Mind Pump: Raw Fitness Truth - 2948: The Type of Exercise That Will Get You Past Sticking Points & Why This Beats Every Other Form of Exercise

Episode Date: September 18, 2026

MAPS Abs and Butt: https://mapsabsandbutt.com Code: LAUNCH for 40% off. Includes Butt Building Diet Guide, Women's Supplement Guide, at-home dumbbell version and a free second program at checkout (Muscle Mommy or Muscle Mommy 15). In this episode the guys break down why everyone should be using isometrics — covering the three types (yielding, overcoming and intra-rep), why they lower blood pressure better than any other form of exercise including medication, how they build strength specifically at the angle you train, how they reduce pain by up to 45% after just one rep, and why tendons strengthen faster with isometrics than traditional lifting. They also get into Adam's Caldera Lab pre-podcast skincare routine and why Sal noticed his skin on the big screen TV, the games kids used to play that are now banned from schools (butts up, Red Rover, baby britches), the Functional Patterns versus Layne Norton beef and why attacking other people in the fitness space is a losing brand strategy, the science of gratitude and how daily practice literally reshapes the structure of your brain, why a cortisol spike from exercise suppresses your next cortisol response making you more resilient all day, Justin showing up to look at a building covered in rock dust after moving four tons of stone alone, liposomal delivery technology and why it matters for creatine, curcumin and glutathione, and Adam's hibachi chef birthday party that took a very unexpected turn. Then they answer questions from Instagram on injury prevention for runners, how to avoid overeating while building muscle, protein for strength without size, and training around plantar fasciitis and a knee replacement. SPONSORS Caldera Lab (The Good serum): https://calderalab.com/mindpump Code: MINDPUMP20 for 20% off. Adam discusses his pre-podcast skincare routine on air. Rho Nutrition (liposomal creatine, curcumin, NAD+ and Glutathione): https://www.rhonutrition.com/discount/MINDPUMP Code: MINDPUMP for 20% off everything. Deep dive on liposomal technology on air — why it matters more for some compounds than others and why it solves the creatine gut sensitivity problem. LMNT (electrolytes): https://drinklmnt.com/MindPump Free sample pack with any purchase, no code needed. LINKS Mind Pump Store: https://mindpumpstore.com Maps Fitness Products: https://mapsfitnessproducts.com Instagram: @mindpumpmedia   0:00 - Intro 2:20 - Why everyone should use isometrics — and why they have been forgotten 5:12 - The three types of isometrics: yielding, overcoming and intra-rep 11:17 - Benefit 1: Isometrics lower blood pressure better than any other form of training 13:44 - Benefit 2: Strength at the specific angle — how to blast through sticking points 18:10 - Benefit 3: Pain reduction — 45% reduction after just one rep for tendon pain 19:23 - Benefit 4: Tendon strength builds faster with isometrics than traditional lifting 22:47 - Adam's Caldera Lab pre-podcast routine and what Sal noticed on the big screen TV 26:38 - Games kids used to play that are now banned — butts up, Red Rover and baby britches 30:10 - Functional Patterns vs. Lane Norton beef and why attacking people in fitness is a bad brand strategy 35:15 - The neuroscience of gratitude — how daily practice physically reshapes your brain 46:01 - Exercise cortisol spike suppresses your next stress response — why working out makes you more resilient all day 47:54 - Justin moving four tons of rock alone and the soreness that followed 53:20 - Liposomal technology deep dive — why it matters for creatine, curcumin and glutathione 55:59 - Adam's hibachi birthday party that took a very unexpected turn 1:03:18 - Q&A: Best exercises to prevent injury for runners 1:06:08 - Q&A: How to avoid overeating while trying to build muscle 1:08:15 - Q&A: Does a man who wants strength but not size need one gram of protein per pound? 1:10:44 - Q&A: Training around plantar fasciitis and a knee replacement — unilateral or full body?

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 health fitness and entertainment podcast in history. This is Mind Pump in today's episode. We answered listeners questions. People went to Instagram Mind Pump Media.

They posted questions. We picked four of them when we answered them at the end of the episode. But the beginning is the intro portion. It lasted 60 minutes. This is where we talk about isometric training, building muscle, fat loss. We talk about nutrition. We talk about family life, current events. Look, if you want to post a question that we can pick from, go to Instagram, mind-put media, post it there, and then we might pick it.

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They have many other products. Go check them out. Go to Caldera Lab.com slash Mind Pump. Use the code Mind Pump 20 for 20% off. This episode is also brought to by Roe Nutrition. Today we talked about their liposomal technology and how this delivers nutrients to your body more effectively. Today we talked about their creatine.

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Odds are you're missing out on gains because you're not doing a strength training technique that was used for generations, ones that strength athletes swore by, made them strong, made their muscles hard, developed, incredible physiques. And for some reason, nobody does them, except for high-level strength athletes. Nobody does them, and they're easy to do.

You guys, you're missing out. If you don't use isometrics in your training, you are not building the muscle you could. You're not getting as strong as you could, and you're not getting the gains that you could. It's very easy to do as well. We're going to talk about it right now, isometrics, why you should do them?

Do you think if we talk about this enough that we could shift the fitness culture to like to the point like we saw. So the point where you come with an invention that like helps it. Not that much. Dang. Not that much. That's a lot of volume. I would just be impressed and happy with what we watched happen with the squatting.

Yeah. Squatting and deadlifting. Yeah. Like I mean, we all started at a time in the fitness space when the squat rack could go empty all day long. That is impossible. in a gym now. Not anymore. Impossible.

There is no way a day goes by in a gym and that squat rack doesn't get used all day long. When I was managing gyms and I would deadlift, so I was 19, 20, so this is like 98, 1999, I'm not exaggerating. Every time I would deadlift, a member would stop me. You go, hey, what are you doing? You're going to hurt yourself.

What is that? I'm like, this is a deadlift. What? Nobody knew what they were. Nobody did them. So, and I agree, I would love to see people utilize isometrics. You guys, the data on them, it's one of the most studied forms of strength ranks. So it's like we don't have a lot of data to support it.

We have a ton of data to support isometrics. And in some cases, in some ways, they're superior to other types of repetitions. In other words, like you're literally missing out because you're not utilizing this incredible tool that can do things for you that traditional lifting kind of misses out on. Well, I am a bit optimistic with it. I have seen isometrics really prevalent a lot in the strength conditioning world for, like, you sports, for sports in general and just the programming of it. It just hasn't become more of like your commercial gym setting. You don't see that. And it's like not real relatable.

And meanwhile, the same benefits, if not more benefits because, too, there's a safety component to it. And there's, you know, rehab ability. there's just so many things that would translate to your average person it's just like it's kind of still an unfamiliar thing. I'm going to say something that I don't know if it's a bit irresponsible or not but it's just honest because it's

what I've been doing and it was inspired by Joe DeFranco watching him do it and the irony of it was why he was doing it and then how I ended up using it was a little bit different keep in a post of like challenging if you could do an isometric lunge, like with your knee just hovering out the ground, you know, and hold for

like a minute on each side, which, by the way, very hard to hold for one minute, you know, about 30 seconds and I'm shaking like a leaf doing that. And so I saw him do it and I thought, oh, you know, I should, let me see where I'm at with that. And again, I was like shaking like leaves. What I noticed was just how much it woke up my, around my knees, my hips, like everything. And I felt so good after I squatted after that. So I did that first just to see where I could do it. Connected now. And I was so connected.

That has become how I start leg day now. Like that's all I do. I don't do any of my mobility work. I literally do a like a variation. What he was doing in a pure isometric in like a Bulgarian split stance. I do a walking lunge and then hold and then hold. And I hold for about 15 seconds in between each stride. And I walk across the gym floor.

and one time of doing that, I am ready to rock. I mean, and I feel so good going into that squad. I have the data to support that. Again, because it's not like we don't have a lot of studies around ice. It's actually one of the most studied forms of strength training. It was super popular at the turn of the century, you know, strong men back in the day. Strength athletes did it. Sandal.

Olympic athletes still use certain types of isometrics. Powerlifters still use certain types of isometrics because they produce tremendous gains in strength and unique ways. So this is what's interesting about it. If we were looking at isometrics and it kind of did what traditional strength training did, then I would say, you know, okay, whatever, just keep doing what you're doing. But it's actually superior in a few interesting ways. And also, it doesn't create this crazy, it doesn't create near.

nearly as much damage as traditional strength training, which makes it this interesting thing that you can kind of add to your training without running a huge risk of overtraining. Now, that doesn't mean if you're redlining now that you add it, you're not going to completely go over. But what it does mean is you get a lot of benefit with kind of little risk, risk of injury

and risk of recovery is pretty quick. It is. Now, one of the reasons why I think it's just kind of fell out of favor is, you know, if I do a source, social media post doing an isometric, there's not much to see. So it's not an exciting post. I'm not moving. Yeah. So it's hard to sell. Yeah. I thought I'm lifting a bunch of weight. It's like I'm pushing and nothing's happening or I'm holding and nothing's happening. So I think a lot of education needs continue to go out so people will get this. But once people utilize this,

I mean, within a week or two, you'll notice the difference. You'll see it. And the challenge is this with is this with isometrics. Don't just try it once. It's not like the exercise that you saw. that's like, oh, this is cool, I'll try it once. I'm going to go back to my old stuff. No, no, do it for a while so you can really reap the benefits of what isometrics can produce. Well, what I like to is it actually like, it's built in intention. So a lot of times people go through the motion and they're trying to get through workouts and they're trying to do reps to complete, you know, their session versus really focusing on what's

going on and like how we can maximize that position by increasing tension and, you know, increasing stability. and all of these things to produce more force. So you can do that just by, you know, taking your time, really feeling your way through and activating more muscle fun. I love that point, Justin, because, you know, because I've been doing this now for a while,

the progression of it, for me, what it's looked like is, you know, it went from just a challenge, can I do it? And then reaping the benefits from me like, oh, this is awesome, to like, oh, this is the thing. To now, like, when I'm in it, I'm like, I'm thinking about my feet on the floor and how I'm kind of gripping the floor. I'm thinking about where my posture is

and I'm really trying to drive into the floor. So it turned into something like this isometric hold to this really, why I'm in this deep position. Sprang your feet. What's all going on right now? Yeah, my knees opened up. My feet are, my toes are kind of spreading and I'm kind of trying to grip the floor with my feet.

I'm really trying to engage the glute when I'm deep down in that position. I'm thinking about where my posture and my chest is. And because you're in this, you're holding this position for 15 to 30 seconds, I've got plenty of time to think about, all those things. And then as I think about them,

really intensifying all of them, man, it just, boy, does it set my body up, getting ready to go into a squad or a deadlift. There's two main ways that you would use asymmetrics in strain training. One of them is called yielding. And this is where you just hold a position.

So give an example, I could take a bench press, bring it down halfway, and hold it. So that would be yielding. Then there's something called overcoming. Overcoming is where I'm pushing against something or pulling against something or squatting against something.

that won't move. And so what strength athletes would do, for example, is it'd get under a barbell and they'd set pins above the barbell and they'd have so much weight on the rack that there's no way I can lift it. And I push into the pins as hard as I possibly can. And I'm doing this for like three to 10 seconds.

So it's kind of a short drive as hard as I can. Nothing's moving. Yielding is, just like I said, you're holding a position. And you can also do the yielding ones intra rep. So I'm in a squat. I'm doing traditional reps, but then I'll hold at the bottom or something like that. A lot of times overcoming, you're going to exert more effort.

And so therefore, yeah, it's more taxing. But so you'd look at that as like if you could, like more of a compound lift versus like single-jury. Very good. I'm glad he said that. Overcoming will fatigue you way more than yielding well. So, all right, here's what the data shows with isometrics and where it's better than other forms of strengthening. So I wasn't interested in looking up where it's the same, because otherwise, why do it? Why do an isometric if it's the same as traditional lifting?

You're doing traditional lifting. Like, why add anything else? Who cares? So I looked up, where is it better? Oh, here's number one. And this was really interesting for me. I wasn't actually familiar with this until I saw the data. It's actually the best form of strength training to lower blood pressure.

In fact, it works as good as first line blood pressure medications. Did you guys know that? Wild. Interesting. I didn't know that. It's remarkable. So now, here's how it works. When I do a hard contraction where I'm holding, so let's say I do overcoming.

Let's say I get under a bar and it's loaded with 500 pounds and I can't lift that. And so I push as hard as I can. All the blood vessels are in the muscles that are contracting are constricting. They're squeezing. They're constricting. Blood pressure goes up. When I let go and relax, I get this rebound effect where they dilate and they relax. What you're actually doing by doing that besides strengthening the way.

the body and all that stuff, is you're actually training your endothelial system. You're training your vascular system to be able to dilate. Now, is there any risk to that if you already have high blood pressure and you're straining that heart? I mean, is that, is that puts you at a higher risk? Yeah, it depends on how high your blood pressure is. So it's a good question. Yeah, because it sounds like that because it's obviously working as a stress. Yes. You know. So if you can lift weights and you're cleared to lift weights, you're probably okay to do something like this. Got it. But double check with your doctor if you're like really high blood pressure. But otherwise, like to lower blood pressure and strengthen vascular health, this trains the body's system that dilates blood vessels.

And so when they compare this to other forms of strength. All exercise will lower blood pressure. All strength training lowers blood pressure. This one crushes all the other forms. And so this is actually a method that's been used in the past to help people with. Now, is that similar what's happening when you sit in a sauna? Different. Okay.

Yeah, different. Yeah, different. So both very good, though. for lower. Yeah, I know that they're both good. I was just curious to if it was a similar stress that's obviously it's not as strenuous to sit in a sauna. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And you're not putting nowhere near as much demand and risk on the body. But I was wondering if that's what's happening from a vascular standpoint. No, it's very, it's different, but both beneficial. Next step is strength at the angle you're doing the isometric. You'll gain more strength in a specific position with an isometric than you will with a full range of motion. Okay. Now, how can I make this valuable?

Well, you got sticking points in your lifts. You know where they are. Maybe it's at the bottom of your bench press, or maybe it's that lockout. Maybe it's holding a barbell overhead, or it's the beginning part of an overhead press, where the getting the barbell off your shoulders or off your chest. Maybe it's at the bottom of the squat. This is where I can build more strength at that angle faster, practicing an isometric there, than I can just practicing the exercise overall.

So for smart lifters, like you want to get through sticking points, do this. This will blast through them fast. You know, you can see where we, this science has been applied at the highest level,

like sports. I think Corey Slesinger, when he was on the show, shared and talked a little bit about this and how he, remember how he uses his box? Yeah. And one of the things he would do

is put his athletes in these kind of like compromising positions and then do isometric. hold. Yeah, is asymmetric hold so that when their ankle is contorted in this position, which it gets contorted in that position in a basketball game. That's right. Yeah.

And then it do an isometric contraction. It's like those 45 degree blocks. Yes. It puts their feet on you. Yeah. And so, and then you see this too. Like if you want, if, uh, if, I mean, sometimes you catch it on TV, not as much. Um, but at a game, you, you can see pregame, uh, all the trainers are out on the floor.

And almost every superstar athlete has their own personal, like, private trainer. Mm-hmm. And, uh, you could see them doing a lot of stuff where, the athlete will get in this position and then the trainer will push against them. And that's what they're doing. They're resisting against them and creating that in a position that they would get in the game. Which I think, in my opinion, is the best form of sports specific training. Totally.

As opposed to like, yeah, you try to explosively move into the, like, you know, I tend to save a lot of that kind of stuff in the conditioning for, you know, sports, just like the practice of it. but to your point of like getting those positions, you could find a lot of those precarious positions where a lot of ankle rolls, a lot of like knee, a lot of shoulders in a compromised position. You can really reinforce the stability there with isometric safely.

And then when you get in that position or you're throwing acceleration on top of that, you're way less susceptible. It's one of my favorite things to watch before the game because I geek out on the fact that I can tell like, oh, that's a good, that's a good trainer. You could tell by what they're doing.

Because some of the guys don't have that. So they have like a general trainer that like helps for every team. And then you have like your superstars that have gone out and like hired somebody else. And they're all kind of doing different hormones. Now granted, each guy has specific needs and so that. So he probably should be doing some different stuff. But I can always tell the guy who's like on another level of helping him because you see them doing a lot of movements like that and doing a lot of isometric holds and positions.

And I'm like, oh, that's really cool. Yeah. So I have a little bit of experience with this developing. strength at an angle. I used to get stuck at the bottom of a bench press, and it was significantly weaker than when I was up like four or five inches. So there was a period of time there where I got under a bar that was stuck in that position.

I drove against it, and mainly because I read some old Soviet studies on how they would use these, and I read a book called dinosaur training that talked a little bit about this. Not only did it get that sticking point to not become a sticking point anymore, I did it so much that that now is no longer a sticking point. It's actually a strength. If I get stuck on a bench press, it's not halfway up. It's on the lockout. It's never in the beginning anymore because I did this. I haven't gone through the training of working on the other than I should, but it's remarkable because I remember literally when I got here, if I couldn't move here, I couldn't. Now it's the point where I'm going to get it up at least four or five inches and then I get stuck.

And it's because I made it a strength. Train your body to recruit more. Yep. Yep. And it's not, it like repeats that process if you do it enough times. It's pretty magical how it happens. I did this with a deadlift as well. So you can actually. You can actually. Actually, this is a great little home gym set up. You can set up anchor two chains to the ground. So if you have concrete in your garage, you bolt them into the ground and anchor these two chains and put collars at the end of the chains. And you can attach them to a bar and you can pull against the floor.

Or you can push against the floor. And you can make the chains long, short, or whatever and work on all these different sticking points, which, by the way, you guys, everybody listening who wants to just build a better looking physique. A little DIY. Getting through sticking points and strengthen your body in different angles is going to contribute to better gains in muscle and in aesthetics. So this isn't just an athletic performance thing.

And then lastly, here's where isometrics are phenomenal. And this is what you noticed at him. Yeah. For pain relief, isometrics are remarkable. It's like someone with like Ashgud Schlaude, right, where they have that like that knee tendon pain. If they sit in a leg extension position, just drive against something that doesn't move, the data shows a 45% reduction in pain. Yeah.

after one rep of doing that. That's crazy. One rep. So what you're probably noticed with your warm up is when you're doing that with your lunge, you get into your squat and you're like, whoa, everything feels really good. It's more stable now. Yes. And then for tendon strength.

Tendin strength and stiffness improve faster with isometrics than other forms of exercise. I'm going to tell you right now, like muscle strains and stuff, they really suck. Tendin and ligament strains are far worse. They take way longer to heal. It's muscle strains heal much faster. And sometimes when we do lots of bodybuilding and lots of hypertrophy training, our tendons and ligaments lag behind. And that causes issues. Got the big strong muscles and tendons and ligaments that can't really support them very well.

Counter that with certain strength athletes, where it's the opposite. Their tendons are way stronger than the muscles. Yeah, I'm convinced, especially like seeing a lot of people get like rapid. strength gains and big muscle growth, but then getting these injuries. And, you know, sometimes that's due to taking anabolic steroids or something, you know, with bodybuilding or with sports or, you know, just your training, you're getting after, you're building strength so quickly, but you're not reinforcing that strength. And to be able to, yeah, have something that can still, like, build strength and reinforce your tendons is going to keep you all intact. I feel like we'll know when this has really

started to become a trend or a wave is when somebody invents a little machine station that has like a I can even think of it. I feel like you're in my head. I was literally thinking that. Can you not picture like this like platform cage thing that has like all these and you just push into it and just yeah and there's just like a on it on it is like a wall I'll tell you all about it of all the different really there is. Yeah. So if you guys have ever seen like a stretching cage. Yeah. That's exactly. That's what it's so there's the so me and my friend going off on this when we were geeking out on, you know, doing it with a stick and, you know, different angles and different positions you could place. And so, um, we put like blocks on that stretching station. And then somebody actually like welded and created one. So it's like you could push. And then, and then if in the middle, yeah, you had like the chains where you could pull a different

chain. It exists? Yeah. What's it called? Well, that's the thing. It's not like commercial. Oh, okay. Well, that's somebody somebody, somebody. Oh, oh, of course there's somebody who's, who's made one. It's not that mainstream. That's what I, that's my point. It's like when we know when it's, when we see a mainstream in a gym, someone's got a, if there was a line of machine. I'll make one in our gym. Well, if it was, if there was a line of machines, uh, that were basic and simple to use, so it's like chest press asymmetry. Yeah, exactly. Legs press asymmetric. Yeah. Yep. And people would you literally, literally would be like a, for every body part, you'd have a little thing. Yep. Yep. And you just drive it. It wouldn't take up that much space. Oh, no. It would be a, a little corner. You're a little

corner spot. Yeah. And like you said, like a little, I envision it with like a stretching cage. It sounds like a priming station. Listen, if you're a personal trainer and you don't use this with your clients, you're stupid. This will give them so much better. It'll blow their minds. When it comes to pain alone, this was one of my favorite ways

to help somebody feel reduction in pain right off the gates. I wish I did this. I'd never did this with my clients to prime them before they did like a squad or deadlift. What I see it working with me right now, I'm like, man, that would have been such a cool tool to use I didn't use that.

I didn't, I wasn't aware. I did this all the time. I learned it from the physical therapist that I worked with. So all credit goes to her. But like, if I had a client who I'd hit pain when we'd squat, it would be literally as simple as this. We'd sit in a chair.

I'd have their leg up against the wall. It'd sit next to them so don't slide on the bench. Press as hard as you can for 15 seconds against the wall. And they'd do, they push real hard. We'd stop. We'd go do the squat, hit pain gone.

It was the fastest, like, thing you could possibly do. Now, it's not, does it replace correctional exercise? size because that's still necessary in some cases. But in the cases...

It unlocks movement, though. That's how I used it. I used it so they could do the exercise. If you're a trainer, you're not using isometrics. Like, you are... It's dumb. It's so easy to use. It's so valuable.

Anyway, I want to ask you, Adam, because I see part of your pre-podcast ritual is to use Caldera Lab all over your face. And I was watching on YouTube. I almost never watch our show on a big TV at home. If I ever, like, review our show, I'll go on my phone. You'd watch it because I was. our new lights or what?

Yeah, so I was at home and I was with bed with Jessica. Yeah, yeah. Hey, I wanted to show you the new lights. So I showed her an older one and then the newer one with the new lights and it looks so much better. But, you know, on the big screen, see our big old faces.

She's like, Justin Adam McLehancewell. Well, I was like... This whole time. First off, I was like, man, the light's really good. And then, like, your skin looked really, really good. And so then I see you rubbing oil a little. And you've been doing that for a while. Oh, I've been for almost two years now.

It's been a very consistent regimen for me before we start the podcast. Maybe just now the audience can tell with the lighting and stuff like that. But maybe before they were like, I don't know Adam says he's used that caldera. It doesn't look like it's working that well. And then also you do some good. Yeah, yeah. Now you put some like good lighting and maybe you can see the difference of it.

But no, I swear. Is it the good before the podcast? Yeah, yeah. I use the good the most. Yeah, yeah, I use the good the most for sure. That's just because it's, that oil is really easy. And I've talked about this before with my psoriasis. It's like the key to that, like, psoriasisers, if you're not familiar with,

dries your skin out. And so having some sort of an oil. And before I was used, I mean, back of the days when I didn't know any better, was using all the steroid creams and all that crap that you should. Not the fun steroids either. Yeah, yeah, no, these are not fun. It didn't make me any stronger or look better at all. It just helped with this.

But once we started working with Caldera, the first time I had used it and noticed that, it's just become this like staple thing that I use on a regular basis. And I keep it everywhere. I got one in my car. I've got one. I've got, shoot, I got, I got three next to me. All my cousins use it. Do they?

None of us were like skincare. Like none of us. Now, everybody, because they come to our Christmas party. So every year, Oh, that's when you got. Has introduced a lot of family.

Every year, Mind Pump throws a Christmas party and we invite for staff and then some family and friends. And I got a big family. So my cousins come. And we give out goodie bags. And so we were given out Caldera Lab stuff. And they all, they all buy it not regularly.

Dude, funny you bring up the Christmas party. I was going down memory lane with our Christmas parties because we're only on year. six of throwing Christmas parties and Katrina's like why did we do that

I'm like well because we didn't really have staff it wasn't until we started to grow a staff it would be just us yeah I was like I mean the four of us could go have dinner anytime we was so it was about six years ago

I think I think this will be the seventh I gotta remember I was going through all of them but it was crazy because the very first couple it was like a big deal that we took a picture with everybody that was there you know and it's like look at the staff and look at all of us all there together and some of that. And we didn't do that

last year. I mean, we had 105 people there. And so we obviously didn't get everybody together for a picture. We didn't do a group photo. No, we couldn't. I mean, come on. And then, you know, we got, we just reserved a new place because we outgrew that place as we're expecting 150 this year. And so it's so crazy to think that, you know, we went from no Christmas party because we don't really have a staff to like the first couple of them, like taking these pictures. And I'm like, I'm going back, look, and I'm like, oh, those are so cool. And then I'm like, oh, we didn't do it last year. And I'm like, well, of course we did it.

Like, could you imagine trying to organize? Yeah, could you try and organize that? That's every family function I have, bro. At the end, my sister or someone's always like, everybody get into a picture. We got little kids. I'm like, oh, God, here we go. Like a crow's nest or something. Yeah, and we got to organize everybody.

And one kid runs away and they're getting threatened by their parents. Be it's going to try and dog here. I'm like, this is not a happy picture, you guys. This is not a happy picture. Yeah. Yeah, speaking to kids, dude, I was telling my kids love, especially my son, loves it when I tell him stories from when I was younger. He loves it. Tell me a story, Papa.

Tell me a story. So this time he's like, what did you guys do that we don't do anymore? I'm like, oh, that's an interesting request. So I was thinking, I'm like, you know what you guys, you know what kids don't do anymore? There's games that we played as kids that are now illegal in school. They don't let, they don't let them play these games anymore. I was like, what are you talking about? So I'm like, first I brought up Red Rover.

You can't play Red Rover. Steal the bacon. Steal the bacon. You don't play. Do you guys remember butts up? Yep. Did you ever play butts up? Oh, yeah.

Is that where you, do you smack someone's butt with it? No. No, the tennis ball. Yeah, dude. Oh, and you go against the fence. Oh, that's right. That's right. And then that's if you don't catch it.

They throw it at you. So what you do is you throw it up against, you throw it up against the wall. And it bounces once and you catch it, you're okay. But if it bounces more than once, you got to go up, stand up against the wall with your hands on the wall. And they have pelts you. And they get to throw it as hard as they can at your butt. At you. And so there's a few different, like, options with that, right?

So they have to, like, spread, you know, the feet out and then hands out like this. And so, and you're like, your feet are, I don't know, maybe like two feet away from the wall. And so the move is always to, like, try and, like, bounce it underneath their legs and get them right and crotch. Now, we played. That game was, that played, that was played against a handball wall. And we played with a red ball is what you play with, not a tennis ball. Oh, we played with tennis ball. Oh, yeah.

Oh, yeah. Oh, it was a red ball. a red ball and you threw it as hard as you could and it was exactly what you're right. If it bounced more than once, bro, my kids thought it was the funniest. They think, you threw it against their butt and he's dying. I forgot that was the name of this. Buts up. Buts up, dude. Illegal.

You will never see anybody play that in school today. That's such a good game. They would get kicked out. It's such a good game. Kids are missing out, dude. You know what? You play battle pong too or you take a shirt off and then if like you miss and like you, you, you, You'd throw it and you'd be able to hit and it'd leave like crazy marks on their body.

You know, there's a, so I understand why they ban somebody's games because Red Rover definitely, you know, kids got their arms broken sometimes or whatever. I get it. But I almost think like. Over asphalt. It was trained. Oh, yeah, dude. It was. And especially boys, because they would see, this is what guys would do.

You'd see a girl that you like and she's holding hands with someone else. And the goal of to run through and break through the chain. Sure. And so you're always trying to show her how, like, I'm going to run through her arm. And you end up breaking the girls. But what I was going to say is I feel like these games, childhood games, like, they kind of toughen you up and prepared you for life, dude. Because it's like, you know. Yeah.

We would stop me so soft. Yeah. We need more that or a rascal. I kind of think we do, dude. I get why we banned them. But I also'm like, yeah. Everything's, you know, estrogened out with like rubber everywhere. Yeah, you know, and then they get into a job or something and the boss is in a bad mood.

And now they're like, ah. Yeah. You know? And it's like, really? Yeah, let the aggression happen. We used to play Bloody Knuckles. That was a real game. You guys?

It's good to get it out. I feel like people are calmer. You can't pencil fight. We used to pencil fight. We used to pencil fight. Remember doing stuff like that? Baby Britches. There's a lot of stuff.

Baby Britches was a great one. Remember Baby Bridges? If your buddy said something that starts with a B, you could punch him as far as you could. That was like slug bug. Yeah. Unless he said Baby Britches first. And this game would last all day.

Years. It was never, you never stopped. So you just, yeah. It's an ongoing day. Oh my God. Kids are missing out, dude. Anyway, I was going to talk, let's talk fitness for a second. Just something that's frustrating.

Always frustrates me. Generally, but then more specifically. Generally, I really hate it when people in our space, so fitness people attack each other. Yeah. This is part of their brand. brand is to attack each other. Now, I get calling people out for advocating for dangerous things or for just lying to the public.

I think that's just for attention. Even then, I'm not, hey, you know what? Even then I'm not the biggest fan of that because I feel like there's a way to do that by educating. Yes. It's like you could say, hey, some people say this. Exactly. You could call someone out without calling someone out.

Without clipping, you know, putting a clip of them and trying to be that guy. But anyways, frustrating because somebody who's famous for this, the functional patterns people love. This is like part of how they build their brand. And they did go after someone. It's like their whole marketing strategy. Who does this a lot too. So they kind of like, you know, it would be wonderful.

It'll be great to see who wins us. It's funny that they've waited this long to find each other. No, no, no. They've been going on it for years. Okay. Oh, yeah. Years they've been going on. They were recently seen a lot.

Oh, yeah. No, they've been, they've, in fact, I would argue that the two of them built their brands off of going after each other early. Oh. Oh, yeah. This is a five year plus feud. Yeah. Wow.

So they were going after Lane Norton, and they were talking about how he did a post where he deadlifted a bunch of weights. Obviously, Lane's really strong. And in the post, Lane's like, I got bad sleep last night. I woke up with a headache, but I'm still working out. So they're like, this is why he gets injured.

And this is why it's like, no. At the highest level when you're that strong or you're profiling, it's like when people point at a pro athlete getting injured and go, oh, it must have been his lack of correctional. No, that's a pro football player. He didn't do mobility. Yeah.

That's getting hip. by a 300-pound person that's trying to cut angles and whatever. Like the reason why people get injured when they're deadlifting seven-hundred pounds is because they're deadlifting seven-hour pounds. Yeah. It's because they're getting after it. And you're at such a high level that the smallest thing. To your point, Lane could do 500 deadlifting for the rest of his life and probably never get an injury again.

Well, the comment I put underneath, as I said, if he was deadlifting, what you could lift, you would never get hurt. Yeah. But it's so frustrating. Yeah. It's so frustrating. Yeah. It's tacky.

Yeah, I'd like to go back and see because, because it's, I believe because I've been paying attention to both those guys for a really long time. And I think probably what happened was both had a bit of a... This is early before everybody knew who both of them were. They had a bit of a cult following for each of them for different reasons. And they probably both saw the algorithm, right? I mean, they saw... I mean, why it goes viral, why it does well is because it's drama.

Yeah. You know, people love... People... You will go to Indy 500 to not see the car win. They see it to watch the crash, right? And so people are here for the fight for the drama. And so it just goes. And so I don't even know.

Why would you want to build a business with that kind of attention? That's got to feel so stressful and crappy. I think you don't, I think you don't, yeah, I don't think you think about that early on. I think you are, you are, especially let's go back, you know, eight years, 10 years ago when social media is just becoming, popular and you're trying to figure it, figure it out. I mean, I'm, I'm guilty of, you know, using shirtless pictures and my physique to get, to get all the, you know what I'm saying? Because at that, I'm trying to figure out like, okay, how do I, how do I play?

Yeah, how do I get attention? How do I play in this game? And I, and I, and I had a moderate success early, actually really good success, because back then 10,000 followers was a big deal, you know, 10 years ago or shit. That was more than that. That was 18, 18 years ago. four mind pump. So 17, 18 years ago, if you had 10,000 followers, you were one of the, the bigger pages on there. And all the attention. I quickly realized that none of it was converting

to business. And then I was like, okay, well, that was the whole point of this was to do this for the business. And then I, so I learned that way. And so I think a lot of people just don't know. I think they think that just more eyeballs, what's that old saying? Like, even bad news is good news, you know, so. Yeah. And so. I hate that statement. I know, but people, people, People still... They live by that. Yeah, they operate from that place. And so I think the theory is like, oh, it's just, it's more eyeballs, so it's good for the business.

I think somebody like ourselves, who've been doing this for a really long time now, have a little bit more experience and wisdom to know that, like, okay, you may get more eyeballs faster on you. But the type of attention that you're going to attract that's negative and drama far exceeds the benefit of the business side of it. and you're far better off going slow, servicing and taking care of the five people paying attention to you, over delivering on them, making them radical fans and love you and growing that way. Not to mention, it's so, so this is such a great segue. I just discovered this, I've got to find his name. He's a scientist who specializes in brain, essentially brain training or neuroplasticity. his name is Dr. Lee Warren.

Okay. And I found one of his videos. Jessica showed me him. And I started watching his video. And what he does is he talks about how you can train your brain to change. And what I mean by that is where they actually can do an fMRI or an MRI. They can look at your brain and see that the brain itself changes in structure through different types of practices. In other words, it's strength training.

for your brain. So like you could change the shape of a muscle through different exercises, you can actually change the shape and function of your brain by doing certain things. And so he was, there was a few things he was talking about. One of them was gratitude, which is the data on this is wild, you guys. So he calls it neuro rehab. So gratitude activates the medial prefrontal cortex. This is the part of the brain that regulates emotion. It literally reshapes it and grows it so that, so when you practice daily gratitude, things you're grateful for throughout the day and you're really paying attention to it, your brain gets better at noticing good things. So it actually strengthens its ability to notice positive things. And what they find is that people who do this, they are far more resilient during hardship and they're just more resilient in general.

So, you know, the whole like, you know, try to find the positive. That can be really difficult because our brains are naturally wired to notice negative. Always. It's always about safety, right? Keep me alive. But when you practice gratitude, the part of the brain that does that, which is this part that I mentioned, actually grows and strengthens and it becomes more natural. So it's like I practice squats.

What happens? I get better at squats. If you practice gratitude, your brain gets better at noticing things to be grateful for and becomes much more automatic, which I think is fascinating. Well, I mean, you know, I just shared with one of the last podcasts. I'm on that kick right now.

And I think the part about the practice is really important because I think a lot of people, at least this is, or at least this, I'll speak from my experience. My experience with it, I kind of, it didn't really work for me at first. And I think it was because it was kind of like this afterthought or like,

It was like just real general stuff. I know exactly what you're talking about. I'm thinking for my wife. I'm thinking for my kid. Same thing you're doing. Yeah. It was like the same five things kind of like every day. I was like,

oh, you know, I hear all this research around how beneficial this is. Let me practice it. And so I'd go through this thing. And you know, every once in a while I get lucky and something landed new in my lap of like something happened that was like,

and it was like, oh, I was a thing for that thing today or what it was like real. I'm like, yeah, I just didn't feel a difference from it. I really started to challenge to go deeper into the most kind of simple and mundane things like that

that I was grateful for. I've told you where that's evolved to now because I finally connected the dots like oh that's what I was doing wrong was like these generic answers versus like unpacking my day and moments of like oh you know what I'm that big

argument I had with Sal like I'm so grateful for the way he he brings it. You know I'm so well this is something that you I don't think you would think about right right right right and then that's the point of this right I think maybe I should say that, right?

Is that not to tease you or anything like that? Sure. It was more like, that would not normally make a gratitude list. That's right. Right? And it was like, but it was the way we handled our relationship after that. I'm so grateful he's my partner. Like that's like

versus just saying, I'm so thankful for my partners. Yeah. Like that, that's like one way to do it. And I learned this and I'm connecting the dots for me was I've shared on the podcast many times. One of my favorite books was one minute manager. One of the exercises that I put into place and practice.

The whole premise of the book is to, instead of leading from a position of correcting your employees and the things they do incorrectly and wrong all the time, focus on pointing out the things they do correctly, right? And so what that looked like for me was, okay, and the generic version before I, like I evolved it and thought about it was like going over and being like, hey, Justin, I'm so glad you work here.

You're great like that. Like that's the just. Not specific. Not specific versus going over and saying, Hey Justin, I saw the way you were just with your client Rich And man, I just, I appreciate the detail that you put into his programming and your attentiveness when you work on them and then walk away. It was like huge difference on having this very specific detailed thing that I appreciated in that like the response I got from my employees. I needed to learn how to do that to myself like instead of like these big generic like my wife, my house, my family, my job like the stuff.

It became like a very specific moment. in the day or thing or what like that. And then that's what I was doing. And I stopped doing it. And I'm going to start doing it again. This is where like every other hour I would reflect back on the previous hour for what I was grateful for. And what they show with neuroplasticity, practicing things changes it.

But if you really want like effective neuroplasticity, if you touch an emotion to it, it's very powerful. Yeah. So I can think about something that just happened. It's easier for me to attach an emotion to. Like I'm thankful for my kids. I can definitely think. about my kid, but the way I tend to attach emotion to is I think about, think about something my kid

did. Yeah. And so, and then when that happens, the neuroplasticity is much more effective. Well, that's like the, and then you start to see more positive things naturally. And it's literally reshaping your brain. Yeah, I know. For me, it's the, we talk about like stress. Well, there's also good stress.

Like, there's a way to look at it is like, this is moving me forward. This is all part of growth versus like it's a negative thing. Like, and it, I mean, I've been in that same state right now where it's like I'm trying to constantly see that. And I'm like, this is moving me forward. And this is a good thing. And this is, you know, it's hard, but it's like I'm through this phase now. And like, just construction in general is going to like, force that upon us. But like, you know, we keep looking at like this little thing just happened.

And then we acknowledge it. And then instead of it just being like, oh, my God, overwhelming, like anxiety over all these things. Post-traumatic growth is a real thing. So it's post-traumatic stress and there's also post-traumatic growth. Well, and understanding that as you go through the stress is magical. I'm learning to reframe that. You know, I also have been doing since, I don't know how many weeks it's been now since we had Jim Quick in here. But I've been really consistent with first thing I do, I go read.

Yeah. So the first. He made so many good points about that. Huge difference. Huge difference. I had a couple days where I missed, notice the difference. I told you where I broke my phone. So I didn't even have access to social media or text.

until I go in my car. Yep. Makes a big difference. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, there's been a couple times where I went to go grab to go check on because I already got up, shower, kind of brushed my teeth. I still hadn't looked at my phone yet. But then it was like, I was going to, oh, shit, I haven't read yet.

Get over, read a quick page or two and stuff like that. Like even that slight bit, it makes a huge difference. By the way, with this point, with this points to is you can strengthen other parts your brain that you don't want to. You're right. So if you're constantly focused on the negative, on the criticisms, on the problems, on the challenges, on the hopelessness, you will strengthen your brain. ability to notice those types of things to the point where those things become larger.

Yeah. And positive things become smaller. So it's like you want to change the filter by which you see the world. You could do it through training your brain. And the crazy part for me that blows me away is we can see this in studies in terms of people's outlooks, but it's all subjective. Like, yeah, I feel happier. Yes, I feel less happy.

All right, what's going on? No, no. We can look at your brain and see parts of the brain are larger. It's objective. It's wild. That is crazy. Well, what's the, what's the thing that Arthur Brooks is doing right now? I've heard him on multiple podcasts.

Like, he's touring on this, like, his, like, and he's doing like this, I don't know, what do you call that? Like a negative bias or whatever that where he's, like, saying, like, these are the five ways to guarantee you'll have a terrible life or whatever. Yeah, and he's pointing to that direction. Yes. And he's pointing all those things. Like, get on your phone person.

People normally do. Yes, yes. Scroll through social media this many hours the day. Like, he's nailed. Don't exercise. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So it's like, it's totally. Another one that I, that he talked about is.

is that so prayer or mindfulness thickens the cortical areas of the brain that help with emotional regulation and attention and memory. Brain scans show this. It's so crazy to me that you could change the structure, the physical structure of your brain

by enacting some of these things. And it's cool because it's something under our control. So it's like, do you want an outlook that is generally more? By the way, I'm going to say this right now because sometimes people are like, well, yeah, but your life doesn't really change. You just think it's better.

First off, that's not nothing. That's awesome. But second off, what do you think a more positive, hopeful outlook will do to your behaviors and the actual objective things in your life? It'll change those too. Yeah. So it's not just I notice more positive things, but the more I notice more positive things, the more positive things that probably create an influence.

Yeah. So it's like this feedback loop that is incredible. I'm pretty sure a lot of, if not all of that research stems back to, Daniel Keniman. Daniel Keniman, thinking fast, thinking slow, Nobel Prize winner.

And he's, yeah, he's the one who did all the research and around that. And you would, I try to get you to read this book before. Neuroscience guy.

Yeah, thinking fast and slow. Daniel Connaman. Keniman. Caneman. Caneman. Caneman. Damn, bro.

You remembered that? One of my favorite books. It's a little heavy for the average person if you're not into neuropsychology. and neuroscience stuff. So if you're into that,

you, it's a really cool read. The gist of it, though, is that your brain toggles back and forth between these two modes, basically the monkey brain or like your critical thinking type of brain. And what you're training it to do, you're training it to get better

at switching from that. We all default to the monkey brain, which I forget the terms that he uses for... That reactive. Yeah, that reactive, animal instinct, whatever, like we... And so much, so many people live in that,

but you can actually train to kick into the second one. And those are exercises that all do that. And he won a Nobel Prize for all this research. And I believe that's probably where a lot of it comes from. Speaking of exercise, a study came out on exercise and it's fixed on cortisol. You guys want to trip off something? This is really cool. So when you exercise, it's a stress on the body.

So we've talked about this many times. It's one of the reasons why you get stronger, more fit. Your body tries to adapt to the stress by becoming more resilient. But for all intents and purposes, if we were to measure all of your stress markers while you're working out, it would be it's a stressor. Okay. This is pretty cool. So you get a cortisol spike when you work out. You're supposed to.

It's a stress. But the cortisol spike from exercise suppresses the next cortisol response from another stressor. In other words, if you're about to do something stressful that you know is going to spike your stress hormones and your whatever, work out before. Oh, interesting. You'll go into it and you'll have a less, you'll have a lowered stress because you did something hard. Yeah, no, it makes total logical sense. What I'm trying to think of right now is like where I've done that accidentally. Oh, yeah, that's it.

Boy, what a great argument for that. What, ice bath before? Yeah. I mean, because you know, everybody's always trying. So people reported that because it is a hard commit. Like, you're like psychologically. Before you're about to get an argument or something. Yeah.

Well, I mean, this is why you think it's such a great way to start your day, period. That's me, not a bad point. You do something hard and resilient. This is why I've always thought. the, the, the, the, the, the, the, all the arguments back and forth with ice bath and building muscle and post-workout. I know, they just blunted the wrong stuff. It's, yeah, you, you've now bastardized something that I think is extremely valuable and that that wasn't even the main case for it. Yeah. Nobody was doing saying, hey, ice bath to build muscle. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So it's like, uh, you know, starting your day off with that is, is a extremely

valuable thing for a lot of different reasons to Justin's point right now, bringing this up is like, I mean, that's a great, great case for that. It's pretty inevitable that you're going to run into something difficult in most days. And so you've already primed more resilient. Yeah, it's what life throws out yet. It's funny, like, even back to the reframing kind of conversation, it was like, I could do that all day through it. But, man, I could not account for the soreness I got afterwards. We had to move, like four tons of rock.

Dude, Justin. Who? Just it. Me and my family. Oh, that's right. He wasn't there. I forgot. Wait a minute.

You and just, that's it? Hey, listen. Let me, let me get it. Let me hijack your story. Okay. Yeah, just because I tell your story better. Oh, cool. Hey, last time you told him that, he left the studio.

The last time we said that, dude, he got so bad. That's fine. No, it's not looking at. I'll set you up. I'll take a break. I'll set you up. I'll set you up. Go an ice bath.

Our audience gets hell. He's going to hype it up and then all. Yeah, yeah, exactly. I'll just set the table for you. I got a deal for you. By the way, our audience gets hello mad about this stuff. I know. You don't let Joseph talk

Joe's story. Fuck off. I know a story better than he does. No, stop. You're just making it worse. No, no, no. So we went to be a part of it. We went to, yeah, I do.

We went to, um, to go look at that building, right? Oh, yeah, yeah. The day you didn't show up. Right, right. And this dude shows up. Oh, yeah. Like, you know, not that you needed to be fancy. I mean, I wasn't fancy or anything like that.

We're showing up to look at a building, right? And so that, and as the, as the, as the four founders, right? and here comes this founder rolls up, dude. And he is from a, and he is from a, like head to toe and like sawdust and like yeah he looks like he just chocked up yeah he's all chalked up and dirty as shit he's in his truck what what what what do you doing flying off me yeah and then he shows me uh all this stone that he's moving because they couldn't bring it to his house so dude just got to roll from felton all the way back and forth it's yeah and you know we've been dealing

with certain issues because our driveway is so incredibly steep and A lot of trucks that are anything bigger than like a, even sprinter vans can't make it up. Really? Yeah, sometimes. Yeah, because it's just too much of a pitch. So we had them just like, okay, fine. They were just going to like take off. And we're like, well, no, just drop it off at, you know, where we're at right now.

And it's like 45 minutes away, but it's still like, you know, we'd rather have the material and figure it out. And Courtney was like kind of like going back and forth with the delivery. and so they ended up dropping off these huge crates like in and we had um how many crates was it so it was four four huge four of them each one was like a ton plus wow and and so it was like so it's not only that it was the fact that like that weekend too we were having to open house and so we couldn't have those at the house and so we have to get rid of these we have to move it and like i don't know like a service or somebody or like i was thinking man we need to get we need to get a fork lift and we need to be able to like put this up on a truck that's like a flatbed truck or like you know

I'm like this is crazy and it's like well let's see how much we can just take out and then move and I'm like are you serious? You understand what this is going? And I'm like, I already knew I was in for it. And I'm just like whatever. I just started going and I just started going. And then I put like, I empty these. So first you have to empty it out.

Then you got to like restack it and everything inside the truck. So we ended up doing like three trips back and forth between two. 45 minutes. Oh my gosh. Yeah. And so it got to the point where is that like, even after I came, I still had like, you know, a crate and a half left. Yeah. And they had to come back and finish. And then by then, like, the kids are exhausted.

Like Courtney's like, I'm like, no, you guys. And so I was like, I'll just do the rest. And I'm still out there with like the little, you know, headlamp on and just like stack in and back. Oh, my gosh. Bro. Yes. And I was just torched. Dude, I haven't been that torch in a long time.

I wish you had an aura ring, so when you do crazy shit like that? Did you sleep good or bad? Because sometimes... Terrible. Yeah, sometimes over-exerting. You went beyond. Yeah, it went past. Oh, God, when you go that beyond?

I was adrenaline. Yeah, fried. Fried. Totally fried. Yeah. Like... Oh. Yeah.

Now, did you have beer and pizza after? Because that's the only thing that I would want to eat or something like that, you know what I mean? High calorie. Yeah. Yeah, high-calorie thing. No, we didn't. I'm trying to think what we had.

It was like, uh, yeah, it was like some barbecue, I think. Okay. Still, yeah, I ate a lot. Yeah, for sure. You know why you're such a good friend? Can I tell you why you're such a good friend? Because you didn't call any of us. You didn't call any of us?

I love you, dude. You know why? Because we would have helped. For sure, if one of you guys asked, I'd be like, I got to go help. Yeah. But you're just such a good guy. Yeah, I don't think it's like that in common. Because I just, yeah.

No, I think we all have that in common. We're like, I'm going to be miserable. I'm like, yeah, I'm going to just. I don't want to make my boys miserable with me. Yeah. Everybody else can be miserable. If I call you guys for help, it's an emergency. It's like something real bad, you know what I mean?

Well, now you know, yeah, it's going to be a real big job if I call you guys. Wow. You know what you know? Okay, so cool. That's a bitch that we would have been like, well, see how much this cost. If we hired this movie, we would. That's how we would help. Yeah.

We're just going to buy someone. We're going to pay a bunch of people help, dude. Let's all hang out and go out to life. It'll be so nice to sell my house and then move over. Oh, my God. I'll get there. I'll get there. When he showed up, I died laughing.

And then I'm like, what is this fool doing now? Dude, you know what you got to take because you're probably so, probably sore and stiff. Do the, the-crazy. So the Rowe has their curcumin bottle. We have some in the fridge. Okay. Take that three times a day. It's got curcumin and it's resveratrol.

It's really good for inflammation. Anti-inflammatory? Very effective at that. By the way, speaking of Rowe, because they use liposomal technology, which if people aren't familiar, this was a medical technology that was designed in the... 60s for medications. And now you can find it in really, really high quality products. Roe is they're experts out there.

So, well, liposomes are like little, basically little fat liposomes that encapsulate whatever you're trying to deliver. And it protects the compound and increases bioavailability. So I went on, and I looked up a study. And I said, okay, I'm going to look up something that already has pretty good bioavailability. So I get it with glutathione. Glutothion. If you're not taking glutathione liposomily, you're basically wasting it.

You need to take glutathione liposomal form. Cricumin, it better be liposomal because it needs that. Otherwise, you could take a ton of it. You're not going to absorb much. But what about something like vitamin C? Or creatine. Right, right. What about, well, I looked at vitamin C.

Vitamin C, you could take vitamin C, you'll absorb quite a bit. If vitamin C is liposomal, one and a half to 1.8 times higher bioavailability, bioavailability. Vitamin C. Wow. So you'll absorb way more if it's liposomal than if it's not. And vitamin C already has pretty good absorbability or bioavailability. Now, with creatine, which you mentioned,

one of the things that liposomes do is they protect, they can help reduce things like gastro distress. This is why I've got so many friends now who are like Sal, I take cratine and if I take more than two grams of cratine, it messes up my gun. Some people are sensitive to cratine. She does the real version for that. I mean, even I noticed the difference of that,

like the bummer about the gummies, is I have to break it up through the day. I can't eat all them at once. No. Try rows, creatine. And push it to 15 or 20 grams. I mean, I got friends of mine. Like, again, they're like, man, I've tried creatine.

I can't. It bothers me after two grams. And there are no issues with the row. They're like, it feels way better on the go. I've got to try it like that because I haven't done that. I've just, I've been like, I just, if I want to make a dose, the creatine, I just have to. You go throughout the day?

Yeah, just bring it up. That's another strategy. Here's the problem with that. That's a pain in the ass. It is. How hard is it to get clients to take supplements? I'm not consistent. I know, I'm just honest.

I'm not. I'm not consistent. Getting them to take it once a day is hard enough. You want to, oh, here, take this three times a day. Yeah. Not going to do it. Yeah.

So with the row, you could, yeah, you could take your dose and it doesn't bother your gut and it's super, it's absorbed very, very well. What were we talking about off air? And you were asking me and I was like, oh, I'll tell you when we get on the podcast. And I can't remember what we were talking about. I don't remember.

Yeah, we don't remember we were talking about something. And you were asking. Weekend? Is this something over your weekend or I don't remember? Yeah, I don't remember. Oh, no, no, no, no, no. I remember now. I was like, it was over the weekend.

Okay. So my aunt came in for her birthday and we had a habachi chef come to the house and serve. Was that good? I saw Doug's video where he threw the egg up on the set. Yeah, yeah. So it was the same one that we, the same company that we used before. Remember that we did with Shallow and Dr. Carlin? Right, right?

That's a good time. Yeah, good time, right? So we said this in, same company, different guy. Uh-oh. This guy shows up and there's a major language barrier between him and I trying to, like, figure out, like, where he's going to put. I really wanted him to come all the way up to my, you know, in my backyard where I have the countertop and everything. Yeah. We had exactly eight people, and that's what I have seats wise.

I'm like, oh, this is perfect. I'll just have him come up here and he'll do the thing right behind my barbecue and it'll be awesome. And he was just like, you know, he was telling me basically. know not a good idea or he couldn't do it you know at least that's what i got from it and i'm like okay and then i'm like trying to ask him like well where do you want to do it i've got this area all kinds of different areas i got all these tables that i can sit up wherever and um you know there's there's this back and forth of like well like he's asking me and i'm asking him because he's telling me he can't do that i'm like i can't understand why he can't do that so why don't you tell me

how you want it all laid out anyways took forever we finally make this like kind of you shape and you know the way you do it is so uh you make a use shape so they can come in the middle and they can do their thing, right? Yeah. So I make this U shape. And then he sets up like 10 feet out of it and underneath my balcony. And I'm like, okay, whatever. You know what I'm saying?

Let's just get this party started and like get going and everything. So he starts, which, you know, he starts to do some of those tricks with the flames of that. And flames are hitting the bottom of my, the bottom. And so I'm like stressing out while he's doing that. Yeah. And, you know, he's, he's. starting to do as like juggles and some of that. He like drops his spatula the first time he starts juggling.

But this guy is like brand new. B team. Somebody's yeah, B team uncle. They like sub because the real, the real guy's not supposed to be here or whatever. And then, and by the way,

I'll get to the part where Doug was alluding to. And I, by the way, too, we sent a message in the company because I was actually really kind of disappointed in this part. So the guy, you know,

he has this little squirca and was sake. and he's like coming out for sakei and he's like shooting it in all of our our mouths and everyone's kind of laughing and he's he's trying to do that like every i don't know a couple minutes to or you know 20 10 20 minutes to break up the cooking and stuff and that's fun and all and everyone's kind of laughing some people are you know no thanks i'm good and uh then he comes out and he pulls out this like little man and this squirt comes out of his where his his penis would be and so it's like squirting in your mouth i know right i know so he does all this and And whatever.

Little aggressive. Yeah, a little aggressive. And then out comes a dildo. What? No. What kind of party is it? Yes. And then he squirts.

And I'm like, Oh, and of course, Max is there. So my son is there. No, dude. Yeah. And so we, you know, we're like, oh,

you know, we cover his eyes and we're like, a bachelor at party. And so it's like, if he sees me. If he went to the wrong place. Yeah, yeah. So he did. Gay celebration.

Yeah. And again, there's like a language barrier there. So I'm being kind of patient about it. And I'm not, and my, and my, Peepee. The adults are kind of like laughing a little bit through it, but then everyone's like covering Max's eyes and trying.

And I thought, okay, once we did that, like maybe, he would know. He would know. Brings it out again. No. Does it like three more times. Bring this out. And so I'm like, whatever. And thank God.

So my aunt is like, but my aunt and my cousin are there who are like super strong Christians and conservative. Oh, wow. What did they do? Yeah. Thank God it was in my, now, even though they are, my uncle is the most, my uncle would have got up and left. Like it would have, he would have been so offended by it.

My aunt's a little. little roll with the punches. She's kind of cool type of deal. And so she was like and it yeah. Yeah. She was like okay for you guys. Yeah. Yeah. She could a party out of throws. It was awesome. Please forgive my. So that all went down. And they think you hired this guy to do that. Oh yeah. And I was like, I was like, hey, I had no idea about any of that. The last guy. Last guy to do any of that. And I was, I was disappointed, but I wasn't as upset. I became upset when I realized that we at Katrina's like, um, because I was like, man, I can't. I can't believe he didn't pick up. And I'm given it. I'm given in the bit of the doubt, like the language barrier.

Maybe he didn't understand that we like, that was not the right vibe or whatever. But then I found out that when we hired them, Katrina actually gives them a list who's there. And Max is on the list as a seven-year-old. So that pissed me off because it was like, oh, you showed up. You know, you sent somebody here. I don't care, bro. If you're working and you see a little kid, just don't do that. I mean, it's a huge.

I mean, I don't know. Doug and is it culturally? okay over there? I mean, is it more appropriate? No, of course not. Okay, so I don't That's like, for me, I'm being like more patient. Like, okay, I don't know where he's from. Maybe it's more culturally accepted where he's at to do stuff like that for the kids, maybe. But then when I thought, well, as a company, if you know that there's a kid, a kid's going to be there, there's like, you shouldn't have done that.

You know, you shouldn't have done that. He, because he could have just done the squirt gun and it would have been totally fine. Totally. It was like, okay, bring it out. And he escalated. Like, as the, as the party went on and got. And then he, he made like a, for D. and Rachel, he made a balloon penis and a balloon vagina. What kind of a... Yeah. What the heck?

What kind of a park? Bro, it's the same company that we are. They did none of that. You're just eating food. Yeah. None of that. None of that happened when we had that company come out for us. They didn't do any of that.

Normally they just do the tricks. The volcano fire. Flip the A. You know, some of that. So that's all I... I didn't realize I was going to have to be like, hey, don't bring any of the pornography stuff. Yeah, dude.

I don't want to drink. suck in of a penis. All hot dogs and bananas here. Yeah. Wow. Like, why? Yeah, it was crazy. Wow.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, I was a little, I was a little diso. Thank God, like I said, my aunt was cool, you know, and she, I mean, at least I think she was. She's praying for you for a door. Yeah, she's like, hey, don't throw me any more parties on. Yeah. Talk about, like, not reading the room.

No, totally not, dude. Oh, that would have been so much. My son, dude. Too much. Element is an electrolyte powder. You can add it to your water. There's no artificial sweeteners, no sugar, and it has the right amount of sodium.

So here's the problem with most electrolyte powders. They don't have enough sodium to make a difference. If you need electrolytes, it's the sodium you need the most. So this can help prevent things like headaches, muscle cramps, fatigue. It can help with getting a better pump in the gym. It can help with endeavors in the heat, in the sun. If you eat a diet that is whole food based and you work out, you probably could benefit from using electrolytes.

If you're on a low carb diet, oftentimes people say going on a low carb diet makes them feel crappy, especially at first. They need to get their body to adjust. That's because their body gets rid of a lot of sodium in a low carb diet. Drinking element can prevent that. Low carb dieting with element, you feel amazing. The stuff tastes great.

It's natural. It works. I take it before I work out for better pumps because I absorb more water. And of course, no calories. Go check them out. Go to drink. LMNT.com slash mind pump. And on that link, you'll get a free sample pack

of their most popular drink-mixed flavors with any purchase. Back to the show. First question is from Nick Dureger. What exercises would you recommend to help prevent injury for runners? I've heard you guys talk about Tibialis raises to prevent shin splints in the past.

Are there any other exercises you'd highlight? Best exercise for sure is the not running one. I'm just kidding. I'm just kidding. There's actually some truth there because a lot of injuries from runners It comes from overuse. So not overdoing it is very important.

And not under-eating is also very important. Sometimes runners get caught up and they eat really little and so they can't recover. That being said. Yeah. Tibialis raises, phenomenal for shin splints. Lateral slag drags, forward slag drags. Rotation and lateral. Reverse sled drags.

like they will really help. And here's why a sled drag is so good or a sledge drive is so good. When I'm pressing a sled, yes, I'm strengthening my glutes, my hamstrings, and my claws, but I'm also strengthening my calves and my foot.

So I'm pressing through my foot. And so it's going to give me strength that really translates to stability when I run. And I like the sled just across the board. If running is your main thing, the sled should be one of the main things you use for your strength training.

Lateral sled drags is great for IT band problems. So people are like, oh, you know, my IT band hurts all the time. I got a foam roll it. Like, you do lateral sled drags. You can strengthen that forefoot as well, too. So it's like, yeah, now you can work on your mechanics of not, you know, running with a lot of times people getting caught up and they're running a little more flat foot. And so you can really drive and, you know, be in good position with that and add load to it with the sled. So I totally agree with that.

That too. And then some rotation, they're like a windmill would be a good supplemental exercise. I mean, to stay on par with our conversation today, I think. that even better than tibialis raises would be tibialis isometrics. Sure. Is to do something like where you're trying to overcome. So I would get my foot under like a couch

or a lip or something like that. Try and try and pick it up and drive as hard as you can on that. That would be before I go on a run, priming with that every time would be ideal. Yeah, because you have shin splints, knee pain, IT band pain are probably the most common. So shin splints, tibialis raises, or isometrics.

Knee pain, pulling a sled is really good. That's where you hold on to a rope or something attached to a sled, kind of squat down and you extend each knee. Really good for protecting. We've got a great YouTube video on Mind Pump TV. Yes, yes. Sled drags like that. And then the lateral stuff, man.

That lateral strengthening with a sled drag is really good for helping with IT band tightness. So if you find yourself having to always foam roll every time you run, oftentimes it's a lack of stability in that lateral position. Next question is from Olga Lee. How do you avoid overeating, but also eating enough to gain muscle? High protein. Yeah.

High protein diet. Just, you actually gain less body fat in a surplus with protein. So that's number one. And number two is this fear is overstated. Oftentimes people who ask this are so afraid of eating in a surplus that they think they're going to balloon up. Okay. So if you're in a modest surplus of like 400 calories, 500 calories, I wouldn't be worried

about this. Where I get worried is when people under eat so much that when then they go on the other direction, it's like they open the floodgates. Well, especially when it's whole food based. It's really hard to, first of all, overeat with whole foods because there's natural limiters in there. And you get satiated pretty easily. So I would say, yeah, if you stick to that, like, it's pretty, you're going to be pretty fine. I've had so much success to my clients. I still, to this day, this is what works for myself.

And it's not easy. There's so many times where, you know, it's 9 o'clock at night. I've kind of had my meals or whatever like that. And I'm hungry again. And, you know, what sounds good at 8 or 9 o'clock at night is a giant thing of popcorn or ice cream or something savory or something. What doesn't sound really great is to go downstairs and reheat my ground beef and rice. But what works is going to do that.

And if I just eat that way, with a high protein whole food meal, I don't overeat. And I hit my protein intake and I give my body what it needs because it's obviously, it's saying I want more. And it's probably because I trained really hard before that or was extra active that day. And if I just disciplined myself to eat the whole foods

and eat a big high protein meal, you land perfect. It's wild. Not to mention this sometimes happens too, Adam, where you're like, I'm hungry. It's 9 o'clock at night. All right, I'm going to go eat a whole food meal. You're like, I don't feel like it.

I wasn't really hungry. I just had a craving. Right. You know, oftentimes it's the case. Yeah, yeah. Next question is from Sylvia Gasa. If a man wants to develop strength but doesn't want to develop big muscles, is one gram of protein necessary?

So one gram of protein per pound of target body weight isn't necessary for any of it. It's just better. So you'll gain more strength by doing that. And you'll build more muscle by doing that. But it contributes very well to both. But I will say this, because there are people. who want to get stronger and not get bigger, especially athletes that are in, like, weight classes.

So I get this, like, you're a wrestler, or you do judo or jiu-jitsu or whatever, and you're like, I want to get really strong, but I want to stay in my weight class. Like, what do I do? Body weight exercises are really good for this. They're really, really good for this. Why?

Not because they don't build as much muscle, but rather because what they do is, if I gain weight while I'm performing, a body weight exercise, my performance doesn't necessarily improve. In other words, if I'm doing pull-ups, I'm pulling my body weight up. If I'm doing a pull-down, I'm using the weight

stack. So body weight exercises can kind of help keep that in check and give you that strength that tends to translate. And the other thing is just to practice lifts and have really good neuromuscular connection to lifts because a lot of your strength comes from that. You could toggle back and forth between a building cut too.

So what you could do is like, and I would run more of a cut than I would in bulk. And so I'd have two weeks where I am trying to get big muscles and eat like that and train like that. And then I go back to a three-week cut. And then I toggle back to two weeks where I'm eating a surplus and I'm trying to get big muscle. And if you do that, you're not going to get, you're not going to get huge. I mean, that's not enough of a surplus consistently long enough that you're going to grow. It'll keep you lean. It'll get you stronger. Like, I mean, it's tough to get really strong and not feed the body what it needs to grow and build. It's just

it's just really tough, tough to do that. If, like you're saying, this is a question coming from, like, a, you know, an athlete that just can't and doesn't want to do that,

then I think body weight is a great strategy. But if this is somebody who's concerned that they're going to get too big and too bulky and they don't want to be that way, just toggle back and forth between a bulk and a cut. Limit your calories more than anything.

Yeah. Yep. Next question is from Holly Bear 3. I have knee arthritis in my left leg and plantar fasciitis in my right foot. Should I train completely unilaterally, both upper and lower body to correct movement patterns? Or can I get away

with just doing lower body exercises unilaterally and train upper body like I usually would? You can get away with it, but here's what we notice when you have unilateral issues in the lower body. It tends to also... Run with the connection. Yeah, so you might not have pain in the upper body. It's all connected. But there's probably some stuff going on there as well. Well, you can think about just, just visualize this for a second. If you have, what,

plantar fasciitis, she said in her right foot, is that what she said? And then knee arthritis. Right. So you have that going from the, and you're doing a standing overhead press. The driving forces into the ground on your right side can play to your left side

is going to be different. That's going to ping pong its way all the way up the kinetic chain in your body. And that will absolutely change the way that bar moves above your head. Whether you can see it visually or not, it will change the way that does that. And so a tremendous value in running like a program like symmetry where you do full, you know, literal work on upper and lower.

I don't think that you, I mean, we recommend that to anybody anyways. Regardless if you had these, for someone like this, it would be something that I would force them to do as a client. We recommend to everybody, regardless of plantar fasciitis or arthritis in their knee, that you should run around of symmetry every single year, and it will benefit you. So, I mean, why not? 100%. Look, if you like the show, come find us on Instagram.

It's Mind Pump Media. We'll see you there. 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,

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