looks like. I've tried to be better now and try to like read my body and be a bit more intuitive. But on average, like recently I do like three old body sessions and gym sessions awake about 90 minutes and you know, trying to bring them close,

each set close to failure. And then I try and do two cart. Like it depends just how the body's been. like a run or a bike, you know, twice a week. But it just depends. Like sometimes I might do mileage of like 25K, you know, over two runs. Jonathan. As a pro athlete, your your gauge of what you can handle and tolerate is so crazy.

It's so far beyond what is ideal for health for your body. So without even finishing, I can tell you right now, you're way, you're hammering the shit out of your body. Yeah, that's why you're feeling. training to failure, three full body workouts, plus additional cardio sessions on that. 25 kilometers. Yeah, that's, bro, that's a ton. And it may not feel like a ton to a pro athlete who has been able to handle elite levels. But there's a difference between training for an elite sport and being in condition to handle your elite sport

and then training to be healthy and fit and have good testosterone levels. Totally different. It's also cumulative. And so this is why this is what you'll notice. It's not that you're old, by the way. You're obviously in your 30s, right? But it's cumulative over time. So you're just pushing your body, pushing your body.

And it's like five years, eight years, ten years of doing this. And it's just cumulative. And so what you don't want to do is look back and say, Mike, I used to do twice as much. This can't be too much. I used to be able to do way more. You're probably going to need to go through a good year of kind of detraining. And so three days a week, full body's fine. Yeah, it's good.

But I wouldn't do them. 90 minutes and training to failure, those are long. Right. I would go 60 minutes and I wouldn't train to failure. You want to stop your sets where you feel like you could do another three reps or so. So drop the intensity, drop the volume. The cardio is okay if it's leisure. But if you're pushing yourself in the cardio, then that might be too much.

And what will happen is let your body recover. Feed yourself, by the way. Start feeding yourself. You don't want to walk around too shredded. Start feeding yourself. Give yourself about six. months of this, retest your testosterone, see what happens. Now, if it doesn't change substantially, testosterone replacement therapy could be a game changer. Now, if you are indeed doing too much,

which is what I think is happening, and you take testosterone, you're going to put a big band-aid over the whole thing. Yeah, it's going to mask it all. You're still feeling good because you got the high testosterone, but you're still overdoing it. So. Yeah, you're not so on the recalls. Yeah. Yes. So I would give it. six months of doing kind of what I said. 60 minutes, three days a week. Three reps short of failure. Don't go to failure.

The data, by the way, doesn't support failure anyway. So you don't need to train a failure. Three reps short of it. Think of practicing the lifts like their skills rather than beating yourself up. And then when you do your cardio, make it leisure.

Yeah. Yeah. And I think you'll feel good. You can walk away from a workout feeling energized. We're on the right track. I mean, something to consider. I mean, you're an ex-pro athlete. so I know you have an appreciation for being coached.

Something to consider is to have someone coach you through this process to get you to that point. And then because this is fixable. Most more often than not, this is fixable before you have to go the TRT route. But it's just we got to find that right balance for you. And then from there, it's, then it's easy. A guy like you who I know can take what. Yeah, you have no problem with discipline. So we just have to point it in the right direction.

Now, again, if you do this and in six months, your readings come back low, then TRT is a fine option. There's nothing wrong with it at all. The only issue would be fertility if you want to have more kids, but you could also use something called HCG while you're on TRT, which will maintain fertility. And it's really not, if it's still low at that point, it's probably healthier to go on TRT. Yeah. And there is a potential association. with head trauma and low testosterone. So what we're saying may work,

but if it doesn't work, it may be associated with the head trauma that you got from your sport, because there's also an association there. Yeah, because that's probably why, like, the fastest that I saw, you know, I think whenever you're playing, everything's a million miles and all,

or even whenever, you know, you might get to go out and, you know, have a drink with the laws like a social, every six day it waits. But when you get that operation, you went hard to see him with your food. You had to eat so much. And then when you do retire,

you keep living that lifestyle or like you have those habits and you don't train where he was like, it's fit for your, it's fit for life, not fit for your 20s or 30. So I think I really took that, you know, on board and like I probably went too far

and like tried to dial everything in because obviously it's in like your head, like you're getting bothered about. And obviously there's more and more, you know, studies coming out and different therapies and treatments. And at some point, like, especially like for American football as well. And ice hockey, you know, they're going to have cures for that stuff. So it's sort of, I probably just the fear of that and just trying to like really nail it down, probably just went a bit far.

Yeah, I think if you did what we're saying for three months, you would know if it would work. I think three months is plenty of time to get retested and then be like, okay, it didn't go up significantly. Now let's go the TRT route. I think peptides are also a good option for you. Yeah. There's two peptides you might want to look at. Actually, three. There's BPC, Salank and CMAX.

Yes. All three of those are really good for the brain. For healing, for inflammation. Memory, recall. Yep. So Salank, CMAX. I'll have Doug send you the names. I don't know how available they are in Ireland, but you might be able to get that.

Yeah. Yeah. No, no, I really appreciate that advice, louts. Yeah, you got it, ma'am. and then why don't we have you back on in a few months? We also have a coach call you if you're interested in that. If you want a coach to coach you through this, one of our coaches can.

So it's up to you if you want to do that. Yeah, it would be good to have a chatter see what the options were. Because I know I'm bought for like, I always do that extra mod rather than. Yeah. It's good you know yourself. That's good you know yourself. Yeah. I'm learning the hard way.

Unfortunately. me. But I think that's been like everything in life. You have to learn the hard lessons. Yeah. Yeah, good. No, good. No,

let's have you back on in a couple months. We'll get some, we'll get back on with you. Yeah, we'll have Doug send those peptides over, and then we'll have a coach call you and kind of show you what that would look like, and then hopefully we'll have it back on.

Yeah. Thank you. I appreciate it, guys. All right, brother. Have a good one. Thanks, Jonathan. All the best. Bye, bye, bye, bye, bye.

Yeah. So a couple things, right? ex-athletes, especially when you live that way for so long, it's so hard to titrate your training. It doesn't feel right. It feels like you're doing nothing. Well, his gauge is way off. Way off, dude.

Rugby? Oh, God. 10 years ago? I don't know. I see he's doing three days a week. I'll give him that, though. Yeah, not bad. But this cardio in between.

As I say, it's not really three days. It's five days a week. That's true. 90 minutes of, and failure. I mean, his physique, when they pulled the picture up, I'm like, oh, obviously. He got pro-athlete genetics. That was like 6% body fat.

Yeah, he's maybe lower. Yeah. I mean, he was shredded. He's like stage ready. He's got, I mean, he's got, he's got pro. He goes hard, dude. He's got pro rugby genetics. Here's the other thing, too, that we know.

Head trauma is also associated with hormone disruption because it comes from the brain. And so they're not quite sure, but you'll see this often. Hormone disruption. You see thyroid sometimes. I feel, testosterone. I feel really confident with. the advice, we move him up. How much up is uncertain. Right. Right. Like, but I, he's overtrained. Yeah. He's over trained underfed for sure. And just simply tweaking that a little bit,

we'll show, it'll show some improvement. The question is, can we get him up over, like, healthy range? He said his position was hooker. What is that position? Yeah, hooker's in the middle. And it's actually the first, like in the scrum. Oh, so you're just getting blessed. Yeah, your head is like, like I told you guys, the very first game I played at San Jose State, like, uh, uh, Our hooker broke his neck. Oh, my gosh. And I was like, what am I doing? You know, it was pretty sketched.

Give you a helmet, dude. Yeah, no. Wow. Next caller is Lindsay from Georgia. Lindsay, what's happening? Hi, Lindsay. Hi, Lindsay. Hey, guys.

Thanks for having me today. You got it. How can we help you? Yeah, so I'll go ahead and get started with my email that I said. I'm a registered nurse and a mom of two boys. I'm currently 11 months postpartum with my second child. I've been consistently following your programs for over the past year and wanted to reach out. After my first pregnancy recovery seemed to

lot easier, of course. This one's been more challenging. I previously did MAPS Anabolic and recently completed the power lift. I wanted to say thanks again because my strength has improved a lot. This past month, I hit some new PRs. 235 on squat, 250 deadlift and 120 bench press. Yeah. So pretty proud of that, working as a nurse and postpartum recovery. For reference, I'm about 5'5 and currently about 160 pounds. My goal is to lose body fat, gain some definitely. definition and looked more tone while getting back to my pre-baby weight, which is still about 18 to 20 pounds away. I am currently tracking macros. I'm around 1,600 calories and around 120 to 140 a protein a day. Even with a busy schedule, I make a priority to be strength training four to five

days a week. I do about 15 minutes of cardio before working out and a hit session one time a week. Despite this, the scale seems to be creeping up and my clothes are tighter, especially in my legs in midsection. So looking for any advice that you have on how to approach fat loss at this postpartum stage. I'm not sure if I should change programs, adjust calories, do different cardio or something entirely different. My husband listens to your podcast daily and recommend that I reach out since I won't listen to him. So you don't listen to our podcast. You're not familiar with our advice typically? Yeah, I have been listening, yes. Over like the past, probably six months. Okay, okay. So, so first off, I'm, I'm shocked that you're as strong as you are eating

16, 600 calories a day. That's really low. Yeah. Low. Yeah, super low. In fact, we have nowhere to go if we want to cut calories. We want to build into the body you want. And so the first advice idea is let go the, let go of what pounds you were before. Because you're actually doing a lot of the right things, like the way you're lifting in the direction you're heading. But it would be, the attitude would be, let's build the body we want instead of trying to cut into the body that you want. Yeah, we got a reverse diet because your calories are so low. I mean, you could go down to 1,200 calories. You'd see a little bit of loss.

You'd also see some muscle and strength loss. And then you plateau. And your energy would suck. And your energy would suck. You'd hate life. So you'd be better off slowly reverse dieting, building more muscle, building more strength, getting you up to like with your activity, 23, 24, 2,500 calories, somewhere around there. And then we could do a cut.

Yeah. But you need to do a reverse diet. You need to probably reverse diet for a good six months or so before we try a cut. That would be the way to do it. If we do a good job at this, the scale should kind of hover around. It could go up and down, you know, three to five pounds. But if we do a really good job of reversing slowly, adding like 200 calories every couple weeks and just keep doing that until we get to a number like Sal Sane, 24 to 2600 at least.

And then we can bring you back. Like, if I got you all up to 26 and brought you down to 2000, you would see yourself just lean. You would see fat loss like crazy. Eating more than you are now. And eating more than what you are now. And you'd feel good and get where you want to be. But if we do this right, I think you should actually kind of see that transition happening while you're increasing too. That would be the goal.

My goal would be, can I increase your calories, not see a lot of movement on the scale, kind of hovering the scale around three to five pounds north or south while we get stronger and keep focusing on the strength. Yeah, I mean, just to put it in simple terms, and it's way more complex than this, but at 1600 calories, it's that much extra. exercise that much. I know that nurse, nurse, you're moving all the time. You're, you got a baby. Your body's hanging on to body fat for dear life. It's just hanging on. It's just too low. So you're giving yourself the bare minimum of nutrients. So we got to, we got to slowly build that up through a reverse. Do you said 200 roughly a week just adding in like the rest that you guys have talked about? Or is there a certain area where I should add that in at? You could go, okay, so easy way is, I mean,

do you do well with high protein? Can you increase like, so just eat a bigger portion of meat when you eat your meat. I don't know if you're like a six ounce meat eater or what your ounces are. Add two more ounces. Okay. Usually it's between five and six. And I think the backstory is this weight was my heaviest about six years ago. And I lost almost 40 pounds in a year like that.

And so I guess it's kind of like a mind thing like increasing calories. I didn't want to see all of that weight gain back. It's different though. how strong you are. Here's the other thing. You want while you're lifting weights like that. Lindsay, here's the other thing too, hon. You're 10 months postpartum.

And I know everybody tells you on social media like, whoa, you're out of it. No, no, no. No, no. It takes, listen, I've trained a lot of women postpartum. Especially number two. It takes two, it takes about two years before you feel 100% like your old self. Okay? Right.

So you're still in that, in that phase. You still got a baby. You got another one at home too. So give yourself some time. If you force it right now, things are going to backfire big time. Mm-hmm. So now, do you know what your fat intake is at? I think it's roughly between 50 and 60 grams. No, bump your fat, hon. Yeah, you'll do better around, you'll do better closer to 70 probably.

What your meat choices, are you eating leaner cuts? Is that what you're doing? A lot of the times they were lean here recently, as I had heard my husband's like, you've got to reverse diet. You've got to listen to them. And I was like, okay, I need to hear it from them first. So I did do a lot of main cuts, but right now it's a lot of like chicken thighs. we do a lot of deer meat, deer roast, you name that. We load up on deer meat. Nice. Okay, good, yeah.

Just stick with the fat of your cuts. Typically, that's all I have to do with my clients that are good at hitting their protein with their low on fat. I know right away they're like eating fish and chicken breasts and stuff like that. It's like, enjoy, enjoy some red meat, enjoy the ribeye, enjoy some tri-tip, enjoy some chicken thighs. That'll bump the calories naturally and you're getting it from a good source. Have you ever reversed dieted before? No. would you want a coach to walk you through it for the next six months or so?

Yeah, I mean, I would be open to that, especially since I'm not familiar with it and kind of what steps to take or how soon and things like that. Yeah, because there's, because as you do the, as you go through it, there's times when you pull back a little bit, times you add a little bit more. It's going to mess with your head. I promise you. So I'll have a coach reach out. And what they would do is that process of reverse dieting, set you up for a cut. They would just walk you through the whole thing. The hardest part is the psychological part.

By far. There's no doubt if I was coaching you through this process, they'll come a, time when I'm doing this with you. You're going to fight it. And you'd be like, Adam, this doesn't feel right. And then that's where I got to kind of talk you off the ledge. Like, trust me, I see where we're going. You're doing a great job. And if you surrender that to the coach and just trust the process, you'll look back in six months. You're going to be pumped. You'll be pumped where you're at. So. Okay, great. Well, thanks. So what about my workouts as far as is there, I've done, like I said, the Maps power lift, the anabolic, obviously hardly any sleep right now.

So that's a challenge. But still aim for about four, at least four days, if I can. I feel better after. But as far as program-wise. Back up. Back up. Tell me about your sleep. What do you mean, hardly any sleep?

I have an 11-month-old that's up about every three hours. Oh, Lindsay. And a three-year-old that doesn't like sleep either. Lindsay, you're redlining, huh? Yeah. I should have known, too, you're a nurse. You guys always do that. You guys redlining.

Oh, he goes through. Yeah. Well, I'm a soft nurse now. I used to do oncology and ER and now I work for code. Oh, God. You're a red light machine. You used to adrenaline. Okay.

So when you work with your coach, they're probably going to recommend a backdown on volume. You'll probably do maps 15 with you. Yeah, I should have asked you. They'll take care of the programming for you. Yeah, they'll recommend the right program, but it's not going to look, it's going to look like a lot less volume because you're just,

yeah, with lack of sleep, that is that was just brutal. You train too much with lack of sleep. And that's another sign that says, hold on to body fat. Don't build any muscle. Don't speed up metabolism. Yeah. Okay.

Yeah. That was definitely, I knew the no sleep obviously is hard, but you feel better after a workout and you're used to it. Just remember. Remember what that is.

That's cortisol dumping in your body. So it's what we call cortisol junkies, right? You thrive off. My nurses love that. My nurses love that. Yeah, you thrive off of stress, right? So, yeah, that's why you feel great. Yeah, yeah.

Over time, though, it definitely adds up on the body. For sure, 100%. All right, I'll have somebody to call you. I think we got a good idea now what this will look like. Yeah. Okay. Sounds great. Thanks, Lindsay.

Thank you. Should have known when she said nurse. I have yet to meet a nurse that doesn't do this to the red light button. Yeah, yeah. I mean, she adds. And she was ER oncology. Is there a more stressful, like nurse? She also adds the additional cardio and hit in there also.

So she's definitely. But like a mass 15 protocols, nice slow reverse diet with walking. she's going to feel like a new person. Hardest part will be a psychological part. Oh, yeah. That'll feel like nothing for her. Totally different operating system. Yeah, it'll probably make her nervous a little bit.

But if she trusts a coach, she'll be fine. Our next call is Rob from Connecticut. What's up, Robert? What's up? What's up, Robert? What's up? How are you all? Thank you so much for having me on. I appreciate it. You got to do.

I can help you. So, yeah, basically what I'm looking for is some help with my off-season. So I'm a pro basketball player right now in Italy, which is awesome. I love doing it. It's a really long season, though. So it's like only a couple months that we have in the summertime to kind of train for the following season. It goes from September until depending on playoffs, May or June. And so in the past, what I've done is done a lot of stuff on the court.

And this summer, I kind of wanted to lay off of that and focus more on working on my body. And my question revolved a lot around diet. So I think right now, if I had to guess, I'm probably 15, 16 percent body fat. I haven't gotten it measured, but I think I would be around there. I'm around like 215, 220, depending on the day or the time of day. So I think in terms of how I can optimize my on-court performance, I would like to get down to around 10% if I can. the challenge becomes whether or not it's sustainable for me to stay at that level when the season comes back around and so it is a little bit different to track things over here in Italy it's a bit tougher like

for example on the a package of ground beef they don't have like the percentage of fat and lean that it is. So not to say that it's not doable. And in the past, I haven't really tracked diligently before, but I am very conscious of what I eat, what I put into my body. So I guess overall, just looking for some advice on diet, whether or not you think that's a, it's a worthwhile goal, I guess, to begin with. And, you know, how I can do that effectively without sacrificing recovery performance on the court. And obviously, while keeping as much strength and muscle mass and stuff. Good question.

So you've been listening to shows since you were in high school. Yeah, it's been a while, 25. That's cool. I was on the bandwagon early. That's cool. And it's great. I mean, I'm trying to, you know, spread the word, tell my parents about you guys all the time. Nice, man.

You're 6-6 in Italy. You must be a giant. Yeah. I actually played in Sicily for a year and a half. Oh, wow. That's great. Oh, nice. I've been there.

Yeah, yeah, that's great. Okay, so this is going to be different for someone like you, but I need to know more about the season. You said it's a long season and the off season is about two months, two or three months? Yeah. So, like, for example, I have my last regular season game next week, and I got here for preseason August 5th. So it's like a 30-ish game season, one game a week. And then during the actual week, we're practicing around two hours a day.

Okay. It could even be more. So it's a lot of practice. Um, okay. And so that's why I think this summer might be a good idea to just lay off a lot of the core volume. This is different for someone like you, right? Because you've got a long season. Yeah.

You're playing a game once a week and on top of it two hours of practice a day. And then you're off seasons about like what, 60 days or so? Yeah, I mean, it could be more. But I think 60 to 90 days. I know it's a little bit of a large gap. Okay. Yeah. Okay.

So let me back up for a second. I'm going to answer the body fat question for you. Going down to 10% body fat won't necessarily improve your performance. No, I don't think so at all. Yeah, it actually might take away from your performance. Take away your energy a little bit. Yeah. So typically leanness is a side effect of performance when you're looking at your level of athleticism

or at the level that you play at, right? So if I take a guy like you who is playing well, a 15% and I just focus on getting you lean, oftentimes we'll see a decrease in performance. Now, if you're training properly and suddenly we like fix, like we have the perfect programming, perfect diet, and your performance goes through the roof, and then you just so happen to drop a few percent body fat, who cares? Yeah.

But what we don't want to do is chase leanness thinking that's going to make us perform better because that's oftentimes not the case with someone like you, okay? As far as your offseason is concerned, your off season should be focused on recovery because your season is so intense and so long. Do you guys do any practice during the off season at all? No. So for the off season, I'll be back at my home in Connecticut, and I'll be doing a little bit of coaching and stuff. And then other than that, it's me making my own schedule in terms of, you know, working out and that stuff. So I think one or two days a week of strength training and

And then playing basketball a couple days a week. Just light skill. Shooting and drills, bro. Yeah. Shooting and drills. Light drills. And that's it. And then just focus on recovery.

It's so important, dude. I mean, if our goal is continuing to be a better athlete, then that's the recipe. Yeah, because otherwise what will happen is we'll start to rack up injuries and stuff because of how much you're doing during the on season. So it might look like, it might look like, you know, one or two days. a week, three lifts. You're going to go and do three compound lifts. You're not training at a high intensity. You're training at like 80% intensity. Just kind of try to get stronger. Then a couple days a week, play basketball or practice your skills so that you can maintain your skills. And then rest,

sleep, massage, mobility, more sleep. Red light. Yeah, feed your body appropriately, which I think you're doing. Because the other challenge in the offseason is someone might be like, well, I'm just going to go party with my friends and eat a bunch of garbage. Don't do that. But also don't go in a cut. So I think just continue to eat healthy, eat adequate protein, feed yourself. I wouldn't do a purposeful cut in the offseason. I think that'd be a mistake. You're, Doug just pulled up all your pictures, bro. You're, you're athletic and fit. You're lean. You're puny lean. I wouldn't want you leaner. Most people's performance is best at 15%. Yeah, yeah, no, he's, and I think he's at the high in 15. He looks like he's 12 to 13. Yeah. Yeah. No, you're, you're fit, bro. If you were high, I

would tell you. If I thought you were in the high 20s or some of that, we could lean out and it would benefit you. You know, if you were Zion Williamson, then I would tell you to cut some, cut some body fat, you know what it would serve, it would serve you on the court. But that ain't you, dude. You're like what I think, I think all of us would agree is like a optimal body fat range. I'm going to get, look, I'm going to send you MAPS 15 performance. That's a, that's a great program in the offseason for you. So it's a little bit every, it's like a little bit every day. And then continue to practice your skills in the offseason and in rest. Actually, that would be perfect. Map 15 performance with shooting drills and footwork drills. Just to keep your skills.

It is perfect. Yeah, sharp. And then rest. Lots of rest, dude, because the season's so long and there's so much going on in the season that you need the rest. Yeah, that makes sense. So actually, I have Maps 15 performance, and I've been doing it kind of modified in season, which has been pretty perfect. Yeah. So I think it's good advice. My thinking with the whole body fat thing, and obviously I've heard you guys talk pretty recently

about the performance detriments it can bring to drop. But one of my goals was to kind of get, I guess, lighter on my feet, like more agile quicker. And I've heard that, you know, being as lean as possible is obviously better for that.

No, it's strength to weight. ratio and... It would be if you were built like a Zion Williamson and you're carrying that much extra. You're not, though. If you were at 23% body fat, then yes, leaning out a little bit could actually improve performance. Let's say you lost 10 pounds. But in the process of losing 10 pounds, you lost 15% strength in, you know, major lifts.

You're not faster. Yeah. You're just smaller. Right. It's negative. Yeah. You want strength to weight ratio. And the same in the reverse.

Like, you can gain 20 pounds. a muscle gets super strong, but now your weight is so much higher that it doesn't make a... You're at such a good percentage, dude. If you weren't, then it would make sense, but you're at a good percentage. Again, if you were 25% body fat, then absolutely leaning out a little bit could make a big difference on our performance. But you're in the optimal body fat percentage. If your dog is more on foot strength, ankle mobility, and you direct all that movement up towards your hips and your glutes to take care of most of that, you're going to be so much lighter on your feet. To have that strength support around the ankles and feet opens up a hole.

like a whole level of like movement potential so yeah but you know here's the other side of it robert you're playing at such a high level that what you don't want to do is mess so much uh with your mechanics that it throws your technique off that you've honed so like uh i remember we saw a picture once of i think it was lebron james it was his feet yeah and they looked all messed up and the trainer the trainer in me is like oh we got to correct his feet no but the dude plays with those feet he's so good at playing with those feet that if I suddenly snap my fingers and made him have perfect foot mechanics, it would throw off his technique and he would not be as good. So that's where you're at, dude.

You're playing at such a high level that honestly, it's like just recover, dude. Math performance, go do your drills, rest. And you'll do so much better in the season. We'll force the joints and eat. Yep. Yeah, that sounds good. I think it's probably been a while since I've taken an extended amount of time off, just dating back to college too.

and summers have been a grind because that's kind of the culture as well within, you know, basketball and whatnot is multiple workouts a day. And so I felt as the years have gone on a little bit, the benefit of like you guys are recommending shorter, more intense, and then just a lot of rest. And what a difference it makes to actually be fully recovered. Totally, dude. Yep. It's huge.

Eight hours of sleep every single night, go to bed and wake up at the same time and take a nap every day. I'm not even joking. For sure. It'll work in combination with performance, a little bit of basketball. You'll come back feeling amazing. Cool. All right, dude. That's it, dude.

Thank you guys very much. I appreciate it. You got it, man. Thanks for calling in, dude. It's so different. People understand it's so different when you're talking to a professional athlete. A high level athlete, the game is complete, like the strategy is completely different. Because someone might be thinking like, oh, off season, let's build.

This is the time to build. performance is already at peak. Bro. Like, he's there. He may need to maintain. And he probably needs, based off the seasons that he was, he may need to just rest. Yeah. For a couple of months. Well, his thinking is logical if he was at a higher percentage of body fat.

He's getting tons of body fat. Yeah. If you, if you, if you, there's, I mean, there's definitely some pro athletes that. Yeah, if it's slowing you down. Yeah. I mean, this is, uh, I mean, this is the big knock. I kept bringing up Zion Williamson on him is that he's, he's so big and heavy and he's constantly injury prone and he carries a higher body fat percentage like in the mid-20s,

you know, and so. Yeah, it would make sense. Yeah, a guy like that, he's right. Which, by the way, wouldn't even be like this targeted cut. It'd just be cleaning up his diet. Yeah. So, but he's, he's in like what we talk about the optimal place. Like, you can see he's a perfect, any leaner.

And I think it would, it would. If we chase lean us, he would not. No, he would do strength. He would lose strength. And that would be. And recovery or two. Yeah. Yeah.

Our next caller is Carissa from Pennsylvania. Hi, Carissa. Hi, guys. Hello. Nice to meet you all. Same. How can we help you? So I was calling, my question is about gaining muscle, but also trying to maintain some sort of leanness. I'm looking to gain muscle throughout this year and make actual changes to my body without going through a cutting and bulking phase, if possible. I understand I will have to gain some weight in order to gain more muscle, which I am okay with, but I'm trying to do it at a rate, preferably, where I'm gaining muscle and losing fat at the same time. I just began raising my calories every two to three weeks by a few hundred calories.

To see the calorie range I could get to while maintaining my weight. Do you think this would be a good plan to take or would you suggest to do a bulk-and-cut approach? I've done about two bulks throughout five months and had gained roughly eight pounds throughout, but I was just not seeing like the results that I was really striving for. I do, I have run through MAPS Anabolic and MAPS muscle money. muscle mommy for the last three years. I do my 10,000 steps daily. I hit my protein goal.

I'm just not sure what else I could really do to make actual changes. What are the calories at right now? I do like $2,300. Okay. So let me just help you real quick. A bulk and a reverse diet's the same thing. It's just different branding. Yeah, yeah.

But they're both in a surplus and the goal is to gain muscle. The other thing is gaining muscle while losing muscle. body fat, to be more accurate, you'd want to gain muscle with the body fat percentage going down. That's different. So if you gain five pounds of muscle but gain no additional body fat, your body fat percentage would go down. Yeah. Because now it's a smaller percentage of your overall body weight.

Does that make sense? Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Now, what's your body fat? It says here that you're sitting around 19%. Yeah. So I know it's low.

And I'm comfortable where I am right now. truthfully, I just wish I had like more shoulder definition. I like my legs to get a little bit bigger. Like I said, I want to actually gain more muscle. Okay. So I know that it probably does have to go up. Keep moving in the direction you're going. And yeah, you probably are going to have to get up to probably 21, 22% body fat.

But here's the deal. More muscle at 21% or 22% body fat looks leaner in your shoulders into legs than 19% does. Yeah. So don't get too hung up on the body fat. fat percentage. Yeah. That's where I felt like I was getting with this scale. We have the Hume scale and I was like, I feel like I'm getting my head about it.

Yeah. I would look at strength and keep reverse dieting, nice and slow. 2,300 is a nice place to be. Yeah. I think if you got up to 2,500 and you stayed there for a while and just keep focusing on getting stronger, I think you're going to get what you're looking for. You might even get there just staying at 2,300 calories. Okay.

Yeah. Okay. Okay. I appreciate it so much. Yeah. Are you, so you're going between anabolic and muscle mommy. Yes, yeah. I go back and forth, like just to switch it up every once in a while.

Have you done power lift? No, I have not. All right. Let's get your power lift. Let's have some fun. Oh, all right. Thank you. I appreciate it.

Yeah, I'm definitely up for anything. I, like, switch it up, and I love your programs. I feel like I've gained so much more, like, freedom and not working out five days a week and just doing it three. And I like to take my dogs on walks. I have a one year old. So we're always out doing that when we have our free days too. You're doing really good.

Yeah, you're kicking ass. The mindset I'd want you to have if I was coaching you is that we're going to build into the body you want, not cut into the body you want. So you're already plenty lean enough. You're in a good amount of calories. The things you want, shoulders, leg depth, all that. We're going to build into that, not cut into that. So that that's the direction to go and slowly increasing the calories like you are

and focusing on getting strong, power. We'll be a great program. Focus on the weights. Just get stronger. Try and add weight to the bar and slowly increase those calories. And then we'll look back in three months. You'll be super happy with what you should. Okay, perfect.

Thank you. I appreciate it, guys. Nice to meet you. You too. Thank you. Thank you. Have a good day. She's already good.

You've been 2300 calories. I mean, that's her. And she's only 118 pounds. She's not. So she's doing good. Yeah, she's in the other. What she's looking for is more. muscle. She's not looking for leanness.

And that's why I meant that the mindset is, yeah, build into the body. I think that's just such a common theme that we need to keep saying to people is that you, they have this look in their head that they want. And they think it's about losing. And they think it's about losing. And it's like, no, you absolutely build into that body. And you'll get the best of both worlds. You'll be eating more than you've ever ate before.

You feel stronger than ever. And then you'll also have that physique. And who cares if you're at 19, 22, 23, 21. It looks the way you want. Yeah. And you feel better. Right. Look, if you like the show, come find us on Instagram, 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 U.S. 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.

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