Mind Pump: Raw Fitness Truth - 530: Growing Legs with Spin Bikes, Fitness Fad Failures, Objective Training & MORE

Episode Date: June 16, 2017

In this episode of Quah, sponsored by Big Top Beard Company (bigtopbeardcompany.com, code "mindpump" for 33% off), Sal, Adam & Justin answer Pump Head questions about fitness fads and trends today that they will be shaking their head at in 10-20 years, learning to be more objective about yourself and your training, their thoughts on spin bike at a high resistance alongside squats to help grow legs and the Pros and cons of going into management and a big box gym as opposed to staying busy as a personal trainer. Get our newest program, Kettlebells 4 Aesthetics (KB4A), which provides full expert workout programming to sculpt and shape your body using kettlebells. Only $7 at www.mindpumpmedia.com! Get MAPS Prime, MAPS Anywhere, MAPS Anabolic, MAPS Performance, MAPS Aesthetic, the Butt Builder Blueprint, the Sexy Athlete Mod AND KB4A (The MAPS Super Bundle) packaged together at a substantial DISCOUNT at www.mindpumpmedia.com. Make EVERY workout better with our newest program, MAPS Prime, the only pre-workout you need… it is now available at mindpumpmedia.com Have Sal, Adam & Justin personally train you via video instruction on our YouTube channel, Mind Pump TV. Be sure to Subscribe for updates. Please subscribe, rate and review this show! Each week our favorite reviewers are announced on the show and sent Mind Pump T-shirts! Have questions for Mind Pump? Each Monday on Instagram (@mindpumpradio) look for the QUAH post and input your question there. (Sal, Adam & Justin will answer as many questions as they can)

If you want to pump your body and expand your mind, there's only one place to go. MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, with your hosts. Salda Stefano, Adam Schaefer, and Justin Andrews. In this episode of Mind Pump, we actually give a little review on our friend Ben Greenfield's Nature By Bar. I actually wasn't even planned, but I just had eaten one and was talking about it. And it was delicious. We're talking about Adam's journey with his training.

He's on a new journey. Find out what it's all about. We talk about priming. We talk about priming. And why priming is the biggest game changer. We talk about my training and justice training. And we talk about the importance of rounded backlifting. And then we get into some interesting questions.

About 22 minutes later. We talk about what fitness fads and trends are happening today. the importance of rounded back lifting. And then we get into some interesting questions. About 22 minutes later. We talk about what fitness fads and trends are happening today that we think people are gonna be laughing at in 10 to 20 years. We talk about how to be more objective about yourself and your training. You know how sometimes you work out

and you overdo it or underdo it because it's difficult to be objective in terms of, you know, what to do with your training for how your body's responding. We're gonna talk, we talk about that in that particular question. We also answer the question on whether or not using a spin bike at high resistance with squats

will make your legs grow faster. And finally, the pros and cons of going into management of a big box gym instead of remaining a personal trainer, which one is better. Find out in this episode. Also, don't forget this month we have our summer starter pack. We actually put this together because we have a lot of new listeners coming from some of the interviews we've done on the podcast. And what we did is we put everything you would need to get started on a fitness journey in one package. That includes maps and a ball like our foundational workout program.

Maps Prime, which has a self-assessment tool, helps you correct imbalances and teaches you how to prime your workouts. We also put a nutritional component in there, the nutritional guide and the fasting guide. And then we give you access to our forum so that we can help you and our community can help you along the way. You find all of this at minepupmedia.com. That box of bars that Ben sent over. They're all gone, right?

Who ate them all? I ate like three of them. Yeah, they ate quite a few. Did you eat, you've had some? Yeah, I've had quite a few. How about you, Doug? Yeah, I've had a couple. So, they're pretty good.

They suit my taste, actually. They're actually not bad at all. They taste pretty good. They suit my taste, actually. They're actually not bad at all. They taste pretty good. And the macro breakdown is, so an entire bar is 200 calories, 210 calories, 13 grams of fat, 10 grams of protein, 19 grams of carbs. I guess Ben said that's the best kind of profile total for energy or whatever,

for the kind of stuff that he likes to do. It's not bad at all. I actually think it's really good. And the ingredients are legit. The thing that, here's, I mean, I'm not a huge bar guy, you know, I never be bars. I'm definitely a bar guy. And what I don't like about like quest bars and bars, they taste so good and the sugar

in them and stuff is what makes you want more of them and more of them and more of them. What I find with this bar is it's very satisfying. It's healthy. So if you think it's going to taste better than a cookies and cream, cookies and cream, you know, fucking or cookie dough, Clesson bar, you're not going to get that. It doesn't taste fake. If that's for sure.

No, yeah. If you're a health conscious person, you like healthy food. You want to put healthy fuel in your body. That's like one of the best bars you can can for health purposes, I think it's amazing. Well, it's got, you know, hydrolyzed gelatin protein in there, pea protein isolate, there's no dairy, there's no, so I can eat it, that's what I like about.

But here's a deal. When I really respect somebody and they say try something, then even though, like I said, I'm not a bar guy, but you know Ben's Ben knows a shit I mean we've said this before so I tried it and it's not bad at all and We should now that I'm talking about it. We should have some kind of an affiliate code, right? We do we do have one We do yeah, yeah, he said a simple one. Yeah. Yeah, he said a soap in fact He said mine pump up with that was the deal. You don't remember me strong arm in him. He said that He said because I was a yeah, here's a deal, bro. I remember that we're homies. We're friends

So you better hook up the discount for Mind pump better than anybody else I don't want to be like just like everybody else like because you got the homie hook up here If you're a mind pump person you get 15% I know all his other affiliates are 10% really? Mm-hmm. So give them two years to develop it The bar is talking about it. Yeah, I guess they're selling pretty well. He was telling us sweet how well they were doing So what's the what's the code mine bump? That's it. Perfect. I tell you dude. You get oh, yeah Of course you guys didn't work out. Yeah, it's too early. What do you mean? I'm I finished just yeah

Just oh yeah, you've been doing morning workouts too, huh? Yeah, man. What are your workouts looking like right now? Are you still doing the intense? Yeah, I'm doing like mainly two intensive moves and then I'm still incorporating a lot of my unconventional training just because I wanna make sure I keep that into the routines. So I'll do more, you know, macebell swings and Indian clubs

and make it sure to keep that rotation in the mix. So let me ask you this, when you're doing your mace bell swings and Indian clubs and make it sure to keep that rotation in the mix. So let me ask you this, when you're doing your mace swings and clubs, it's part of your workout because when I've done them, it's part of my warmup. Right. But you're doing a mace party workout. I do. What do you do time-on, or do you count rotations?

I go based off of feel for the most part. Really? Yeah, so right before I fatigue completely, or like my form diminishes, I just set them down. So, and I, and I'll do them almost like a super set right now, I'll do them between doing a compound lift. So I was just dead lifting this morning. Oh, wow, that's more.

Yeah, and so I do that. I do that to keep that rotation in that fluid mobilizing my shoulder joint. So you do like mace, swing, swing, swing until you kind of start to feel fatigue. Yeah, and then I rest. Then you go, oh, you don't, then I'll go back. So, well, what I mean is I'll do that, you know, in conjunction with the deadlift. So, will you do that and then go straight to deadlift or rest and then go deadlift and then repeat that?

Uh, well, if I'm super sad, I'll go straight to deadlift or rest, and then go deadlift and then repeat that. Uh, well, if I'm super sad, I'll go straight to deadlift. I, that's a, I've never even thought of that. That's actually sounds, I did the reverse. That actually sounds good. I've done the opposite too. So I typically deadlift or squat, a heavy, a heavy barbell movement,

and then right afterwards, I'll go do the mace. And just, and I'm not really trying to go to fatigue or anything that I just, just for those exact same reasons is I'm just trying to keep that rotation in there because when we're doing all these sagittal plane breaks and everything in the front here. So that's a lot of what I was doing this last. I'm not doing it as much, but I'm still,

these are some of the things, and this is a good point that bringing this up is, a lot of people are asking me what's going on with my training and stuff while I'm going. Yeah, what's going on with that? I'm glad you brought that up because you are looking different. I'm not going to lie, dude. You look like you're building a little bit. Thank you.

And a good way, too. Well, I'm actually right on the exact same way. I haven't moved your compositions for sure, too. Yeah. Oh, yeah. So that's the goal. So I'm trying to show people that you can do that, right? Like I'm trying to not go through this big massive bulk or massive, or crazy shred cut

is I have plenty of body fat to lose and I have plenty of room to grow. So I'm, you know, trying to slowly build and slowly cut body fat at the same time. Now I just started, literally yesterday, my mini cut. So I'm on a mini cut right now. How long is, what do you mean, mini? Well, I'm asking you because I know there now. How long is, what do you mean, mini? Well, I'm asking you, because I know there's listeners who are like, what do you mean by mini? Does that mean a small deficit,

or does that mean a short period of time, or both? Short period of time. And both, actually. So the mini cut will be somewhere between two and three weeks. And the reason why I say somewhere between is is I typically go off of how I feel. So if I'm trying to keep this as honest and real as possible on this journey, I know it makes more sense for me guys to sell you guys something and I'm like, oh, this is the

formula. Do this. Like I will, I'm going to stay in a cut until I feel like it's a good time for me to transition out. That will be somewhere within. I know I'll stay in it for at least a week. It's rare that I come out of it in a week unless I see myself dropping just way too fast. And I won't stay in it longer than three weeks.

So it'll be somewhere between one and three weeks, more likely fall right around two weeks, and then I'll transition out of it. And when I do my mini cut, I'm looking for only about a 250 to a 500 calorie deficit. And that will be created either through my nutrition or increased volume and movement. And the goal is to lose fat but not lose any muscle.

That's why it's mini. Yes. And that's why too, I'm not pushing really hard. I'm not trying to, I could reduce by a thousand calories and watch myself shred out faster, but I don't want to do that. Like I want to just create enough of a deficit that it forces my body to lean out a bit, and I also are still kind of building at the same time too. Now, what about your training? Is it more structured? Like, you're doing more

maps aesthetic type training? So focus session. It is, but if I'm completely honest with everybody, I have maps aesthetic is the foundation of what I'm doing right now, but there is definitely a flavor of maps green and prime involved now, but there is definitely a flavor of maps green and prime involved there. So prime is essential. Sex athlete. You're doing the sexy athlete combo almost. Yeah, it's kind of, but I, you know, again,

to be completely honest, I'm not following any of our protocol to a T, I am kind of implementing all of those tools. Well, of course. Which is where you know your body. Yeah, and this is what I think, you know, this is what we always recommend to people because I know we've had I know people said this before like Oh the boys don't even follow their own program Well at one point we all did like I think that's I think it's important that everybody follows some sort of a structure at first

Because that creates a lot of a certain level of awareness There's no program design that's going to be perfect for your body the goal is we have to evolve and we've always told people When you enroll in one of our programs, follow it to a T first, do the full, however long it is, then go through it again, and then start to learn your body and modify so you get better with it. And I think the only way you can learn is to be on some sort of a structured regimen, just like I believe, that if our goal is always to the ultimate goal is intuitive and to do eating, in order to get there, there has to be some sort of structure and tracking at one point to truly get all the way there. Otherwise, it's

not objective otherwise. Yeah, otherwise you're bullshitting yourself. You're you're guesstimating that that whole time so you can't and that's why when you don't veer off too far either. So you know, like with the skeletal structure of it looks like. And so now you can modify, but keep it within, you know, the same frame of it still. Well, and you have true, you have true measurables now, right? So now you can, if you're really, truly following something structured, you can say, hey, wow,

when I'm in phase three, every time I see to get in a phase three, my body just responds really well. It's crazy. My body just really likes that adaptation, right? So, you know, you'll, and some people will be like, whoa, when I'm in phase one, my body just responds really well. It's crazy. My body just really likes that adaptation, right? So, you know, you'll, and some people will be like, whoa, when I'm in phase one, my body just responds. And so everyone's gonna be a little bit different. And so, you know, when you start to pick up on things like that, you realize like, okay, well, maybe I'm gonna spend maybe a week longer in this phase. And maybe I'm gonna cut this face shorter, but I'm gonna, or maybe I'm gonna run this one more time

than I would run the other phase, whatever. Point is that you follow a structure first and then you can start to have fun and play with it. This is also how I keep things fun for myself too. If I was always following the same program over and over and over, Jesus Christ, I would fucking, I would be annoying, right? I get tired of that. This part of what we do and we love to do is experiment.

So part of what I'm doing right now is experimenting with a couple things. One of them is this, maps aesthetic is the foundation foundation. So, you know, I have focused things or certain muscles. I'm trying to kind of develop and bring up. Meanwhile, my main main goal, though, above even bringing up muscle groups, which would normally be the main focus if I was competing. The main focus for me is keeping mobility through this process. So it is very important to me as I build this aesthetic physique.

Yeah, you don't wanna go back to where you were. Yeah, I don't wanna lose that, you know, because I'm so heavily focused on aesthetics. So I'm trying to be focused on it, but not losing the mobility along the way. So I've implemented some things. One of the, so here are a few things that I'm starting to do right now.

And I'm trying to do my best to share this. Hopefully, if you follow me on Instagram and my InstaStory, you're piecing this together. By the way, it's a lot of work for me to do that. So I hope to God fucking people appreciate it because it's one thing to be somebody who tracks and logs and follows everything. It's another thing to do that

and to make sure that I snap it, share it with everybody to every single day. It's a major commitment for me to do this. So I really hope and I do appreciate when people give me feedback that it is helping you through your journey, which I have got a ton of. So I appreciate those that have reached out. So during this process, every week I will make sure, and you guys saw last week I was doing the the stone, you know, the sandbags. I'll pick like a movement like that that just normally would not find

its way into my programming because it just doesn't really have a place. I'm not competing for a strong man, but it's such a great functional movement, you know, that requires me to have to be able to get all the way down in a really deep squad and a rounded back type of pulling up. So it's totally a great functional movement, like the one I just posted a day before yesterday with reverse lunge to a balance with a barbell. So totally not a normal movement that I would incorporate into my routine, but because I'm trying to do things that are going to promote good movement, you because I'm trying to do things that are going to promote good movement, I'm going to you're going to start to see me incorporate these type of movements

sporadically and intermittently into the programming. It's not the staple. It's not the foundation It's not like map screen is a lot of that right where I'll all intermittently drop Exercises that we would have in map screen into my Maps Black to help keep that functionality in my body and that good mobility. Plus, you know, it is, to me, a priority now, right now, always to do my prime stuff and my fortifications, sessions above all other things. That's such a game changer. Priming properly was for me the biggest game changer for me in the last few years. Easily. Easily. Yeah, you you've been logging that, especially I know it's the prime movements that you kind of highlight and you showed which test you went through and then kind of

like show people like your process with that too, because that's such a valuable tool. I wish more people like took it seriously. It's a flight. It's their workout. It's a game changer. I had a message from someone who is using prime before their basketball games Sweet so what they'll do is they'll do the priming, you know like the 10-15 minute priming Yeah before their game and they're like dude, it's like usually it takes me Way more responsive. Yeah, they're like I hit I right away. I'm playing like I was put like I'm ready to go and I just feel

I feel connected to my movement. I feel like I have good agility. It was this whole long message. I didn't even say I should send it to you guys. Yeah, yeah. It's a game changer. Well, it's not only is it a game changer, but it's become such a priority for me. And it's what got me to where I am now

as far as my mobility that I've promised myself that even though I'm heavily focused on aesthetics right now, that if it comes down to me going to gym and, you know, something's gonna give, it won't be my priming, it won't be me working on all my movements to keep good mobility, what I will sacrifice is that, you know, extra set of chest or that extra set of shoulders

because that will become a priority. So in other words, I never miss that now. It's always starting all my routines. And if maybe I only had 30 minutes or maybe I just wasn't really feeling like a big hard one hour workout, I'll spend that the entire time just doing priming movements at least above anything else versus in the past, what I would do being the, you know, bodybuilder guy and who's always trying to shape its cold to body. above anything else versus in the past, what I would do being the body builder guy and who's always trying to shape and sculpt the body,

it was like sometimes I'd hit the gym and I knew I had to hit the gym, I needed to put the work and I needed to get the volume. And so I would go there and it's like, I don't really have time to warm the body up, I don't really have time to work on my 99. I don't really have that time right now. I'm just gonna go over and hit some chest press real quick

and do some shoulder shit and try some shit and then get out. Like where I won't do that right now. I've told myself that, if it comes down to something like that, well, if I go to the gym with that mentality, then it will be okay, we'll get in there, do your 90, 90, do your froggers, do your legs swings, do your thoracic mobility stuff, and your shoulder mobility, do that stuff,

and then get out, because that was what we agreed, or what I've made a pact to myself, is I'm gonna keep doing it. I love it, yeah, love it. So my training's changed a lot recently also. out because that was what we agreed, Eura, what I've made a pact to myself is I'm gonna keep during this process. Yeah, love it. So my training's changed a lot recently also. I've started incorporating, I hate calling them circuits because it's not really like a big circuit,

but I'm pairing exercises together in odd ways. So like last week what I did was, one of my workouts was I did, I picked a weight that I could do five reps with the deadlift width. That was kind of easy, so I put three 15 in the bar. For me, I could probably hit, if I really wanted to go for it, I could probably hit, you know, I don't know, 15 reps with three 15.

So five reps isn't that hard, but I would go five reps there, then I'd go to dips, then I'd go to pull-ups, and then I'd rest. So it was like, it was like a heavy exercise with some lighter ones, and then I'd rest a little bit, or the other day what I did was I did a heavy double with squats, so I did a heavy double squats to like a heavy overhead press to a light cable row. So I'm doing these kind of odd combinations,

and then what I've done since this weekend, because I tend to move and do some kind of exercise every day, is I've only done body weight movements this entire weekend. There's a park across a kind of across the way from where I live and they have like parallel bars and they have like monkey bars and which you can do too. That'd be awesome for you to go through. Like you know, just all, you know, calisthenic or like bodyweight movements for a while just to like experience that for a couple of months.

Well, so that's what I've done the past three days. And so like today, this morning's workout, because I'm not able to work out anywhere else because right now my kids are in summer camp and it starts late, so it's kind of painless. So what I did was I walked, it's probably a quarter mile from where I live to the park, which isn't far at all except I was carrying a 50 pound kettlebell and doesn't sound like much at all

But when you're carrying a 50 pound kettlebell for a quarter mile. Yeah You feel things working and so that that was the beginning of my workout was to walk with that in one hand and switch off And I was feeling all these different muscles activating and fatiguing up in my back, like up in my ribs and then in my core and I could feel my hip firing and then my hands were getting a little tired, so that was kind of cool. So I walked all the way over there with that.

Then I did one set of walking lunges all the way across the black top. So it was like this super long distance. It took me like, I don't know, 10 minutes of walking lunges with a 50 pound kettlebell, which a lot more difficult than it sounds. I'm looking, I can do that. No, it was pretty hard. Then I got on the bars and did a bunch of dips and pull-ups and suspended push-ups and body rows and I walked across the parallel bars and did a monkey bar type of stuff and remarkably great workout. So I'm gonna be doing more of that kind of stuff,

just kind of improve my, because I have, you know, I never do those movements in my workouts. I'll do chin ups and dips, but I never really just do body weight movements. So, feels good. I'm feeling, yeah, I'm gonna start doing it more. Yeah, besides the dead list too,

like so with squats, like I'll do my heavy loaded squats and then in combination with that, I'll do like some caustic squats, or I'll do something like that where, you know, it's a little more challenging functionally, you know, trying to really get depth in like, so I guess I'm really trying to preserve, you know, that type of mobility and movement. And same thing with like bench press, then I'll kind'll come in and then I'll do some rotations with Indian clubs with that to make sure that I'm functioning on that capacity as well. Well, we had a good discussion. I mean, I think it was Friday when Adam, you were telling

us about lifting the 200 pound sandbag off the ground and putting it up on a platform, which is kind of like the atlas stone, right? But they make them into these training bags now. And you were talking about how sore your back was, and we had this great discussion, and I think it- Rounded back lifting. Rounded back lifting. And I'm not talking about rounded back,

like your lumbar spine is super rounded to where you're at end of range of motion. I'm talking about rounded and you're up or back. You're like bare hugging. Yeah, to where your scapula is spread because you're hugging something, and then you're like bare hugging. Yeah to where your scapula is spread because you're hugging something And then you're having to lift it and because when we deadlift We're always in this kind of tight upper back position, which is proper form that we never really strengthen those muscles in their spread out position

and That's why you got so sore that is a very important part of training. It's like a zircher squats or so Yeah, it transitions way better to like going and grabbing and really, yeah, heavy, awkward object. I mean, it's not a lot of times where you got a nice even bar that's in front of you. And you arrested on your shoulder, right? What is that ever happened, right?

I don't know if I'm ever in that posture. Normally, you're picking up a couch, right? Like, and you're in that rounded back position to lift a couch up or carry something big. Heavy bag, you know, duffel bags. So it is a great, right? Like, and you're in that rounded back position to lift a couch up or carry something big like that. I'll be back, you know, double back or something. So it is a great, you know, and shame on me, I should have known better. But of course, this, and, you know, we, here we go.

This is a good, I'm glad you brought this up because this is another example of, if I was programming correctly, if I was really being mindful of the best approach at this, I would have not done a 200 pound sandbag the very first time I decided to do a movement like this. I hadn't done zurcher squats in a very long time. I hadn't picked up a stone like that.

Probably picking up a 100 pound stone probably would have been a better, if I was trying to maximize my results without getting over sore and to where it would hinder my workouts following that, it would have been wiser for me to just do a hundred pounds. Now, the reason why I didn't was my buddy who just recently posted that, he put a challenge out there and was telling me that probably less than ten people in this entire gym could even lift that up and do that one time. And he's like, you know, the record is like two minutes and 55 seconds, 10 times. And so of course, I have to try and see where that was at.

So that is a good example of times where even we do not do what's best for my body. That is not, that would not be. I got lighter. Yeah, I should have, I should have trained with a 50 to a hundred pound sandbag for, you know, a couple times and then moved my way up to 100, then 150. But what ended up happening was my bicep.

And it was actually, my back was sore, which felt great. It felt like a good sore. But I actually felt almost like a strain in my biceps, which I should have known better because I was in this extended position. When was the last time I held 200 pounds and extended position? Cause I don't curl 200 pounds when I curl, right?

So I'm not not my biceps Aren't even used to that and I didn't even that I knew my back was gonna get sore from that But it was more my arms that was really what hindered my workouts going forward because they felt strained to where I was like It hurt to do I will say this though, man It's like I'll not I mean every single time I've ever Done any type of strenuous, you know, normal activity like moving, you know, you got to move like furniture and shit out of a house or whatever.

And I go do this and my dad will come help. I'm, and I'm like, I lift weights, man, I do that for a living, right? I'm pretty strong. I can live with my dad kicks my ass and he doesn't work out because he's always lifting shit. He's always moving things. That was his job for you know most of his life So when we move a couch or a fridge like He can like balance it and grip it and his fingers don't hurt and you know Meanwhile, I've got gloves on because I'm a pussy like like it's like it's it's it's good to do that kind of shit

Man, it's nice to be able to like yeah, man go out in real world and do shit that you know like Requires some strength. It's not a part of me a part of heavy objects like I highly suggest you do that exactly yeah that's why I lift logs and shit bring the bird dog step right up all you bearded man and all you bearded ladies this prize brought to you by big top beard company who's all natural beard oil products not only make your beard smell amazing, but feel amazing too. Their organic essential oil blends

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MindPom for a 33% off and check it. MN2AK, what fitness fads and trends today do you think you will be shaking your head at in 10 to 20 years? Oh yeah, what ones haven't we addressed? So I'll tell you around. 10 to 20 years Well, I if you guys don't have you can start

I see go ahead started off so comes the mind right there's probably quite a few actually I so I called this like emerging trends right now there going into yeah I called this early on a mind pump film believe me go listen back to some of our early episodes, but I called this um and that is that we put protein into everything. Protein water, protein cookies, protein, fuck. And anything with protein makes everything better according to the marketers. And this is because the fitness industry

has done a very effective job at demonizing everything but protein. And protein, in fact, is the magic macro nutrient. And so they throw everything. And I'll tell you this much right now, excessive intake of protein over long periods of time is not good for you. I'm not saying people are doing this,

but at some point we're gonna laugh when we look back and see protein gummy bears. And we're like, well, that's kind of stupid. So that's one of them. And here's a couple more that I already see happening right now. And it's happening literally right now. The gut health trend, and I call it a trend because it's very important, and taking care you've got is very, very important, but now the fitness muscle building industry has

gotten their hands on it. And you're going to see supplements that are geared around gut health, that are probiotic based or whatever, that are for fat loss or for muscle building. So it's like, you know, this special probiotic formula that's for fat loss and they're going to sell it and it's going to have the same kind of labeling as a pre-workout. And it's going to be all ridiculous. And the third thing is ketones and ketogenic dieting. And again, you're seeing it right now.

Supplement companies are already coming out with their- There's got to be an easier way to get to ketosis. Yeah, they're protein powder with exogenous ketones added to it and ketones this and ketones that and again, it's magic and it helps with everything and there's some truth to some of it but like everything the industry takes it and just turns it into shit and I think those are the things we're going to laugh I think we're going to look back and be like,

wow, we put probiotics in everything. Like that's not really necessary. And we put protein in everything. And just throwing ketones in everything doesn't necessarily make it. I definitely agree with the ketogen. I already see it happening right now. And again, I felt like we called that one,

we first introduced it to our audience and said, hey, all the great benefits was right away. You saw like this huge flux of people doing it to the point where people are like, oh, I don't feel good on it. What is, what should I do? It's like, we'll stop doing it. You know, like, so I think that it's become, it's got a lot of great benefits, especially since I think we're,

we're carb heavy and carb addicted as a whole. So I think that something the opposite of that is really good for us, but I think that it's just like anything else will go to an extreme and you're gonna see and we're gonna be kind of shaking our heads. Like, you know, this is just ridiculous. People drinking coconut oil and fucking living off

of just avocado like that. You know, I think that's going to, that trend will end and I think we'll kind of shake our heads a little bit. I also think, you know, I think that's going to, that trend will end. And I think we'll kind of shake our heads a little bit. I also think, you know, I'm going to go away for nutrition and like some of the gym trends I see. So one of them being the weight belt thing, I think that that is a, a needs to end the walking around. And this is just fresh in my mind because literally yesterday I was at the gym

and watching a, a dad train his son And they were on they were doing lateral raises on at the machine and he had his weight belt on him thinking myself like what are you son You got to protect your back. Yeah, right so I Thunder belt. I think that I think we're gonna we're we know enough now about that I think that we think that's kind of silly. I think the elevation mass will be another one that we kind of just kind of shake our head at unless you're just like some extreme athlete where that actually makes sense where you would be doing that. I think a lot of these, the people that you see in there using that, that will go and

it will be funny when we look back at that. Like, oh, Murrell silly, that was used to like suffocate yourself while you trained to try and get a competitive edge. Like, how silly was that right so I think we'll kind of laugh at ourselves about that one. I think the squeam one has to be blows my mind that's still happening right now. I thought mind pumped did a good job of making fun of it. I feel like it's reversing a little bit. No it's not. Are you sure? Yeah I'm sure of it. Oh really? Yeah, it's just it's reversing from maybe where you're look standing, but in the men's physique world and women's bikini, it's just as just as live and well as it's always been. So it's not going anywhere. So I think that

is another one that we will shake our heads and laugh about. And I don't know, get back to me on it. I'm sure there's more. I think so this may be totally wrong. You know, like I'm open to that, but the way that things are evolving, if I'm gonna predict like 20 years from now, or even like 10, I see a lot more gyms, I see barbells being like dinosaur for a lot of gyms.

Oh, whoa. Yeah. I see people moving away from that a lot. And of course, I'm coming from the performance and I'm from athletics. And I see a lot less emphasis on barbells and more on this functional training again to where, you know, a lot of people are sort of going against, you know, balanced loading and they're more about, you

know, lateral loading and, you know, body weight and explosive moves. So this is my caution because I feel like, you know, like at some point it's, people are going to sort of go against it whereas it's such a staple thing to me that I don't feel like I want to caution not to do that and to stick with, you know, that is being the foundation because I can see like all these different programs coming out and they're all just like all that like the movement is crazy right the movement has gotten a lot crazier and the bar like we've gone away from like the the barbell training that got the strength established to then you know take with you into the sports so there's a lot of crawling and there's a lot of like monkey movements and you know this like you know movement coach is a new term that's out there. And you see like your Conor McGregor's of the world and all these things kind of highlighting this new

thought process of like movement is everything and movement and movement. But I caution because I see it getting to the extreme in 10, 20 years where we we're gonna forget about how important it is to establish that, you know, strength, that raw strength. I'm gonna touch one that's gonna, that probably might, might anger a few of our friends, but before I get into that one, I'll, I'm gonna point one out that I think is hilarious. Cupping, cupping where you go, and I've done cupping many times, it's where you go to an acupuncturist and they put that something you do with your buddy Yeah, exactly. I mean where they put the suction cups on your back and and then you get the massive hikis up and down

We just talking to you about this and I was then Ben had cupping the up and down his back Remember here, so So here's why it's hilarious to me first of all cupping's been around forever So I'm not here to debate whether or not it does something or not But what is funny to me is when you have some kind of a you have an athlete or a First of all, cupping's been around forever. So I'm not here to debate whether or not it does something or not. But what is funny to me is when you have some kind of, you have an athlete or a celebrity who takes his shirt off, it becomes like this advertising.

It's like, if you go get acupuncture, nobody knows the next day. But if you have cupping, you've got a row of hikis all over your back. Gifine hilarious. So now you're an Olympic swimmer or something and everyone's talking about it. And next you know, everybody wants to do it,

because Michael Phelps has very visible. Right, it's like free advertising. And here's why I think it's funny, because cupping is, in my opinion, one of the things that may give you some benefit, but it's not gonna be anywhere near the benefit of just proper nutrition and training. And I've already seen this where I see these people who don't know it exercise each city

and the hikis all of themselves. And then I asked them, hey, you know, it looks like you went to cupping. And I'm thinking maybe they're doing it for anxiety or a part of the document. Oh no, it helps with my performance. It makes me stronger. It helps me feel. Oh, if you're going to go there, you have to go with grass and then too you have to oh I feel the same thing about that's what's happening right now in the men's Physique and bodybuilding world is some pro bodybuilder and again, it's all about the markings Right. Yes, how much freaking and ruin your skin and this is why I find it hilarious is that it's going of course There is some science to support the benefits of it

There is to deep tissue massage and fascia release you I mean there's of course there is some sciences support the benefits of it. There is to deep tissue massage and fascia release. I mean, there's, of course there is, and they're, and they're all very close related, by the way. So the difference between someone doing L, Della and fascia release, somebody foam rolling, getting a sports massage massage and, or doing like, very similar, very similar. So if you look at the studies and the, the improvement that it's made and what exactly it's doing to the tissue and the body, very, very similar. Very very similar. So if you look at the studies and the improvement that it's made and what exactly it's doing to the tissue and the body

Very very similar. It's not like they're grossly different. They've all been around for and what I think is funny about it is It's now turned into like being a martyr again, which always ends up happening in this industry where people take it to the extreme And now it's like these battle wounds like who can show who can go get it done and look more fucked up from it, which is just hilarious to me. Like why do you want all these rashes and hikis all over your body and your splitting hairs on how much it's really truly important? Well, when you talk about body work, because I know some exceptional body work specialists, exceptional, and I've worked with a lot of them. And what they'll tell you is a good, deep massage is going to hurt a little bit, but it shouldn't be so painful that you're getting and I've worked with a lot of them. And what they'll tell you is a good deep massage

is gonna hurt a little bit, but it shouldn't be so painful that you're getting bruising or you're fricking crying. That's the equivalent of me saying, it's over intensity. It's like training over exactly. It's like what you're doing is you're creating this kind of response in the body

where it's trying to protect itself. And if you're trying to loosen the body up, you're doing the opposite of it, of loosening the body up by hurting someone, by doing something so intensely that it's so painful, but again, it becomes a badge of honor. Here's the one that I think might piss a few people off. And some people might even be surprised that I'm going to say, talk about this, but we're in the midst of a revolution in public opinion on psychoactive substances. I like the channel here. I'll start with marijuana. Okay, marijuana wasn't that long ago where the majority of Americans believed it should not be legal for medicinal use and

definitely should not be legalized for recreational use. It's gonna be the next wonder drug. All of a sudden, you know, over the course of 10 years, very short, very fast movement. That happened. But now, more Americans support it for medicinal use and for recreational use, which is nothing wrong with that. I fully, fully support that. I think the war on drugs has caused way more harm than good. However, I am now seeing people on the pro side who literally Literally will tell you there are zero negatives to marijuana. There are zero. No, it's good for everybody It solves every problem. It's a miracle cure. Yes. I've gotten messages from women who are pregnant who are telling me Hey, you know, I like to you to, is it okay if I smoke marijuana

while I'm pregnant? Because I know it's relatively safe, and it's like, what are you doing? Like, first of all, no, not a good idea. Is it safer than other things, maybe, but you are putting cannabinoids in the brain. It will influence or affect your body's own cannabinoid receptor production, excuse me,

endocannabinoid production, and you will influence your developing fetuses brain because that could tell the brain to make more or less cannabinoid receptors. That's just, I mean, that's just black and white. We also have studies that show that it affects the developing brain in adolescents, and if they smoke a lot of weed They probably may affect their IQ later on If you smoke it it's does lead to more frequency of infections of the lungs because you aren't handling smoke and

It can call it can trigger psychosis. It can't make people anxious It can cause more stress and a lot of people can you abuse it? You definitely can't but no There's people are like marijuana can't do nothing wrong or whatever. And that's just not true. Everything's got its purpose. I'm really glad you said this because I think all of us, we talk highly of marijuana. We all smoke marijuana. So I think it's important that people understand that

there is a side of that we have balance. I am by no means going out and telling people like, oh, you should take it because it's the answer for all, oh, you have achive, oh, smoke this. Oh, you have a keep oh smoke this oh you that is oh smoke this No, it's just it's an option for some people and for some people it's a better option and it is non toxic So it's better than certain things but it's not this panacea and We are also seeing this revolution and other psychoactive substances

Especially the psychedelic ones. Yes. You're hearing people talk about ayahuasca, LSD, salosybin, as if they are the answer to humanity's problems. I've actually heard people tell me this, like if everybody just did mushrooms, there'd be world peace, everybody would get along, nobody would kill each other. It's not that easy.

And there's adverse effects. There's people, I know, personal people who thought all this stuff, they weren't ready for the first experience or they never experienced it before. They were in a bad setting, whatever the case may be. And they actually got post-traumatic stress from doing the psychedelics, because it scared them so much.

And that's a revolution that's happening right now. It's like right now. You can see just like some people just have such a profound, you know, experience through it, that it's just really hard to see the other side of it, you know? It's just like highlights things that they didn't even know were there. And a lot of times like, I don't know, and that's why I caution, because it's, I mean, there's a lot of work we have to do all the time and accountability-wise and self-reflection and being aware of your own habits

and all these kinds of things. Like constantly having to figure stuff like that out, how to get in tune with myself. Like that takes work. That takes a lot of work to work on yourself. And so, just caution yourself or check yourself if you need a substance to provide that for you. Well, I just, I think, again, the message right now that I'm hearing some people say is that it's like, it's all good. That there is no negative, no potential negative, that everybody should do it and that's not

true of anything. I can't think of a single thing that that's true for. I think it's, it could be a tool. I don't have tons of experience with it with myself. I'm just based off of science, but you again, well, I have nothing wrong with it. Here's a thing, you know, here's a big one, like if you're an advocate for the legalization, or at least the decriminalization, of some of these psychoactive substances,

you're doing the movement a massive fucking disservice by pretending like it's all, you know, rainbows and frickin' fluffy clouds, you are, because here's what happens, here's what's happening when marijuana, because that's been around, that is everyone's gonna push the limits on every. Not only the push the limits,

but you see some of these dispensaries selling fucking gummy bears, or a bag of gummy bears has 100 milligrams of THC, and it's gummy bears, like kids, you leave that on the table. You eat that, yeah. It's a fucking, if I put a bag of gummy bears on the table, and I'm an idiot parent, and my kids see it, and my kids eat it, there's a fucking, if I put a bag of gummy bears on the table and I'm an idiot parent and

my kids see it and my kids eat it, there's going to be a report of an adverse effect and next you know people are going to call for the government to hammer down on it again. I mean, you can look at the names of marijuana. Look at the strains. It's a bunch of fucking stoners that don't consider that naming something fruity pebbles is going to delegitimize it as potential medicine, which it is, it totally is. So I see, I think 20 years from now,

we're gonna look back at this era, and we're gonna giggle and be like, oh my God, look at them, they thought, they were saying how, everything was, it was all like, awesome. I like that, I like that call, and people are gonna have to wait, they're gonna have to wait quite some time for that,

because we're on the verge of it rising right now. Oh, big time, yeah. And we were. That may be the 20 year one. And it's, and I know the question was for fitness, but it is the fitness and wellness industry that's pushing for all of us. No, no, no, it's, it is.

It's the fitness, wellness, meditation, mindfulness, people that are advocating it. And, you know, and I think again, like the cannabis thing, also again, all of us are very pro everything. Like we, I believe that everybody and anybody should have the choice to do and try whatever the fuck they want as long as they don't harm somebody else. Like if you, if that's your journey, that's your journey. But what I don't like is how much things become cult-like. And I don't care what we're talking about, whether it be a substance or a brand or a thing or an ideology or a modality of training, like, you know, people get so fucking cult like about something.

It's like, awesome, I'm so glad that you tried this and you had this amazing eye opening experience for you. Like, it was for you, you know, that was for you, good for you. And I have noticed this is really popular amongst people who did not grow up around any sort of like religion or spirituality or anything like that. It's got the same pull. It is. It's the same.

You know, and I grew up around all that stuff. So I've seen the like slain in the spirit and people like speaking in tongues and like, just I've seen a lot of crazy stuff or what you would think is crazy as a kid growing up. That actually was snake handling. It became very normal in my life and so people talking and sharing these spiritual stories and awakenings and things that they had processed and God speaking to them. It's very similar when I listen to some of these people talk about their experience through psychedelics and I'm not here to say that either one of them are wrong. It's

just that I think those the same people need to learn to objectively pull themselves out of it and look at it and think like, oh, well, maybe that's just my experience because I was able then to tap into something I was never able to tap into before. And it's not the end all, be all for everybody else. No, and the way I look at it is this, if something has enough power to profoundly change you in the positive, it also has the same ability to profoundly change you

in the negative, and we can use religion again. Religion has done some amazing things for some people but it's also been wielded to do some horrible things. That's a good point. Psychedelics, same fucking thing. People don't know this but Charles Manson used psychedelics heavily with his cult and brainwashed the fuck out of him to do crazy shit.

The CIA is investigated heavily and dead their studies on how to use it for brainwash. It's got positives It can have some big time negative so I see that I see again 10 20 30 years from now We're gonna look back and laugh like oh my god look at all those podcasters talking about how yeah how all these Lucienery how they were so awesome. They were gonna save the world Quick interruption by our sponsors you guys lots of people been asking us how they can support the mine pump mafia family Our first one is our chimera coffee that we love you guys go to chimera coffee.com

That's chimera with a K for 10% off. Don't forget mine pump at the checkout We also have our big top beard company dot com for 33% off also mine pump at the checkout check out also brain FM We talk so much about this for sleep and meditation. It's brain. FM for 20% off Also mind pump at the checkout you guys we also talk a lot about books on here all the time We're using that audible you guys can get a free trial 30 day trial plus one free audio book if you go to Audi audible trial dot com forward slash mind pump and then last we get lots of people asking about Ben Greenfield CBD Supplement. So we hit him up to hook you guys up. You go to get nature blend.com forward slash mine pump for that discount Next question is from microwave refrigerator

It's the good combo. How do you learn to be more objective about yourself and your training? so About for me, let's see, if you like it, it feels good, check yourself. I'd say, I always, if there's something I really love, or drawn to, and I find myself, man, I love this, oh man, I'm good at this. Right, yeah.

Those are always the ones to check yourself on, because it's a good point, because it's usually the opposite right right You know like oh, I don't like this Ah, right. I'm gonna do this over here and so if if you're truly being objective about your training Then the things you like the most that you you swear the by the most that gives you the best gains It works the best for you. You probably need to look deeper into and it works the best for you, you probably need to look deeper into. And that's just a little bit of, you know, from experience and of training thousands

of people that, you know, we typically gravitate towards the things that we are good at. And we avoid the shit that we're not good at. And normally what is best for your training and what is best for your body are the things that we avoid the most. And the stuff that we need the least is the stuff that we probably already do the most. And you know, here's a thing with being objective and why it's so difficult is because we're very subjective about pretty much everything. It's all based on, you know, and we trick ourselves into thinking that we're being objective. And it is.

It's a very, very powerful, you know, deceit that we do with ourselves when it comes to our training. I still do it. Something that I started doing about 10 years ago that was one of those moments where I was like, wow, this really made a big difference. Was I started writing down my workouts as I was doing them. The amount of reps I did, the lift I did, the sets, how much weight I lifted, and I gave

myself a score in my workout. One meant it was bad, a two meant it was okay, and a three meant it was awesome. And I only used three numbers because at first I was doing like a scale of one to ten But that was so like what's the seven compared to it eight or whatever? So it was just three, you know, was it shitty? Was it okay? Or was it awesome that I feel great and what I realized is I would go into my workouts and I would go in thinking like I'm gonna fucking live so heavy today I'm gonna crush the bar or whatever then I'd look back on my workout and they'd be like, oh wait a minute.

Last workout, I did that. I had a great workout and I did hit a new PR and I crushed it. That's the last thing I should do, this workout, this workout, I should go lighter and do more reps and when I started doing this, I started noticing that my tendency was to lean towards kind of like that phase one style of training and

mountain symbolic that heavy type stuff. And I would move away from the other stuff. But as objective as I thought I was, I didn't realize it until I started writing this all down. I also realized that I would do certain exercises like crazy and I wasn't doing other exercises. You just don't realize this until at least I didn't until I started writing them down. Yeah. And then I was able to kind of flip through the pages

and be like, well, I haven't done a lateral lunge in four weeks. You know what I'm saying? That's something I should be doing every single week or I haven't done anything for a single-legged movement for two months. You know, and the only way I would really know that objectively is by going through this book

and seeing exactly what I did. Yeah, it's tough, because I mean, obviously that, like I look at it a lot, like how we look at nutrition too, with like our levels of awareness. So that's something that, you know, you wanna make sure that you know what you're doing and you have a schedule and you have,

like you know what your workouts look out, whether it's writing it down or, you know, premeditating writing it down before you go to do your workout, whatever it is, and you stick with a plan. And then you get to a point where, okay, now I'm going to be a little more experimental, and I'm going to get into other things I'm probably not good at. I'm going to venture out in that direction. But then you have to kind of realize what your goal goal is or you know, if your goal is just like

to be awesome at movement in general and just be kind of like it, I have a general goal of that, you know, maybe I will keep in that direction where I'm constantly like adding new variables into my workout. I'm trying to experience these things. Or do you want to be really good at something? That looks totally different. If you want to be really good at something, you have to incorporate those movements constantly Right, so it's like you know you can make the argument that um, you know I'm benefiting my body by doing all these different things But now I mean, oh my meter for being awesome at that thing is is slightly going down. So

I look at you know the workouts is like going down. So I look at, you know, the workouts is like, what's the why? I just got a great that's exactly what I just couldn't have in rough and say. So there you go. You're why, right? The same thing you said earlier was, you know, finding your why with the business thing, I think the same thing applies here for training is truly understanding your why because a lot of times, you know, people are doing exercise and I think this is also where I think people get really defensive like when we point out things like, oh, that's a stupid exercise of times, you know, people are doing exercise. And I think this is also where I think people get really defensive like when we point out these like, oh, that's a stupid exercise. And you know, it comes off bad because we say it,

and it's probably not the best approach right to say an exercise is stupid because there's a place for everything, right? There's, but there's a place for stupid exercises. There is, there really is. And I was talking about the whole thing with Johnny with doing these isolation movements. It's, no, it's, when you're, when you're,

why doesn't match it is when I think it's stupid. So if, and it was like I brought up just recently, how, you know, a lot of these girls that are trying to build their butt, you see them doing the, you know, assisted pull up machine and they're doing the step downs, right, to build their butt. It's like, well, if that's your why

and that's your priority, like you would be way better off doing probably sumo deadlifts, which I've never seen those girls do before. It's like, I've seen you do the, the gravitron, fucking push down with one leg a million times, but I've never seen you go do a sumo deadlift or conventional deadlift or even a deep four-range squat, which I'll tell you right now, if you want to ask, like those things are going to build you and ask more than that thing ever will. So understanding your why and the same thing goes for guys that are training, like I see a lot of guys that are

trying to, you know, get big and buff and then they're doing things that are counterproductive to that, like what we brought up with the cardio thing the other day, like, you know, if your goal is to build and get bigger, like doing cardio two to three times a day is not advantageous for that. So you got to understand if that's your what. Now, if you're somebody who wants to be good at doing cardio

and efficient and maybe you're training for a Spartan race or maybe, you know, that then yeah, then that makes a lot of sense. Or, you know, same thing like when you see a lot of these guys doing these high intensity training, like a cross-fitter. Like, if your goal is to be a cross-fitter and you want to go to the cross-fit games, or you wanna be able to hang with a cross-fitter,

or maybe that translates into like, Spartan type racing, and so that's your mentality. Well, that makes sense, but if you're going to cross-fit to build a more aesthetic physique, then that's not the ideal way to do it. Like, you know, it's the wrong direction. It is, it's not, it's silly thinking.

Now, does that happen for some people? Of course, there's genetic anomalies that have great physiques that do anything and they're gonna look a certain way. So, you're gonna find those in all sports, but to train like an athlete, but then want a bikini body or men's physique body, they're counterproductive and vice versa for the two of them.

Like, your body builder does not have any business being inside a men's physique, I mean, a CrossFit facility trying to get ready for his show that just doesn't make sense, you know. So understanding your wise, a great way to be objective to your training. Our next question is from Mark Wolves. What are your thoughts on spin bike at high resistance

alongside squat to help grow legs? So let me tell you why this one's very interesting, because we talk about cardio and how that's counterproductive, but he's talking about spin bike at high intensity. And I will, I will tell you this much, bike sprints, very effective at building size in the legs. Oh, in fact, some of the most muscular legs you'll ever find on anyone aside from people who lift weight. Like ice skating.

Yes. The biggest most muscular legs you'll ever find on anybody aside from people who lift weights are anybody who sprints, whether it be sprinting on land, like running or sprinting on a bike or even ice skating sprinting. Those people have incredible, incredible muscle mass on the legs. So high intensity sprinting with squats, I believe is a very effective way to build muscle.

And I'm gonna challenge that a little bit though. Bring it. Well, this is how I'm going to challenge that is, can somebody, absolutely, can somebody do it? And there's great examples of sprinters, like we're saying right now. If you compare most your elite level sprinters versus a marathon runner, look at their quads. I mean, incredible. That explosive training, you're, I think there, there's something to be said about that. Now, that being said, most of those guys were genetically built to become sprinters

and they are going to adapt and build that way and they're going to respond incredibly to that. And training for training cardio high intensity is not going to affect them the same. Now somebody who their primary goal is to build their legs. So this is a similar goal to mine right now. Like I'm wanting to build my legs right now. I would not go do sprints on a bike. Now, does that mean that it, I think it's bad?

Does that mean that I couldn't benefit from doing that every once in a while? No, I'm not saying that. I'm saying that a barbell lunge, if I'm going to do squats with a barbell lunge instead of sprints, I think I'm going to build more muscle than I would doing sprints. I think if you go, if you caution the damage factor because of like you're mentioning these people, like it's the frequency principle, right? That makes that so effective for like your sprinters

and your you know, your ice skaters and people like that because like he's talking about a technique. So if I was to like interrupt my normal process and then do that technique, I could over train really quickly. I think you would be surprised. I think you would be shocked at how much muscle, here's, and this is interesting. You're gonna think of this though too.

Think of, okay, the person who's asking this, are you asking this because you're taking a spin class and then you're cranking it up to full. That's different. When I say sprints, they're short. And that's it. And you're done. They're short and you treat them like weights. And. Yeah, sure. And you're done. They're short. And you're done.

They're short and hard, and you treat them like weights. And 30 seconds. It's like doing vertical jump. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, right before. But here's what's interesting about the legs. The legs in my experience, and this is complete anecdote both on myself and on my clients. The legs more than any other part of the body

seem to build muscle pretty well with higher reps. Like, if I do sets of 20 with barbell squats, that just makes logical sense because we're on them all day long. It does. It does make logical sense, but I don't know if there's any science to support this necessarily. But I mean, I'll tell you what, I love training in the one to four rep range on barbell squats. Do you know what happens when I take a lightweight and do squats for 15 reps? My legs blow up.

My legs blow up. If I wanna make my legs grow, I'll do sets of that shit and they just fucking blow up. Yeah, but I see I'm gonna counter that with, that was, I had the same exact experience because I was a very high rep guy and when I started squatting one to three reps with you guys, my legs exploded in comparison.

So part of the reason why you get that experience is because if you ever Gourd a Gravitator. It's different from what you typically gravitate. So this technique in that in that terms. Yes. Yes. Because yeah, if you're not doing that. And I think that's where we can all agree is if you don't, if you don't Typically take a spin class and you decide to intermittently put that in there for your legs to respond absolutely. I think it's a great technique to enter. I think a spin class is too long, but that's what I think he's doing. So I think he's asking this question because he takes a spin class and because he probably likes to take the spin class and he's thinking, Hey, if I crank the spin bike up, can I get the benefits to help grow my legs? And here's the problem with that is if you're doing spin

for 30 minutes plus, the signal you're actually sending your body more than for your legs to grow is, we don't, exactly, endurance, we don't need very much muscle because we need to ride on this bike longer. So understand that when these guys say that, that's the only way that I'm gonna agree with him on this. Is it, because he was talking about raising his resistance, but we're talking about sprints.

So sprints is a very short period of time that, you know, we're delegating to doing these sprints and then rest. Yeah, not rest is very much a part of that. The way I would do it is I would do, if you were gonna incorporate this as I would do squats, and then I'd finish off my workout with some short uphill, hard sprints on a bike, where you're like, I mean, you're pushing it apart. I push it apart.

I would do like a little bit. But you need resistant sprints. You need resistance and you need strength and speed and you're all of it and that's what's gonna, what's gonna be the most important. And what we're talking about right here is like, four rounds of 15 to 30 seconds tops. Yeah, exactly.

That's it. Four rounds of 15 to 30 seconds tops. Yeah, exactly. That's it. Four rounds of 15 to 30 second tops, not sitting in a class setting for 30 minutes to an hour and cranking it up every once in a while because the louder signal that you're sitting to your body is cardio, not build muscle for your legs. And so that's the reason why I took the counter

with these guys is I'm afraid that that's more towards this question and I don't want you to mistake that with this idea that sprinting on a bike It's better than doing some barbell lunges to make your legs grow because there are a lot of their ways to make your legs grow Way more efficiently than taking a spinning class Especially if you're in a class setting that you're in there for like I said 30 minutes. You'll get good stamina That's for sure. Yeah, All right, our next question is from Brendan Mulhall. Pros and cons of going into management at a big box gym as opposed to staying busy

as a personal training. Trainer. That's a great question. Goals, do you want to be a corporate man? Exactly. So I did this. I was a personal trainer. And four months after being a personal trainer,

I was a fitness manager, where I was still allowed to actually train clients as well. So I trained clients while managing a fitness department. And I did that for like eight months or nine months. Then I moved into weekend manager and then a system manager very quickly and then I became a general manager. So this was over the course of maybe a couple of years.

And I loved managing as much as I loved training people. If not more, and I'll tell you why. My, and this is just me personally, my personal passion is people. I love working with people and I love working with people in terms of growth. And so I can do that as a love working with people and I love working with people in terms of growth. And so I can do that as a trainer working with clients, but I can also do that with a staff. And so I had a great time managing health clubs with a big staff, although I didn't train people

while I was in the as a general manager. I did coach and train my sales staff, my front desk, my training staff, and how they would train their clients. And I enjoyed it tremendously. But as a manager, you're much more, you're not connected to clients, one-on-one. So you don't get that benefit. So if you just love personal training people and you want to connect to your clients, that way it's not going to happen as a general manager. You also can make a lot of money as a general manager, but the way I've seen certain comp plans with some gyms, you can also make a lot of money as a personal trainer. When I opened my wellness facility, when I owned a wellness facility,

I used to charge rent to personal trainers, so they'd come in, they pay me rent, and then they'd train their clients. And I had several trainers making well into the six figures, and all they would do is train their clients out of my facility. I mean, they had a great opportunity, they just pay me rent, train their clients,

and they made as much money if not more than a lot of general managers of Big Box gyms, and they didn't have to manage nearly as much. That's the other thing too. Like, you manage a Big Box gym, and then maybe today it's a little different, but back when I was doing it, it was a grind, and it was pressure, lots of pressure to perform.

You had meetings daily and weekly with your supervisors, and it was all about your numbers and what you could produce, and if you were good, and you did produce well, well, they were gonna take your staff from you and put them in other gyms. And so you were constantly building a staff on top of it. So I could see how being a manager can be very stressful for some people. I had friends who were trainers and then decided to get into management and then went back

to being trainers. They hated it because it was just so different from being a personal trainer. Yeah, I think, I think an easy way to kind of figure this out is, are you more drawn to leadership, are you more drawn to helping others, like personal training people? And I think that's, because the managing a big box,

so I was a trainer first for about a year and a half, and then I was a fitness manager for nine years. During the nine years, I actually turned down the GM position multiple times and flirted with the idea strictly just because I wanted to make more money, and there was an opportunity to make a little bit more money on the GM side than there was on the fitness side.

But I loved the fitness side so much, and I already felt like I was managing the sales team anyways, so I felt like I wasn't really going to get much more and they weren't willing to pay me as much as I wanted, so I stayed on the fitness manager side my entire career for a big box gym. But I will say that there are certain things that I found out really early that I was tired of training when I left it. I was really burnt out of the 8 to 10 clients every single day.

I loved it building it and once I proved to myself that I could build a sustainable business, I could be successful, I could make good money as a personal trainer, I became over it really quick. I didn't feel like if I was going to be really, really good and make a lot personal trainer, I became over it really quick. I didn't feel like, you know, if I was going to be really, really good and make a lot of money, I didn't actually think I was a great trainer because what it takes to be, to make a lot of money as a personal trainer, you know, even if you have a really high dollar amount that you charge, you've got to train quite a few people. And the more people you train, your value as a

trainer starts to go down. I don't care how fucking good you are. It's just a fact. The more people you have to manage and handle, the less opportunity you have to service each one of those people individually. So your service starts to suffer. And so, I saw that and I knew I wanted more. I wanted to make more money. So for me, the obvious transition was to go into management.

And then when I got into management, I felt quickly in love with developing other leaders. And that is where I have a huge passion. So, and there is the cons of it is, that's where all the politics are, for sure. Like, if you don't like politics, you don't like having to deal. I mean, some books that come to mind right away, winning with words, verbal judo, 360 leader, these are some books that come to mind right away winning with words verbal judo 360-liter These are all books that I I love to read winning Jack Welch like those were all Monumental books that I remember going through and reading that I was drawn to because I love I got off on that I enjoyed that okay I need to get something done in my facility. And I know that if I just ask my boss, can I do this?

He's gonna say no. So how do I get this done? So I actually enjoyed that process. I enjoyed that struggle of, how do I get to run my facility, the way I want to run it, even though I work for another company. And all those books, I just name,

were all great books that help you guys are so good at Instagram trolling. That's a good way. Yeah. You know how much trouble I got into? Yeah, well it's because I was the opposite, right? I mean, I don't like politics. I don't like drama.

I don't like, I'm a pretty straight shooter and going through management. And I like leading people. So that's something I did enjoy. And I enjoyed when people had questions for me and I could help them with their business and guide them in a direction that would benefit them and help them help clients.

That's a passion of mine for sure. But I just, I was gonna have to play the games and I was gonna have to sort of abide by certain standards and rules and different things I didn't believe in. And so I was just like, I'm out of here. And I took off and realized I could do it all myself and make my own rules for myself. And do business with people.

I wanted to do business with people and dump people while I didn't wanna do business with. I wanted to do business with people and dump people I didn't want to do business with and you know I can set my own standards and that excited me but it really does take a lot of A lot more work and I think the corporate the corporate way and if you can kind of deal with you know The games the politics of it. You know, there's some there's definitely things that you know You can you can influence people and you can influence them for good. And you could go through this setting, this corporate setting where you're going to see a lot

more physical people come in and out of the door. And so you're going to have a lot more influence on those types of people. If you can handle it, like for me, I was just so happy to do my own thing and realize that that was my passion. So I guess whichever direction, like you feel like is a good fit for you. I don't think I could be a manager. I don't know if I could be a big box manager nowadays.

I'd have to be given, so we know why, because if I were to manage a big box gym, let's say something happened, my pump exploded, whatever, and I'm like, oh fuck, okay, I'm gonna go manage a gym. The owner of that gym would have to give me complete autonomy and latitude, because the way that they run them now,

like it's tough to answer. You're not allowed to do, well, you're not, back then, see, when I was doing it back then, because the company was still privately owned, because I was was this like they called me a phenom right? I'm this young kid and I could so I basically got away with a lot of shit and I mean I would have car dealerships park Cars in front of my gyms with balloons for close out. I'd have my staff dress up as super heroes or as disco people or whatever I'd have You know food trucks show up and give people food. I'd have DJ spinning loud music in the gyms.

I would do a bunch of shit that I would get in trouble for that now you get fired over. Like now if you manage a gym and you decide, hey I'm gonna have Una Moss come and serve food. If you don't get clearance from HR or whatever, like you're in big trouble, I gotta ask anybody, I did it all. And now I would hate that.

I'd hate to be like, okay, I've got this promotion going on. Here's the things I wanna do. I just like, no, let me do what I'm gonna fucking do. I'll show you the numbers. And leave me alone. And I don't know if big box gym would be able to do that with someone like me. Yeah, I mean, we're a lot of like, and I mean, you left the company way long before I did,

and all my buddies thought it was crazy how I lasted as long as I did in there for those exact reasons. But I also, like anything else, I took something that I knew was a negative or drove me crazy and I flipped it as a positive, and I found it as a challenge, right? I took it on as a challenge, okay, how do I get the that I knew was a negative or drove me crazy and I flipped it as a positive. And I found it as a challenge, right? I took it on as a challenge.

I go, okay, how do I get the things I want to get done? How do I run this motherfucker the way I want to run it? At the same time, I have to abide by all these bullshit rules that they keep giving me. And so I always found creative way. I don't give you an example what I mean by that. I'll never forget when we started doing these fit budgets where they would say, okay, you have 20 trainers and you are allotted a total of 40 hours in

the month that they have that you can pay them minimum wage to go on the floor and then that they could go and pick up new clients. And something that I wanted to do, because I think I've talked about this in an episode before, I remember having this moment where I saw these stats on the difference as far as productivity and longevity in the company that a trainer made if he was here, she was a level three, meaning they had three national certs or more and trained over 5,000 hours,

how much more money they made for the company and how long they stayed. And when I saw that I thought, why the fuck are we not spending more time educating these guys and getting them to that focusing, getting them to that level because of how much we get as a company in return. And I felt like it was so crazy that nobody in the company was like putting this together, but yet we had all the stats to show it. And I remember thinking, okay, well, I'm going to ask my boss, if I can actually pay my trainers to learn, and then I thought to myself, there's no way he's going to do that.

I was like, I can't do that. So when I- Even though it makes total sense, you know, what you're going to get back- Exactly, but because of corporate. And it paid people to go learn. Yeah, they're like, no way. So I got creative and those hours that I had allotted for them to go get new business, I actually organized training groups

where my trainers would be teaching each other certifications to get them to the next level. So they would hold these classes with each other. And I had two trainers at that time, both had kinesiology degrees and were already level. And then I had that 18 other trainers that weren't. And so these guys would hold these classes and they would start to level them up.

And then as new ones came on, those ones would now mentor the other. And I paid them to study and do this. And of course, they were so exciting. Because I'm like, hey, I'm gonna help you guys get paid more money. I'm also gonna pay you why you do it it so they were completely bought in on the idea And we just decided that we weren't going to tell anybody about it We were just going to do it and it was kind of like one of those like just you know ask for forgiveness instead of for permission

My god, that's my middle name and then once my trainers were all master trainers and we were you know crushing revenue Because it didn't take long after that that we were out producing everybody and we were crushing revenue, because it didn't take long after that that we were out producing everybody. No one was going to say anything to me. And later on, I- And the trainers get more money because they got more certs, like every level you will have.

Yeah, and so I got a kick out of thinking of creative things like that, that I knew later on when I shared the story of how I did it. Now lots of people later on emulated that, but I also know that it would have gotten the kibosh. There was a no way you can't do that. And until you run into, and this is what I hate about working for other people,

is that you get these egos that come in, and it's all great, right? Now, from my standpoint, if I own the company, and I see someone doing what Adam is doing, and he's killing it, and it's all great right now from a bit from a from my standpoint if I own the company And I see someone doing what like what Adam is doing and he's killing it and it's working You know what I'm gonna tell Adam to do more of it. I'm gonna tell him to do more of it I'm like it's fucking working good job, buddy. Here's a high five. Here's five great I'm gonna give you a bonus in fact you're take a couple days off because you're a badass But what happens sometimes is you get a manager that comes in who's got a massive ego and all they want to do is prove to everybody that they're in charge.

And I had a couple times with this. I had a district manager who came in who wrote me up literally because he wanted us to highlight a master appointment book. Like when there's spots that were open and he wanted us to color the whole fucking page with highlighter, which was as such as it took forever to color the whole thing. The color bled through the pages. It wasted highlighters. I'm like, look, trainers, just underline it with a highlighter

and don't worry about it. I got written up for some stupid shit like that. Like, and then one thing that I did was, I remember, I'll never forget, I was at a general manager meeting. And I used to, you know, at some point you get bored when you're doing it and you're doing it really well and you normally have, you know, and it just sounds cocky, but I didn't feel like I had competition in certain areas

So I found creative ways of Doing things and so I remember I was at this general manager meeting and there was this big meeting on how Gems weren't selling enough a peril like oh, we need to sell more retail our apparel numbers are slow or low Whatever like the top gem only did like eight grand or ten grand in a peril for the month And we need we can we think think our gems can do more or whatever. So in the, in this big meeting, I said, hey, I'll challenge all the general managers here to see you could sell the most apparel and everybody's like, okay, wait, wait, wait, so what I did was, is I created packages with apparel.

And I said, this is your starter package. When you sign up for this membership, you also get workout pants, shirt, workout gloves, and a lock for your locker. And I put it all together and I made my own presentation forms and this is where I sold it. And my gin did something like $40,000 in a peril, which at the time was mine like nobody even came close to that. And I did all these huge numbers and everybody was super excited until the powerless stupid ego manager management at the time found out that that's what I was doing. How did they find out?

Because I told them, it wasn't a secret. They're like, how are you doing this? I'm like, let me show you. It's really cool. No, you can't do it that way. That's not the way you're supposed to do it. And they basically said that I was breaking all these rules and that I was going to get in big trouble or whatever.

And it was ridiculous, it was absolutely ridiculous. So it was so dumb. Because it was, so that's the one thing that I like out of the box thinkers. So I think that those are all definite cons. I mean, I also think too that, you know, there's something to be said about developing leaders versus just helping clients.

Like you're at the next level of educating. And I think that educating the next level of minds that goes on, do they go on to go impact hundreds, potentially thousands of people, is very rewarding for me. And so I would, and I also used to think of myself as like an umbrella for them and all the shit that's out in Justin or Tom, like the company was going to be shitting on on them. And I was going to umbrella them and protect them that I would take all the shit that's out and Justin or Tom Baillie, the company was going to be shitting on them and I was going to unbrella them and protect them that I would take all the shit to help develop them and foster them into these great minds. So probably a lot of the reason why I've maintained great

relationships with almost anybody who's ever worked for me for longer than you know a year or whatever is I continue to mentor or spend time or always I'm there to help because I genuinely cared about my people and I think if you get off on that, you like that, you love to lead and you love developing other people, then maybe you can handle all the politics and the bullshit and the stuff that does suck as a lot of that stuff is true.

You can make as much if not more money just being a personal trainer. So if those are the things that drive you then absolutely stay in that direction because you can't get a worry about all of the bullshit. I'll tell you what, it's definitely school. There's no, you ain't gonna learn how to run a gym, whether you own one yourself or not,

you ain't gonna learn in any better way that I can think of than managing a big box gym. Well, it's a hundred percent the best way to learn. I had to get most of my business knowledge from that. that I mean because when I would get challenged with an idea I Wouldn't just accept it like oh, okay, you said no, I can't do that. I'd be like why well We why you need explain that you need to spend explain the business logic to me and break it down to me We were very fortunate okay as much as we joke around and talk shit like we were a part of 24-hour fitness during its fast, fast growth,

while it was still privately owned, and we worked under groups of people who implemented systems that now you see being standard in the big box gyms that nobody was doing. We learned how to read metrics for your gyms, and we read them every single day, and we learned how to turn certain knobs to produce certain numbers. We had training systems for the staff that we would do.

We mastered how to do a presentation and how to do an intake form. We mastered how to read members statistics statistics and all these other things. Like, it was, I was very, very fortunate to be a part of that particular period of time. I mean, when I started with 24-Fitness, it wasn't that short after they merged with Ray Wilson's family fitness and became 24-Fitness before those 24-Fare Nautilus. Yeah. And I mean, I learned so much about what I know through doing that, so I'd say that's a great place to learn if you want to ever own a gym. Go manage one first.

Oh, definitely. Definitely. 30 days of coaching is available, and it's free at mindpumpmedia.com. Also, if you ask us a question on our Instagram page, MindPump Media, underneath our Q&A meme or a claw meme, there's a decent chance we'll answer on one of these episodes, so that's where you got to do it. Also, each of us have Instagram pages.

Each one is unique and provides different value. You can find my page at MindPumpSoul. Adam is at MindPump Adam and Justin is at MindPump Justin. Thank you for listening to MindPump. 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 Superbumble at Mind Pump Media dot com. The RGB Superbumble includes maps on the ball, maps performance, and maps aesthetic.

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