Mind Pump: Raw Fitness Truth - 966: Importance of 1-Rep Max, Overcoming Fitness Setbacks, Optimizing Recovery Days & MORE

Episode Date: February 13, 2019

In this episode of Quah, sponsored by Organifi (organifi.com/mindpump, code "mindpump" for 20% off), Sal, Adam & Justin answer Pump Head questions about the importance of the 1 rep max for building muscle and strength, tips for optimizing recovery days, whether personal training will be covered by insurance and how overcome difficult setbacks in fitness. What are the guys doing for Valentine’s Day for their significant other? The importance of going all out or not. (5:11) The benefits of consuming liver meats and how Sal uses Butcher Box to sneak them into his kid's food. (16:41) Users beware: This crypto exchange can't repay the $190 million to customers because the CEO died with the only password. (20:32) How money is one of the greatest breakthroughs of mankind. The guys speculate on the future of the dollar. (26:25) Skinny Dipped is taking over!! (28:55) How part of being cool is blazing your own trail. Burning Man comes out against Instagram Influencers and Coachella-ification. (30:57) The exciting future of podcasting and cannabis. (35:37) #Quah question #1 – How important is knowing and improving your 1 rep max for building muscle and strength? (50:42) #Quah question #2 – Any tips for optimizing my recovery days? (59:48) #Quah question #3 – Do you ever think personal training will be covered by insurance? (1:04:13) #Quah question #4 – What was the most difficult setback in your personal fitness journey and what did you do to overcome it and bounce back? (1:11:16) People Mentioned: Amanda Bucci - BUSINESS MENTOR (@amandabucci)  Instagram Jordan Harbinger (@jordanharbinger)  Instagram Dr Gabrielle Lyon, DO (@drgabriellelyon)  Instagram Products Mentioned: February Promotion: MAPS Performance is ½ off!! **Code “GREEN50” at checkout** Butcher Box   **2 Free Filet Mignons, Bacon + $20 Off** Skinny Dipped Almonds  **Code “mindpump” for 20% off** Valentine's Day by the numbers: See how much money is spent on flowers, candy and cards This crypto exchange can't repay the $190 million to customers because the CEO died with the only password End the Fed – Book by Ron Paul Fed Up: An Insider's Take on why the Federal Reserve is Bad for America - Book by Danielle DiMartino Booth The Creature from Jekyll Island: A Second Look at the Federal Reserve - Book by G. Edward Griffin Bankruptcy of Our Nation - Book by Jerry Robinson Burning Man Comes Out Against Instagram Influencers and Coachella-ification Spotify buys Gimlet and Anchor in podcast push, earmarks $500M for more deals Sunday Strategist: Yes, Podcast Ads Are Working for MeUndies - Bloomberg The Four: The Hidden DNA of Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google - Book by Scott Galloway Mind Pump Free Resources

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. Salta Stefano, Adam Schaefer, and Justin Andrews. In this super exciting episode, it's so exciting. Look, for the first 45 minutes, we don't talk a lot about fitness, but we do have our fun introductory conversation. We start our favorite part of the conversation. By talking about Valentine's Day, what that's all about for us.

And Justin's butcher box Valentine's Day barbeque. He's given his wife a steak for Valentine's Day. That's a great gift. Yeah, great honey. I also talked about the liver meatballs. I like to make with the butcher box grass fed ground beef and I throw a little chicken liver in that. So my kids get to eat those organ meats.

Oh, sneaky. Send them a bit. We are sponsored by butcher box. If you go to butcherbox.com forward slash mind pump, this is what you're going to get. You're going to get two free filet mignon steaks, free bacon, and $20 off your first order. Mignon. That's a fat hookup. I said that good.

Didn't I like it? Then I mentioned the crypto exchange CEO who died and lost the password. Now, like $190 million is trapped in there. Oh, no! People aren't getting their money back. I lost the keys. Then we talked about fiat currencies.

What does that mean? We get a little conspiracy theorist in that part of this episode. And then Adam's suggestion reality. Adam suggested that in the future, people will be using chocolate covered skinny dip omens as currency. Awesome transition, by the way. Now the reality is, they are delicious omens with amazing

macro profiles. We are sponsored by skinny dipped. So if you go to skinnydipped.com, forward slash mind pump and enter the code mind pump, you will get 20% off. Then we talk about how burning man is coming out against influencers. Uh oh, it's getting too big and popular.

What do you do now? Yeah. And then Justin brings up how Spotify has acquired Gimlet Media and we talked about the future of podcasts. Podcasts, so hot right now, Sal. Then we get into the fitness questions. The first question was, how important is knowing and improving your one rep max?

This is the amount of weight you can lift for one rep. The most weight you can lift for one rep. Should you even train for that? Should you test for that if you're just the average person? Is there any validity into doing that? Find out in that part of this episode? Next question, this person struggles with taking days off from the gym.

They love the gym, they love working out. We tell people we gotta take off time sometimes to let your body recover. They think that sucks, what should they do instead? Yeah, you can't wear a shirt with no sleeves at work. That's it. Next question. Do we think that doctor's offices will ever include personal trainers and would do we ever

think personal training is going to be covered by insurance and of course we get into the discussion of whether or not personal training should be covered by insurance and the final question. We all get into the most difficult setbacks we've ever had in our personal fitness journeys. That part gets real touching and emotional. Sounds timey, me getting fat and Adam's hormones. That's a good sign. It's a good one. It's a good one up right there.

You got it right there. Also, I want to let everybody know that Maps Performance is 50% off this month and this month only. Now, maps performance was designed with the ancient athlete in mind. That's the avatar that we had when we created this program. Now, what's an ancient athlete? It's not an old athlete.

What I mean by ancient athlete is a sculpture, a Greek sculpture, a Greek god. When they did those sculptures, they were picturing their best performing warriors or their best performing Olympians. And what you have is a balanced body with definition and muscularity everywhere. Now, one body part is not overpowering another body part.

Maps performance was designed to create that look, but more importantly, create that type of movement. You get full spectrum athletic performance with maps, performance. You get strength, agility, power, and stamina in that program. Again, it's 50% off. Go to mapsfitinistproducts.com

and use the code green50, GRE and 50, no space for that discount. And on that site, you can get information about our other maps, programs. We have quite a few on there. Go check them out. Teacher time! And it's T-shirt time.

Oh, shit, it's my favorite time of the week. All right, we've got- And be T-shirt time otherwise. 20 reviews total between iTunes and Facebook. So a little light this week. The winners for iTunes are Pamskyies P. J. Dudley, 18, both of you are winners. For Facebook, we got Lori Brower, Trevice Andrews.

I think we're related. Cabrera, all of you are winners. Send in the name I just read to iTunes at mindputmedia.com. Send your shirt size, your shipping address, include your Instagram handle, and we'll get that shirt right out to you. So Valentine's Day is coming up. I know. What are you guys doing?

Making nervous. It always makes me a little nervous. I'm forgetting something. What's the history of Valentine's Day? Is it really? It's a homework holiday. That's what I'm saying. Is it really that?

Or is there like a history that... Oh, it's made up. Is it, I thought there's's on the say, is it really that? Or is there like a history that? It's made up. Is it, I thought there's like a St. Valentine, isn't there like a, is there like a Christian or Catholic? It is, isn't there? There's a lot of really no, none of the history, but. Was it an E.S. St. that blessed chocolate rabbits and gave it to children?

Yeah, I thought he was like a little cupid. Just shot him with things. Chocolate, chocolate hearts on that. Okay, here it is. Okay, here it is. See, knew it, I knew it. One legend contends that Valentine was a priest who served during the third century in Rome,

when Emperor Claudius II decided that single men made better soldiers and those with wives and families, he outlawed marriage for young men. When Valentine's actions were discovered, Claudius ordered that he be put to death. So I guess Valentine was like, hey, young dudes. He's like, we need love.

Yeah, you need to get married, don't listen to. Love is, we'll conquer all. That's crazy. So he actually, this guy actually was like, no, don't get married when you're young because I want you to fight harder and not try to survive. Now I'm curious to hear from you guys with your girls because some girls are different.

Like some girls are bigger on birthday, bigger on Christmas, bigger on Valentine's Day. Do you guys as girls lean towards one holiday more is like more important? Yeah, yeah. There's not as much weight on Valentine's. She kind of shares that same sentiment that it's like, you know, it's a bit of an artificial sort of made up

holiday to where like everybody has to like make reservations and do like go over and above and really like sort of wow, their girl with stuff. So she's pretty low key about thank God, but I still make an effort. So I'm like gonna be cooking for her and just do like, usually it's just flowers and then cooking for her. That's like my go to.

I read what you cook. So I just do, I stay in my lane, dude, and I do like usually it's just flowers and then cooking for her. That's like my go-to. What do you cook? So I just do, I stay in my lane dude and I do, I'll grill and I'll do steaks and I'll do veggies and potatoes. So it's like kind of like something I'm comfortable doing but I do it really well. You know? So yeah, and I mean I got a stock full of meat in the freezer. Oh you got your butcher box.. I come and butcher box, I'm cheating. I already have it there and it's accessible. So I got two, you know, two steaks and then actually we have this, is it the wild and lesskin salmon? Did you see?

Yeah, no, did you see that it's like a, is that an all-card or is it like a bonus? Like when you get the box, you can get that in addition to it. I think it's a bonus meat. It bonus meat. I, you have to select it, yeah. It's a Google bonus meat, you'll get that in addition to it. I think it's a bonus meat. It bonus meat. You have to select it to, yeah, to get it. Google bonus meat, you'll see what I'm talking about. No, it's a monthly special that they have going on right now

that you can add to your normal order and it's called Serfen turf. And you get two pounds of wild elask in salmon plus two six ounce filet mignon's for 39 bucks. Well, that's it, she's. Yeah, I was gonna know that. I bought it ahead of time just by itself. So, yeah, that's rad. Yeah, that's a full-et mignon's for 39 bucks. Well that's it, she's. Damn, I was sure of knowing that. I bought it ahead of time just by itself. So yeah, that's rad.

Yeah, that's a filet mignons. The mignons. Yeah, Valentine's Day was a bigger deal when I was a kid. Like when it was a kid, it was so much pressure that you have to make a big deal about Valentine's Day, you know what I mean? Yeah, dude, I mean, how excited you get when like the hot chick gave you like a really personalized one. Did you get that?

You didn't get the generic will you be mine? But then you found out your friend got the same thing. Yeah. Have you ever seen the old, I guarantee you guys have these, I'm sure. Did you guys get the little basketball ones, like Michael Jordan? Yeah, yeah.

You know what's funny? I like Snoopy. I jump for you. Yeah, it's so tailored. It's generic. Actually, I'm curious because I know Taylor, Taylor, he loves to dress us up and shoot us now. That's like his new thing.

Yeah. So he, he wanted to like his little dolls. I actually think he's going to do photos like that. He, that the inspiration of the last shoot that we did was exactly that. He's like, do you remember these cards? Of course I remember. Yeah. You know, and the will be, so you guys have a, thinking back to all the Valentine's days that you've had, especially you Justin had been married forever.

Oh, wow. Yeah. Best ones, worst ones. Like, you have, have you had a home run before? Where was I, that was epic and then times that were the... For me, it's always, the best ones are always just like sex. Like, if I come home and that's what's gonna happen, you know what I'm saying? Of course.

Like, yeah. Other than that, like, it's, you know, it's all, I mean, I appreciate all the other stuff too. But, there's some of them where it's like. That's for you, selfish. I'm talking about what do you done for your girl? Oh, have you ever gone all out? Are you never, yeah, that was the best one. Yeah, same.

Yeah, give me the same. Yeah. No, no, I mean, you know what it is? It's funny, because it's one of those holidays where, because it's expected, I almost feel like it's not as special. You know what I mean, you know what it is? It's funny, because it's one of those holidays where, because it's expected, I almost feel like it's not a special. You know what I mean? Like, oh nice, you got me stuff on a day's list too.

Isn't every holiday that way though? Kind of. Yeah. But you know what, there's a little bit of urgency. So it's like, you know, just to like, try, like, I don't know, like wearing things or like lingerie, those types of things. Like, it comes back into the thought process of like, oh yeah, maybe I should like, I don't know, like wearing things or like lingerie, those types of things like it comes back into the thought process of like

Oh, yeah, maybe I should like, you know, try a little harder this day. I'm like, thanks. Would you Valentine? What do you wear? Do you put it in your mouth? Actually, I have one. Holy underwear. I told you guys about the whole cowboy thing, right? What? No. Okay, so we don't know. She went to Texas to found out she has four boys. Apparently. Apparently she found that out. Yeah, she went to a rodeo and it was like, oh wow, like, you know, and I'm just like,

you know what I'm gonna do, I'm gonna go get, I'm gonna go get like a hat, I'm gonna get like a vest, you know, I'm just gonna surprise her. Yeah, I actually did that on the Valentine's day. It rolled up like after that. So it's the whole thing. You actually showed up in a cowboy. Well, she had laundry on and so I was just like,

it was like, that's great. I'm gonna do something too. And it just blew her mind. Hold on a second, hold a second. I wanna know the whole ensemble. Yeah, you just got a glazy over this right now. I'm trying to go fast. I was at the D.

It's embarrassing. Yeah. Hat vest. I didn't have guns. I was like, looking for a little like, oh, you don't need guns. You'm trying to go fast. I was the de-battle. It's embarrassing. Yeah. Hat vest. I didn't have guns. I was like looking for a little like, oh, you don't need guns. You got a hat to vest. Oh, I got a gun.

How's the rest of this ensemble slinging, if you will? Or is that it? Was it just a hat vest? No, no, no, no, no. It little, like little, you know, booty shorts, things, you know, like, boxers. Yeah.

So you had a while out. Yeah. They're like the tight boxers. Bro, don't avoid this. Finish the outfit here please. Right, red, you know, like tight, you know out there like the tight boxers, bro. Don't avoid this finish the outfit here Please right red, you know like tight, you know the tight boxer, you know the ones that like you know really You know smother the package. Oh my god. Yeah, no spurs. Yeah, no spurs. I would have I would have rocked out if I had them Did you have boots or no boots? No, I didn't have so you had a hat a vest and red shorts and red red shorts

No, no socks. What, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, And then it was like, okay, I'm into this. I knew you'd be into this. Like she tried to deny the fact that like, that was a thing. So anyway, I was just, I was like, on top of that before even, you know, she knew about it. That's awesome. What about you Adam? No, I haven't dressed up like that.

You know, I'm trying to like rack my brain right now and what Katrina probably would like. I mean, I'm definitely a sport, so I definitely would do it. But I just don't think she's never expressed that. I see I've never she's never came back and been like, honey, I just went here and I didn't realize I have a thing for whatever. She doesn't tell me that or else I probably would. You know, I think last year was a year that I kind of went all out for her. That was a year that I- Is that when you put the Rose petals leading up to the-

Yeah, that's why I did- I think I just- This is how- this is my turmoil in memory. Don't smoke, we kids. I think that I did seven dozen for the seven years that we've been together. So she got seven dozen balloons, seven dozen- Wait, seven dozen balloons? Yeah. How many is that? A lot. That's almost a hundred balloons. Yeah. Yeah. So I, if remember, I filled the whole ceiling. How did you get them in the house?

I had to make trips to the play. It was a big ordeal to do it. That's what made it kind of cool, right? So I did, you know, seven, seven dozen roses, seven dozen balloons in the room that she came home to. And I don't think I got her again. I mean, fuck, that was a big enough gift as it was for all that shit. She's always she walks in, where's my present?

Yeah. I think that was probably the most like, where do we have to ask? Stravagant thing for Valentine's Day that I did. I typically am with you guys. I don't like Valentine's Day that much. I feel like it's a sexist holiday. What?

Yeah, totally sexist. It's totally geared towards women. Is that like guys gotta do all the- Well yeah, I mean every other hall, Christmas is even Steven here. Christmas, you give me gifts, I get you gifts. Well, that's for fair things. Your birthday is your birthday, my birthday is my birthday.

Dad, mother's day, father's day. It's because women- Valentine's Day for women. It's because women like to be wooed, you know what fair things. You're birthday is your birthday, my birthday is my birthday, dad, mother's day, father's day. It's because women. Valentine's day for women. It's because women like to be wooed, you know what I mean? That's a hard job. All I'm saying my reasons why I'm not a big fan of holiday. Okay, you don't have to sell me on line wide. Okay, I'm not, I don't not celebrate.

You're not a fairer to gift you a new maneuver. But is it, I mean, I mean, you give you seven dozen balloons? Of all, no, oh my gosh. So of all the holidays, which one would you say is the most sexist? That's probably it, right? Mother's Day Easter.

Mother's Day Easter. No, because you have a father's day. Yeah, but nobody cares about father's day. But it's a matter of it exists though, for that reason, to counter that, right? Valentine's Day, we don't have like a day, like Valentine's Day, that's kind of geared towards men. They call it Man in Times Day.

Man in Times Day. Yeah. So yeah, Super Bowl. We'd say, but I think it's a good time for tips for guys out there, right? So I think the move is that everybody in the office, if your girl works in office or works with other people, knows it's Valentine's Day.

And I think it's important for men to recognize that. And I don't care if you send a card, you send one damn rose. Something. You do something so she's not the only chick who didn't get shit in the office. That's, you don't need to be, you don't need to be the guy who gets seven dozen roses

and go over the top or do something ridiculous, but you don't wanna leave your girl hanging at work with all her coworkers, and she's the only one who doesn't get anything. So she, you need to make sure you come through it at the bare minimum with that. That's what I think for the sake of her not having to explain herself.

I wonder what the amount, the money spent on Valentine's Day, for it'd be good to look up, right? Be interested in see how much money is spent on cards and balloons and, you know, that kind of stuff. Probably a lot. My kids, I mean, a lot of pollution.

I took my kids to the store because they had to go buy little Valentine. They still do that with the kids where they give all cards to every schoolmate. I was going through and like writing them all for my youngest because now he's asked to do it for his class. And so he signs his name, though. He can write his name. And so I'm like, I was thinking, I was like, maybe he can do all of them himself.

No, I had to do like all of them because that would just take in like forever and ever. 18 billion dollars. Wow, that's an average of $136 per person. That means if you spend under that, you're kind of a puke. No, you know what that means? That means there's some people like you who spend $1,500 on balloons and rides like you.

You're like, shit, I thought my $80 gift was cool. And then there's about a $5 card. You know, this is funny. She's like this card. Kinda cool. I love you. Here you go. Anyway, speaking of Butcherbox, you reminded me.

So you know what what Jessica's been doing that I find absolutely brilliant. She'll take, because I've been trying to get my kids to eat organ meats. Do you know how impossible it is to get kids to eat organ meats? Well, yeah. I've never tried to feed a kid liver. You try and hide it in the cotton candy

like the dinner we had. Yeah, no, I didn't know. I thought that wasn't that smart. That was smart. That was way smart. Bro, you mean I ate it. But you know it's in there. You you bite like oh, I didn't know it's in there until you guys said something What do you mean? Yeah, when we got it? I didn't know you didn't hate stay in the middle No once I did once I did it yeah, but up into that point

I thought I got a little cotton candy on a stick Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, but with a surprise you don't tell your kids you just bite it. No, but here's a surprise We don't do that's that's oh my god. Yeah, that's more like a trick like your kids you just bite it. No, but here's the surprise. We don't, that's, oh my god. Yeah, that's more like a trick like your kid would bite into it. And be like, what the, and they never trust you again. No, what she does is we buy liver and we have the butcher grounded up and then we freeze it. And then when we want some, and we freeze it,

we freeze it into small servings. It's like little tiny, really small. Little added to your normal. That's it, small servings like an ounce. It is you cooked the. That's it. Small servings, like an ounce. It is. You cooked the meat. Wow, that's a really good idea. Like an ounce and you mix it and let's say six ounces or are you getting a liver from butcher box? No. Okay. So I'll buy it somewhere else. Yeah, I don't think they don't sell that, but but I do get the ground beef from butcher box. And so what we'll do is we'll mix like an ounce of it in like a pound or whatever. What a good idea. And it's all chopped so you can't taste it.

And so now my kids are getting an adequate amount of these organ meats and organ meats are very, very, very high. They're very high. They're so nutrient dense that you can overdo it. Like if you eat liver all the time, you can actually too much of the nutrients that are found in them.

And you know modern hunter gatherers when they kill an animal, the parts of the animal that are prized the most, the one that they'll all, the ordinance. In fact, if you, you'd like the heart is like the ultimate, right? Like the heart, the liver, the spleen, those are the ones that like the, like if you're the hunter that killed the animal, for example.

Which is obvious. So give that to you because you're the one that did that. Well, it's obvious because of back then when things were scarce, right? You would want the thing that was the most valuable nutrient- The funny thing is they didn't know that. Yeah, just intuitive. I think when you're eating a natural diet and you go through periods of not having food and you're not surrounded by processed palatable food that is, you know,

we've got fruit loops over here and I got pancakes over here and whatever, that you start to enjoy and crave these foods because your body wants the nutrient. Well, yeah, and it makes the most sense that those were probably the most satisfying. If you're in a state of quote unquote starving, more often than you are full and satiated, which is what we live in today,

it would make the most sense that the foods that are the most nutrient dense that fulfill those needs are the ones you actually truly crave. Well, like fat. Like crazy how much we've changed that. Yeah, and like fat, like think about it. An animal you think that the hunters are like carving off the fatty pieces?

No, they're freaking, they're fighting over the fatty pieces. They're cooking with it, yeah. Because it's so high in calories, which they need, they need the fat and they need the nutrients. And then speaking of the nutrients you find in livers, chicken livers are very high in cholesterol. And I've told you guys this before, I'll go through periods of training where I will bump my dietary cholesterol intake up. So I'll do this for anywhere between two to six weeks

at a time and I get a strength bump every single time and chicken livers a great way to do that. Of course, egg yolks is the other way that people like to do it. But it's definitely a strength booster and I would go as far as I say, it's the non-talked about anabolic that, I think we're gonna see in the next few years.

People come out and start to talk about a little more. It's an old school thing. Old school bodybuilders do it all the time. So anyway, did you guys see that article? I think it was a jacket that sent it to us about that crypto exchange. Did you guys see that? Oh, the Oh, and like a hundred and oh, 92 bajillion dollars. Yeah, he died. Okay. He died, but he,000,000. So he died. Okay, he died, but like. And he had the only password. Yeah, that's crazy.

What the fuck, though? So for you think about this, so for people who get their money. So crazy. This is what's hilarious about this. It's so bad to laugh about someone dying, but what's hilarious about it is, and what made crypto so amazing is,

you know, how secretive it is, and how safe it is. And it's so safe that one person could have the key to open all of it. And no one had no one thought far enough or this hadn't happened yet. Like, hey, what happens when the person who's a gay keeper guy? I just imagine one guy just like, okay, what was his dog's name? You know, they've been trying to hack it. They're trying to hack it.

They're trying to hack it. And it's like the most encrypted code ever. Of course it is. So it's, so it's a a it was a Canadian crypto exchange called Kradriga CX and it cannot repay most of its $100 and 90 million in client holdings the founder Gerald cotton died unexpectedly he was 30 years old and They have put it so it has so that's just that one crypto coin

like whatever service yeah it's like a what do they call it cold storage or whatever and they they've had experts trying crack it or whatever nothing wow yeah so you're so you're fucked because you wouldn't be aware yeah like buying into all these different versions right that's crazy to think that is that yeah I mean I think I'm in like five or six. And so, you know, I think God, I'm not heavily vested. Boy, and again, when I told people way back when I was doing, I looked at it like gambling money for me. They say money that I would normally gamble in a month

or what I was throwing it towards crypto. Maybe it'll be more valuable, you know, the scarcity. Okay. There's no more going to be for a very treasury. It's a very, it's a treasury. My in valuable, you know, the scarcity. Okay. There's no more going to be for you. For a very treasure. Yeah, it's a very, it's a hidden treasure. My in treasure, you know. Part of me wonders if there's like something else going on. Like if there's some conspiracy going on, you know what I'm saying?

So I killed him. Yeah, because he owned the only, first of all, he only only passed word, which is kind of strange. You would think they would have some kind of safeguards with that much money. It sounds like a very, unless he's the worst company CEO of all time, you would think they would be some safeguards.

It's interesting to think about, though, because I know the allure for crypto was that you could really narrow it down to only having one person sort of having to influence over that whole entity versus where it gets away from you is when you have all these vested interests behind it. And then- Well, no, actually the opposite was that crypto was decentralized

and that it was not controlled by a central bank. The problem is that this guy's not creating the currency. He just has an exchange that stores it. So like if you get Bitcoin, you need to be able to store it somewhere, like a wall. You know, a Bitcoin wallet, or whatever.

So it'd be like the coin base. It would be okay. So it's the equivalent of you having a bunch of gold bars and you giving them to a secure vault, a bank. And then they forget the code. And then they lose the code. And then you're coming to your bank and you're like,

hey, I'd like to get my money out that I literally deposited like six weeks ago and they're like, we can't get in there. You know what? Fucking, you know, Steve, which is the only one that has, look at the keys. Fucking Steve got hit by a bus

all the way to work yesterday and he's the only one with the keys. No, he's the only one with the code. Except it's not even a physical place that you can, you know what I mean, you can do anything about. So the actual creators of the, they don't know. The blockchain, they don't know still.

No. Okay, that's okay. No, nobody makes sense the way you explain it. No, nobody knows how they created, you know, who created these block, these, this technology or these currencies. Although there's a lot of conspiracy theories where people think like the CIA created it and pretended like it's a decentralized thing

so they could watch black market drug deals and shit like that, you know. Oh, really? Yeah, there's a whole bunch of conspiracy. Cause it is kind of weird. She don't know. Yeah, any possibility could be the answer, right? Well, weren't they able to narrow it down

to like, you know, the top 20 to 50 people on Musk could have been responsible for like, I think still though, there's no. Yeah, but I thought they were like, like the technology that's gone into crypto, I think is like so high level that there's only so many people that even have the intelligence to create it. I thought they narrowed it.

Dude, whoever controls the money, man, controls everything. It's almost like we worry so much about government policies and stuff, but you need to worry more about monetary policy and who controls that because that's fucking everything. Have you read Ron Paul's Fed up before? That's a good one. That's a really good. Or what about the creature projectile? I'll earn all that stuff.

I'm just getting knowledge about that. The creature from Jekyll Island is really good. Oh, that's the one that I think Mike was posting. Yeah. Matthews was posting. Yeah, so it talks all about the creation of the Federal Reserve. And at the time you had the biggest tycoons of business and these massive and these extremely wealthy bankers all secretly meeting on Jekyll Island.

Okay, so with fake names and stuff to come up with this legislation to create a Federal Reserve Bank, which is essentially it's a private bank that is the only bank that is allowed to create currency. And the government is not federal. And I like how they use that name. No, I know. It's like federal express. It's not really a federal entity. And the money itself is debt.

So this bank loans the money to the US to use. They didn't even give it to us. So every dollar you get is debt towards this bank. Yeah, all right. So anyway, when you read this book, it's really a fresh reason. So bankruptcy of our nation gets into that too So that's another good read what remember we had him on

Yeah, they they touch on it. It's called what you say it was called Tell the creature from Jack O'Lilats I think you want to pull that up dog just a double check, but I'm pretty sure that is correct Thank you dog. It is the one that Mike I saw Mike post Yeah, when you read this kind of shit. You're like whoa Because money, you know, I know there's a lot of evil and negative connotations attached to money, but money was one of the greatest breakthroughs

of mankind, because it allowed people to trade with each other even though they did not have things that they'd necessarily wanted to trade with each other. So, if you had chickens and I had spears, and I wanted chickens, but you didn't want to have spears, I couldn't trade with you had chickens and I had, you know, spears, and I wanted chickens, but you didn't want to have spears, I couldn't trade with you. I had nothing to give you. But now that we have money that represents value, I can trade with anybody, and it just exploded

plus you didn't want to lug heavy shit around with you everywhere and have the danger of getting robbed all the time. That was like a whole other thing. Yeah, that's true. Well, it all started with the goldsmiths, right? That used to write the receipts, right? You go to a goldsmith, you drop off your $100,000 worth of gold, and he would write you a little receipt,

and then you could go all around and you trade all these receipts. But hasn't, isn't it true that all Fiat money has eventually fails? In history, that's fucking scary. Yeah, Fiat currencies are currencies not backed by a solid commodity like gold, which were not which were not. A lot of people think a lot of people think we are we used to be people a lot of people

Don't understand that we are no longer backed by gold. No, no, it's just paper. It's backed by the US army You know what I mean by the military And and tied to you know oil sales sales they call it the petro dollar But it used to be gold used to be able to take a dollar, go to the bank, and trade it for gold. And they would actually give you gold. And little by little, they took that away until eventually they cut it off completely.

And it became illegal to have gold. You had to turn your gold in to the Federal Reserve. Oh, I didn't know that. Yeah, oh yeah, there was, a Doug could probably pull up the announcements that said it was illegal. He had to turn it in. That was it. No more gold line or gold window at the bank. Your money now is total fiat.

And since then, the dollar has lost something like 90% of its value. That's where a lot of the inflation comes from. Because in the past in order to print dollars, you needed to add the equal the amount of gold that we had. So you couldn't just print money. Now the Federal Reserve can print money whenever they want. Technically. So what do you think the futures? I mean, do you think it's in circulation? Do you think it's inevitable that the dollar will eventually at one point, maybe even our lifetime

be worth absolutely nothing? I think at some point, I think we're at trade chocolate almonds. They're all right. They'll seem very valuable to me. Speaking of chocolate, I think Skitty dips on the subject. Wow. Dude, they're everywhere. I am.

They're in every damn store. No, I'm so glad too that they're there. We need to make sure we tell them that because we send people to the to the page Yeah, but people don't they buy an awful guilt. I got them at CVS the other day with Courtney Target target Ralph's Fred Myers Where else and then much of obscure places Yeah, I know I've seen them in random like college campuses i've had people message me go my pump skinny dipped in the post which is great by the way

i do appreciate uh... with the tigga no no this is very solid one point to south to our audience and i think those that are doing it and then encourage those that don't uh... skinny diff is a great company that we work with and you know most companies that we do sponsorships with, they obviously measure the results and that's how they decide they're going to continue on with us. Some of the companies recognize that they're not just direct to consumer and that they are in big stores like Target and obviously a lot of you that listen, probably shop at Target and it's

more convenient for you just to grab a bag while you're there and put it on there. And now, my pump doesn't get any credit for that. But what they do see is they do see everybody when they post and they tag. And so because of that, you guys have been, we've been able to sustain that relationship with skinny dip, then we're with them for at least till the end of this year. Well, if you want 20% off though, if you go through our link, right. You get a little bit better deal.

But I think even at like target and some of those places, they put them on sale and like, I mean, it is a better deal to go through our link. Right, you get a little bit better deal, but I think even at like Target and some of those places, they put them on sale and like, I mean, it is a better deal to go through, but let's be honest, dude. I am, some people are like this. So I know there is some people that, hey, if you save a dollar, they'll fucking go, whatever, jump through whatever hoops to save a dollar.

I'm not like that. I'm a convenience guy. Like, if I'm in the line and even myself being sponsored by a cool, yeah, if I see it, I'm like, oh, I just ran out of the peanut butter ones. I want some, I'm gonna grab it. So, especially if you have a craving. Yeah, right.

At the moment, yeah, yeah. But anyway, I think they're as valuable as money. And I think that's how we're going to try. So again, speaking as money, speaking about money, what was that burning man article you were trying to tell me about? Oh, yeah, yeah. They had an issue with,

did it have to do with people buying stuff? That's an influencer. Okay, so what's happening is, and again, I'm proud of us for not jumping on the bandwagon. I mean, I really did want to go to Burning Man for a while there. And I don't know, this is all the rage. I've always been this kid.

I don't know about you guys, but I've been this kid since I was younger. If everybody is doing it, I don't want to do it anymore. Yeah, I've never done what's cool. Yeah. Well, part of my own cool, my own version of the cool. Part of being cool too, I think it's blazing your own trail. Yeah.

And being unique and being yourself, and I've just never been a follow the crowd guy. And now Burning Man, it's become so popular, you've got fucking Paris, Hilton going, you've got all these people, all these influencers on social media going there. And the whole point of Burning Man, or from what I know, I don't know very much because I haven't been there and I know Doug has. But the idea is the worst is to disconnect from technology and the world and it's supposed to be about trading and interacting with people. And it's starting to turn into this social media phenomenon and people are posing and taking professional glitter and wings.

And then I take pictures. This is the problem with movements like that where they're like anti-media, anti-capitalism. What are you doing? It gets big. Now what? Now you've become your own enemy and I think that's what they're struggling with, right?

No, it's, and you know, I was reading some of it to you out loud as I was kind of chuckling over it, and you were laughing back just like, what do you expect? You know, it's so true. Like, what did you expect? I mean, it's so- So what is it?

You said something like the, they don't want influencers to get, like to get, because you're supposed to trade there, right? Right. So they don't, what they don't want is an influencer to be like Hey, if you give me I don't know five hits to acid or whatever they give out at Burning Man I'll take a picture in front of this in hashtag right and they're saying we don't like that

Yeah, cuz you got these big influencers. I know that a man a butchie went there this last year And she's got a huge following she's and she took I mean I she took a ton of and they're great photo They're dope. They're dope photos. I like them for sure, right? So, but someone like that going there and using her social power to get to leverage, to get things at Burning Man is something that they're not a fan of. Plus people are doing things too.

Like the imagery looks cool and then they're using it to plug their supplements or plug whatever is a trial. See, this is people completely misunderstand the whole idea of voluntary trade. You know, they want it to be this free voluntary place where people trade. They don't use money fine.

You wanna get rid of money because you think that's whatever. So would that be okay? That's what I'm saying. They're doing it voluntarily. What's the problem? No, they want to be controlling. They want to control it and make it look like it's this image of what it used to be.

Sorry, it's never going to be that anymore. No. It's too big now. It's a different world now. Yeah, there's going to be another burning man that's going to start somewhere else. We already have luxurious RVs coming in with, you know, people want to like, be- Oh, that's the other thing they were saying they were pointing out to like Put people were are starting to only allow like the hot chicks

To to barter with and stuff so instead of like bartering with anyone and everyone in this great networking thing Now it's becoming this like social popularity contest and so it's called natural this like social popularity contest and so- It's called natural hierarchy. Natural selection. Just happened all of a sudden. I know that's what- I mean, I'm just repeating what I read.

I definitely don't necessarily agree with it. I mean, I think that this is what happens. This is what happens when something gets massive like that and you can no longer control it. And you know, people are going to do that. It's just, it's human nature. No, I think the whole attitude there was voluntary exchange. And that's very voluntary. But I mean, they're just trying to,

they're trying to control the image of it. Because I think they feel what we're talking about. They feel the fact that it's becoming this really big commercial kind of played out. You know, now it's a bunch of wealthy people going to get high and you know, have orgies or whatever or be crazy. You know, now it's a bunch of wealthy people going to get high and, you know, have orgies or whatever or be crazy. Whereas before it was supposed to be people, people going expressing their artistic expression, discovering themselves, being away from- Well, you know it was like- You know it will happen. And this is what it always happens, which is great. And I think this is,

again, this is free market. What will happen is somebody will, who was a part of probably the original. So create another one. Who created another one. And it'll be, and it'll be intimate and small. Or try and control it. It'll get big. And that's just like how things go.

It's interesting talking about growth too. Like if you guys saw how podcasts can just continue to blow up, we saw just recently Spotify. And I'm not sure if we brought this up on the show yet or not. No, we haven't. Okay, so they they just I mean they have all this money now that they're pouring into the podcasting space and they bought up a gimme a media for how much again? I shared this on my story. I was like 50 was it 50 million Doug something something along the lines of that. 50? I thought it was more than that. It was $200 million. Yeah, it was a lot.

It was a lot. It was $200 million for a gimlet, and then I think they have another 500 million. It's 500 million. It's like I'm appropriated for more. Yeah, so they're gonna be acquiring more in the audio space, which is pretty exciting. And then alongside that too, you saw,

so like me undies was, I mean, if you listen to podcasts, you've heard these commercials on like, like all these different podcasts. They've been a huge push in the podcast space. I guess it's really paying off for them. So, you know, companies like this coming in are seeing lots of value.

I read that article. It was talking about how major advertisers now are really looking to podcast. They're starting to realize that this is a great place to advertise because the conversion is so high. And the numbers they showed with me undies was, it took them something like four years to sell a million dollars worth.

And then after they started advertising on podcasts, I think they hit like 75 million in very short period of time. It was like a huge jump. Yeah, huge jump. So I'm excited. I'm excited and scared. Yes, and this is why I brought that up because of, you know, we just talked about burning man

and how that's changed it. I wonder how much podcasting is gonna change. It's going to. And this is, it reminds me too. I just had this conversation with somebody about the marijuana industry. Close, old client, friend of mine, messaged me and said that her husband was looking into,

or no, his brother, excuse me, was looking into getting into the marijuana business. I want to know if I was open to a call. And I guess I'm just, I must be shorter now with stuff like this, because I just, like, well, I have like this laundry list of things I send back. Like does, does he know this?

Does he know this? Does he know this? And like, honestly, like, I don't recommend people getting into it right now. It's so, it's oversaturated now with everybody wanting to jump on the bandwagon with it. It's it's overtaxed It's overly competitive and it's the big players like Marbro Yeah, and I said it's an only a matter of time before the big hitters come in and put out 80% of the business of those that maybe have a nice little business for themselves

and put out 80% of the business of those that maybe have a nice little business for themselves. Anyway, so everybody who I think is in it right now, if you're not planning an exit plan or a cell plan, you better watch the fuck out because these guys are coming in. I feel I'm glad we're at right now with podcasting and it excites me that we got in as early as we did and more importantly, as far as all the other podcasts that we deal with,

nobody has built an in-house marketing team like we have with both the Casey and Brett side and then in addition to that, we have Taylor and Rachel, we handle all the advertising. That to me is going to be huge and crucial because what you're seeing already happening is the middleman coming in. Just like I remember with marijuana.

So when the clubs first came out and started, you had the farmers and then what ended up being a huge market was the broker in between who started to make their money on where they can send in. So there was a good run to make a lot of money in that position. The same thing is happening in the podcasting space. You have people even like our good friend, Jordan Harbinger, which has one of the best podcasts out there. I mean, he doesn't even deal with any of his advertising because he doesn't have time.

But because of that, the dude sacrifices 50% of his revenue streams to somebody else who is not probably listening to his show and is matching him up with brands, they're like just willing to do advertising and pay the- That was a big thing that they talked about in that Miendy's article was when you match up your brand with the right audience or podcast,

it's a home run. It's why we crush. It's the reason why we do 4x to 8x, the CPMs of any of our peers, is because we built that in-house. We found somebody like Taylor, who's very, very talented with brand management, and he looks for companies that we specifically would want to fuck with.

We turned down a ton of people, and it's a lot of work. We've had to, we funnel a lot of our revenue streams to him to make sure that he's taking care of and he's doing a good job for us. I think that's going to pay off huge in the next two to three years. And this is the tough. Well, this is what this is the writing on the wall. What'll happen is as more advertisers come into the space as they are because it's growing. I think it was the estimates were like something like 74 million podcast listeners in 2018 by 2022. They project it to be almost double.

Yeah. What's going to happen is you only have so many podcasts that will have, you know, X amount of reach. Let's say 10,000, you know, individual unique listens per episode or something like that, right? There's only going to be so many of those. And those are the ones that the advertisers can want to go to. Because the space will be limited, it's going to drive the cost up. So as it becomes more and more of a desirable place to advertise, and there's only so many spots that you can fill up because there's only so many podcasts that get a particular

type of reach. It's just going to end up being, and this is going to be kind of exciting, you're going to see people start to, you know, they're going to have to go to, what is it called, where they're competing? Oxygen. Oxygen. That's exactly what we're building towards right now, and that's something that the conversation that I'll be having this afternoon when I meet with Taylor again, and we've been talking

about for a long time, is we are trying to get to the place where we have enough cool brands that align really well with us that we all like and the spaces are completely filled for the entire year so then we can then go back and then auction off and be competitive with it and that's going to really. There's so much room though. Then again, when you look at it, you think fine, it gets up to 140 million listeners. And I mean, it's still, there's still so much potential for growth. And the big, big, big media companies have yet to invest heavy money into producing.

Like, you're not seeing podcasts getting produced by Netflix or it's gonna, I can see Spotify starting to do that by Netflix or it's going to. I can see spot. No, it's happening already and this is what I mean. We're we're going to get there. And here's another piece of it. It'll be the new labels that I give to everybody that that reaches out to me that's starting their own podcast.

And you know, and again, I like to attribute a lot of this to Doug. You know, this was Doug's brilliance of being very stern and hard about making sure that we spend the money on the sound quality and the editing and making sure that it's very professional sounding because it's going to be extremely competitive. Because you do have companies now that are coming in and I'm drawing a blank on ones, but I know I've already seen it because I've thought about this. And these companies that are coming in and I'm drawing a blank on ones, but I know I've already seen it because I've thought about this.

And these companies that are coming in are hiring like comedians and hiring people that have been speaking on television for, and we've talked about this. When we get a guest on this show, the people that are, like the John Brinkis, why that episode was so good was this guy's been on television for 20 years. Not only does he have a great compelling story, he's really smart, but then he also, you know, is that a talk? You know, is that a talk? And we all flow really, really well together. So this space is going to get competitive with other. Yes, it's going to get very interesting. So if you're somebody coming in, your sound quality isn't up to par. You don't, you haven't practiced the skill of conversation flow.

All new. You're going to get,, you're gonna get gobbled up. All new media, all new media, YouTube, five years from now. Yeah, that's true. That's all gonna look so, it's gonna look like network TV, but on a new media. 100%, yeah, love it. And it's only a matter of time. And what's gonna start it is what you,

as I love you with this direction on the conversation, because this stuff is what intrigues me, is stuff like this, is what you, I love you went this direction on the conversation because this stuff is what intrigues me is stuff like this, is big money starting to make its way in there, then come all the advertisers. And once you start seeing millions of billions of dollars, then also like you said, Sal, companies like Netflix and companies like Pepsi and these will start to perk up

and go like, okay, hold on. Yeah, we were gonna shift over here. That was literally their tagline. Now Spotify is like, we're gonna be the Netflix of audio. Is that what they said? Yeah. Oh, shit. Which is brilliant.

And their platform is totally crazy. They can easily do it. Yeah, and so I think it's such a great move on there. I'm gonna put this out on the podcast because this is something I've been lobbying for amongst us for over a year now. And I had I've always had this vision for Spotify for us. Is I would love to find a young kid who fucking is just up and up on country music, up and up on hip hop music,

up and up on one for each. And I would like to create a channel, music-wise, underneath Mind Pump as Spotify. And all they do is they update the playlist because I believe that that platform is gonna continue to evolve and if it is going to become the Netflix of audio, we all wanna have established real estate there. One of the best ways I think we as a media company can establish real estate there is to put out incredible

Music and on that and be on top of it with each genre and so I've been sending your playlist That's right. I've been in search of young young kids that already love passionate about music and I'm passionate about music And I kind of do my list right now, but I'm not like like a young kid who's like buried in it I want that. I want a kid who just lives and breathes a genre and is up on whatever's new coming out creating that. Do you face who I was like, you know, 15, 20 years ago? Right.

Me too. Me too. I would have been great for this 20 years of awesome at that. Right. Do you guys think iTunes is going to at some point make a play to compete because I feel they haven't updated their platform and so long for podcasts. There's still the leading by far, the leading platform for podcasts.

I don't, I think that Apple, Amazon, Google, they just got bigger fish to fry. As big as this space is and we're talking about right now, Amazon's fucking with shipping. you know what I'm saying? Like they're trying to change the mail. They're trying to change. So there's not even pay attention. Yeah, I just think that it's so far down the road

for them if they are gonna fuck with it. They're not worried about it right now. You're just kidding. Apple, I feel the same way. Apple is huge, is it become a luxury retail brand. It's not even like a, people think it's a digital or like, it still sells a shit ton of music, but iTunes, you know, but it's an digital or like, I tune still sells a shit ton of music, but I tunes, you know.

But it's an afterthought for that. It's still the number one platform for podcast listeners by far. It is. I think it's something like, yeah, because it's like 90%. Right, because it opened it, right? Yeah.

They started it. And it's only a matter of, and I believe in Spotify. Oh, wait. Yeah, they'll wait and see. Like I bet you they're paying attention to Spotify's moves with this. And they're kind of, they kind of sit back and see

like how the market responds and all that. Or you can see they'll put money in. They try to, you guys don't, there is a Spotify version for Apple. Oh yeah, nobody likes it. Yeah, nobody likes it. The UI sucks compared to Spotify. Spotify is better.

They're tweets, yeah, they basically acquire beats just for that reason. What is the streaming service? What they probably will do. They're gonna buy. Yes, that's what I would think of. Amazon and Apple, when the time comes where they wanna go in there,

or if that sector ever becomes threatening, you know, if Apple is like losing hundreds of millions of dollars because of Spotify, then they'll take a few billion dollars and go buy them. But until then, it's just not, it's not a big enough fish for them to fry. So they're over elsewhere and worried about other sectors that are bigger movers and they're bigger game changers, I think, because, but they still like, you know, they got enough money to like, oh, hey, Spotify's making moves, go make our own, that's kind of like it. Yeah, they both they both were court netflix for a while there.

That was interesting. He was on an Apple. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Offers and nothing happened out of that. And I still feel like that's what will happen with one of those companies at one time. I think one of the big, this is why the book,

the four was one of my favorite reads last year because they kind of talk a little bit about this and just how massive those four companies are. And you think about it, digital music and sound and what Spotify is doing is just it's beneath them. You know, it's just not, they're not worried about it right now. But the time may come when those people are starting to and they'll be apparent. That's coming back to the talk about marijuana, I feel like that's the same thing too.

Marbrose like slow rolling the whole thing. Let all these idiots jump in and learn the hard way and figure things out and try and patent this and try and do that. We got enough money, we have enough land, we have enough power, we have enough advertising muscle. We'll just wait until. They don't even have to do anything.

Marboro has the grows, they have the land, they have the processes. They're waiting for the loss. As soon as the loss change, boom. And to get the analytics, I really believe that the slow process of legalizing marijuana, part of that was so the government can see exactly how much we're actually making. Before they start throwing out their taxation

and legalize and say, oh, this is how it is, it's like, okay, let's slow roll this. Let's take city by city, let's take the average dollar amount, so they can get their numbers right, so they know how much they should be getting, and allow all that to happen. I think it's more complex than that. I think you have...

That's pretty complex. I think you have pharma companies, you have alcohol, you have tobacco was also campaigning against it, but it's inevitable. It's inevitable. Canada is now legalized. They just, I think it was the, God, was it the World Health Organization

that just recommended that cannabis be rescheduled again? Rescheduled. I don't know if you guys knew this, but there was a treaty years ago by several major countries, including the US, that they would never legalize marijuana. They all made a treaty on that. Oh, yeah, dude.

Yeah, dude, it's pretty funny. If you read the whole story behind it, it's pretty silly, but it's on its way. There's nothing they could do to stop it. There's absolutely nothing they could do to stop it. Nobody respects the marijuana laws. Do exist in the US now, and so many states have legalized it. Now you the marijuana laws that do exist in in the US now. And so many states have legalized it. Now you've got Canada legalizing. When Canada legalizes something, you know, they're right above us. So the weed train is coming.

Exactly. This quaz brought to you by Organify. For those days you fall short on getting your organic veggies or whole food nutrition, Organify fills the gap with laboratory tested, certified organic super foods to help give your health a performance the added edge Try or gain a fight totally risk-free for 60 days by going to organify.com That's a large a N I F I dot com and use a coupon code mine pump for 20% off at checkout First question is from powers How important is knowing and improving

a one rep max for building muscle and strength? My thought is, as long as I'm adding weight to my working sets, I'm accomplishing the same thing. Am I leaving gains on the table by never attempting a one rep max? I like this question because of, because I feel like, and I don't know if CrossFit is to blame or that you know the PR culture yeah I you guys know I don't know about you guys but the first half

of my career I didn't even know what PR was I never even hurt it in fact everyone I was the worst the early recent yeah like yeah yeah that was not it when we were early trainers no one's yo what's your PR no it was what's your math. Yeah. Yeah. What's your bench? What's your bench? Yeah. It was just squat. Right. And and even then I remember being a trainer saying like, I don't know because I don't train that way because I told you guys I didn't even ever drop below five. Yeah. So I actually never even I always looked at it like there's so much more risk at me putting a load on that I may only be able to get one time that it's not going to benefit my overall gain.

So fuck it. Why do I? No, you know, here's so there is no muscle building benefit for knowing what your total absolute one rep max is. You don't need to do it, but it can be fun. And now here's here's where I think there would be a benefit. It's not what the one rep max. It's in knowing what your max is,

what your five reps for your 10 rep maxes. And here's why. Now I've talked about for a long time, why training to absolute failure is not really beneficial for most people most of the time. Occasionally, you can throw it in, but for most people, no need to go to failure. Just train at a high intensity, it close to it,

but don't get to failure. And I've done this with myself for a very, very long time. So I went for a long time without lifting to failure at all, like never. And more recently, I thought to myself, like, you know, I haven't really pushed the intensity that hard for a long time. I want to see what happens.

And here's what I learned. What I learned was, I thought that I was stopping a couple of reps short of failure, when in fact I had more like six or seven reps left. Like I was under the bar on a squat, and I put three, 15 on the bar, and after five, six reps, I thought, oh shit, one more and I'm gonna fail, and I'm at seven.

Then I get eight, and then I get to nine, and then I get to 10. It's like, whoa, I've got more than I thought in my gas tank and what ended up happening is it helped me reset my intensity gauge. It helped me recaculate what it feels like to get to failure. Yeah, I look at it as stretching out my capacity. So if I know where my lines are,

I can sort of build up underneath that constantly. But I just, every now and then, every so often, I'd say maybe twice a year, I would probably go to see where I was at in terms of my squat, my bench, my deadlift, whatever it was. Just this is a test and see what my training has been providing me. Yeah, because a lot of people fold themselves. You actually see this with clients as a trainer all the time where, and this is more common with female clients than male clients,

and I think it's just they're taught not to lift heavy. There's a whole myth around lifting heavy, or you know, weights, and it makes you look bulkier, whatever. And I give them a weight and they would do eight reps and they'd be like, four more. I can't do any more, and I know because I'm a trainer, I can see what their form looks like. No, you actually have more than four more, but I know you can do four more. I can't do any more, and I know because I'm a trainer, I can see what their form looks like.

No, you actually have more than four more, but I know you can do four more for sure. And then they do it and they'd be like shocked, or I'd add weight. And they'd be like, why am I going heavier? That's so heavy. It's because you fold yourself into thinking, this is about as much as I can lift with good form. Now, you can be on the other side, right? You can be one of those macho guys, like I was when I was a kid when I worked out.

Where I overs, I thought. I think you get addicted to it. Well, let me, yeah, I wanna be the counter to this message that you guys are sending right now because up until like after I was, it was towards the middle way of competing, it was really when we all got together. I had never chased PRs, ever in my entire lifting career,

even into my amateur and beginning of my professional career in men's physique, never chase PRs. It was when we all started hanging out and comparing dead lifting, squatting, overhead pressing numbers, did I then become like kind of fascinated with, okay, how far can I stretch myself? I've never trained myself to reach and exceed these limits. And I got a lot of benefits gains wise, for sure. But I also got a lot of draw.

More, I've dealt with more injuries and achy joints in my life. And those, the last three, four years and I did the previous 12 of lifting when I was never even concerned with what is my max, where's my PR and and and what I attribute that to is Partially bad programming on my part, so I'll own that like if I was Literally following our programs to a tee which we never allow you to even stay in that range For a little carry away. I get carried away and it's and it's hard not to and if your listings is right now and you say you're

Oh, I'm so good I'm liar, you know saying like once you hit that first PR. It's a good feeling. It's a good feeling to see 500 pounds on a board and you know I could lift that and now I know that I could do Oh, can I get to 550 and like hmm? And I kept yeah, you start wanting to to stretch those limits and do that and you know What came with that was a lot of aches and pains, a lot of setbacks injury wise. And I didn't build a technically better physique. And I was just fine competing at a very high level without ever chasing that. So if you're somebody who's chasing aesthetics and you want to look really good, you could train your whole life and never even find out

what you're you're one right now. I would go to say, unless you're a strength athlete that actually competes for how much weight you can lift, I would go as far as to say that really the only benefit that comes from maxing out is the potential mental benefit that you can get from it. Really, that's about it. I mean, if you're already the kind of person

that can apply a high intensity and train yourself hard, then you're probably not gonna benefit from having to max yourself out. But if you're like a lot of people who have a tough time pushing themselves, don't know what their bodies can do. You know, many times I would get clients that I would push them hard on a set,

not necessarily because it was beneficial for their physical body, because I needed them to see that they could go further than they thought they could. To that point, and this will sound sexist, but it's true, that most of the people that benefited from this were my female clients. And that's just because I think for... I think they're taught not to do that. Right, I think for so long they were taught, don't lift heavy already.

So it's already rare that you get a, we get a female client that was lifting heavy weight five repetitions. She most certainly wasn't single doubles or triples. I mean, that just, that just seemed like, oh, if I'm not a power lifter, I would never even consider doing that. So my, and, and I think women are always, they're always my better form, right? My, my, form, right? If I show a female client mechanics, they tend to pick it up better, and then they're meticulous about their form, but if they lack anywhere, when I'm with programming, it's the intensity piece.

Well, at least not wanting to, yeah, what that's what I'm saying, pushing to failure or getting close to that, and they are the ones who I find benefit the most, mentally, from this, because they go, holy shit, I didn't realize that, I was that strong. Yeah, it's interesting. I've thought a lot about this, especially because of the fact

that it does provide that benefit to the central nervous system that like, I can produce this much amount of force and I can max effort in that direction. Now, for me, I found different ways to sort of hack that with isometrics and to place myself in positions where I could apply maximal force in a certain direction, but have less of the risk involved with lifting that type of weight. Now, it's a little bit more tricky because it's about like really being able to emulate that and sort of mimic that sort of response,

but in a stationary position. And so, but yeah, I experimented with that from a different positioning and also with the lifts, but I found benefit to that that carried into now my lifts and I felt that I could access a little bit more force production. Yeah. One rep max or max training is all about safety. So if you are going to do it, the main focus is on being safe.

So make sure you have a spotter or you set up safeties so that if you fail, you can fail and you're not going to hurt yourself or kill yourself, which has actually happened to some people. Make sure your form is perfect. You have to have really, really good form because the first thing to break down when you're struggling is your form and when form breaks down, that's when injuries tend to happen. Make sure you have good mobility and stability and your experience. If you haven't been lifting weights consistently for a year, you have no business testing out your max. Definitely not.

Next question is from Dean McFarland. I struggle mentally with taking days off from the gym. I know recovery is important, but lifting heavy and bouncing around gets me fired up for the day. Any tips to optimize my recovery days? This is Sal's problem. Yeah. This is, you know, I don't know if you can answer this action or

I'm really like skip him. I'm going to just, no, you know what? You know, I think people forget that a recovery day doesn't mean you do nothing. Right, right. You know, you can still go to the gym. You can still go to the gym and do really light movement. Get a pump. You could do trigger sessions. You could work on other body parts, that maybe need a little bit more work, you could take other classes, you could stretch, you could do mobility work. In fact, that'll actually optimize recovery.

You actually recover better, I remember learning this a long time ago, it was earth shattering for me. I used to think, I was under the belief that, you lifted weights heavy. I'm gonna go with lay down. And then yeah, you go on lay on the couch and eat food because you don't want to waste calories and let my body recover and repair.

And that's what I thought I had to do for a long time. And then I remember over one summer, my dad got this job, and my dad's a, he works with a, you know, marble granite and stonework and he brought me along. And there was all these floors that we had to float with cement. And what I used to do with my dad is I would mix cement,

which is, you know, it's not super intense, like I'm not maxing out, but it's movement and it's tiring and you do all of that. It's the constant grind. And that summer, I also really got into lifting weights, and I remember, a lot of the muscles that are involved with mixing cement are your biceps, your forearms, and your back,

because you're constantly pulling the, you know, the hoe as you're mixing the cement or whatever. And of course your grip as you're carrying the buckets and doing a lot of stuff. And I noticed that summer, the body parts that built the most were the ones that were also involved with mixing of cement, like my forearms, built more, my biceps built more,

my back built more, even though they would get sore a little bit from all the mixing of cement. And it wasn't able to take a day off like I normally would where I'd work out and then just completely rest. And it kind of tripped me out. And then of course later on when I developed trigger sessions, I realized that if I was really sore for a body part, let's say I hit my legs today, and then tomorrow,

my gosh, my legs are so sore, really light, full range of motion, body weight, squats, and lunges, actually give me a little bit of a pump and I'd recover faster. And I'd actually build more muscle. Oh, that blood circulation. I mean, just think about like healing and mending tissue, too. You need like that blood flow. And so to be able to promote that, like in a lower intensity moderate type of situation where we can express that movement and get that blood flow through the joints and through the muscles that need repair, it's like it's a no-brainer.

Now the only person's gonna be careful with this and we don't know who's asking this question is if you're a cortisol junkie because there is there is that fine line of, okay, so all of my competing I almost always was in the gym seven days a week. I rarely ever took a day off. But like Salisang, I I modified those days. I definitely didn't have seven intense days of training. I had probably four or five days of intense training and then the other two to three days is more a recoverative or me doing mobility work

or me walking on the treadmill. So if you're somebody who's going there and you're getting after it every workout because you like the rush of cortisol and you gotta be careful. And this is more common than not. I mean, I saw this like crazy in the OTF, the Orange Theory community.

I see this a lot in the CrossFit community. These type A high stress job people that get after everything in their life, they get after their workout and they love it. You know, they say things like, you know, I just, I love lifting and bouncing. It gets me bouncing around and fired up. Now, if you attach every one of your workouts to that

and what makes you feel that way is a good sweat and working hard, that's because you may be addicted to the cortisol spike and that's what you're getting. You gotta be careful if you're that person. You gotta know that, you know, am I pushing my body that much where I'm breaking a hard sweat seven days a week. You might be that person, that person's got to be careful.

Next question is from Adam Bora. Do you think doctors' offices will ever include personal trainers as resistance training becomes more mainstream and prescribed? Do you ever think personal training will be covered by insurance? You know, it sounds like a good idea. No. Everybody's like, oh, that would be great if physical too much life.

Wait, here's why I wouldn't want it to be covered by insurance. The regulatory bodies that cover all that shit are so stupid. Everybody's only gonna go to 90 degrees again. You would have, yes, you would have terrible standards, terrible, everybody's got to be the same, you'd have bad choice with personal trainers. I'm sure some people would benefit, but a lot of people would not benefit.

Really really good trainers wouldn't be able to do what they do as well as they do because of insurance. So, but that being said, do I think at some point it'll be covered by insurance? I actually think at some point you'll see more resistance training in all of medicine because there's starting to see a return. These companies are seeing that when people lift weights, they spend less money on having to buy drugs, they spend less, it's more cost effective, it's a good investment. I think they're going to encourage more of it.

I know Kaiser encourages meditation. They pay for all this preventative stuff now, because what they're finding, we're gonna bankrupt ourselves if we don't do the preventative stuff. As far as, you know, doctors, including personal trainers, I worked with a lot of doctors, and they all sent me patients all the time,

mainly though it's because I was their trainer. So they were, they witnessed firsthand what resistance training could do. And so they would end up sending me to their patients. Yeah, I see that. I mean, I see like doctors really finding and gravitating towards like quality trainers that they can refer patients to. And I think like the awareness of the benefits of resistance training will

be more prevalent amongst you know the medical community going forward. But I see it more as like you know referral process not like integrated within their practice just because it's such a like there's there's a lot of lines there. Have you guys ever had physical therapy that was like covered for paid for by insurance in the hospital? Yeah, that is terrible. It's terrible. Oh, if unbelievable. I walked out of my...

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You only get so many sessions and they're like, okay, that's it, see you later. And it's very, you know, here's standard form. Generic as fuck. Do this movement, I'm gonna be over here. It's just, I had a physical therapist that rented a space in my gym

when I had my personal training studio because she did not like the limitations that were placed upon her in the system. She went private and I remember asking her, why are you going private, why not stay because she had a nice position in a big hospital. She's like, I can't do what I really wanna do. I wanna help all these people in all these ways

that I know it'll help them, but I'm limited because I have to follow this protocol. I can only do this much. And so she chose to go private, and of course she was extremely effective, and I learned quite a lot working with her. And I think that's what personal training would be if they put it in hospitals, you know.

And here's where I think it'll end up happening. First is for the elderly. They're already starting to recommend resistance training to the elderly because they're starting to see it make a huge difference. Yeah, in home care is exploring. So try start with machines and then they'll branch out. Well, I hope we, I mean, I'm banking on

we'll be a major conduit for this. I think that, you know, as my pump continues to grow, I think our relationships will start to build with hospitals where already we're starting to build more and more relationships with doctors. You know, once they get to know us and the information that we're providing, I could foresee them recommending first to go listen, hey, listen to this episode or listen to these topics because we've covered so many things. We've had so many specialists that have come on the show that I mean, like we just had a great interview just just now With Gabrielle Lyon and you know talking about like Minipaz and hormone stuff like you know We have a good doctor that knows who we are and that we provide information like that

I would hope that they are starting to recommend like go listen to this episode They talking depth about that we also provide great programs that should complement a lot of the information that we're putting out there So I hope that we are definitely a major catalyst in that area. Yeah, we're about to enter into a revolution in understanding surrounding resistance training. I don't know what that's going to mean for insurance companies and conventional medicine. I'd like to think that conventional medicine will be a part of the revolution. I'm seeing more and more studies that are showing the remarkable benefits of resistance training for pretty much anything, including cognitive health, function, diabetes, cancer treatment, helping people as they age.

But I think we're about to enter into revolution with it because resistance training up until now We're about to enter and revolution with it because resistance training up until now has been the kind of played second fiddle to cardiovascular training in terms of exercise. Like up until right about, you know, right about now, if you were recommended vigorous activity, it was aerobic. It was 30 minutes of vigorous activity.

And resistance training was kind of like, oh, that's what you do if you go to the gym and you wanna let's wait. And if you wanna build muscle, and you know, especially if you wanna build a lot of oh, that's what you do if you go to the gym and you want to let's wait. And if you want to build muscle, and especially if you want to build a lot of muscle, that's what you do. But otherwise, walking provides enough resistance to build up your bones and your legs,

and they say stupid shit like that. And I think we're about to enter into a new revolution of understanding where resistance training becomes very, very, very mainstream in terms of how people understand it and its applications. Well, I've seen to lots of insurance companies and there's a lot of digital health initiatives in terms of companies trying to really provide analytics and data on each one of the patients.

And they're trying to push things through past HIPAA restrictions and things like that. But I see that eventually that's gonna be more accessible to where if you have devices that will help to kind of provide more data for your physicians, your insurance companies, and you're willing to give that information to, I guarantee that there's gonna be more breaks that we'll see like the healthier your markers are.

The challenge is, it always has been with resistance training that it's complicated. At least, much more complicated than going for a 30 minute walk. And that's where I'm interested to see how people overcome that hurdle. Because if you tell the average person, hey, 30 minutes of weight training,

four days a week of resistance training, four days a week, is what you really need to do. People are gonna be like, okay, okay, how do I begin? Yeah, what does that look like? And then you say, oh, you know, push up squats, lunge, they don't have good form, they don't have good control. No one's gonna know what to do.

I hurt myself. I can't do anymore. I don't wanna hurt my back though. I'm not supposed to lift weights because I have back problems not realizing that if they do it right, it'll fix their back problems. So it's going to it's there's a much more than it there's a there's a steeper education curve a learning curve that goes along with resistance training. That's where I'm interested. Yeah, that's where I'm interested to see, you know, how how we tackle that next question is from mind to muscle.

What was the most difficult set back in your personal fitness journey? And what did you do to overcome it and bounce back? Oh, geez. That's easy for me. This was, I've talked about this many times. This was your gut, right? Yeah. Right around, um, I want to say 30. I think I was like either 29 or 30. And remember at this point, I had been really pushing my body for years. I mean, from the age of 14 pretty much on, I've consistently lifted weights and eaten and supplemented in a way to try and build muscle.

So it's just been a consistent process. I've never taken time off, aside from the occasional injury and illness, but I've never taken longer than a week or two off, always pushing. And at the time, during that period of time, the early years, I would say, it was driven entirely by my own personal insecurities

of my body. I was a skinny kid growing up. And I actually thought I was skinnier than I even was. It's how bad body images can be, because I look at pictures now. You just look like a regular skinny 14 year old, but I thought I was skinnier than I even was. It's how bad body images can be, because I look at pictures now. I'm like, you just look like a regular skinny 14-year-old, but I thought I was made much worse, didn't like the way I looked.

And so because it was driven by this kind of self-hate, I did a lot of things that weren't great for my body. I worked out in ways that weren't good for my body. I pushed myself too far often. I took lots and lots and lots of supplements and combinations of supplements with zero regard to any negative effect on my health. I force fed myself food in insane ways. I mean I would I put tuna fish and eggs and chicken breasts and a blender and I blend it up so I could drink it. I drink you know these 5000

calorie shakes that I'd buy that were terrible. I'd set my alarm in the middle of the night so I could wake up and drink a shake. And I just did a lot of walk around with protein bars and just insane stuff. I took designer steroids that at the time were available over the counter, probably worse than actual anabolic steroids because they were, you know, these oral steroids that were rejected version discarded by pharmaceutical companies because they would, you know, these oral steroids that were rejected version. Discarded by pharmaceutical companies because they would cause liver problems in animal studies. And these are the ones that these companies would end up selling on the gray market.

And I'd take those. So I just did all this shit to my body. And didn't really pay too many consequences. And then right around 2930, my body rebelled. I, all of a sudden, could not keep any weight on. I was, I had severe gut issues. And it's really, that's a terrible situation to be in for somebody who, I mean, take your deepest insecurity.

So if you're listening right now and you're like 99% of us, you have some pretty bad, you know, you have some insecurities. Think of the most, the most difficult insecurity you have. Now imagine if life poked you right on it, right? So like, my big insecurity was not being muscular and now I'm losing weight and I can't keep it on and food doesn't stay inside my body and I'm depleted and nutrients depleted.

I looked pale and I lost close to 15 pounds in a very short period of time. And remember at the time, I was fooling myself and thought I was this fitness and health expert. Really, I was just a, I knew exercise and I was a muscle building expert, if you will. And so here I am, I'm thinking I'm eating healthy. What am I doing?

I'm eating, I'm not eating, you know, lots of fat. I'm eating all these whole grains, I'm thinking I'm eating healthy. What am I doing? I'm not eating lots of fat. I'm eating all these whole grains. I'm eating all these other things. These supplements are fine. I'm taking all these supplements. What the hell is going on? I couldn't figure it out. Once the doctor, they were saying maybe it's some kind of autoimmune thing that's going

on. Luckily, for me at the time, I worked with some wellness experts in my facility. Thankfully for me I've always been very open-minded. Although I was a meat-head kind of person, in my facility I had acupuncturists, I had people who tested gut health and did hormone testing. I had massage therapist that was all into the esoteric and meditative type stuff.

And to me, it was kind of weird what they did, but I saw that they did with their clients, their clients appreciated, and it was effective. And I like these people, and I'm a people person, and so it was all good. It just wasn't for me. So here I am, can't figure out the fuck's going on with me. Doctors don't know what's going on.

And so I finally turned to them, and I'm like, I need help. Like, I don't know what the fuck's going on with me. Doctors don't know what's going on. And so I finally turned to them and I'm like, I need help. Like I don't know what the hell's going on. I'll do whatever you tell me to do. And so the person who did the gut health testing had me do some, at the time, leaky gut syndrome was a bad word. If I had said leaky gut syndrome to any medical doctor,

they would have told me it was hogwash. It was bullshit. Mine is well go pray to some crystals like nobody nobody thought that was a real thing. Now of course we have a scientific term for it. So what is it? A hyper gut intestinal hyperpermeability or something like that. So it's a real thing but nobody believed it. And so I she did all these testing on me and she said okay according to your tests, these are the foods you probably haven't tolerances to. We're going to do an elimination diet.

We're going to cut these things out. You're going to reduce the intensity of your workouts. You're going to focus on your sleep. You're going to meditate. I incorporated high CBD cannabis at this time as well for its immunomodulating effects. But the biggest thing that I did was I changed how I viewed exercise, truly, for the first time in my entire life.

Up until this point, it was driven entirely by my insecurities. It was driven entirely by my self hate. And I had gotten to the point where I didn't even care anymore. I just wanted to be healthy. And so I started to, just started to realize that I had a healthy body before

and I was making it unhealthy. And so I started to treat my body like I cared about it. And my focus was entirely on my health. And it took me about a year. I mean, it was to the point where, especially in those early days, I had such a terrible sensitivity to gluten that I could literally, if I ate something

that had a breadcrum on it. I remember my mom makes these chicken cutlets and she breads them. And then when I'd go to eat dinner there, she'd make mine without any breading on them. But if they were cooked in the same pan and I had like some bread crumbs on it, I'd eat that and I was fucked.

This is like in the first months. So I had to be like insanely strict and it took about a year and it's a weird process. I didn't really look at myself in the mirror like I used to. Like I used to judge myself in the mirror and pick my body apart and oh, I'm too small and my body part this and that and the other. Because I changed my mindset,

I didn't pay attention to myself that way. I didn't look at myself in the same way. And it's funny because about a year, maybe a little over a year later, I was hanging out with some friends. And there was a, we were in a pool. I went to the bathroom and I go in the bathroom. And there were two mirrors

and one of the mirrors was reflecting off the other mirror. And so for a split second, I saw a reflection of myself from an angle that I'm not used to. And for a split second, I didn't recognize that it was me. And so it was a very strange phenomenon. I saw myself like someone else who sees me. I don't know if that makes any sense. Okay, you're excited.

I was just, yeah. So I was enabled, I didn't know if that makes any sense. I'm not that excited. I'm so excited. So I was enabled, I didn't judge myself in the same way that I normally did. I just looked and then I said, oh shit, that's me. And then I went, whoa, I look. Handsome. I look really good. Look at those glutes.

Handsome. No, not like that. I looked at, I was like, well, and so then I looked in the mirror and I realized at that moment, I had looked better than I had for most of my lifting career and all I was focused on was on my health. And so although it was the biggest setback

that I'd ever encountered, that actually is what turned me into who I am now. I mean, who, my voice on Mind Pump would not be what it is today had I not gone through that very, very difficult period. So it was a blessing, but at the time, I'll tell you it was a fucking... Oh, you helped us understand the microbiome.

And I had no idea, like, the depth of, you know, how that affected us. And like, just bringing all these experts on to educate us on that. And it's such a new science that I had never even really ventured into. So that was, yeah, that was really cool to learn from you going through that process with that and bring that

on the show. So that's crazy. I, for me, I think I brought an example of this up long time ago. I mean, I just, I fluctuate a lot like there was a one point after college, like I got turned into a fat turd. And that's basically the amount of me, just sort of like putting the brakes on

because I had been training so fucking hard for decades. And I was just like full throttle, like redlining, every time I hit the weight room. And so for me to just take that time away from the gym was just like a shell shock. Like my body just completely like shut down and was like trying to make sense of it all. And it took me a while to get, pick myself kind of back together to get motivated to even train again. Because all I knew was that one, that one mode, which was just like all.

knew was that one mode, which was just like all. And so that was quite the process for me to just reorganize my thoughts about, well, I'm not competing anymore. Like, what do I do? It's like, I think a lot of athletes go through that process of like the identity of it. Like, well, I'm not an athlete anymore. So what am I doing in here?

Like, what's the motivation was driving me? I wasn't motivated by looking at myself. I actually think that's really called it. Really called it. Super common. Yeah, I've turned a lot of ex athletes that are, you know, in their 50s and stuff like that. Just they lost all their motivation.

Yeah, because they were training for a sport. I'm not training for a sport anymore why the hell is in my inside this gym? And I, for a while, it was funny because I would like try and recreate things. Like I would do like some of these weekend warrior things where I'd plane like a three on three basketball tournament and I would like join.

I probably, if it existed back then, the Spartan races, I'd be that guy. Like I'd be like, yeah, we're doing the Spartan race like every weekend, I would be like, like, signing myself up to do something like that because it's like, either I'm competing or I'm not and that's like all I knew about myself in terms of like trying to challenge my body. And so thankfully I got into the training world and saw opportunity there to kind of figure

that out as a job. And that taught me so much about just like your average person and, you know, just the daily things that they try and figure out and get stronger and lose weight and all these types of things. And I was like, okay, then things just started to click. Like, well, why am I not considering eating better? Why am I not considering, you know, my joint health? And that's, and then I started to get really into mobility and just like overall quality of movement, bettering my nutrition, which I hated,

I hated that whole process of learning more about nutrition. I just know as an athlete, I can work my way out of whatever calories I'm taking in. It's just the opposite of the saying, because it goes. Yeah. It was so like that. That was just the mentality though.

I'm gonna be honest. So, you know, just like getting through that old process was, I mean, that's a couple of years to be honest. So, that was challenging for me. And then, from now on, it's a totally different mentality. All right. It's, I was thinking right now, I went last on purpose because it's easy for me to answer the same thing because nothing I feel like come compares to what I went through not that long ago.

Losing or coming off of testosterone and that was, I don't wish that upon anybody. I think that I've dealt with all kinds of little injuries and even major ones where I had surgery on my ACL and MCL. And I was totally fine with those things. I like, I set back for a couple of weeks. I was back in the gym. I was lifting even with a brace and crutches and, you know, and even though it sucked, I got back on the horse and never had a problem with it. And I've had shit

happen in my personal life that affected the gym and work and always been able to balance right back. I fell out of shape big time when I was in cannabis and then came back and documented that whole process. And all those things to me were like nothing. It wasn't hard for me at all. It was literally like changing my mindset and getting after it. But when I went through the coming off test oscarone, that was absolutely fucking miserable.

And it's the closest thing to what I have ever felt to depression. Like I don't know for certain if I was technically depressed or I battled with that It all going through it But if there was anything that I've experienced in my life that I would say is like that I would say that and that was really difficult for me And what I found and I found myself like originally like reaching for like different workouts or I was trying to motivate myself and doing you know listening to pump you up music or laying out my plans or doing my you know getting my food already like trying to do all these things that would assist my motivation in the gym and nothing was working until I finally just said fuck it I'm just going to go with it instead of trying to fight it and be so attached like Sal said with you know being this muscular big guy it's like okay it's inevitable I'm off a testosterone I have as much

testosterone in my body as a you know 13-year-old teenage girl I'm not going to build a bunch of muscle on me right now so stop thinking like that and to refocus on other things that I can do right now, so stop thinking like that and to refocus on other things that I can do. And for me, that was a lot of mental growth. So I began reading a lot more, more than I already currently was. I began listening to music. I started to seek out things in my life. And I had to really think back all the way to the childhood of the stuff that has given me joy through my adolescence,

to teenage, to a young adulthood, things that I've loved that had nothing to do with fitness, or not nothing to do, but aren't really centered around the way I look and building muscle. So basketball, music, snowboarding, these things are things that have fulfilled me basketball, music, snowboarding. These things are things that have fulfilled me before in the past, and I started to implement them

into my life, because I couldn't control my hormones. And I was doing all the things that I needed to do. I was doing the infrared. I'm worried about my stress. I'm taking the tongue cattali, the ashwagandah, I'm doing all the stuff that Sal has got me lined up. And nothing is giving me that feeling of elevated testosterone levels, why I was used to. And it was really tough. And so I had to really latch on to

other things that gave me joy. Now, I also think it's one of the best thing that's that's happened to me. I really, I think it was really good that it happened after I came off of bodybuilding for four years because in bodybuilding, no matter how level headed I was going into it, the whole sport is around being this big muscular guy. And that ain't gonna be possible when I have no testosterone or very little testosterone

flowing through me. So I think being able to switch that mindset was really important. I think sometimes what happens when we get in these ruts is instead of kind of like going with our body and my mom says this really well, you know, son, you go through seasons of your life all the time. And instead of crying that we're onto another season or trying to force it to be that season, season, to kind of go with the body and allow it and be okay with it. And so I did.

And even today now, because my levels aren't high again, my focus is just really different right now. I'm not freaking out that I know I'm not hitting weights that I was hitting just two years ago. I'm not worried that I don't look the way I looked just two years ago. I'm celebrating the other victories, like the amount of books that I've put away,

the amount of personal growth I've had, being back into sports like basketball, which is a major love mine. I snowboarded, I mean, I've already been on the mountain like six times this winter already. My mobility, I'm more mobile right now at 37 years old than I've been in my entire life. And so I've learned to latch onto other things

that aren't directly connected to the things that used to drive me in the gym. And so if you're in a slump or you're having a setback, evaluate your goals and the things that you're focused on. And if you're in a place right now because of injury or hormones, like I'm with you, or like somebody could be going through

because they're pregnant or they got or menopause or something like that. Instead of attaching yourself to the things that used to drive you before, reframe your goals and give yourself other things to drive, and focus on that you can control, and then celebrate those victories. That's what got me out of that darkness,

or that's how I was to let go of some of those things. And, you know, I'm the Justin and I are probably the more religious or spiritual ones at all of us. And so I believe that that was given to me as a gift, which is a fucking twisted way to look at it, right? Here's Loach's testosterone and a Tornickele's atom. Who always works that way. Right, but I believe that it was something

that I needed in my life because it took away these other things that I was so hyper focused on. And now I've had to look at other places. Well, growth comes from being uncomfortable. Absolutely. Growth never happens when you're comfortable where you're at. You don't need to change. There's no reason to change. And real change is painful. And so you literally have to be forced to grow because staying put is more painful than growing. So think about that, right? So you're in a situation where you can't work out like you normally could.

That shit's real painful. Okay, I'm forced to look at things a little bit differently. Right. Right. So with that look, if you go to mindpumpFree.com, you can download any one of our guides for free. Actually, you can download all of them if you want. Also, you can find us all on Instagram. We have our own pages. My page is MindPumpSal. Justin is at MindPump Justin. And Adam is at MindPump. Adam. 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 Superbundle

at Mind Pump Media.com. The RGB Superbundle includes maps and a ballac, maps performance, and maps aesthetic. Nine months of phased expert exercise programming designed by Sal, Adam Adam and Justin to systematically transform the way your body looks, feels and performs. With detailed workout blueprints in over 200 videos, the RGB Superbundle is like having Sal Adam and Justin as your own personal trainer's butt at a fraction of the price.

The RGB Superbundle has a full 30-day money-back guarantee and you can get it now plus other valuable free resources at MindPumpMedia.com. If you enjoy this show, please share the love by leaving us a five-star rating and review on iTunes and by introducing MindPump to your friends and family. We thank you for your support and until next time, this is MindPump. We thank you for your support and until next time, this is Mindbump.