Mind Pump: Raw Fitness Truth - 968: Best Training Volume for Building & Maintaining Muscle, the Benefits of the Overhead Squat, How to Elicit Long Term Change & MORE

Episode Date: February 15, 2019

In this episode of Quah, sponsored by MAPS Fitness Products (www.mapsfitnessproducts.com), Sal, Adam & Justin answer Pump Head questions about the carry-over an overhead squat has for a traditional back squat or front squat, go-to techniques to elicit long-term behavior change in clients, the training volume needed to build and keep muscle and the best way to close a potential client. The ‘unicorn pencil’ meltdown at the Di Stefano Household. (5:47) Is Sal abusing his wisdom with his family and staff? (10:15) The Four Sigmatic “Winter Sale” is running until 2/17! Time to stock up! Plus, Sal gives his supplement stack from them and the magic of mushrooms. (13:30) Adam is going to be a DAD!! (19:33) #Quah question #1 - Thoughts on the overhead squat? Do you prescribe it to your clients? Does it have carry-over for a traditional back squat or front squat? (50:21) #Quah question #2 – What are your go-to techniques to elicit long-term behavior change in clients? (1:00:17) #Quah question #3 - If you build muscle with a certain type of training volume, do you need to keep that volume of training to maintain that muscle? (1:13:54) #Quah question #4 - When meeting with a potential client, what is the best way to close them? (1:22:37) People Mentioned: Jessica Rothenberg (@thetraininghour)  Instagramero Isokauppila (@iamtero)  Instagram Josh Trent (@trent_sd)  Instagram Ben Pakulski ® | Official (@bpakfitness)  Instagram Products Mentioned: February Promotion: MAPS Performance is ½ off!! **Code “GREEN50” at checkout** Organifi   **Code “mindpump” for 20% off** Four Sigmatic   **Code “mindpump” for 15% off** Was Chinese Medicine The Secret Weapon In The Chinese Olympic Team’s Domination At The Olympics? Mind Pump Episode 777: Tero Isokauppila- The Magic of Mushrooms & the Real Story of Santa Claus LIVE At Spartan Worlds Lake Tahoe 2017 - Mind Pump - Wellness Force Amazon.com: Watch The Business of Being Born | Prime Video Heavy duty – Book by Mike Mentzer Mind Pump Free Resources

If you want to pump your body and expand your mind, there's only one place to go. Mite, ob-mite, up with your hosts. Salda Stefano, Adam Schaefer, and Justin Andrews. In this super special announcement version... Who eased your eggs in here? Of a mind pump. So for the first 45 minutes, we don't talk a whole lot about fitness, but we do our fun introductory part of the episode conversation. So we start out by talking about my daughter's unicorn pencil melt down.

It was good times at the DeStefano household last night. And you know, just put it to be a parent. We talked about our staff member Rachel and her experience with Organifies Pure, she actually drank it, worked out and freaked out over how awesome she felt, contacted all of us and it's like, what is in this pure? It's pretty freaking awesome. And it is pretty awesome. Now, Organify is the company that makes pure, it's a neutropic supplement, but they also make other products like their green juice, which is for overall health, red juice, great pre-workout, gold juice for evenings and relaxation.

Of course, they have vegan, organic protein powders. Anyway, we got you a fat discount. If you go to organify.com, forward slash mine pump, and if you use the code mind pump, you'll get 20% off. And then along those lines, Adam talked about how four-sigmatic is having one of their only big sales of the year. Now four-sigmatic is the premier supplement company when it comes to mushroom-based products. They use a process that does both liquid water extraction, heat extraction. You get all of the beneficial compounds from mushrooms.

These guys know their shit. My favorite product from Forsegmatic is Cordiceps. I love the way it makes me feel when it worked out. Well, here's what's going on right now. The sale is live now. Products are already up to 50% off. This is crazy. Here's the best part.

If you use our code, you can slap an additional 15% off all of their sale products. So if it's 50% off, you'll add our 15% off. 15 plus 50 is 65. I can do math. So again, there are sponsors. If you go to four, Sigmatic, that's spelled F-O-U-R-S-I-G-M-A-T-I-C dot com, four slash mine pump, and use the code mine pump, you'll get massive, massive discounts.

Then I give my recommended supplement stack and then here's the exciting thing. Adam has an incredible announcement. He's got to wait for it. What do they call it? A bun in the oven? Is that it? A bun in the oven? I can give it away. You've got to have to find out. Find out the gender.

Super secret. Yeah, find out what's going on. Now we get into the fitness questions. The first question was, what are our thoughts on the overhead squat? This is a very, very difficult movement. Do we ever incorporate it into our clients workouts? Do we do them ourselves? What are the benefits?

What are the risks? Should you be doing them? The next fitness question is, what are our go-to techniques to elicit long-term behavior changes in clients? If you're a fitness professional or a trainer or if you yourself are somebody who's trying to change your long-term behaviors There's a lot of wisdom in that part of the episode. I mean collectively we've worked with clients for what is that? 40 years more 50 years So great information there. Next question, if you build muscle with a certain amount of volume, is that the same amount of volume you need to maintain in order to keep your muscle, you might be surprised at the answer to

that question. And the final question, this is a personal trainer, when they're meeting a potential client, like, how do I get them to hire me? Like, what do I say? What do I talk about? So we give some good fitness advice for all of you trainers and aspiring personal trainers on how to build your business. And if you're not a trainer, you'll like the communication tips that we've given there as well. Remember, effective sales is nothing more than just effective communication and all of us can benefit from communicating better. Also, I'd like to share with you something that's pretty awesome. Our Maps Performance program is 50% off.

So we designed this program to sculpt and shape a person in a balanced way. What we did basically is the avatar that we created that we tried to create a program around was a all around overall awesome athlete. So somebody who can run fast. Like an American Gladiator. Someone who can jump high, someone who's got lots of strength, lots of agility,

somebody who's got lots of stamina. Like what would that person look like? What they look very balanced. In fact, they would look like an ancient athlete, like those sculptures that person look like? What they look very balanced, in fact, they would look like an ancient athlete, like those sculptures that you see of the Greek gods, where they have well-developed core muscles, muscular legs, strong shoulders and upper backs. That's how you're gonna look

if you follow mass performance and you have a good nutrition protocol, but even more importantly, that's how you're gonna move. You're gonna build maximal strength, you're gonna build incredible agility, strength, endurance. You're gonna build the ability to move

in different planes of motion. This workout is not a traditional workout. Lots of different exercises, lots of movements you're probably not familiar with, lots of movements that incorporate the entire body. It's a movement based workout. It's a lot of fun and it's 50% off. All you gotta do is go to maps fitnessproducts.com, use the code green50, GRE and 50 to get the discount. On that site, you can also get information

about our other maps programs and we have a lot of them and they're all extremely valuable. Make sure you go check them out. Tell me what happened last night with your with your daughter with the unicorn pencil. I was dying laughing till I could dream. So how did it go down? Well, so I go I get I go pick up my kids life of a daughter right here. It's just kids. This is daughters. This is daughters here, bro. It's kids, bro. I go pick her up. Yeah, there's some boys. And I pick her up and from school. Yeah, I pick them up from school.

And you know, they get in the car and we're driving off. And we're, I don't know, like, three seconds down the street. So I haven't even, I barely left the school parking lot. Oh my God! I'm like, what? What? What? And I'm looking to re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re Calm down, okay, okay. Go get my unicorn pencil. I need my unicorn, I said, we're gonna go, we're gonna go look, but if the doors locked,

then there's nothing we can do about it, because we literally, I picked her up right when they are closing the doors, you know, whatever. Yeah. So I go back and go up to the door, it's locked. Loses her mind. Ha ha ha. Loses her mind.

Over a unicorn pencil. No, it's special to me. Ah, it's just freaking out. And I'm like, I'm trying to calm her down. And I'm like, listen, you can't. And I said, I'm not gonna listen to you if you keep freaking out. So I said, and so she's like,

so then it gets into the hole. Cause she's nine, right? So she's getting to the teenage, it's coming up. It's gonna happen soon to that teenage attitude. You ruined my life. You ruined my life. You ruined my life. You made my life so hard. Why do you ruin my life?

You left it. Why don't you care about me? I can't believe you don't care about me. I'm like, I will get you 10 unicorn pencils on Amazon store right now. Yeah, like it's not a problem. Like, no, this one's special. Oh, yeah, freaking out.

So I'm like, oh my God, so I left her, I just left her downstairs and she, so I left her downstairs. And she just, she lost her voice. That's how long and hard. Wow. She lost her mind for. So I found that happened with a coat that, yeah, my youngest left at the Taekwondo

and they had closed shop. Well, I could feel, I could be a little more attached to a coat. I feel like, I mean, he freaked out though. I mean, he was like just beside himself. Bro, I couldn't calm down. Yeah, kids just do that. Yeah, it's like getting this like thought process.

It's a can't you know. What you're dealing with with a kid, a lot of the times is a, is it, they're like, they're humans, so similar to you or I, except they're completely irrational. Yeah, that's all it is. They don't have those governings yet. Yeah, so it's like control that. You're dealing with a crazy human being sometimes.

Not always, but sometimes you're just like, okay, this makes no, there's no reason for you to lose your mind so much. The development of self-awareness. You're being irrational. Isn't there yet. Yeah, and then that doesn't work. So I tell you know, I said,

I look, I look, I look, I said, you're being completely irrational. And that's when she's like, you're ruining my life. You're like, turn it right back on you. I said, you're the one that did everything. And I can't, I'm like, thinking I'm looking at her, but she's losing her mind. I'm like, is this gonna be worse?

Now just, oh no. When this goes down like this, does Jessica try and intervene or does she just stay out? Jessica is brilliant with kids, like very, very good with kids. So she comes home after she whispers in there after I'm a smack the shit at you Dude old school talked about this. There's like old school So I'm a chick I will whoop the shit at it. No dude. The inside of me is like, you know, I want to like I don't know destroy her property like oh you want to act crazy? Smash your doll house.

You have nothing. You're gonna burn stuff. Yeah, now you can cry, you know, but no, I didn't do any of that. No, Jessica comes home after she's been, you know, my daughter's been freaking out for a good, I don't know, solid 15 minutes in a row. And she sat down and talked to her.

And now here's the part where everybody feels bad, right? She talks to her, has a good conversation with her. This is why she's like a child whisperer. And I come downstairs and Jessica takes me aside and she's like, today her friend told her, her friend told her she didn't wanna, be friends with her anymore. And then she took a test and she didn't feel like

she did very well on the test. She said that she felt dumb. And of course, now I feel like the biggest asshole in the world. So I'm like, all right, there's all these other factors attached to that. But at the end of the day, you freaked out of our pencils. Right. No, not at all. So much she does, yeah, she does, she does talk to her.

So anyway, dude, did you hear what Rachel said about the organify pure? She tried it yesterday, she told me. First time. Yeah, yeah. She's like, she loved it. She goes working out here too. Her literal words are, she goes, I tried the pure what's in that? Yeah, I'm like and of course you're supposed to do something Of course Sal's favorite and I watched you do this one for your birthday. Do you see your fucking my cousin? He loves

Because everybody comes to him for advice nutritionally right So ever he appears as he appears is He totally does you know, not a bit around long enough. I see it every time Anytime I expect that now first. Oh totally like now it doesn't work with me because I've seen it I know it's coming right so I don't even waste my time asking him anymore because I know I'm gonna know I'm gonna get a scare fucking first check on internet and then ask him you took the small rapper one No, you're not supposed to you know I feel like you know it's in there. Yeah, yeah, right. No, no, what do I do? So I don't remember what I did with my cousin. I think it was I he asked me it was a charcoal

Well, oh yeah, yeah, yeah, it's a charcoal. We're all getting ready to drink and he's like I took those two pills You gave me and you go wait, you took the black ones? No, no, no, you weren't supposed to take those and he's like, huh, huh? Oh my God, what's, what is it gonna do? What's happening? And I see it all happening. I'm like, you dick. I told him I'm like,

this is your family. They still don't know you by now. Like I've only been around for four years. And I know. That's what it makes, I mean, family, yes. You gotta have to do that. My favorite is still to this day. And just thinking about it,

brings a smile on my face, like, because it, because it, he faced time me from the pool and him and my brother on the pool laughing, like, yeah, we're having a great time and then my cousin turns around and I see these circle hikis down his back. And so I'm like, so I,

Oh, you have to get him. Yeah, so I looked at my brother and I'm like, and I knew what those are. He had cupping, obviously. Yeah. But he didn't know that cupping makes those hiki marks on his back. So I, you have to get him. Yeah, so I looked at my brother and I knew what those are. He had cupping, obviously. But he didn't know that cupping makes those hiki marks on his back. So I said, I said, hey, to my brother, I'm like, Joe,

I'm like, what's on the back of Alex's back? My brother goes, huh? He goes, what is that? So he goes, Alex, you got something on your back. And my cousin Alex, who had the fucking cupping didn't realize that that's what it does. So he turned around and he's like, what? And he's like, what's on my back? So now the freaking out, I know what's going on.

So I'm like, did you get any alternative health treatments? Recently? He presented like that. He's like, well, I did certain parasites leave marks. He's like, well, I had cupping done. I'm like, was it on your back? He goes, yeah, I'm like, did you take any herbs? He goes, yeah, they gave me some herbs and stuff.

I'm like, holy shit dude. I'm like, you did a reaction. Yeah, yeah. So I'm like, did you take any herbs? He goes, yeah, they gave me some herbs and stuff. I'm like, holy shit, dude. I'm like, you do the reaction. Yeah, yeah. So I'm like, I want you to take your pulse right now and count your pulse for 10 seconds. And then for six seconds, multiply it times 10. Is it over 100? Now, of course, it's going to be over 100. He's already freaking out, right?

So he's taking his pulse. He's like, he goes, it's 120. I said, lay down. I said, oh my god. Yeah, I said lay down. Let me go get some water. That might be it's 120. I said, lay down. I said, oh my God. Yeah, I said, lay down. I'm gonna get some water. That might be a sign of some organ failure. Lay down.

So now he's on his back. Organ failure. Damn, dude. So now he's on his back. And I told my brother, I said, put your hand on a stomach and put your hand on a chest. Rub it slow. Oh, I hit a circular attack.

I might help him belly breathe. Help him belly breathe. I said, give him a second. And so they're freaking out. And then I just start cracking out. And they're both fuck you, man. That's great. You know, speaking to the supplements,

so four sigmatics running this thing right now. So they only do this three times a year. Oh, it's their sale. Yeah, they're big sales. So they do this three times a year. This is one of the three times that they're doing it. And in what's cool is for all of our mind-pumplaceners that already get a 15% discount.

This is where they actually let you add it on and they have stuff that's up to 50% off. And so if you do stock up. Yeah, so if you're if you're already somebody who uses the four-segmentic products you love all the stuff that they have, this is a great time to stock up on all their product because you get to add your 15% on top of the big sale there already. And they have stuff running from 20 to 50% off on a lot of their products. So here's my stack.

Here are my four-signatic favorite things to use. I like to use cord accepts before a long workout. So I'll do cord accepts and I'll mix that with a little bit of caffeine and I notice much more stamina. Cordyceps also has a testosterone boosting effect in men with suppressed testosterone levels. It's an adaptogenic herb or mushroom so it helps about a deal of stress. The other thing I like to use is the Raishi at night, a very nice relaxing supplement. There are times when I combine the Rishi

with the organifies, and now we're combining two supplement companies, right? With the organify, gold juice, and that's when I want, like the best late product. What are you, you were on a kick for a while there with the macho, when were you using that? Macho is a, because there's some caffeine in it, I'll use that.

Pre-workout. Yes, I'll use that for the caffeine. Now would you ever combine the macha with the corticeps? Oh, yeah. So here's why I like corticeps. I like corticeps because it's a non-stimulant energy boosting type of supplement, but it's not the same as a stimulant. So when you take a stimulant, you get that like wired boost in energy.

With corticeps, you just feel more wakeful. And then when you start your physical activity you feel You feel like you have more stamina. So it's it's it's it you feel it while you're working out I typically recommend it to the people because you know And it's rare, but you do meet people that don't drink coffee and they don't like that jittery feeling and so they avoid anything that gives you that that stimulant so they're they've avoided all pre workouts They don't drink coffee. They don't like anything.

Red Bulls, things like that. I tell them that like this is a good thing to take before your workout because you'll like the way it makes you feel. It won't give you that. You know, cordy steps made the news a while ago. And I think it was, I can't remember which Olympics it was. I want to say it was the last one that happened in the US.

Maybe. But but anyway the Chinese Swim team, I do remember this was crushing and everybody was like speculating like what's going on? I didn't attribute it. Yeah, because they they all said that they are supplementing with it They said that they were using cordiceps as part of their the protocols for cordiceps kind of took off it Cordiceps and interesting. It's a fungus that grows on a bug. I believe it's a caterpillar. It's a parasitic fun. Is that the one that turns them into zombies? I'm not sure if it does.

Yeah, no, there is one like that. That'll literally, it's a parasite that'll control the mind of the insect and make it do shit to prop it. If someone do that, then they'll get them to kind of go to a high ground. So then it basically presents, so a bird will come eat it and then, you know, shoot it out and then it'll keep continuing the cycle.

Well, you know that there's a, I forgot what parasite, is it a parasite that's in cat poop? Or something in cat poop or urine that if mice get infected with it, mice become, they start to lose their fear of cats and get themselves to those who are cats. Yes, I've heard of that. So it's literally moving. So they basically get high.

It's getting them to kill, no, it's getting them to get killed by the cat. Right. They can soon aggressively go approach them. So it's like LSD. They're drawn to cats. I think they're drawn to the cat pee smell. That's it. So think about it this way.

This is how crazy this is, right? So here's a parasite whose life cycle is to spread to more cats. So one of the strategies is to, if it infects a mouse, the mouse then is attracted to cat piss. Therefore, another cat who may not be infected, eats this mouse, gets infected, and the cycle goes on. How crazy is that? Dude, parasites are fucking crazy.

Dude, there's raise organisms. Well, I'm sure our bacteria are fucking controlled. I mean, I know, right? You start thinking like that. Well, they find that your gut microbiome can alter, well, besides how you feel, because now they're connecting it to things like depression, your mood, energy, sex drive,

but also your food cravings. So if you like, you have strong sugar cravings or strong carbohydrate cravings or strong cravings for certain types of foods It might just be your microbiome trying to feed itself. Mm-hmm. Which is kind of a weird thing to think about Wasn't that relationship with fungi and bacteria like that's one of those things like so that's how they found You know like it How they discovered like antibiotics and everything else. Oh with penicillin

Yeah, it's like that relationship's always been really interesting. It's like, and that's why they're trying to advocate like ingesting and eating more mushrooms to kind of help to maintain that relationship to that. Much of your interior. Interesting.

It's an interesting topic. I remember when we interviewed Tara from Forcimatic. Really good episode for anybody that has that's curious about mushrooms as well, because I learned so much. Like when you talk about some of the episodes that we've done where I felt like I was just absorbing

information the entire hour or two, he was somebody like that, was just firing shit that I'd never even heard before. Dude, it's crazy because I never, when I've always thought about eating vegetables, I always thought that, oh, I eat lots of vegetables, and so mushrooms are a part of that,

but they're not their own category. And you'll find in like, aeravetic medicine, Chinese medicine, they use lots of mushrooms. Mushrooms are another category of foods that you probably should consume on a relatively regular basis. They do provide certain things that you don't necessarily find in other foods. Yeah, it was a really cool episode. Yeah. You have to really like, you know, go seek it and make sure that's part of your diet. Yeah. Yeah.

Pretty cool. Anyway, I'd like to, uh, so add them. Oh, dude, that was talk about this. So it's been announced. It's up, dude. Bro. Adam. Adam.

It's official. It's going to be a dad. My sperm work. It's official. Do you, can I just say something before you you cuz I want you to get into the shit like a little rocket I want you to get into the whole process, but I you know I even I told this to to just and even separately when after we found out that Watching you go through the process of You know you went off all your gear and I know that part of your motivation

If not most of the motivation was to, so that you could have a child. I saw how difficult that was for you. And I knew that would be tough. You know, when your body goes from normal testosterone to none, that is a very, very, very depressing, difficult thing, just mentally, that affects your mental state. But you did it, you stuck to it, and fucking

your bless now, man. It worked. And I just want to say, I commend you. Yeah, the crazy part, though, to be honest, is, you know, looking back now, and I'm glad it all played out the way it did, because we talk on the show a little time about adversity and going through those tough times. Those are, that's when growth happens. That's, and so a lot of growth happened in the last year of,

you know, the tornakeles and then the low testosterone and the battling with that. And so, you know, I'm grateful for all that. At the same time, what was crazy was, you know, a lot of people may not know this on the show, but it's been almost two years that Katrina and I have been unprotected. So we never were really announcing that we were, you know, quote unquote, trying to have a kid, but we most certainly weren't trying to avoid it either.

You were just letting things happen. Yeah, we're just letting things happen. You know, I wasn't calendar, or she wasn't calendering it and going like, hey, today's so you weren't doing pull out or anything You were just yeah, yeah, yeah, so we we that's kind of how we've been for two years um and You know after after about a year or so that was when I decided to come off the test Auschwung was then I thought it was kind of me. I was like, oh fuck, you know, we've been unprotected for a year now and she's not pregnant. Maybe it's these, you know, superficial doses of testosterone that I've been running for some time and thought, okay, well, you know, I'll do my part and I'll come completely off as miserable as I knew

that that was going to be even though it was way more miserable than I would have ever anticipated. And I did. And then that's been over a year now. I think I'm on 13 or 14 months or more that I haven't had any synthetic test on it. And that was I scaled down. So, you know, I didn't go from taking. I'm glad you shared that because you did try to go completely cold turkey at one point.

And then I ended up talking to one of my doctor friends and they said, no, that can actually be dangerous. You want to slowly scale that one. And I should clarify too. I didn't go cold turkey even then, but I didn't, I went like a normal cycle where I'd run and then I do right afterwards do a four week PCT and then I'm done where you would talk to your doctor friend

and he's like, no, if he's been running for four years consistently, you know, you would talk to your doctor friend and he's like, no, if he's been running for four years consistently, you know, taper it longer. And so then I went and tapered for like six months. So really I had started the process. Almost, you know, year and a half, two years ago, when we first started coming down and then I came completely off. But what ends up happening after about a year or so of us,

you know, not, not trying. And all of a sudden, I start going like, fuck, man, is there something wrong with me? And she's starting to have the same questions. And so she's kind of going to the doctor and getting checked and everything, getting her blood work, and she's coming in on a regular basis.

And, you know, they're telling her like, you know, hey, I think you're healthy, you're fine. Everything seems good. And so more and more of the concern is coming from me. I'm like starting to think like, oh fuck, we're gonna have to go test me and see. And then one of the last, and this was back in end of October of last year,

she goes in and the doctor says, well, we have one more thing that we can do. We, you know, all your blood markers, things like that, you seem fine, you seem healthy. We don't see any problems with where you're at, but we haven't done an ultrasound to check your equipment. Let's do an ultrasound. Let's see what's going on inside there if we see anything. And they do that. And the doctor goes, oh my God, you have a softball size cyst on your ovaries. And she's, and he's like, are you not in pain? And she's like, no, I don't, I haven't felt any pain. I haven't had any problems. He's all judging by the size of this cyst. You've

probably had it for seven to eight years. So pretty much the entire time Katrina and I have been together and he goes, you know, there's a good chance that your body is getting fooled in the thinking that you're already pregnant. And so it's not allowing you to get pregnant. And he goes, you know, we can we can remove that. I mean, obviously it's probably a good idea if you're trying to get pregnant. Even though you're not in a pain, we should definitely get rid of it. And so she did, she went and had the surgery. And is that where they do the laser surgery?

Or did it do it? Yeah, and she would fucking a lot of pain afterwards. Yeah, that's not easy. Yeah, I don't know if you guys remember. This was right before I took off with her to our, so if you look back on my Instagram, you can see the post of her and I at one of our favorite beach resorts that I can't think of right now that's up in Carmel.

And it was that weekend, that was the weekend after her surgery. So it was about six, seven days later. And the first time that we had sex after she had removed the cyst. Boom. Bingo bingo. Right away. Yeah. Right away. Yeah, right away. So, and then she, yeah, then she let me know.

Now you found, you knew, but you kept it, you didn't tell us for, yeah, for three months. So, you know, I mean, which I understand. Right, we, everyone, everything that you read or one says like you should wait till the first trimester is over because of the risk factor of potentially losing the baby in that time.

And so we had decided that we weren't going to tell anybody until that. And I didn't, so I didn't know that until we got pregnant, then I started reading like, oh shit, we're not supposed to even tell my fuck, this is crazy. Yeah. I got to go the next two months, hanging with the boys and hearing shit and then not say anything, this is going to be kind of hard, right? And it was. And the biggest challenge that we had was on new years, so

new years we had scheduled already a week off in Tahoe with her family. And anybody that's been listening to the podcast for a long time knows that I've share family can drink. Yes. The entire family is foodies and drinkers. And they get together on a very regular basis. Fuck, we were just together the night before because her niece was in town from New York and like I said, any excuse that we were meeting a new boyfriend. So fucking whole families over, huge dinner, drinks are poured. Like, yeah, that's how they roll. And Katrina is like the lead, you know, she's pouring the drinks with everybody and she's, I mean, she can drink me

out of the table. And so we're like, okay, we're going into New Year's with her family for seven days and it's gonna be not, as soon as we get there. Yeah, how you get on? We had to drive a separate truck for the alcohol, you know, I'm saying like, there was a truck for the alcohol. So what did she say to them? You're like, I got the flu. Well, so, so what we agreed, agreed

upon then was so we let them know on Christmas. So they actually got to find out her family found out when we were only like, I think on week five. Because you're like, you had to tell them. Yeah, because we're like, okay, we wanted to do something special for all the family members and kind of tell them because everybody has been waiting It seems like everybody has been waiting for Katrina and Adam to finally have a kid I mean we've been here and that shit since the day we got together and So we knew that everybody's gonna be excited We wanted to make kind of a big deal about it for our our family my mom her mom and and brothers and sisters and shit

So we revealed it on Christmas and what I will do because I don't, you know, those that know I don't share a lot of my personal, personal family life in Katrina and whatever, the forum I'll share the video that, so I actually recorded the reveal to her family on Christmas, which was really cool. I still get emotional. I get emotional.

I get emotional. I see. What, when you found out, because I'm assuming she went and did one of those at home pregnancy tests, I get emotional. I get emotional. I get emotional. I get emotional. I get emotional. I get emotional. I get emotional. I get emotional. I get emotional. I get emotional.

I get emotional. I get emotional. I get emotional. I get emotional. I get emotional. I get emotional. I get emotional. I get emotional.

I get emotional. I get emotional. I get emotional. I get emotional. I get emotional. I get emotional. I get emotional. I get emotional. I get emotional. I get emotional. I get emotional. I get emotional. I get emotional. I get emotional. I get emotional. I get emotional. I get emotional. I get emotional. I get emotional. I get emotional. I get emotional. I get emotional. I get emotional. I get emotional. I get emotional. I get emotional. I get emotional. I get emotional. I get emotional. I get emotional. I get emotional. I get emotional. I get emotional. I get emotional. I get emotional. I get emotional. I get emotional. I get emotional. I get emotional. I get emotional. I get emotional. I get emotional. I get emotional. I get emotional. I get emotional. I get emotional. I get emotional. I get emotional. I get emotional. I get emotional. I get emotional. I get emotional. I get emotional. I get emotional. I get emotional. I get emotional. You know, there there was a part of me that you know because I was so anti not having a kid up into this point

That holy shit. I finally decided I want to and now I can't like how fucking shitty is that? You know because I never said when I was younger in my 20s and in early 30s even I I never said like I don't want to have a kid It's like I didn't want to have a kid now. I've had personal goals where I wanted to be and I've I expressed that since day one with Katrina When she met me, it's like I knew I had my plan like this is where I wanted to be. And I've expressed that since day one with Katrina, when she met me, it's like, I had my plan. Like, this is where I want to be. This is what I want to do. And, you know, hopefully it's you and I, and that's the idea, right?

So, there was part of me that was this huge relief of, oh, fuck, you know, like, thank God I can have a kid. Like, that would really suck that because I was so adamant about waiting and waiting and waiting and waiting, that also, then when I decide, okay, it's cool. Now, I want to. Now, I can have a kid, like that would really suck that because I was so adamant about waiting and waiting and waiting and waiting, that also, then when I decide, okay, it's cool. Now I want to. Now I can't, like that kind of freaked me out a little bit. So there was definitely the relief. And then I'm excited, man.

I really, I couldn't be happier about the timing, where I'm at in my life, the partner that I chose. I'm super pumped, man, to raise this kid. And it's neat too because I'm watching my two best friends who are going through it right now with their kids. And I've got, of course, a million people when this happens, like everybody's telling you. Advice.

Advice, isn't that? And one of the things that I, and I don't say anything to anybody because I appreciate everything. I appreciate all the books that have been sent my way. I appreciate all the advice. I would never turn any of that away. But I think a lot of people forget, and Josh Trent dug into this with me

when he interviewed me on his podcast way back when, and he said something to me that resonated because I never really thought of it like this way because everyone I was asked why I haven't shared kids yet. And I really do feel like I've been parenting most of my life. And of course, it's fucking different when it's your child and that love and I'm not comparing what I've gone through to what it's like to be a parent for anyone else.

But, you know, I'm the oldest of five kids. And there's a major gap between my two youngest brothers and sisters. There's 14 years apart. So I was a teenager when they were babies being born. And my mom was definitely not one to not leave us with them. My mom worked and did things. So very early on, I'm burping the baby, I'm changing diapers, I'm heating up formula

and helping raise these kids with my mother. So I'm very comfortable with all of it And I'm reminded of that when I see my two best friends were the opposite the youngest in the family boys They didn't have any any younger siblings around or cousins and I can see them with the baby and stuff I come in and I'm like It's like it's so yeah, it's like a football right. It's very it's very easy for me And then I and then we have like Katrina's family Who's a massive family? Everybody's so excited to be a part of the kids. I just surrounded by a lot a lot of help and support So there's there's no nerves. Oh, you just wait to see me around a baby. I know

I know I could I could imagine so I mean I'm excited And I know that I know that we'll do a hell of a job. All the like the, you know, what to do, that kind of stuff. I mean, you'll learn that and people will teach you. And that's not the hard, I think the hard stuff is just the emotional stuff that you, the growth that you get from having a child, the way it changes your perspective of thing.

I'm sure your perspective of things has already changed and you don't even have a baby at the time. Oh, no, that's a good point. There's some things that it's pretty funny. Katrina and I got into our first little tip for whatever since then. And it was all me, for sure. I mean, it's my fault. I feel this urgency. So Katrina and I have, we've put ourselves in a nice position where we have an joint account, we have a joint savings account together, and then we also have our separate

accounts. We both are making enough money that we can, I don't have to fucking police her finances. She doesn't butt into my finances. We agree that we need X amount to pay our bills and we have our savings together. And then what else ever doesn't matter? Well, that's when we didn't have anybody to take care of. So I didn't really think about any of that shit where I felt that switch over real quick.

Real quick already, like the way my brain just works is like all the expenses that are coming up, I wanna be ahead of things like saving for the kid, like just some fanatical with that shit. And so now I'm like, what did you just buy? What did we pay for? You covered what for your mom? Why?

I don't understand why we paid for that. And so I would never do that. Like it's your money, go spend however you want. But now it's like, now I look at it like, no, this is all of our money now. Now I want to know everything and I want to be a person. So I've caught myself kind of doing that. But what's awesome about her is that even though

there was like a little tiff and the tiff was probably the way I approached it, she's supportive of all that. I mean, she agrees and I definitely think that that won't be a problem. The crazy thing for me with my first because the first is the, you know, that's your first, right? So you kind of have no idea what to expect or anticipate. Yes, you're known. And what was weird to me, what I actually not weird is just fascinating, is, you know, right now Katrina's pregnant. She's got the baby inside of her. She's already building an intimate connection

and bond with the baby. For you, because you love her so much, you also have this kind of bond, but it's kind of an abstract thought, right? Like, okay, I see your belly growing. I know there's a baby in there, but it's kind of an abstract thought, right? Like, okay, I see your belly growing. I know there's a baby in there, but it's kind of this abstract thing. You don't have a connection, right? A physical connection like she does.

You can't hold the baby touch. You could just see this growing belly. And so what happened to me when I went through that process was like all that. And then when the baby was born, it was like a ton of bricks hit me. Boom. Oh, shit. I have this is a real of bricks hit me. Boom! Oh shit, I have this. This is a real thing.

A human that I'm responsible for, and it was just, it was crazy. And then I remember, and I did this with both my kids, of course, you just watch them. It's really weird, like they're sleeping, you just staring at them, like, oh my, this is insane, I can't believe I can love something so much. And then you love them more, and then you love them more.

And then you get scared because you love them so much and then you love them more and then you love them more and then you get scared Because you love them so much like all of a sudden yeah, and this is this is a good thing I think it sounds like a scary thing, but it's actually a good thing. I Realized how invincible I was before I had kids Now I'm so vulnerable, but that's also what makes me a I think a better person now Yeah, you know in the growth that comes out. I would totally agree with that. It definitely brought to light a lot of other factors where it's like, you sort of ignore a lot of things

and you take a lot more risks in terms of like, just with my own health or how hard I'm pressing and, you know, like I just start thinking about like what's going on in the world. I was never into politics. You know, I was never into like so many things, but now I pay attention because I'm like, how's this going to affect the way he grows up?

And you know, and his brother and one of these policies mean and it's like all this shit just like becomes more real. Well, it's here. It's our legacy, right? So I figured, you know, I'm only going to be on this earth for another, you know, 50 years or so if I'm lucky, right? And at that point, they are you moving on. So I think, and I already feel that instantly.

I mean, the moment that I know it's coming and then. You're gonna make a great, great fall. I told you that, I don't know, two months after we started working together. I told you to make a great father. I think Katrina will make a great mother. Are you telling everybody that the gender or are you keeping that like a story? No, no, we told that we revealed the gender. I actually posted the name yesterday

on Instagram. So everybody knows. So you're having a boy. Yeah, that was that was funny. That was a really oh, bro, this this I the gender reveal video you sent. I love the little like. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, there was there was like this, the home joke, right? With I love the little like There was there was like this the home joke right with Katrina and I that I used to tease her that when we when we were You know trying right or whatever and I would say if you if we have a girl man. I'm gonna return it I'm gonna just get so mad at me. Don't you say that? What do you say that? I'm like you know what I mean? You know I would never do that. I would love I would love love, but there is this, there's this part of it. And of course, I think for me, it's probably, there's a little bit of a fear, I think some

men have with, with a little girl, you know? Well, not only that, I don't, I don't want more than two. Okay. So I don't, I don't want more than, than two kids, for sure. And, you know, if I had one girl, then there's still, then there's a chance I can only, I could have another girl and then I never have a boy to continue the last. Yeah, and I think for me with losing my father and the lack of the relationship, I have that,

and there's not a lot of shaffer men in my family, I wanted that really bad. And I feel like I was responsible for so many years in my life to not have it when I was a child and not raise some shitty kid That I needed to grow and be at a place that like I'm gonna pour everything into this this kid And you know selfishly there's a part of me that wanted to be rewarded for that like I want to give me my boy You know give me my boy that I can pass my legacy down to and I can pour everything that I've learned over all these years. And because I was responsible and I didn't pop it out when I was 19 or 20 years old when

I probably was still a child myself, I waited till I was a man and not to say that I don't have a lot to grow and a lot more wisdom coming down the road. But I do feel like the place that I'm in right now that I'm going to be a hell of a lot better of a father than had I would have had it when I was 25 or younger. So yeah, there's a part of me that like wanted that so bad. And so if I would have had a girl, I don't think I would have been disappointed. I think it would have loved it no matter what, but the excitement of getting the boy was like, I was fucking pumped. Yeah.

It's cool too when you have your kid and then you see like similarities between them and you when you were a kid. Right, right, I'm excited for you. Yeah, that can be really cool. It's cool because like there's certain things I was insecure about as a kid that I see in my kid, but I love it in my kid and And yet I was insecure about it.

And it actually helped me deal with my own insecurities with myself. Like, well, how can I love him for being how I was and hate myself for being that way? That doesn't jive. It doesn't connect. It doesn't make sense. And that helped me deal with my own thing.

Because when you love something so much and realize it's a part of yourself, I think you can connect that to yourself and then start to love yourself in that same way. But I had my kid, you know, I had my kid a lot younger, but that's fun. You're in for it, bro. You are in for exciting, man. You are in for it. Like, of course, all the bad shit, like the lack of sleep and worry and all that stuff. I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm in the storm. I'm curious about that because I'm not gonna lie. And I haven't said anything about it because I know everybody's waiting to jump over.

I have my two best friends who they haven't slept in like six months, they claim and shit. And they're just like, oh, it was way too. You're gonna get fucked up. You might be lucky. You might get the one. Well, then I was talking. So yesterday we had the family party.

So that we had one of our good friends. She's got a three month or a four month old right now and Babies just fucking amazing, right and we're I'm talking to her and stuff and I'm like, you know It's so funny because it's like I see I feel like there's a 50 50 I see with the kids and she goes You know what she goes if if your your kid will be a reflection of you and And she goes, when I see parents that have the kids that just fucking destroy me, a lot of times it's because they're young, they're nervous, their baby feels that energy. That's the only way they know how to communicate.

And so she goes, you and Katrina, she goes, you kidding me? She goes, watch, you're gonna have a baby that's so fucking chill. And I believe that. I believe when a baby is really young, like I look at my best friend, and I love my best friend,

but I could see him like challenged right now. Like he's, when we go over to see the kid, his baby daughter, the daughter is so attached to the mom, like you were saying, because that's just natural. They've built that bond, comes out, and she hordes her, and he's nervous, so he just allows, so he's hands off so much. And so then the baby starts crying, you could even see the way he's like, bouncing her and allows, so he's hands off so much. And so then the baby starts crying.

You could even see the way he's like, bouncing her and trying to get her to calm down. I'm like, give me the fucking baby, bro, here. You know, relax. Like it's not like a, it's not a, it's some people just have, they're learning that. Like if you're learning that and you've never learned that, you can't tell me that a baby doesn't feel the same.

That's it. You're right. No, you're absolutely right. My kids compared to the stories that I've heard of other kids did very, very well. That being said, kids just don't sleep like adults do. They wake up in the middle of the night. That's during the day. Yeah, you know, you got to change your diaper.

They're crying. They're very, very, very needy. Obviously, they're right. It's a fetus outside of the body. So from a time perspective, you just don't have, you just a lot of your time is occupied. There's things like collic and jaundice and these things. I had to go through, you know, my kids,

and it's just like part of the process, you know, you just get through it. But I did send, so I sent you guys both to videos. One was the, you know, the documentary on the whole birth process. Right, we watched that. In this country, and how the C-sections are exploding. And I thought that was just such an illuminating documentary.

And then I sent you another one about, I think they call it attachment parenting, which I thought was really smart. And it was, I think it was Dr. Sears, if I'm not mistaken, is that it? Is that it familiar named Doug? Was this the article on just how, you know, back in the days we used to have

the babies like attached to us 24-7? Yeah so what he says is so babies human babies are born way earlier than they should be and the reason for that is because we walk upright the females pelvis is much narrower and humans have massive brains, massive heads. So the baby has to be born at a particular time, otherwise it's not gonna come out. So it's born and it's totally useless compared to other mammals.

Like a lot of animals are born, like a horse or a cow or it comes out and they're walking the day one. Yes, yes, or like a little monkey will come out cling to its mother's fur and then it's stuck on the mom, and she can walk around, or she can climb treason shit. Human babies are totally worthless because they're still a fetus.

And so what he, part of the theory is like, look, when these babies, first of all, when babies cry in the middle of the night, for most human civilization, most of the time we've been on Earth, a cry in the middle of of night is a fucking dinner bell for predators. Like, if we're all huddled in the cave

and we're trying, could sleep is a very vulnerable time for humans and there's a lot of nocturnal predators that eat humans and you don't want a baby to cry in the middle of night. You might as well just be like, hey, I got food here. It's a helpless little baby that you can eat very easily. So we probably didn't let our babies cry that much. And babies probably didn't cry that much

because they were always on mom. And so what the theory is that the mom would, we would create these slings or whatever, which you see in a lot of modern hunter-gatherer societies where these mothers will put the baby in a sling and the baby is just riding on mom all day long. Now mom is, because their hunter-gatherers is working all day long.

So she's out picking, she's doing stuff, she's getting water, she's preparing things or whatever, the baby just on mom the whole time. And when they follow these societies, they find that the babies just don't cry that much at all. The babies there, and when the babies are on mom, and they wanna eat, many times they just reach up, grab the breast and feed. And so he's saying, this is a much more natural process. There's also see-cissie pictures right there. And so in modern Western societies, what we've done is

we've separated the baby from the mom and that causes a type of anxiety because the babies become in sync with the mother. They become in sync with the mother's breathing, the mother's pulse. They find too that there's even some theories to suggest that some of these terrible things that happen with babies were like kids, where they just stop breathing. They, some people say that the mother's exhale

and the mother's body temperature helps signal the baby's body when to breathe. So when you remove the baby, so that article I sent you guys and then in documentaries all about that, I thought it was absolutely fascinating. Do you know who's dealing with the cry it out? Theory, like who popularized that?

No, that's kind of a Western theory where you teach it. Now here's the other part of it, is that you also have to look at life. And- Right, the adversity that life throws you when you get older and then the cry theory, Justin is like the, you know, teaching the kid to be independent at a very young age

and so they're not so dependent on a mother because it's a different life. Well, that's a different civilization. That's true, but what he says, what they talk about is that the first, I forgot what it was like year, or maybe six months or a year, or formidable. After that, then yeah, then you start to teach

a little bit more independence. But what I'm talking about is life also means you want to maintain a good relationship with your spouse. So if baby is strapped to mom 24 hours a day, how is she going to feel about that? How's a relationship gonna be? Is it realistic? Yeah, the relationship between you and your wife. Yeah, is it realistic?

Maybe she has to work and all that stuff. So, but it was fascinating to look this up and read it and stuff like that. I'm really curious to see how, you know, everybody tells me that she'll change when that happens to be both will obviously. I'm curious to see because she's in a position where she doesn't have to work and she loves to work. So I'm

really curious if that switches over. She was raised by- She's gonna not want to work it. Right, right. I'm staying out of that. I have my own personal what I would selfishly like, but I'm not gonna tell my girl that she has to do anything. She can do whatever she wants to do. And I know that she was raised by a mother who worked full-time, built a business while she was raising her. And so, you know, Katrina and her looks at her mom like the queen. And so I think she wants that herself too. wants that herself to. Well, let me ask you this.

Do you guys have, is grandma available? Totally. Okay, so grandma ants are causing. Makes a huge difference. They, you know, one of the theories as to why women go through menopause, where they literally their bodies can no longer become pregnant, is because of the importance of the role of the grandmother. And many anthropologists think that the grandmother played such a major role that they evolved

to not have children anymore so that they could help with the child rearing of her daughters and her sons and stuff like that. So... That's probably one of the things I'm most excited, which makes it even even less fear or Reluctancy going into this at all is that you know, we literally have her family my family all live really close And they I mean you saw in the video right like just how Excited they are to have a kid. I mean it's gonna be like a fighting frenzy over who gets to have him next or have him around And which is exciting for us as parents because Katrina and I do a lot of stuff. And that was one of the things

why we waited as long as we did is because her and I travel a lot and have lived a very selfish life of spending money on ourselves and doing a lot of cool things. And she really doesn't want a lot of that to stop. I've told her, we'll see. When we have a kid, a lot of the shit's been slowed down. You'll see.

And she's like, no, we've got family. I don't want to stop that stuff. We can, I want to be able to still do a lot of good health. Yeah. Right. I'm so I'm excited. I'm excited. She has that attitude. She's got that attitude. I'm all forward. I got all supportive. We can make it happen. And she believes that we've got that that family network that wants to be a part of the kids life so much that we will be able to heavily lean on family to be able to, hey, you know, we're gonna take off for four or five days,

could you guys, obviously in the first year, what about that, that's probably not very likely, but as he gets into one and two and three. Well, we got some babysitters here. Yeah, it's very helpful to have family like that, you know, reaching out and getting you out of, like it's just good for your relationship too. Yeah, we'll watch the baby.

Yeah, sure. Oh, we're professionals. No, no. good for your relationship too. Yeah, we'll watch the baby. Yeah, sure. Oh, we're professionals. No, no. Pick up your little boy and he'd be like, I'm telling you twice. I tell you what, if you're a young guy and you're listening right now, my advice to you,

and it's, I think it's gonna pay off very well for me, is that I do, I have just an abundance of help and wisdom that's around me being a 37 year old that's finally having a kid that I don't have that. Like I can imagine being 22 in the first one having a kid, like how, I mean, you're figuring out yeah, you're figuring it out all on your own where I don't feel that way at all.

I think you know, it's gonna be my biggest headache to be honest is actually shutting everybody the fuck up. Like I think there's gonna me so many people wanting to help and that's always a problem. I could already feel- But she during labor, you get a push family members out. You just wait till you get the ants and grandma's in. 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 I can give him candy all the time if I want or whatever. Oh my god. So I am worried about that. If there is anything that I'm worried about,

it's actually that. It's that I'm gonna have so many people that are gonna be wanting to be a part of his life that I'm gonna have to be like, okay. That's a better problem. I can't wait to teach this kid some Italian words. You're gonna pick them up for my house. Hey, what's up buddy?

You'd be like, Papa, va, va, va, coolo. What the fuck, cool. What did he say, Sal? He says he loves you. don't worry about it. String Math and the ball is the perfect place to start with a full 30-day money back guarantee There is absolutely zero risk. So what is your waiting for go to my promenade.com and get started today The motherfucking world Eagerness landed

Quique Our first question is from J.M. Wardle Thoughts on the overhead squat first question is from Jam Wartle. Thoughts on the overhead squat. Have you ever incorporated it into your or your client's workouts? How much carryover does it have for traditional back squat or front squat? Do you know what? I don't know if I have programmed this four clients. I never have. I don't think I have. I don't think I've actually programmed four client. I have myself done this and worked towards this, but to be honest, very few people have the mobility to perform

an overhead squat really well. That's a very difficult exercise to do right. It takes a lot of, it would take a lot of specialized, what I mean by specialized is, you know, when I train a client, I'm looking at general, improving lots of general mobility, improving lots of general performance. When I'm training an athlete, it's much more specific, right? So if I have a sprinter, you know, I'm working some on general performance, but then I'm working a lot on specific performance to improve their performance in the sprint. An overhead squat would require a lot of specific type of training to get someone to the point

to be able to perform that movement safely. So if I took the average client, I'd have to first get them through all the general stuff and then I'd have to really focus on specifically getting them to do an overhead squat. Not saying it's not impossible, it's definitely possible with a healthy person. It's just, I don't know how much carryover

or how much benefit they would necessarily get from it. I'm just, as a coach, always evaluating risk versus reward. And I think that's, this is along those lines of like, okay, does it have that kind of a carryover if you're looking forward to attribute towards performance on the field. Are there other alternatives that might lower the risk in terms of injuring my athlete or are

promoting you know problems further down the road. And so for me like I kind of I flurred it with the idea of teaching this to some athletes, but really I didn't see a whole lot of reward from that particular exercise other than somebody trying to learn an overhead snatch. And that was, I didn't have any clients that really were trying to pursue that very specific skill other than that. Because even if I am, there's lots of reward from promoting like a power movement and Olympic lift like an overhead snatch, but you can do that with a dumbbell or a kettlebell

or something else that the risk factor goes way down with that. I do wanna say that if you have the mobility, which an overhead squat, I mean, requires incredible ankle mobility, incredible hip mobility, incredible shoulder, incredible thoracic mobility. Like, you kind of have to have it all. It's a really good pack, complete pack. It's the entire kinetic chain is stabilized on the community.

Right, so if you do have all that, I think it's a great move to incorporate in your programming. So if I did have somebody, like, let's say I got, like a 17 year old, probably a young teenager that's an athlete and that has incredible mobility. Let's say I have them, they're actually hard to find even these days, but let's say I have someone like that.

What I like about the move is that if you were to keep it into your routine when you already have that really good healthy moment, it'll help promote that mobility and keeping that mobility for a long time because it's kind of like, I posted a video of me doing The band pull apart pull apart, but I do it in a deep squat now. I couldn't start there I had to work on the ankle mobility. I had to work on the hip mobility

You had to be able to sit in the squat right I had to be able to sit in the squat so Now that I can sit in the squat now what's kind of cool is I can work on my thoracic mobility at the same time I'm promoting good ankle mobility and hip mobility because I've worked on that so much sit in the squat, now what's kind of cool is I can work on my thoracic mobility. At the same time, I'm promoting good ankle mobility and hip mobility because I've worked on that so much, all in one move. So somebody just asked about this, asked about that exercise and that's why I do that, is now I don't have to spend, I used to have to spend 10 minutes on combat stretch, spend 10, 15 minutes on the 90, 90, but now that I've done all the work to get reconnected to all those muscles and to improve my mobility,

now I can actually go into a single move like that and that's my warm up. Yeah, that would be like the pinnacle example of like your entire body is supported in mobile. Like that would be like something where I could show off. Like I put in all the work, shoulder mobility wise, you know, thoracic mobility wise, you know, hips, you know, ankles, like the entire chain is solid.

And I can perform this exercise. Yeah, the big benefits I can see from this movement are being able to maintain strong stability in your entire body as you're squatting, being able to connect good hip and ankle mobility, two good thoracic and shoulder mobility, because I get a lot of benefits from doing overhead carries.

Now I'm walking, I'm not squatting. So if I take a kettlebell, or I've done this with a barbell too, where I'll press a barbell up above my head, hold it real steady, maintain good tension, and then do a very careful braced walk. I get lots of benefit in my shoulders, in my upper back. I've actually noticed muscle growth and strength.

As a result of maintaining that end range of motion tension, part of the reason being, I trained so long, like bodybuilder style where I didn't even lock out with my dumbbells, where I wouldn't focus on that. So now I'm focusing on that part of the rep that I don't normally focus on, and that's all I'm focusing on while I'm moving, but a squat while holding a weight above your head.

Now, connects the lower half of your body, challenges that mobility at the same time as your upper body. I mean, I'm in the firm belief that if you can do something, well, then it's okay to do and it's perfectly safe. And if you wanna maintain that ability to do it, you need to practice it. So, to the example of Adam gave of the 17 year old kid that's fit and athletic and can do this,

if they wanna keep it, then you gotta keep practicing it. Cause I will say this, it'll go away. If you don't practice this movement, you won't be able to do this movement forever. It's a challenging exercise, and it requires lots of practice. Even then, and I fully agree with the overhead carries,

which I perform all the time to be able to maintain those abilities, but I do those with independent tools, so dumbbells or kettlebells versus a fixed bar, because as I'm walking over, one is going to affect the other, and just that little bit of torsion could really fuck your back up. And so that's like a whole other level of extreme where I don't do overhead walks with a barbell. Here's a good replacement. If the sound of stabilizing your shoulder

and your upper back, along with, you know, working on some hip mobility, so working the upper body in a, in a tension position while working the lower body through a full range of motion, if that attracts you and you like that challenge, but you've never done any type of an overhead squat type movement. Here's a, here's a good replacement that you could do pretty much anywhere. Hold

a kettlebell or a dumbbell above your head with one arm and then do some walking lunges. Start really, really light. Start with a really, really light weight. Five or ten pounds, just maintain that tension. Keep everything real straight and strong. And then do some walking lunges going forward and back and then switch arms and practice that. And you'll get a lot of the, you'll get some similar benefits. Not nearly as challenging as an overhead squat, but you will get some challenge. Start there. And then if you want to take it into the level, then you grab a barbell. And now you do walking lunges with a barbell.

And then if you want to take it to the next level, now you hold the dumbbell above your head and try and squat. And then you can progress to the barbell. And then of course, all in between is all the mobility work, all the handcuffs with rotation exercises, the combat stretch, all the, you know, the prone cobra movements,

the loosening exercises that dynamic warm-up is practicing it constantly with, you know, like a dowel bar, and then you're head in creating your own internal tension. And take your time because even My even myself and I think okay. I know what to do with my body I was practicing exercises like windmills and overhead carries Mainly because I need to work on that type of mobility and I I went a little too far too fast

And I caused shoulder impingement issues on my right shoulder head to back way the fuck off Couldn't do anything like that for a couple months and then that set me back and I had shoulder impingement issues on my right shoulder. I had to back away the fuck off. Couldn't do anything like that for a couple months. And then that set me back and I had to get back into it. And so it's an easy pitfall to get in where you're challenged yourself to. I just think too when I, if I were to just be walking in almost any gym, grab 10 random people and have them perform a squat for me, just a basic barbell squat. I mean, what do you think, what do you think of those 10 people, how many of them would actually be able to perform a barbell squat?

Ten random people? Yeah, random people. I don't even think one would do it. Yeah, I mean fuck things on the gym. It depends. Right, right. And really though, that's what I'm saying. It's rare that you even find somebody who's got just,

I mean, when I see it, I actually will either one walk over and say something. Like, I will, I will compliment somebody in the gym. I'll take my headphones off, walk over to someone if I see a beautiful squat. It's just rare. It's a very hard thing to get in a very deep squat at position and no breakdown in the catacombs.

How funny is that too? It's such a fundamental human movement, but because we don't do it ever. Like think about everyday life. When do you do a full squat? You don't. The closest you get is when you sit down on the toilet or in a chair and that's not even a full squat. So you just never do it. You never do it. Now take that and multiply it times a hundred or maybe even a thousand and now you have the overhead squat. That's literally the difference in difficulty of application is a regular barbell squat.

If that's a 10, then a overhead squat is 100 or 1000 in terms of difficulty. Just that much more risk factor. Definitely. The next question is from the real mad mason. What are your go-to techniques to elicit long-term behavior change in clients? I like the way it's worded because as a trainer, I learned this. It took me a while to learn this as a trainer, by the way. This wasn't something that you learn in your certification classes or it's kind of something

you learned through experience. What you're really doing, if you really want to help that person person is you're trying to change their behaviors, their permanent behaviors. That's what you're trying to change. So think of any permanent behavior that you have yourself and now imagine if you changed it completely for the rest of your life, is that going to be easy? Of course not. It's a very, very, very difficult thing to do. And so the big mistake I would do in the beginning as a trainer, my first years as a trainer, would be I had the answers.

So, okay, you wanna lose weight. I know exactly what you need to do to lose weight, and it's as easy as doing what I have to tell you. Just follow my direction and you'll lose weight. And then we win and you succeed. And that didn't happen. Sometimes I'd get clients that would do exactly what I told them and they would lose weight, but there were no permanent behavior changes. And so

they would end up going right back to where they were before. And then a lot of times people didn't even do exactly what I said, because it literally would include completely changing their diet, throwing in three or four days a week of exercise, changing how you sleep, like all these major changes, all at once, which humans just, we don't change our fundamental behaviors long term that way, it just doesn't work. Really, there's really two ways that people will make a fundamental change in how they behave. One way is through the epiphany process,

which is extremely rare. This is an extremely rare process. So I'll give you an example of how an epiphany process, which is extremely rare. This is an extremely rare process. So I'll give you an example of how an epiphany might actually happen for someone. Let's say you're a man in your 50s and you're working hard and you've got some kids and they're young and you've got a wife at home and you're real stressed and yeah, you know you need to work out

and yeah, you know you need to change your diet but whatever, I'm just trying to bust my ass. And then you get a fucking heart attack. And you wake up in the hospital, and everybody's around you, and the doctor's like, you were with an inches of losing your life, and never being able to see your family again. That might be enough of an impetus,

and it's something, many times it's not by the way, but that example might be enough of an impetus for somebody to look and be like, that's it. Of course, course, I almost lost my family. I need to make major changes and that's it. I'll never go back again. And that's even that, that's extremely, extremely rare. So don't, that will not happen with your clients. You are not going to give your client a fucking epiphany. I don't care. I'm motivating and charismatic. You are or how awesome you are. Yeah, they're going to find it themselves. You're just not going gonna do that for them.

You ain't gonna happen. So forget that. The other way that humans make fundamental long-term behavior changes is the way that most of the changes that we make happen, which is a little bit at a time. There's key. It's one step that is challenging, but realistic,

and then you stick to that, and then that becomes a new behavior change, and then you move to the to that, and then that becomes a new behavior change, and then you move to the next one, and then that becomes a realistic and challenging, but then it's realistic, and then you do that one. And what happens to that process, you'll notice what's your clients is, they build confidence the entire time.

So whereas in the beginning, it was, okay, let's avoid soda on Tuesdays, and then the next thing becomes, okay, now you're gonna avoid soda everys, and then the next thing becomes okay, now you're gonna avoid soda every day, and then the next thing becomes cool. Now you're not eating processed sugar. And before you know it, your client starts taking

bigger and bigger steps, but this process takes years. It's the bottom line. The real game of it is to see what you can get them to adopt and then retain. And so whatever concept I'm throwing at them, it has to be realistic. It has to be something that's very simple to where it's, I'm not overbearing them with a ton of different objectives.

I had to learn that process because what is on paper and where we want to go and All these different types of goals that we want to accomplish are definitely, you know valid And that's something that we can all shoot for but to get you there like when it comes to experience and training people over and over You start to realize like what has had the most impact and has been the most subtle like what has had the most impact and has been the most subtle thing that I could provide this client for them to be able to really understand it on their own and come to the conclusions themselves. It's like, how do I teach them something that they're like, it changes the way they think

to where they're like, wow, and it clicks, and now we can get further and dive deeper and go as we get into this, but like really it's trying to plant the seed to let them really come to this understanding themselves. I think we underestimate how challenging it is to get someone to change a behavior. I mean, and I think that was like to Sal's point while it took me so long to even figure this out because like you Have the answers, you know if you want to get shredded if you want to build muscle you want to lose a bunch of diet plan Yeah, I I know your weight. I know what you're doing Okay, if you follow this this food that I tell you to eat you do and the the challenging part is a trainer

And I think why I failed for so long is because a lot of clients want that. That's what they tell you. They say, just tell me what I need to do. Adam, just tell me. They get mad when you don't give them a diet plan. Oh. That was my biggest fight for many years when I stopped giving meal plans was,

I don't want to track or I don't want to do, I just want you to tell me what to do. And it became something that was managed where I was. In fact, yesterday, I got a text message from an old client you to tell me what to do and it became something that was managed where I'm in fact yesterday. I got a text message from an old client, a friend of mine that I've helped out before with coaching and she knows how busy we are with mine pump and everything. She listens to the show and she goes, she goes, you know, I'm really trying to get back in the swing of things. Could you recommend somebody else for me who

Coach like you and I'm like oh, I said well, I said tell you what I said. I'm not really helping anybody right now You know, what do you think and how long when you want to start this? And then she told me all that stuff and I said okay, I said well, you know what I'm gonna tell you to do first right? Doesn't fucking matter that I know you we've done this a million times before What am I gonna tell you to do first and she's's like, okay, I'll start tracking, right? And so, and the reason why that is, even somebody who I know, and I know her kind of habits, I don't know, I haven't seen her in over a year.

I don't know what new behaviors, new habits, where she's at in her life right now, and I need to see that. And once I see that, the mistake that I used to make as a trainer before is, okay, this person's eating like shit, they're all over the board and all these things. Here's the perfect meal plan. Like, no, absolutely not. Now it looks like this. I look at everything, all the shit she's fucking up, and I pick one thing. One thing that I want to try and improve,

whether that be getting more fruit in the diet and more fiber, or reducing the amount of processed sugar, like Sal said, or increasing the protein intake, or getting enough healthy fats. I'm gonna pick one fucking thing, and I'm gonna drill that home. Okay, this is what we're gonna, your first week, keep doing what we're doing,

but now what I want you to do is every day, I want you to have one cup of blueberries and strawberries and raspberries. Something so basic and simple for her. Yeah, one of your big jobs as a trainer or coach or fitness professional is to help your client set their expectations. And that's huge. See, I used, I fucked up in the beginning because I, you know, I'm able to really set someone's expectations, right? So the client comes to me and I would sell them. I'd be like, look, you hire me, you do what I say,

and you're gonna lose the weight. Follow my lead, and you're gonna get where you want. People would be like, yeah, that's what I fucking want. And so I'd set their expectations, they'd follow what I did, they'd lose weight, but then of course, they'd fall off, they'd gain the weight back, and because the behavior didn't change, and they'd feel shitty about themselves,

which makes things worse. Later on, I realized I could take all that energy and I could focus on changing their expectations in a way that's really gonna benefit them in the long term. So now, then what I would do is I'd get clients, it'd come to me about, I wanna lose 30 pounds in three months. And I'd sit down and have a conversation with them

and I'd tell them what we're talking about right now. Look, we could do this the fast way, we could do this the forever way. So let's talk about the forever way. This is what it looks like. Now, here's what it's gonna look like in terms of results. It's gonna take you a long time. You're not gonna get the results you want right away,

but they're gonna be permanent. And you're not gonna have to keep hiring a trainer, you're not gonna have to keep getting on a new diet, you're not gonna have to keep hating on yourself because we're gonna do this in the permanent way. And so expect to not lose a pound for a little while. Expect for the workouts to be mild for a little while. Don't expect yourself to come to the gym five days a week from zero.

Right now, two days a week is two times more than you're doing before. We're gonna stick with that and trust me, that's gonna be challenging. Now, maybe not for the first month or two because you feel like you're so hyped and motivated right now, but I guarantee you, four, five, six months from now, shit's gonna pop up and that two days of weeks and be difficult to stick to, but it's realistic. That's what we're gonna start with.

And I would set their expectations in this way and then I would have them focus on the small wins, you know? Yeah, you're not lose, you don't lose 10 pounds. However, you're squatting five more pounds than you were two weeks ago. You're able to do a push up, you couldn't do a push up before. Hey, your sleep is a lot better now. Look at your hair, look how you feel. Then I get people who would come to me and say, you know what, I went to a work event

the other day and I hadn't seen some of these co-workers in a long time and they all complimented me and said I looked really good. I haven't lost a single pound on the scale though it's really weird but people were asking me like what I've been doing like well you're healthier, you're health shows and people would change their expectations and start to celebrate those small wins and then here's what ends up happening because when I truly figured this out as a personal trainer this is when I had to have clients who would train with me for, at this point now, clients would train with me for 10, 12 years.

If I was training today, they'd still be with me. I had clients that would be for 15 years, 15 years straight. Now, the training changed, of course, it would start off with three days a week, then two days a week, then one days a week, then one every other week, just to kind of keep them, you know, meeting with me. But these people became extremely consistent. And now, I still think contact keep them, you know, meeting with me. But these people became extremely consistent.

And now I still think in contact with them, and they're still working out. They're still consistent. It has now become a part of their life. But here's the kicker. Some of these people didn't lose their 30 pounds or whatever for three years. I had one guy that took him three years,

he lose 35 pounds, but it never came back. That's the hardest part, though, is the hardest part I think is a trainer is to handle the clients and then constantly nagging you about that. I used to give this analogy, like I used to, first I get my clients to agree that the foundation and the framing of a house is the most important part of a house, right?

So if we're building your dream mansion, your dream home, can we agree that the foundation that the house is gonna be built on and the framework of that house is by far the most important piece of it. Not the channel. Sustain, sustaining forever, right? And then I say, you know, when you keep asking me about when we're gonna lose these three pounds

or when you're gonna look like this girl that you brought a picture in or what, then you keep doing that, you sound like the person. And I'm over here and I'm, you know, scraping the concrete and I'm making sure it's fucking perfect. And you're over here talking to me about the fucking curtains in the second bedroom. Like, we're not even there yet.

And we can talk about that all you want. If you want to stop what we're doing here and put all of our energy and focus on that, we can go buy all the coolest curtains in the world. But no, that shit matters. If you don't lay the foundation and you don't build the framework correctly, and your body is no different.

Like, we have to lay this solid foundation and take our time on that. If we're gonna take our time on anything, it's that. Let's take our time on really making sure that we have a solid foundation. And then you know what? Once you got that, man, you can switch your goals up. Tell me you want to jump higher. Tell me you want to run faster. Tell me you want to look like a bikini model. Tell me you want to, you know, lift about 500 pounds off the floor. Tell me whatever else you want. Then we can spend all the time in the world chasing after all these coagulals,

because you get it, because we've laid our solid foundation, but we gotta do that first. Yeah, I think trainers need to realize that the reason why there's an obesity epidemic, the reason why there's a health epidemic, the reason why fitness and mobility is so terrible and people is because modern lifestyles promote that.

And it's your lifestyle. This is how you have a 30 year old person in front of you, a 20 year old, a 40 year old, 50 year old person in front of you. That's how they've been living. The reason why they look the way they do and the way they feel the way they do is because that is their life.

And what you're literally trying to do, so I want to present in perspective, is you're trying to get them to completely change how they live. Good luck, that isn't gonna happen tomorrow. No, because right now they think about it as adding. They're adding something in that's gonna help them get better and they're not thinking about changing

their patterns or lifestyle of behaviors. No, I don't. It takes a lot of time. I don't give a shit how motivating and inspiring and charismatic, look, I can stand toe to toe with the most charismatic charismatic mother fuckers on earth and I'll tell you something right now all the charisma in the world And all the motivation in the world isn't gonna get someone to instantly change Life-long behaviors forever. It's just not gonna happen. It's a long process Set the stage make sure you set those

Expectations and coach them through that process. It's a slow process, but if you do it right, you will change lives for real. Next question is from Barbell Scott. If you build muscle with a certain type of training volume, do you need to keep that volume of training to maintain that muscle? Good question. It is. You know, it's funny. So when I was younger, if I laid off training

intensity or diet, boy, would I lose muscle fast? I mean, it would be hard for me to stay above 190 pounds. Now, because I've built this muscle, I've had it for so long, keeping it's pretty fucking easy to be quite honest. I don't have to fight to keep it. I have to fight to build more, but I don't have to really fight to keep it. And so what I've started to realize is that, you know, getting there takes a lot more work and effort staying there, not as much work and effort.

After a certain point, right? If you know, I don't mean you get there and then all of a sudden like, oh, I'm here. And I can fuck off, which think God, because I I don't mean you get there and then all of a sudden, like, oh, I'm here and I can fuck off. Which, thank God, because I mean, think about how much time and effort it took to really build yourself up to a frame where you're like, yeah, I got some good amount of muscle on me. Imagine if now every single workout was dependent on you killing this volume or this amount of work

that you constantly had to uphold to. And that's what gives me comfort, actually. Like, I can go, I can scale down a bit and I'm going to be okay and I can ramp it back up. And, you know, there's actually ways to improve and then build upon what I've built. But like you said, it's once you get there, like maintaining it isn't as challenging as, you know, the previous. Years ago, when I had my studio, this, had my studio, my studio used to be next to breakfast place, real popular breakfast place in Las Gatos.

I'd see people going in and out all the time. It was a really great location because a lot of times I'd poach clients who'd be waiting for their breakfast. In fact, pro bodybuilders, a few of them would eat there. It's pretty funny. I met Phil Heath a couple times. But anyway, there was this old guy who, I was Saturday morning, breakfast place is popping.

I'm training a client, and this old guy walks in, and he's kind of looking around while I'm training my client. Now, I love, you guys know, I love people in advance stage. I just have a thing for him. So I'm, you know, in between sets. I'm like, oh, no. It's weird. It's weird. Don't go that far. I'm, you know, in between sets. Oh, no. It's weird. Don't go that far.

I'm sorry. No, I'm not. So I walk over to the sky and what stood out, he's wearing a t-shirt and he had these little fucking media ass little forums. He's a small guy. He was like, five, seven. He had these media ass little forums and I'm looking at it. I go to talk to him and he has this really thick,

Russian accent and he's like, oh, you know, Kettlebell, he's like, you know, how much did this way? And I told him, you know, it was 78 pounds and he's like, how many kilos? And so I did the math forum. So he's like, oh, and he fucking grabs his kettlebell and he presses it with one arm above his head and he puts it back down.

Now he's got these musculoskeletal forms. Then he pulls his shirt up and he flexes his bicep and he's got this like little gun, you know, and I'm like, holy shit. So I became friends with this guy and he came in, he would come in a couple times at one point I had some time to sit down and talk with him.

So I'm like, so like, how often do you work out? He's like, oh, I haven't worked out in years. I'm like, what? He goes, I was an Olympic lifter for the Soviet Union. This guy was in his late 70s. And what blew me away was the amount of muscle that he kept on his body, obviously, because he trained for so, so, so long. And this is when I first started to read about muscle hyperplasia.

And this is where, you know, when you build a muscle, it's called hypertrophy, a muscle fiber grows. But then there's also something called hyperplasia where you actually create new muscle fibers. And the theory goes that, you know, if you stop being active, your muscle fiber shrink back down the atrophy. But when you build new muscle fibers, they never go away.

They'll atrophy, but they'll never go away. And I think that's kind of what I've experienced now that I've worked out for so long, is that there's always a certain amount of muscle now. That'll be able to keep you. I definitely agree and think that, although I will say that, I mean, my body, I definitely fluctuate a lot.

The positive is that I know that when I ramp the volume back up, I get back to that place that I worked so hard to get to for so many years, a lot faster. But I definitely can relate to somebody who, you know, training high volume, dialed in nutritionally, feel great about yourself, and then you stop training for six months or whatever and it feels like all of it goes away like you definitely will feel like that especially when in you're in your first five years of training and then you're what I notice is after five and then 10 and then 15 plus years of training it starts to get easier and easier because and I

Attribute that to the hyper pleasure when you look at somebody like Ben Pekolsky like what a great extent The guy was trying to not get rid of his soul. He's trying to lose muscle. He was eating such a low calorie diet. He was, he had the frequency of his training was down extremely low. He was like 70, 80 pounds lighter than he was before. Right. Still extremely muscular. Right. Still. Still, still looks like a probioty builder, you know, like it, but it's training to lose that

muscle. So there's, there's definitely something to be said about when you've put the time out of the iron and you've been doing it for a really long time, that you do start to, you know, build or add more muscle fibers and then therefore, even when they shrink and go down, you still look. It takes a long time though. It's important to say that though. Like it takes years of time. Very, very, very, very long time. That's why I wanted to make that clear, because if you're somebody who's in their first five years

of training and you finally start to get some headway, you hit a new marker as far as size wise or whatever, and then you lay off and then you go right back to square one, that's fucking normal, dude. I mean, I felt that way for sure for at least the first five years. And then about 10 years in, I felt like, okay, when I fall off now, I looked like the better version of me when my first five years.

You set point. Yeah, there's a new set point. And so I think that that needle just, and it's, you know, for somebody who's going to the gym every day, year after year, like, it's a slow grind, but the positive side is that absolutely I think over years and years, right now I'm training some of the lowest volume I've trained in probably 15 years. This is the amount of volume that I'm training right now is extremely low, but my physique is, I have way more muscle than I had, you know, 10 years ago at my peak.

So my body right now, even as crappy as it's gone in the last year, is still significantly better than what it was 10 years ago. You know, maybe not at my peak, but 10 years ago in training and dieting and feeling pretty good, like I still got more muscle. Here's another thing too,

and I'll tell a story to kind of illustrate this. I remember as a kid, I was under the belief that more is better when it came to training. And so I remember at one point, I was doing 20 sets, per body part, per workout. I was doing crazy amounts of volume. I was working out twice a day. I'd work out before going to school.

Then I'd go to school, I'd come home, and I'd work out again. And then I remember reading about a style of training at the time, it was called Heavy Duty, a book written by Mike Menser, where you do one set to failure per body part, and that's it. And it's way, way, way, way, way less volume. Now I switched to that style of training, and I built muscle. I actually gained five pounds. It gained it so fast that I became a disciple of heavy duty

way too long that I should have. Of course, it was a stop working, but I stuck to it way too long but I became like this hardcore disciple of it. And so, and I've experienced that time and I've experienced that with clients where clients will come, look, Doug is a good example.

When Doug was my client, he didn't come to me as a complete beginner. He'd worked out for years and years and done all these super high volume workouts. When he worked out with me, he was working out twice a week, but he was hitting PRs and strength and muscle. So sometimes reducing your volume actually builds more muscle. If you're doing too much, then cutting it down,

you'll get better results. So it's not a, you know, because I know we talk a lot about increasing the volume as become more fit and all that stuff. And it also needs to be appropriate. And many times, especially with the, and this isn't common for most people, most people just don't work out enough.

But a lot of the hardcore fitness fanatics and, you know, people addicted to exercise, a lot of those people, when they hire me to coach them, one of the first things I tell them is, okay, you're doing too much. Let's cut that way, that way back, and then they report back to me, like, oh, shoot, I'm stronger. I'm hitting new PRs, I'm building more muscles.

Like, you were just two and too much, just too much. So sometimes reducing the volume is actually better for building muscle. Next question is from Snow LVR. When meeting with a potential client, what is the best way to close them? And then they went on to say they're a rookie trainer and not so good at closing. Oh, this is fun. Yeah.

You, you know, when you have a potential client, I'm assuming first and foremost, your, your, obviously, a trainer and you're talking about, um, you're doing an assessment. Um, and that's how you're, that's, that's the process of, they're talking about closing them because,, and I wanna be clear, when I used to coach trainers on how to get clients, I would always tell them, when you first meet someone on the floor, your goal is not to sell them personal training right there,

your goal is to get them to want to come and see you for an assessment in a free session. That's when you have the time to sell them the training. Only the absolute best and absolute greatest sales people in the world are the people that tend to sell training off the floor and most people aren't there. And so I always tell them, make sure you get them to schedule a workout with you. And then in the workout, that's when you get to talk to them about training and get them to buy higher you as a trainer When you're doing the assessment the the the first half of that assessment is listening

You want to ask a lot of questions you want to ask them about of course what their goals are in their history You want to ask them about their commitment level? That's an important one People tend to not want to go back on what they just told you earlier. So if somebody tells you on a scale of one to 10, I'm a nine. I really want to do this. This is something that's really important to me. The odds that later on the conversation, they're going to tell you, I don't know if I want to do this, is actually much lower. People hate to do that.

So it's a really good way to get that person to make that commitment. Ask them about how many days a week they can work out realistically. That automatically overcomes the whole, I don't know if I could make it to the gym type of objection. Ask them if there's anything preventing them from getting to their goals. Go through all these different things, then take them out in the workout floor and show them some value. And the way you show them value is you show them value by doing the exercise with them, correcting form, making them feel good, but that's not enough. That's not enough. You also have to talk about what they've just witnessed and make sure that they agree that they're getting some

value from it. And it's not because you're tricking them, it's because people are very unaware. They're not in their bodies, most people. So if I take somebody and we do a whole goal assessment and we talk about their goals and all that stuff and I take them out and I look at them and I say, okay, looks like you have some forward shoulder. I'll explain what that is. I'm not gonna assume they know what that means.

And I'm gonna say, here's a great exercise to fix that. We're gonna do the exercise. I'm gonna put them through the movement. Can you feel where that's working? Can you feel your shoulders loosen up? We put the bar back, have them stand up. How does your posture feel? Wow, I feel so much better.

Now I'm gonna make sure they I really understand it. So I'm gonna say something like, can you see how doing an exercise like that or working with exercise like that can fix this problem? Can you see how that will take away some of the neck tension you've been feeling? And they'll say yes. And that's the whole process of that goal assessment.

Getting them to understand and talk about the value. Then you take them back, you present to them and prescribe to them your training, make sure you give them more than one option and you recommend one of them but leave it open and make a decision for themself. Really, it's that simple. It really is. If you follow that process, you should find that people who book an assessment with you at least half, if not more than half of the people will end up saying yes to hiring you for some period of amount of time. I fully agree with the assessment as being a valuable part of that process. And mainly

for me, I try to get outside of the desk. So where we meet and we sit and we chat, that's great. But I always found the most effective way to get somebody interested and hooked and was to just start moving. And for me, to really listen and prod them with questions that were open-ended to where I could get them to keep talking. Like, my goal is to get them to talk almost the entire time. So that way it's building up my understanding of really why they're there and what it is that they're trying to accomplish where they're at in life, like what they want from the experience. But also, you know, you do want to have them have that sense of authority in terms of like, you know

what you're talking about. And so you'll throw in every now and then, like, you know, so I'll bring up an example of like a postural issue that you can sort of highlight by taking them through a specific type of movement or an exercise. It just creates a dialogue between, you know, you and the client and it further helps them to understand that there is some immediate things that you can help them improve. But also, start to now take what they've told you, bring it back to sit down and further the conversation of how I can really help you achieve what it is that you're trying to do. And I've just found that the more I can get them to talk,

the easier the close becomes at the end. And so you just sort of take notes mentally if you have to, sometimes I'll write things down, especially during the assessment process to kind of reiterate. But the most effective ones have always been, if I can get on a level where I relate to where, I'm not talking over them, I'm not using a whole lot of fancy words.

I'm just trying to be like, look, this is gonna be great for you. You're gonna have a fun time doing it. And then it's just, it's an asumptive after that, I'll see you tomorrow, you know, sort of thing. And like, let's draw this up and give a big hug. And then, yeah, and then we kiss. Pat him all the time. I love this shit, man. This is, this was like one of my favorite parts in being the profession. And the part that I liked was,

I liked helping trainers good at this. And it's funny, I think the most common thing is, they lack the confidence. Oh gosh, so much. If I could, if I could, trainers hate to ask for money for me. It is, that's everything. And when I would tell them,

and this is what I'd say, I'd say, you know what's so crazy? And everybody has got probably a doctor appointment story within the last year or two, and you had to go see the doctor. I said, your doctor has the best closing skills ever, and you don't realize it. I said, so let's pick apart exactly your last experience

in the doctor's office. You went in because you had some fucking cough or your strep throat or fucking some growth on your foot or some weird shit, right? You go in you make your appointment just like they would make an assessment appointment with you as a personal trainer Nurse comes in first. What does she do? She sticks that weird doohickey in your ear She opens your mouth up. Yeah, you do that then they fucking hit the little thing on your knee and see you got the reflexes You don't even know what the flux she's doing in for. You have no idea.

Like, why are they doing all this? I have sore throat, but I'm doing this thing in my ear. Light my eyeball. Right, right. But this is part of their assessment. She's doing it. You don't ask questions. You just fucking do it.

Your client's the same way. They walk in. You do a squat assessment. You think they know what the fuck a squat assessment is? Do you think they know what upper cross syndrome or lower cross syndrome? They don't know what the fuck that is. That your job is just to do that. You're doing an assessment.

You're doing what you're supposed to. Then the doctor comes in like big swinging dick the last five minutes and he just goes, okay, I want you to do this, take this, do this, do that. And then he hands you prescription. And what the fuck do you do? You don't ask any questions. Maybe you ask some questions. How often should I do that or how long or where do I get my refill or whatever,

some bullshit like that. But you don't question what he tells you to do. You just fucking do it and you leave, right? You gotta get that level of confidence with however you're presenting. So I don't care what you're presenting or what you're telling these clients. You've gotta learn to be confident in what you're saying.

And if you do, it'll transfer into that person and it really is that easy. Nobody wants to hire a trainer that's not confident. But we're doing the questions themselves. So what I used to tell trainers is, you know, stick to the things that you're confident. Okay, if you're not really, really good at being able to look at every imbalance

and then talk real deep about it and understand you're still learning all the muscles. Then don't go crazy like that. Go take them and kind of into Justin's point in the South, show them one or two things on the floor that you know they're going to feel and you can tell a difference. And then when you get back to the desk and you sit down, explain to them, give them an idea of how long it should take to correct these things. Or, you know, so, and I like telling trainers that you stick to the easy shit, right? Like, everybody you're gonna see is gonna have a procrastinum.

Everybody's gonna have rounded shoulders and forward heads. So, okay, learn that shit, understand what that is, okay. What muscles are tight because of it, what ones are underactive, what exercises we should do to correct that, and then understand that that doesn't happen overnight. It takes four to six to eight to 10 weeks long to do that, and then wrap that into your prescription of what you're doing. So I go, okay, I know Susie, you came in, and you want to lose 15 pounds. Well, that's actually the easiest part of everything I'm going to teach you and do

them. I mean, once we dial your nutrition in, once we set all your program out, your training correctly, the pounds are going to come off. The big thing that I'm concerned about and that I want to address along the way of reaching your goals is this upper crossing because this is going to cause problems later on for you. If you don't already deal with back pain or shoulder pain or neck pain, That's because we're not in good alignment. And what I want to do is not only do I want to get you to your goal, but I also want to address these imbalances in your body so that not only do you get to your goal, but you also feel better.

And so this is what we're going to do. In the first month, I'm going to see you one or two times a week. We're going to be addressing all these movements. We're going to be working on your nutrition. Then we're going to go to the second month, the second month. We're going to be working on. Now you're prescribing. Yes. I'm prescribing to you what we're gonna be working on your nutrition, then we're gonna go to the second month, the second month, we're gonna be working on. Now you're prescribing. Yes, I'm prescribing to you what we're going to be doing.

And then the closing question literally is this. Now, Susie, my clients do this. They either want, they want to see me one time a week, they want to see me two time a week, or they want to see me three time a week. And the way they decide on that, of course finances are an issue for some people, and so they can't afford to go three times. So if that's the case, we can only do one time a week if you like. Ideally, most people are somewhere between two and three, and the way I tell them to choose

that is based off of this. If you're the type of person where you're like, Adam, tell me what to do, I'll execute, I'll follow, you're probably somebody that only needs me one time a week. Now if you're somebody who knows you need accountability, you know you've tried this before and you've failed before and you haven't done it, and you're somebody who needs that constant attention, and you also don't want to take any risk or fuck anything up, you're probably somebody who needs to see me three times a week. Now, out of those three, which one of those ones do you think you are, Susie?

And then shut your mouth. And shut your mouth. Yeah, it's important. I have two. You know, something we're kind of, two things we're kind of, you know, glazed over. First off, the reason why I said love teaching trainers this, more than teaching sales people, is because sales people expect to have to sell.

Trainers never expect to have to sell. It's like the biggest hurdle with trainers, is that I just want to train people. It's a massive disconnect. Yeah, I just want to train people. I just want to help people. I don't want to sell anything. That's a dirty word. Well, sell every second you're in the gym. Who the fuck are you going to train people. It's a massive disconnect. Yeah, I just want to train people. I just want to help people. I don't want to sell anything. That's a dirty word.

I will sell every second you're in the gym. Who the fuck are you going to train then, buddy? You know, you work out by yourself. You have to learn how to communicate these things. I also like to help that person. So, and this is what I would do, I don't know if you're working in a big box gym where you have a boss and hopefully,

or somebody who has got good skills in closing. And this is how I'd ease my trainer into. I said, listen, you better know how to at least get on there and show people exercises and better be able to tell them, you know, what's wrong or not wrong with their body. I mean, if not, you need to keep reading and learning so you can at least do that. And then what I want you to do is tell them what you're

going to be doing with them for the next two or three months. Don't talk about money. Turn it right over to me and you can sit your ass down and listen to me talk about money because it's not a big fucking deal. We all work for it, we all use it, it's just a way of we exchange for services. This person obviously is sitting in front of you

because they need something. I'll be the one to ask for money if you're too scared to do it. And then I allow the trainer sit in and watch. Yeah, to watch me ask for the money and it is that simple. And if you do a really good job of assessing them and pointing out the things that they need help with,

and then prescribing what you're going to do. And don't freak out on this part. So I used to do an exercise. I used to tell trainers, I say, okay, give me a common thing that you've heard. You know, a client says they wanna work on this, that their flabby arms are fat tire, or something, like, go fat tire, okay.

I have a fat tire program for you. And then I would write fat tire or something, I'll go fat tire, okay? I have a fat tire program for you. Then I would write fat tire real big down the side of a piece of paper and say, the first month is F and we're going to be focusing on the frequency of your training. What I would do, and the point of this, I would never sell somebody on this, but the point was to teach the trainer that I could roll with whatever gets thrown at me and I could prescribe something for that program. And so I would lay out, you know, F is for frequency and then I don't know, A is for adaptation or whatever. And I would go through and I would come up with a term for that.

Then I would, yeah, then I would, right. And then I would tell them what we would be doing in that month and what we be focusing on. And so it was just a way to practice prescribing what you as a trainer do. You know all the things that you provide for these clients, learn how to wrap it in a prescription on what you're going to be doing.

Paint that picture for them very clearly. And then when it comes to asking them for the money, the best thing to do is to give them options. Like I said, the one time, the two time, or the three time a week, and then, and then, and then, and then, and then, and then, and then, and then, and then, practice makes perfect. So I recommend that you find your other trainer buddies

or friends, and have them pretend to be, yes, a potential client, and practice, and practice, and practice, because you will get better, you will suck, keep making calls, man. Yes, that's the thing, always be on the phone and getting new leads. And the other thing too is, you know, we talk about sitting down at the desk, asking them questions, leaving going out to the workout floor, coming back to the desk.

That's very important, okay. It's much harder to sell someone anything standing up on the workout floor and it's gonna be very difficult to bring them back to the desk if they weren't at the desk to start with because here's what ends up happening. I so I remember I used to see trainers doing this. They'd meet weren't at the desk to start with. Because here's what ends up happening. I remember I used to see trainers doing this. They'd meet a client at the front desk, oh hi Susie, boom, they take them out in the workout floor.

Then at the end, they try and walk them back to the desk. What do you think the client's thinking? Oh, here we go. Now you're gonna say, but if you start out at the desk and then you leave and then you go back, it's much more friendly, it's not as bad. Look, at the end of the day, here's the's the thing remember this if you could get that person sitting across from you to understand what you understand about fitness

To understand about the changes that they're gonna make in their lives with fitness and how life-changing They truly are if you can get them to understand those things Well, anybody ever really say no to you? If you're really that passionate about helping them, they'll feel it. Nobody will ever say no. I just, you know, think about it this way. Look, it's all about perceived value. If I was selling a pencil for, you know, $100,000,

I would never sell a single pencil. If that was a house in Silicon Valley, I'd have people bidding, they'll be bidding wars over it. Same amount of money, all of a sudden, people have $100,000 to spend. If you're selling a package of training for $900, $1,000, $3,000, and they really understand what you know about fitness, they are gonna do it.

It'll make sense and they'll find the value. So that's really what sales is all about. It's communicating effectively, getting that person understand what you understand about fitness, to understand the real changes that they're going to experience, and the true value that they're going to get out of it. And believe me, more often than not, you're not going to get the objection where people say, I don't have enough money to invest in my health.

Look, if you go to MindPumpFree.com, you can download any of our guides for free. We've got tons of guides on there. Didn't you write a good one on how to be a great trainer too? I did actually, great. Yeah, I did write on how to basically build a business as a personal trainer. And a lot of the sales techniques and how to talk to people is in that guide.

And it's free, you can find it again at mindpumpfree.com. And you can also find our own personal social media Instagram pages with our own unique content. Justin can be found at Mind Pump Justin. My page is Mind Pump Sal and Adam is Mind Pump Adam. Thank you for listening to Mind Pump. If your goal is to build and shape your body, dramatically improve your health and energy

and maximize your overall performance, check out our discounted RGB Superbumble at MindPumpMedia.com. The RGB Superbumble includes maps and a ballad, maps performance, and maps aesthetic. Nine months of phased, expert exercise programming designed by Sal, Adam, and Justin to systematically transform the way your body looks, feels and performs. With detailed workout nutrients in over 200 videos, the RGB Superbundle is like having sound, 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 bag guarantee and you can get it now plus

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