Weights and Plates Podcast - #99 – YOU'VE BEEN LIED TO ABOUT WOMEN AND YOUR ABS

Episode Date: July 11, 2025

In this episode, Michael Sartain — former Air Force captain, social dynamics expert, and founder of Men of Action — breaks down the science of attraction, how fitness fuels confidence, and why most men are failing in today’s dating market. We dive into why being the “nice guy” doesn’t work, how evolutionary psychology explains what women are actually attracted to, and the role of social proof in modern dating. Michael explains how building muscle and boosting testosterone are foundational to male confidence and success — but that’s only part of the equation. He also unpacks the biggest myths around masculinity, why emotional trauma affects men and women differently, and how to rebuild your life with discipline, purpose, and leadership. From his early days managing strip clubs to serving in military intelligence, Michael shares the real-world lessons that shaped his Men of Action protocol and helped him coach thousands of men into becoming high-value individuals. If you're ready to build muscle, build status, and build options — this episode is for you. https://weightsandplates.com/online-coaching/ Follow Weights & Plates YouTube: https://youtube.com/@weights_and_plates?si=ebAS8sRtzsPmFQf- Instagram: @the_robert_santana Rumble: https://rumble.com/user/weightsandplates Web: https://weightsandplates.com 

Welcome to the Weights and Plates podcast. I'm Robert Santana. I am your host. And today I have a special guest on the show. A little bit different than previous guests. I wanted to bring somebody in from the outside that does lift weights, but that has some unique perspective. My guest is a retired United States Air Force captain. He is the founder of Men of Action, a mentoring program designed to help men with high status social networking, leadership, and lifestyle design, transforming over 2,000 lives through its five pillar framework, social dynamics, entrepreneurship, mindset, finance, and leadership. He is also the host of his self-titled podcast, The Michael Sartain Show, where he discusses many topics

that are taught in his mentoring course and things that he's learned over the years and also things that he's interested in, including fitness. I chose Michael Sartain to be on this show because he interacts with a lot of men and he also interacts with a lot of women, a lot of young women, in the Las Vegas scene. He hosts many different social events ranging from bikini parties to charity events. And the reason I brought him on is because over the years you've heard me say, you've heard Trent say, you've heard Rip say, that women don't give a fuck about your abs. That it's for other dudes.

And there's context in that statement, of course. We get a lot of clients that are not particularly muscular and are worried about having visible abs at the expense of everything else, even though nothing else is muscular. I wanted to bring Michael on because of his unique experience that also includes giving men dating advice because he tends to get asked about that. On the same token, there's the issue of men wanting to be ridiculously huge as well, and he's going to talk about that as well. Michael doesn't train like us. He lifts weights. He sees the value of lifting weights and building muscle and looking good and being in shape and being healthy. But he doesn't lift the

way we do. He has not been instructed by me or any other starting strength coach. Hopefully that will change. But he's always been active and he values the weight room as well as doing other activities that he'll talk about when he goes ahead and introduces himself after I'm done rambling here. You know, this year I want to try and get a lot of different guests on from the outside world as I call it. Because we live in our little bubble where we all want to barbell train and lift as heavy

as possible and stay in reasonable shape. But what about everybody else? There's thousands of gym members across the world. And rather than make fun of what goes on in there, I'm trying to understand it better and find ways to get people at least doing the movements even if they won't commit to the minimalistic program that we often promote. So Michael's gonna talk about his own training. I'm sure haters will make fun of him in the comments. I'll make fun of him a little bit, but not today. So with that said, I'm gonna hand it over to Michael and yeah man go on and introduce yourself. You should be

able to find me at Michael Sartain on Instagram. It's probably the easiest place to find me and you can find me as Michael Sartain on YouTube as well. And if you're interested in the men of action program that we teach you guys can go to MLAmentoring.com and you can see all the men of action program that we teach, you guys can go to mlamentoring.com and you can see all the fun stuff we have to offer there. Welcome to the show. Hey, what's going on, man? Hey, good to be here.

Yeah, man, good to have you. How you doing over there? You're down in Vegas, right? I am, it's good. Like when you do the cold plunge, you get super cold and you go out and it's 111 degrees outside, you just feel perfect. Dude, I don't know how you do that.

Cold plunges is, uh, it's, it's a skillset to be able to get your body in there every day when you really don't feel like doing it, especially when you have, like, when your body aches a little bit, you really don't feel like jumping in there, but when you do it and you get out, man, it's a, you feel euphoric. So I went to a gym here in town and it gets even hotter here than where you're at. Not by much, but five, 10 degrees when it's that hot, you feel it. Dude, I put two feet in and I'm like, yeah, fuck this, I'm not doing this.

Yeah, yeah, after a while, man, it just becomes one of these things where you just train yourself. And then what happens is all these other difficult things in your life become a little easier because you know you can push yourself over the hump to jump out of the airplane, start the podcast, get in the cold plunge, go to the gym when you don't feel like it, all those kind of things. Ask the girl out, whatever, all those things that you're kind of afraid to do, you're apprehensive to doing. It gets a little bit easier when you can

get over your fears like that. I would agree with that. And we talk a lot about that here and it's kind of why I wanted to get you on the show because you do talk about lifting and health related topics too, and some of your podcasts, but, you know, why don't you start by telling the audience a little bit about yourself, give us a general background of who you are, what your background is and a little bit about your company. And then we'll kind of dive into some things that are a little bit more pertinent to the podcast. I am. So I grew up in East Dallas. I went to a pretty multicultural high school.

Multicultural, I think probably a better way to say it was 85% Hispanic. Very few people at my high school spoke English. It's at Woodrow Wilson High School in East Dallas. And it was a poor neighborhood, but I went to I went to I lived in Lakewood, which was a nice neighborhood. So if you Dallas is a unique city, because it's very segregated. Whereas there were there were no civil rights protests back in the 1960s. And there was sort of an accommodation made between the different groups of people in the city. And so was sort of an accommodation made between the different groups of people in the city and so if you go to Dallas you'll find a neighborhood like Highland Park where it is 100% white and you'll find a neighborhood like South Dallas which is 100% black

and so I mean it's not out of function of racism it's just that's how it was and nobody ever did anything to change it so I went to I grew up on the north side of Swiss Avenue and I went to high school on the south side of Swiss Avenue. So I was kind of like living these two different existences growing up, where I would go to church. I go to this Baptist church and it was only white people. And then I would go to track and football practice and it was only black people. And then I would go to class and it was only Hispanic people.

And so, you know, that was interesting for me because I didn't realize that other people's high school experience was not like that. When I would watch Save by the Bell and 902 and O and I saw they had like clean lockers and they would drive nice cars to school and there weren't fights and the, you know, the school didn't smell like piss. I was like, that's what your high school experience was like. My high school experience was just nothing but chaos and violence and like very little education.

So without trying too hard, I ended up finishing in the top whatever, 20, 30 in my class. It wasn't a great accomplishment. I don't think we graduated 100 people. I don't know that up until recently, Woodrow Wilson had ever graduated 100 people in a senior class and we were a 4A school, meaning we had 1500 students. Our dropout rate was

probably 75%, something like that. It's like, it really is interesting when I think about that growing up, like how incredibly unprepared I was for college coming out of Woodrow, with the one exception, I was a debate champion. I was a 12-4A debate champion and when I was 16 or 17, I forgot and And I think that definitely that part helped me and also I joined an internship The second semester of my senior year, which is still affecting me Like I learned so much from it because I went to go work at a sports radio station Which probably led me in a lot of ways to what I do now for a living

I knew I always wanted to do something like this behind a microphone. So, I did that for a while. Then I go to UT Austin. UT Austin, it was again, an interesting dichotomy. There's a lot of Hispanic people, obviously in South Texas, but the school is over 90% white. And then I lived on a floor in Jester

with a bunch of guys that I got along with really well. I played basketball with them, played video games with them, a bunch of black dudes, and they had me join their fraternity. So I joined a black fraternity in college called Gamma Phi Delta. I don't know if a lot of people know this, I used to do step shows, stuff like that,

because I just wanted, I missed being around that kind of culture growing up. That's what I was used to. I didn't think I was black. It wasn't anything like that, but it was one of these things where I just, I enjoyed hanging around guys who would rather play basketball than tennis.

That was just me. And guys who would rather play Madden than Mortal Kombat. That's just what I enjoyed more. And I really like rap music. So it was one of these situations where growing up in college, I fell in love with astronomy and I still love astrophysics, astronomy, anything to do with quantum mechanics,

relativity, Newtonian physics. I read everything I can about it. It has no bearing on my life whatsoever. It does not help me professionally in any way whatsoever, but I read about it all the time. It helps me in like small ways. Like for instance, when like con artists like Joe Dispenza start talking about quantum mechanics, because I understand what quantum mechanics actually is.

I understand Irwin's Schrodinger's equations. I understand, you know, wave particle duality. And I understand how like the force carrying particles for the different fundamental forces of the universe work like a gluon and a boson, et cetera. I know that when people like Deepak Chopra or Joe Dispenza starts talking about quantum physics, they have no idea what they're talking about,

but they're able to fool most people with their nonsense. But other than that, I mean, also, I get into flat earth debates. I debate flat earthers and moon landing deniers. I'll debate them too. We did land on the moon. I love debating, guys, about the moon landing deniers. I'll debate them too. We did land on the moon. I love debating guys about the moon landing denial because they're so, I just humiliate them

because it's so obvious they did no research to show why we could have landed on the moon. All they did was look at why they think we didn't. And if you really wanna debate me, you have to look at it from both sides. So college was eye-opening. I found a group of people that I really aligned with. Last year college, this is where things get weird.

So MCI, WorldCom, and Enron, I don't know if you're old enough to remember this, but there's a.com bubble, then MCI, WorldCom, and Enron go out of business, then 9-11 happens. And this is over the course. So this is from 1999 to 2001, you have those four events happen.

So first it's a dot com bubble. You start having a crash in the stock market. This is when, you know, Mark Cuban sells broadcast.com for $5 billion to Yahoo. Then you have the, you have MCI, you have Enron go out of business. Turns out, you know, their CEO was cooking the books. MCI WorldCom goes out of business.

I can't remember what, and then one of the big accounting firms, there were a big five, one of the accounting firms goes on, Arthur Anderson, I forget what his name was. Yeah, one of them goes down and then you have 9-11 happened. And so there's not a lot of jobs. We are in not a massive economic recession, but definitely a recession and I try to get a job out of college and you know, I had a brand new degree from University of Texas at Austin and I couldn't find a job anywhere. I couldn't find a job. I couldn't even get hired at

GameStop. That's where I was trying to work and I was the door guy at a nightclub That's what I was trying to work. And I was the door guy at a nightclub in Austin. And I actually enjoyed the work during the winter, but during the summer, I couldn't do it. It just, it was too much. So I tried to get another job. And then one of the bartenders at my work, she says, I remember she's really pretty.

She said, hey, I work at this, I strip during the weekends or during the week. And then my other shifts I do here as a bartender to pay my way through college. She ended up getting a PhD in forensic psychology. And she said, I did this. And that this is another thing that's really different about Austin, Texas compared to other cities

because it's such a massive college town. You find a lot of girls who strip who are getting like master's degrees. It's really, it's strange. You'll see that in San Antonio as well. You'll see girls who are like, you know, junior NCOs in the guard and they're stripping at the same time. It's really strange. I go to try out at this place called expose on Congress Avenue in Austin, Texas. It's called the

Red Rose. Now, I go in there and as a joke, honestly, I don't really think I'm getting this job. I'm actually freaking out the whole time. I'm like, this is gonna ruin my life. I can't believe I'm gonna work in a strip club. I would never do this. This is so beneath me. I go in there and first maybe two or three attempts, I'm terrible.

And by the end of the hour, I have figured out completely how to be a strip club DJ. And I completely, I have completely figured it out. Like the pattern totally made sense to me. I totally understood what was going on. The type of music the owner wanted. It just took me an hour to figure it out. They immediately gave me the job

and I worked there for almost four years. Two years as a DJ and about a year and eight months as a manager at a different strip club. And I worked at four different strip clubs. Yeah, I believe during that time, because the owner owned a few places. And I learned a ton. Now, a lot of people,

this is kind of controversial for a lot of people. I learned initially, I did not learn about women from working in a strip club. This is a misconception some people have about me. What I learned was that the way the world described women was false. I did learn that from working in a strip club, if that makes any sense.

Meaning the things that I've been told by my family, the church and by Disney about how you should treat a woman in order to get a woman to be attracted to you, I learned at a strip club that was not true. Something was broken. And I'll never forget the story, man. This girl, Joy, she was the hottest girl at the strip club, it wasn't even close.

Like Joy, 100% Playboy cover, insanely beautiful girl. Everyone knew she was the hottest girl in the city. Everyone knew she was the hottest stripper in the city. Every strip club wanted her to work there. And so Joy would, she would come work occasionally when she was getting ready for night shift, she would come work occasionally when she was getting ready for night shift, she would come and see me in the DJ booth and she would just flirt with me, you know, the whole time.

And here I am, I'm 22 and I think I have a shot with this girl, which of course I have no shot in a million years. And she's, you know, she's telling me all this stuff about her life and then she complains, she goes, she comes to me, Robert, and she goes, and again, I want you to think of like Pamela Anderson and Kendra Wilkinson have a daughter. Like that level of gorgeous.

Like just perfect. And she's sitting there telling me a story about the other daytime DJ named Ryan, and she can't stand this motherfucker. She can't, she hates Ryan. She thinks Ryan's a piece of shit. And she said, I love hanging. I love working with you, Michael, because you're so nice. And I'm like, Oh my God,

the hottest girl I've ever seen is talking about how nice I am. This is amazing. And anyway, she goes away for a while. She, she doesn't work for a couple of months. She comes back in the strip club. She sits on my lap. She's putting her shoes on. She really loved flirting with me because I think she knew, because she, I think she was older than me too. She's probably like 26 and I was like 22. And she said, so I divorced my husband. And of course, she's sitting on my lap nude, Robert. And I'm thinking this girl, this my dream girl just told me she's divorced her husband. This most incredible thing. She goes, the reason why I haven't been at work in a while is because I've been moving.

I moved in with Ryan, the other DJ. That she couldn't stand. I'm sorry, I'm sorry, what? Is that what you said earlier? Yeah, yeah, I moved in with Ryan. Wait, the DJ that you told me was a piece of shit? The one that you told me you weren't attracted to or like you thought he was a horrible, horrible person?

You moved in with him? It's like, yeah, we moved in together and I'm probably gonna like, I think, I don't know. I think he's the one. I think I'm gonna get married to him, whatever. And I was just like, I know some people will listen to this skeptically and be like, well, Michael, you know,

she's probably has some unhealed trauma or whatever. Guys, let me tell you something. I have dealt with women who have doctorates. I have dealt with women who have masters in astrophysics. I've dealt with women who have been traders at hedge funds. I have dealt with women who have been world champion bikini models at the same time being a fitness model,

at the same time being a mother of two. I have worked with every type of girl. I have worked with the nine, when I say worked with, I mean like I've either gone out with as friends or they've been on my podcast or I've worked with every type of girl. I have worked with the nine, when I say worked with, I mean like I've either gone out with as friends or they've been on my podcast or I've interviewed them. I've interviewed girls with a two body count, a zero body count and girls with a 900 body count. And I'm telling you that what I saw

that experience with Joy and Ryan, I have seen with the Virgin and I have seen with the porn star. It is the same, this idea that women are Virgin and I have seen with the porn star. It is the same. This idea that women are different and the reason why women do immature things is because of the trauma that they haven't expressed is a simple. It is a farce. It is a simple falseness. The reality of the situation is

the the sluttiest woman you've ever met and the most prude woman you've ever met. Both think that Chris Hemsworth is attractive, both of them do. Both of them thought that Brad Pitt in Fight Club was attractive. So there's this idea that men have about getting the good girl versus getting the slutty girl. And they think that they have to be different

to get the different type of girls. And so if you ever have this question, Robert, and you probably, even you work in fitness, if you've ever dealt, if you find a guy who's like a male stripper slash VIP house, some guy who's like accidentally without trying slept with 600 women, some guy like that. Okay. And then ask him, say,

hey, so every girl you slept with is a whore? And he'll be like, no. It's like every girl you slept with is like super experienced, super wild in bed. And they're going to be like, no, they're going to tell you that more than half the girls they sleep with are like an accountant who was married for six years and then got divorced.

Like it's so crazy to me this idea that only bad girls like bad guys. This is really important for people to understand. Like the most important lesson I teach that kind of differentiates me from a lot of other people is that all of you wanted Megan Fox and Megan Fox chose Machine Gun Kelly. Machine Gun Kelly is a despot covered in tattoos

who wears a pink dress and has had sex with 50 or 60 girls in a night after his show, I know, because one of his groupies is a good friend of mine. And she would tell me the story. She would tell me the story about Machine Gun Kelly after a show having so many women that he was having sex with, that there were certain girls he couldn't get to,

so she would go fuck those girls. I'll bring her on here if you don't believe me. She would tell me the story and it was crazy. And that is who Megan Fox chose. Not you, not you, she chose him. So this whole idea of like, you know, and then how about the good guy? Is there any greater good guy than the star of I am legend and I robot

and Independence Day and bad boys? He's the he's he should have been James Bond. Will Smith is the ultimate Captain America paragon of virtue and masculinity and toughness. And his wife fucking cheated on him. Right. You remember what I said about good guy status and bad guy status? masculinity and toughness and his wife fucking cheated on him. Right? You remember what I said about good guy status and bad guy status? Why is it that Will Smith's wife cheated on Will Smith and machine

machine gun Kelly got Megan Fox? And the reason why is it's not the good guy who gets the good girl. It's the attractive guy who gets the good girl and the bad girl. And that's the lesson that's really hard, especially for my clients that come from hyper structured households. So where they're like, for instance, a second generation Indian whose parent, whose parents tell him what he's going to do for a living or possibly someone who's Asian or someone who's maybe Eastern European, German, something like that. They have a hard time dealing with this concept. They think they need to be the good guy to get the good girl.

And that's just not how it works. So that's basically what I learned working at strip club, and then joined the military in 04. Took me about a year and eight months to get in. They had lost all my medical records. They had lost everything before I tried to get in. Then when they let me in, I told them I wanted to be an Intel officer,

and their response to me is that, okay, you can be an Intel officer. And then I took the AFOQT and then they said, would you be interested in applying to be a navigator or a pilot? And I was like, well, what is it for a pilot? And they said 11 and a half years. And I was like, nope.

What is it for a navigator? And they were like, about seven years. And I was like, all right, I'm 26, seven years from now I'll be 33. Okay, I'll do that. Seven years as a navigator. And that's what I did. And I was happy about it.

So every navigator gets asked to apply to flight school and I didn't wanna be a pilot. I have no interest in going through that much work. And I knew I didn't wanna fly after the military. So I did that for five years. And then I had a medical condition that DnF'd me, which is called duties, not including flying. That's what didn't if stands for.

So I got to nift because of an autoimmune disorder. And then, so for the last two years, I got to be in Intel. So I got, I finally got my wish. I did counterintelligence. That's not what we called it. It is counterintelligence. It's under the umbrella of counterintelligence. I'm not going to say what the name of the office was

because of counterintelligence, but I worked in counterintell for the last two years. I'm not going to say what the name of the office was, um, because of counterintelligence, but I worked in counterintel for, for the last two years, I lived in a skiff. Anybody who's been in the military or worked for the federal government, you know what a military skiff is. It's this concrete, almost like bunker where you can't bring your cell phone in. I basically lived in a skiff for like two years. And, and so I did that for a while.

And one of the greatest things I learned there is I had two flight command, two squadron commanders. I had one squadron commander with the 99th air fueling squadron in Georgia, and she was not good at her job. She was, she did not meet the physical fitness requirements. She did not meet the flying requirements. She would blame other people for her problems. And what really bothered me the most was that her and I went

to the same university and it bothered me that like, she's the only other Longhorn in my unit and she's not holding up the mustard. And I remember when she got fired, it was like, I remember I was doing like a survival training and they called us back to the base and she was fired. I'd never heard of a squadron commander getting fired.

Then when I went to the 350th Air Fielding Squadron in Wichita, Kansas, we had another female squadron commander and this woman was awesome. She was smarter than everyone else. She was sharper than everyone else. She was stern without being mean. I was watching her type like she was having a conversation with me while typing like 80 words of men. Like this girl, this woman was amazing and she was a great pilot. And so I saw the difference

between bad leadership and good leadership when I was an officer in the military. And that's what I've taken with me into my practices with business. I wish I could have written a book about it, but someone did write a book about it. It's called Extreme Ownership by Jocko Willick. It perfectly describes this whole dichotomy between passive aggressive, bad leadership style

and extremely good leadership style. Um, so I learned that from the military and then probably 2011 I get out. And I remember it's a great summer. I was sleeping on my mom's couch the entire summer. I just retired from the military and, uh, the Dallas Mavericks won the NBA championship and I thought I was living in a fucking dream. I thought I was like that. Probably the hap, one of the happiest moment, probably the happiest moment,

one of the happiest moments of my entire life was the Mavericks winning the championship in 2011. Then afterwards I decided I'm moving to Vegas because Vegas is not like Wichita. I was leaving Wichita, Kansas. And so I split time between Vegas and LA and that's when I realized the difference. That's when I learned the lesson about logistics.

So LA is the worst logistical situation you can imagine. If you live in West Hollywood and you meet a girl who lives in Santa Monica, you will never see her again. You will never. I know that from experience, man. If you live in Silver Lake and you're trying to go talk to somebody who's on Olympic Boulevard, you can move from one city to another in LA,

but you can only do it once per day. Like you can't come back. There's no, it's four hours. Like I remember one time it was, I was with, I was at Runyon Canyon and I was gonna call an Uber to get my friend kindly from Santa Monica to come to Runyon and we were gonna make a video on YouTube and it was one hour and 42 minutes

to get an Uber from Santa Monica. Bro, I could have walked there. Like it was crazy, the traffic there. So the logistics in that place are terrible along with all the apartments there are old and rotting full of mold. And half the buildings in the city are sliding down the Santa Monica mountains.

So when you go into Lake, live in someone's apartment, you'll notice they're all off balance. They're all sliding down the hill, down towards sunset from the mountains. Go check it out if you don't believe me. And it was just like, and then I would go to the nightclubs there and the nightclubs were like one eighth

the size of the Vegas nightclubs with no attractive women. And it was so confusing to me. I was like, why aren't there more hot girls here? Like it was so weird. So that is when I also learned the lesson of throwing events. So whenever I would go to an event in Los Angeles, like the Maxim party or the Playboy Mansion or the ignite parties or the babes in Toyland, whenever I would

go to one of those parties, I would see two, three, four hot girls for every guy. And that was amazing. And I was like, if this is what LA is like all the time, this is amazing. And then the nights when there weren't events, I would go to like say Warwick or, or Greystone or Nightingale or whatever, you know, Poppy, or, uh, I would go to Delilah, whatever. And then I would see way more guys than girls whenever I would go out during the week. And I realized, okay, these events,

these themed events were actually the key to getting really attractive women to come out on a regular basis, right? Maxim hot 100 party, tons of hot girls come to that. Nalu Bay swim week. Anything with like a brand deal where girls get to try on some, anything with Fashion Nova, whatever. Four, five, six girls for every guy. Incredible lineups.

So that's when I learned the event side of it was very important. And then the other thing that happened was probably 2012, 2013, somewhere around that area. Um, it became very clear to me and my friends that Instagram was going to be a big factor in our lives and that it was going to take over Facebook. And it did. And then we got to the point where Instagram DM was like the main way. So most promoters before like say 2012 were text messaging girls to get them to

come out to different stuff. And then once, um, IGDM became very robust, especially once they had the unsend feature, then you started to see a bunch of people using IGDM in order to invite girls to events. And then that's kind of like what I started to figure out. I mean, an extreme example, we don't have to use this example, but Stephen Lau, or we could say Dan Bilzerian or Vegas Dave, or there's multiple guys that Adam Quinn, I think, is another example. There's tons of Roman Royale, Sam Rima. There's tons of guys I can tell you their names. Where basically they use their social media as a recruiting tool to get girls to come to different parties.

Okay. And so I started doing that with my social media, my Facebook and my Instagram, more specifically, a little bit of Snapchat, but not much. And now I use Twitter. I never used to do that. And that's when I started realizing I use social media to build social circle events. And at those social circle events, there's more girls than guys. And now dating is on easy mode and networking is on easy mode from all the lessons that I've learned over the last 25 years. And so I just took all those 25 years of lessons. I put it into a simple course called the Minute of Action Core Protocol.

And then here we are 4,000 clients later. Wow. So it sounds like you've had quite the diverse, not just background, but experiences too. So you grew up in East Dallas around lots of different people. You like sports, you're into quantum engineering, is that right?

Did I get that right? Okay, so just so we understand, I studied astronomy in college. I took up a division in astronomy in college. It was not my minor because the business school would not let me minor outside the business school, okay? The McCombs School of Business

So after college, I just became ever like I would basically read a self-help book and then I would read a book on physics So everything by Michio Kaku Everything I would read Hawking's I would read Robert Greene. I would read Neil deGrasse Tyson I would do anything that was like in pop physics or actual hardcore physics. I would read all of their books, okay? And then I would read papers. It was just a fascination of mine. I have no intention of getting a master's in physics

or anything like that. It's just something I very much enjoyed. So, and the three sort of branches of modern physics are Newtonian physics, Einsteinian relativity, and then quantum mechanics. And quantum mechanics has only been around for about a hundred years. I knew and then quantum mechanics. And then quantum mechanics has only been around for about a hundred years. I knew enough about quantum mechanics

that when people started talking about quantum mechanics, I could tell in one second whether or not they knew what they were talking about. So just imagine, do you ever play basketball, Robert? I used to when I was a kid. Okay, so I play basketball several times a week. If I play basketball with a guy who doesn't know how to play basketball, it takes me one second to figure out he doesn't know how to play basketball several times a week. If I play basketball with a guy who doesn't know how to play basketball, it takes me one second

to figure out he doesn't know how to play basketball. He looks at the ball while he's dribbling, he's hunched over while he's dribbling, he's dribbling with two hands, he shoots the ball by like flinging it at the basket, he has no idea what he's doing. That's what it looks like to me when someone like Joe Dispenza describes quantum mechanics

because he has no idea what he's talking about. He says that he used his quantum field to heal his spine. He did not. And the thing is, you know, I'm also conflicted because I know a lot of people who have dealt with a lot of trauma and they say that Dr. Dispenza has healed his trauma. A doctor, Dispenza.

He's a doctor in chiropractic. No disrespect to chiropractors, but that's a different kind of, a medical doctor who's a cardiologist is very different from a medical doctor who's a chiropractors, but that's a different kind of... A medical doctor who's a cardiologist is very different from a medical doctor who's a chiropractor. Okay, this is not the same thing. And so, you know, it's just one of these things where, because I understand finance, because I understand physics,

and because I understand biology, one of my other fascinations is natural selection. That's why I'm into evolutionary psychology. Because I understand those three basic ideas, One of my other fascinations is natural selection. That's why I'm into evolutionary psychology. Because I understand those three basic ideas, then it's very hard to fool me. I am very hard to scam because I understand certain principles.

Like for instance, in finance, the idea that you can tell when the market's gonna go up or down based on Bolliger Bands or one standard deviation moves or a cup and saucer pattern or the death cross or whatever made up nonsense, those have all been disproven. None of that stuff is actually real.

And then when it comes to biology, when people start talking about using a horse dewormer in order to cure a fucking virus, I know that isn't true. Like again, I don't wanna get too political here, but hydrochloroquine did not cure COVID. That wasn't, but it was one of these things where it's like, there was never a chance for it to cure COVID.

That it was, it was not, there was no possibility that a horse did warmer because people didn't understand the difference between a parasite, bacterium and a virus. And so they thought one could do the other and of course it couldn't. So it was stuff like that where it's very difficult to scam me because I have a fundamental understanding of biology.

I have a fundamental understanding of physics and a fundamental understanding of finance. And so that's a little bit to a certain extent geopolitics because being a military officer. So I try to instill that in my clients, being skeptical without being cynical, okay? We listen and we don't judge. We learn discernment without judgment, and then we are skeptical without being cynical. That's what I try to teach guys to be like, because that's what most of my really good commanders were like.

So you want them pretty level-headed when they're approaching things like this. So dispassionate, yeah, I mean, additionally, dispassionate or unaffected is also a great way to be, unless you're the American Psychological Association, in which case you think that being stoic is harmful, is toxically masculine and harmful. Yeah, no, I do.

It's one of these things where, like I don't have to explain this to men as much because they get it. If I love you, I'm gonna solve problems for you. If I love you, I'm gonna solve problems for you. If I love you, I'm gonna make your life easier. If I love you, I'm gonna protect you. I'm not gonna cry in front of you for no reason. I'm not gonna write you poetry

and I'm not gonna express my undying love while beating my chest for you, but I will protect you because that's how I show love. I have the same emotions as everyone else. I just choose to show them in a different way. I have more control over the way that I express them. And because I have that control, that doesn't make me repressed

and I'm not less healthy than you. It's just, if you're a woman and your body is filled with estrogen, then maybe it's easier for you to get over some kind of trauma by talking about it for hours. But me as a man, my body is filled with testosterone, it's easier for me to get over trauma by accomplishing things for several hours. And so that's the difference. And there's nothing wrong with that. Men are not defective women, but that's how modern therapy treats men. And so,

and that's why we get into the issues that we get into now. I just don't know many guys who play basketball every day who are depressed. I just don't know any. I don't know many guys who are just like every day in the gym and they're just depressed. I just don't know many.

I just remember going through a horrible breakup and just like going to the gym every day and I was over it so quick. It was just incredible. Like it's just really one of the best things ever. You know, you bring up a- And I don't think it works the same way for women. I really don't think a woman can get cheated on by her husband and then just go do a squat, you know, leg press max,

and then all of a sudden she's happy. I don't think it works like that. But I do think it works like that for men. I truly do. I think a man could get dumped by his wife. She leaves him for another man. He starts a business and he turns it into a multimillion dollar business and he is completely cured of his depression. I believe a man can do that. Right. But that's me, I'm different, right? I'm different, so that's my belief

when it comes to therapy. I think women need therapists and men need performance coaches. I could get on board with that. This segues perfectly into what I brought you on here for. So I'm just gonna comment on what you said and kind of turn this into a conversation. I have a list of questions I want to ask you, but it has been my observation that when I'm feeling down or depressed, right? I'm going

in that direction. If I do aerobic exercise, that kind of brings things back up. If I'm feeling up more on the anxious, angry side of if I lift fucking heavy it brings me back down I don't know if you've noticed this in your own experience if you lift heavy it brings you back down I think it brings my energy levels back down But it doesn't make me depressed what I mean is if I'm pissed off or really anxious and like on edge And I need to take that edge off lifting does that better for me than aerobic aerobic tends to bring me up I'm feeling down and shitty, you know? And then afterwards I'm like, what the fuck?

Yeah, I'm like, what the fuck was I so pissed about after I do like a heavy set of five, you know, on the squat? Yeah, so because a lot of that, so where is that pissed energy coming from? That's cortisol, right? It's a stress hormone. Yep. When you lift, you're using,

so basically, for those of you who don't know, like, have you ever seen somebody who's like wired and tired? Like, so for instance, you know, you're falling asleep at the wheel. Yeah. And then all of a sudden, you almost get into a car accident. I know where you're going. That's an adrenaline rush that's coming through

the cortisol going through your body. Excessive levels of cortisol cause high levels of stress, but cortisol also gives you like that adrenaline rush. So you're like, you have this temporary strength, but you're borrowing from the future to pay off the present. And eventually you're gonna have to pay the bill down the line, which is terrible sleep,

high levels of stress, et cetera. When you go lift weights, you're like, you're using that cortisol, you're getting it out of your system. And then also you're getting a dopamine rush because you're lifting. Testosterone makes effort feel good. So you use effort by on the bench press

or doing dead lifts or whatever, that then gives you a dopamine rush and then the cortisol is eventually flushed out of your system. If you wanna see a great example of this, play a super high stressful video game right before you go to bed. You didn't move your body at all,

but your heart, but you notice your resting heart rate stays up high and your heart rate variability decreases because of the fact that you had high cortisol levels, even though you didn't move your body. I remember papers on this. And so, I mean, it's just, it's an interesting thing. My friends always like last night, my, my guy friends are trying to get me to play, uh, play fucking a war zone until like three 30 in the morning. Cause I'm sorry, we kept winning.

We all, y'all want a piece of me, it's CaptainLonghorn77. We kept winning, we won four BRs in a row. And so we were just like, okay, let's just keep playing. And we just couldn't stop playing. But like, I remember I had trouble sleeping because my adrenaline levels were so high, trying to go to sleep, even though, and I had nothing to flush the adrenaline out of my system

because I wasn't sweating or moving my body. I was sitting there just moving my thumbs. So that's the reason why you should not watch stressful TV shows like The Bear or Breaking Bad right before you go to bed. And same thing with- For the last three nights, I got sucked into severance. Have you watched that one?

No, I've not. That motherfuckers kept me up to like two, three in the morning. I haven't slept for shit since Saturday. That one's very stressful. It's about like, they create this technology. It's interesting. So it looks like it takes place in the eighties based on the cars and some of the things they're using. But then somebody has a cell phone in the show. So they never tell you what era

it is. They don't tell you what state it is. There's like a fictional state even. So, so like when they show that's how, that's how Archer is too. The show Archer. They don't tell you what the date it is. Yeah, the cartoon Archer. You never know what year it is. Yeah. Yeah, that's how this show was. And these people agree to have their brain quote unquote severed. So when they go to work, they have no recollection of who they are and they just go to work. Oh yeah, I've heard of this. Okay, all right. I might check this out. Yeah, that show looks pretty cool. Yeah, because they don't remember going to work

and then when they're at home, they don't remember being at work. Yeah, that's pretty cool. Do not watch that before bed. That's wild. I just, I watch one and I'm like, okay, I'll watch another. Then it's like three in the morning. I'm like, fuck, I gotta wake up early.

Yeah, for sure. Well, we're all just killing time till Grand Theft Auto 6 comes out and then our lives are all over. Shit, I haven't played since three, dude. Are they still good? The best thing in the world. Yeah, I love three where you can get the guys.

They're too good, bro. They're too good. I got to go out and date women and fucking go to the gym and go party and stuff like that to keep me away from that PS5 man. Do I just remember if you get the guy jacked on the third one? You're talking about getting CJ jacked. Yeah, grand. Yeah, San Andreas. Yeah.

CJ, I forgot his name, dude. Last time I played a video game and this is probably a future conversation off the air. But it was 2007. I was actually a DJ as well. I played at college bars. And the guy who mentored me got sucked into World of Warcraft, pulled me into it. And I didn't get a fucking thing done for like three months, and then I swore off video games since 2008.

Red Alert, what was it? Not Call of Duty, I can't remember. Command and Conquer. It's the tank battle. Command and Conquer. Command and Conquer, Red Alert. I went 24 hours and I played that game for 24 hours straight. I'd never, and I'm not saying that as an exaggeration,

what I'm saying is Friday night, I started playing around 7 p.m. and I played till the next day at 7 p.m. I think I have an addictive personality, which is why I've never tried drugs and I've never drank before. Instead, I put my efforts into perfecting my jump shot in basketball or throwing a football with accuracy,

playing Madden or getting good at public getting good at, so, you know, public speaking, I, I, I become addicted to those things as opposed to, um, as opposed to drugs or alcohol or gambling. That's positive, man. There's two questions I'm going to ask you in that pertain that pertain to fitness and lifting. Um, the first one is since you are a big physics nerd, have you heard of a book titled starting strength? No. So you should read it because it had to give you

some indication. Most of my audience has found me through startingstrength.com. So they're probably wondering why the fuck did you bring this guy on here, you know? And you said several things in your intro that I wanna hit on to answer that question. Starting Strength is a book on how to properly perform the squat, the bench press, the deadlift, and the power clean.

Then the chin up is the, I think he calls it the sixth honorary barbell lift. Then there's a program associated with it that's based on progressive overload. So you perform essentially three sets of five on every exercise except the power clean and the deadlift. You do one set of five on the deadlift, five triples on the power clean, and then there's this concept of linear progression where you add five pounds every workout.

This is tailored towards the rank novice who's never lifted before. And it came out of not too far from where you're from. It came out of Wichita Falls, Texas. Have you ever been up there? Okay, of course. That's where it's in Air Force space. That's Air Force space, yes, yes, that's right.

That's right, I always fly into that airport. So did you ever go into town? Yeah, yeah, I did. That's where actually those F-16s that we gave to Ukraine, they're training the pilots. Anytime we have foreign fighter pilots, they come train at Shepherd Air Force Base. So did you ever swing by the Wichita Falls Athletic Club?

I did not. So that is owned by Mark Ripito. Have you heard of him? Nope. He is the author of Starting Strength. I swear dude, if you're into physics and you read this book, you will probably enjoy it. There's a 75 page chapter on the squat mechanics.

Sure. That sounds incredible. Yeah, Just to give some indication. So what it's done a real good job of is getting skinny guys real strong pretty quickly because of you probably have heard the term newbie gains. We call it the novice effect. So you had five pounds, you had five pounds. If you're young and have never done it before and are willing to put on the body weight, which is going to tie into the second topic I wanna hit on, you'll see like 200 pounds in the squat deadlift in the first three to six months.

And it's not unusual, we typically see that. But one of the problems that we run into with our male clients that aren't that muscular to begin with, you know, skinny fat, and that's usually who I'm talking to on this show, is that they don't want to gain any body weight because they are concerned that they're not gonna score dates with women.

They're worried about losing their abs, and they'd rather be bone skinny with visible abs than put on a little bit of fluff to get strong. Are you familiar with this phenomenon? Of course, yeah, definitely. I mean, I've seen it the other way though. I've seen guys just abuse anabolic steroids to try to get as big as they can.

Oh, we're gonna go there too. When women don't want that, they don't want guys to be that big. I am probably, so I'm 6'1", 220, I'm probably bigger than I need to be now. I mean, I'm in pretty good shape, but like I've also seen, again, I go back to, I'm go back to Machine Gun Kelly and Brad Pitt

in Fight Club, like, women want that. And it's hard because my brain wants me to just get bigger. Right. But like, I have also seen these skinny dudes just crush it with women, but they're skinny and lean, and I hear women talking about it all the time. So like, anything skinny, lean, muscular, wiry, just not the dad bod bullshit.

That is not true. But that is utter nonsense. What they consider, they consider Jason Momoa when he's jacked and he's a little fluffy, they consider that a dad bod. No, a dad bod is just pasty fat. That's a dad bod, but they don't understand that. And there's an over perception bias that men have

where we think women want us to look like Schwarzenegger, women want us to look like Brad Pitt, and women think we want them to look like Twiggy when really what we want are some curves. We want Selma Hayek in Dusk Till Dawn. That's what we want, that kind of body. You know, that's essentially what I've seen, you know, so far. So, I mean, there's kind of a misinterpretation.

Here's the thing though, like what I have an issue with is not the guy who has abs, who's skinny. That's fine if you wanna do that. I will tell you upper body muscle, women do report being more muscular than averages is attractive. Some of my clients who come from cultures where they're vegetarian and they believe that they're eating a normal healthy diet

when they're really just loading up on carbs and salt and their arms are like twigs and they have these big old distended guts and then they don't know why women don't find them attractive. And over time their testosterone levels started to drop. So that's more of an issue that I see. And there's a healthy balance that we can all find

where you're not quite, you don't quite look like an NFL linebacker, but you look like you could handle yourself. You look like if a girl came up and wanted to fight you, you wouldn't be like running for your life. I know some guys that are so frail that a girl could knock them over. And if that's what you look like,

then that's kind of an issue. I don't know if you know the answer to this question, but to that I ask, does his machine gun Kelly trying to be that skinny or is he just that skinny? There's a clear difference here. I don't think he cares when we're like, he's one of these guys who's like, he doesn't try.

He just looks that way. He's like, he's not people like that, or at least that's the perception is that he just, everyone else is trying to be famous and he's just like, he just has the coolness about him. I don't know Machine Gun Kelly, so I don't know one way or the other. What I do know is when he does heavily transgressive things

like wear a pink dress, women find it outrageously attractive because it's transgressive. I know there's some people who are like, well, no, women find it attractive because it's feminine. No, they don't find it attractive because it's feminine. They find him attractive because he's high status and they find what he's doing attractive

because it's transgressive, not because it's feminine. So it's a really interesting, it's really interesting dynamic there, but. So it's part of it. It's doing it on purpose. I have no way of knowing. What I know is like, I want you to consider this, man. Think that you're like 250 kind of fat, okay?

You're 250 pounds, you're kind of fat. Untrained, right? And every untrained, you know, you don't really of fat. Okay, you're 250 pounds, you're kind of fat. Untrained, right? And every untrained, you know, you don't really go to the gym, you eat whatever you want. And every day there's a different girl trying to have sex with you. How much work would you really put in the gym? Being serious.

Right. How much work would you put in the gym? I mean, I like being active, dude. No, no, I understand. I'll give you another example, right? So I can afford a nice car. I have a 10 year old. You asking me that question is like me asking you

how much basketball would you play, you know, if it was that easy. Like I enjoy it. Right, but that's different. I don't play basketball to get women to like me. It doesn't work like that. So what I'm saying is, you know, let's just say women hypothetically in this fake world

we're making up women like nice cars, all right? You're right. I drive a 2014 Lexus IS250 with 115,000 miles on it. That's a good car. And the reason why I drive that car, Robert, it is a good car. The reason why I drive that car is because women keep wanting to go out with me.

If women didn't wanna go out with me, then I might consider changing up, but like they wanna go out with me. The other thing is, when I went from, you know, whatever body fat percentage I was to whatever out with me, then I might consider changing up, but like they want to go out with me. The other thing is when I went from, you know, whatever body fat percentage I was to whatever I am now, which is much lower, more women want to go out with me. And so that it's, it's almost like a operant conditioning, classical conditioning.

So it's a situation is I have one, a friend of mine, he's just like, just imagine if you ever meet a guy who manages a strip club and he's like overweight, but he's just surrounded by girls all the time who like throw it at him and like flirt with him and they want favors from him. And so he's just constantly hooking up with chicks. He just has no incentive to not be fat.

That's the point I'm trying to make. So when you ask the thing about Machine Gun Kelly, I don't think Machine Gun Kelly gets skinny or fat or muscular or whatever Because of anything that he's trying to accomplish I think he just is what he is because so much money fame and vagina is being thrown at him He doesn't care one way or the other Well, you're getting to the heart you get to the heart of the issue here because that's a very different situation from your normie guy

Has normal job watch his fight club and I'm using that example because that's what got me situation from your normie guy has normal job, watches fight club. And I'm using that example because that's what got me sucked in all those years ago. And then says, I'm gonna get that lean and then I'll get the same result Brad Pitt is getting. That is the problem that we run into as lifting coaches. Yeah. And you're just-

I'm surprised because me growing up, the problem was always, you're trying to bench press 350 and it doesn't make you look better. You need to probably put 155 on the bench press and do like 30 reps rather than trying to bench press 350. That was actually the problem we had growing up is that guys wanted to get too big and too strong. And what you're saying is guys now wanna be too lean

and too skinny. And that's not what I've seen, but again, I'm 47 years old. I come from a different generation. Yeah, it has swung the other way. No one in this generation gives a shit about bench press. No one. I don't talk to any guy under the age of 25 who tells me how cool it is he can bench press 415 pounds.

When I was 16 years old, that is all that literally your badge of honor was the first time you bench pressed 225. I was 17 years old. First time you bench pressed 225, you're just years old. First time you bench pressed 225, you're just like, everyone just stops, claps, what up? It's like, I'm not gay no more. I'm a man now.

Like, you know, it's incredible. The fucking seniors, if you, when I bench pressed two, I remember the first time I bench pressed 235. Yeah, tell us your PRs, dude. And I was 17 years old, and and like the seniors on the varsity came and congratulated me because at home, I heard you bench pressed, it was like a news thing. It was like people gave a fuck in my school

that I bench pressed 235. You know what I'm saying, how crazy that is. So I will tell this, I don't know if I've ever told a story before. So I have never really focused that much on a bench press max, just because every health coach I've talked to said that it is one of the most useless,

you know, kind of like things that you can work on. Like working your chest is not useless, but like strictly bench press max is not a ton of utility. It doesn't make you punch harder or anything like that, right? One RMs are very specific. So I, you know, easily, pretty frequently, I would do sets of 225 at 10 reps, okay?

I would do that over and over again. And what would happen was, okay, I was like, all right, let me see how much more I can make. So 275, I would get it up pretty easy, 275. One day, I was like, okay, I'm just gonna keep going until I see how far I can get. And at 295, my pectoral just tore, it just ripped. It made this like, almost like splat noise.

It goes, yeah, that's what it does. But the thing is Robert, like it was not a hard lift. Like I know I could have gotten this up had my arm not come apart. And so because of that, I kind of stopped trying to go above 300. Instead I just do like, I'll just do nine to maybe 12, maybe I'll, you know, light workout six reps at 225. And then like a heavier workout, I'll do like, you know,

12 reps at 225. But I just kind of stay with that weight. And I don't, I don't really try to bench press 400 pounds or anything like that. If I maybe on a Smith machine, maybe I could do something, but I just don't, it's not, it wasn't worth tearing my, my shoulder. The other thing is, you notice there's guys who have big shoulders and guys who have big chest, but you rarely see both. I'm definitely just, I'm all shoulders. I have a very barrel chest, I have narrow shoulders.

And so I'm just not a good bench press person. Like I've just not built for bench press. It's not that I'm not strong. Yeah, I've long arm. I'm just not narrow shoulders, long arms. I've got the Kevin Durant problem, right? But, you know, so for me, it takes a lot of work and then I can get up to where I'm benching 225,

several reps, but I don't have the build, the big fucking chest and the wide ribs to like throw up all that weight and it work out fine. And then the last issue I have is I have an impinged rotator cuff on my right side. So I have to stretch for a long time before I can even do pushups. And that's another issue I have.

So I've tried some different stuff when it comes to that. That's what the cold plunge and the BPC 157 and that kind of stuff is supposed to help. Hear good things about that stuff. Yep, yep. So that brings up an interesting point. So when we're teaching, so we have our novices do sets of five because fives are not too far on the endurance end.

They're not too far on the strength end. And if you kind of, if you dive into strength conditioning theory, they say one to three reps is good for raw absolute strength, which I would just broadly call powerlifting because that's the main sport that does that. We have strength lifting too, but that's, we're ultra niche, nobody knows what that is except people that listen to this show. But yeah, one to three reps is it.

So the way that I like to describe it to people, the way I was taught is fives or more, five to 10, if you're talking to bodybuilders, it also depends on the exercise too because something like a squat is very technical, right? So the more reps you do on something like a squat, the greater the likelihood that your form's gonna break down,

because the endurance becomes the limiting factor versus strength. So your low back might go out before your legs are done, especially as you become more advanced at the lift. So five is a nice even number for a lift like that, whereas something like preacher curl, right? That's a single joint exercise where you're just mainly focused on elbow flexion.

You have the opposite problem. If you do low reps, you're gonna bring other muscles into it, cheat it and hurt yourself that way. So higher reps on a lift like that makes more sense. But the way that we teach this concept of strength training versus maxing out is fives or tens, if you're doing other stuff, let's just say five plus, right?

That's training. That's where you're building muscle. That's where you're getting stronger. That's where it's all being developed. Singles, doubles, triples, we refer to that as practice because now you are teaching yourself how to recruit all those motor units to contract those muscles and have 100% motor unit recruitment for max force production. That requires practice.

So like the scenario you just described, it always amazes me how people get away with that. Like your story is what I would expect to happen because if you don't practice singles for several weeks and build up to that max, number one, you might not produce what you can actually produce or two, you get hurt early on because you're just, all right, I'm just going to run up a single and I haven't really done singles yet. So recently, funny you say that nobody gives a fuck about bench, you know, 25

years later, uh, I finally got the three 15 bench, I think a month ago. Everyone when we were growing up, knew how much they bench press all thought they could shoot three pointers. Every one of All thought they could shoot three-pointers. Every one of them thought they could fight. Everyone was good at Madden. There were just certain things that you did as a kid. Fight, bench press, played football. There were certain, everyone.

And now no one gives a shit about any of that. Dude, I hit the 315 bench. In December, I cleaned up the technique. Got a cleaner rep in May May and nobody gives a fuck. I got three, I squeezed out 320 after that just to finish it out. But to do that, Mike, I was basically doing lighter singles. Basically I'd do a top single with let's, I don't know,

maybe start 275, 285, right? Then I go down to like 260 and do a triple. I'm just throwing numbers out there and then my log in front of me. Then the next week I might go 285. Then the next week I might go 295. And I have a pretty good idea in my head of where that max is going to land. And then after about, I don't know, three to six weeks of that, I'll hit a max and then there's nothing left, right? And then the week after I go back down, work back up. So that is what you're talking about there is sport. There is no reason for somebody

that just wants to build muscle and get stronger to do singles. You know, singles are for competitive power lifters or somebody who just likes to max out like me. I don't like competitions. I don't like formal competitions because once you introduce a formal competition, like a club sport, a league sport, now you're subject to a schedule. And there's this old quote. Have you ever heard of the famous power lifter, Kirk Karwosky? No, he squatted a thousand for two in 1993 in a suit and it's like, okay This is a it's a meme video is that they you'll see circulating the internet He was only supposed to do one because he was doing what I just described and then he decided to do a second one and then

It fucked him up at the meet the following week and he couldn't produce a max because he used everything there, right? And they asked him why he did that. They're like, dude, you know, that's your world-class lifter. Why'd you take that risk? And he's like, well, it's not Christmas in the gym every day. So that's what happens when you introduce a deadline. You may not, it may not be there at the meat.

And then now you're just trying to figure out how you can maximize your points versus lift the heaviest weight you can lift. So. Yeah, I mean, I am way more of the opinion. I'm going to Swimsuit USA's world championship in October. So it's me and 85 girls and I'm the host. My deadline is to be in really good shape by then.

I don't give a shit about how much I can bench press. Right. Uh, I give a shit about, about, uh, you know, 80 girls who are 25 or younger, all looking at a 47 year old man with my shirt off. That's all I care about. That's it. So nothing else besides that matters to me for the rest of the summer.

Sure. And that's important for these people to take away. So you are in the business of promoting parties that are typically filled with women. You've kind of said that in your intro. There's also this, there's, so I said that there's this belief, you get these guys that are, you know,

call them normie guys that are just in, you know, mediocre shape or dad bod. You know, they might start out with a dad bod, they'll start lifting, things will start to fill out. And they won't push themselves harder on the strength end because they don't wanna get fat. You end because they don't wanna get fat. They don't wanna get fat because they correlate it with attractiveness.

On the other end of it, you get guys that don't give a fuck. And I've done versions of this. I think I mentioned this before. Like when I did that bench, I pushed my weight up to 215. I was definitely fat. My gut was 39 inches, but I knew what I was doing. I lost 20 pounds since.

I'm basically a professional. That's what I do for a living, right? The second guy will do that. Then stay there. They'll be like, I'm two 50 and I'm like, you know, 35% body fat. And it doesn't matter cause women don't give a fuck about my abs, you know? So I've heard these two extreme positions here. And then the third one, obviously being the guys that are addicted to

anabolic steroids, uh, which I want to dive into next, but yeah, I wanted you to comment on that. You know, you get two extremes. You got guys that think they need to be sickly skin ripped. And then you got guys that say, well, fuck it. Abs don't matter. Women don't care about that. And then they'll be really fat. They'll be fat. Yeah. Imagine, imagine if, so the issue is men don't look at attractiveness through the same lens that they look at women.

So for women, they will look at a woman and see she is physically attractive. And the first question you ask yourself is she a Republican or a Democrat? Does she have a close relationship with her family? You're just like, she's attractive. When men, when we look at ourselves, we kind of see ourselves the same way. So that's why you see guys abusing anabolic steroids, taking steroids

and just getting bigger and bigger is the equivalent of, let's just say you're a basketball player and all you can do is inbound the ball. You're really good at inbound. You can't dribble. You can't shoot. You can't defend. But inbounding, you're a fuck it. You're a monster at inbounding. It's like, no, there's multiple skill sets that you need. Let's just say you could only shoot threes. Okay, cool. You can only shoot threes. You can't defend, you can't rebound, you can't pass, you can't dribble.

There's all these other problems you have. Okay. Let's say you're just really tall and you can dunk when you're around the basket. You can't run up and down the court. You can't pass. You have trouble rebounding. You can't shoot threes. You can't inbound the ball. There's all these things. There's all these different skill sets. Okay. So for a man, what happens is the anabolic steroids guy thinks that the muscles is all he needs.

The money guy thinks all I need is money. I need to money whip her. Show her the Lambo while buying her a bag, while taking her to a nice dinner, money, money, money. I'm gonna money whip her, okay? Then the looks guy is like, all I need to keep these chicks is just to be a hot guy, right?

The looks guy really, it's probably not even a conscious decision for him. Then there's the game guy. This is the pickup artist who's got really good at making girls laugh, but he's fat, he doesn't like do anything to get in shape, and he doesn't try to make any money. And it's like he can get some girls,

but not quite the girls he wants. And he's out late at night fucking up his sleep. And so there's that guy as well. So you notice how I'm naming all these guys who have like this one gambit to try to get chicks, the muscles, the money, the game, the looks, the what? This is one, exactly. Okay, so I just want you to think about like

the fastest player in the NFL. We'll just say for sake of argument, it's probably not Cheetah, but let's just say it is Tyree Kill. If Tyree Kill had a 99 on speed on Madden, but he had a zero on strength, meaning every time he came off the line, he fell down, how good would he be? It wouldn't be any good. He needs to not work on speed anymore. He needs to work on strength now. Think of Jonathan Ogden. He used to play left tackle for the Baltimore Ravens. He was six foot nine and weighed like 340 pounds.

Does he need to work on strength more or should he maybe work on speed more, right? Right. Like what I'm saying is, so you got speed handled. It's almost like in order for Elon Musk to do better with women, he needs to get richer. No, he doesn't need to get richer. Right? Yeah. Right, he needs to get richer. No, he doesn't need to get richer. Right? Yeah. Right, he needs to discern,

hey, Amber Heard has borderline personality disorder, let me not put my penis in her. Like that's what he needs. He needs discernment more than he needs more money. Does that make sense? Like- He doesn't need to get richer, bro? Yeah, so same thing like with Zuckerberg. Well, Zuckerberg's married, so it's a bad example. But like Zuckerberg doesn't need to get richer, bro. Yeah, so same thing like with Zuckerberg.

Well, Zuckerberg's married, so it's a bad example, but like Zuckerberg doesn't need more money. He needs more calibration so he doesn't look like a reptile when he's talking to people. And so you need to understand these concepts. So there's the ones that we can't control, which is gonna be eye color, hair color. I mean, I guess you could change your hair color.

So the shape of your face, right? Your height, those things I can't really change. Okay, I can't do any of those. Non-modifiable. I can't help you with money, but I would very much rather you attract women without using money at all. And then what are the things I can change?

So it's gonna be physique, it's gonna be competency, relevancy, access to scarce resources, locations, and access to scarce networks. Then it's gonna be pre-selection, it's gonna be social proof, it access to scarce networks, then it's gonna be pre-selection, it's gonna be social proof, it's gonna be charisma, and it's gonna be humor. And I can also throw intelligence, or not intelligence, but education in there too.

I can get you to read a lot. So I can give you all those nine skill sets plus fitness, so that's 10. Those are things I can change about you, right? So it's social proof. So I can help you align with cooler people. So for instance, for me, I think I'm really good at talking to women, but let's just say I wasn't really good at talking to women.

And a group of girls came here to Vegas and I took them on stage to see Tiesto. And then around 2 a.m. we left and then we went on stage to see Calvin Harris. The likelihood of this girl wanting to continue to see me is astronomically high. I know a lot of guys don't believe me, but it is true because I had so much access. I remember one girl, I had a crush on her forever. And I walked on stage to see Marshmello one time at Access. And like when I walked up, the guy who was the stage manager who watches my podcast, he immediately hands me these artist wristbands.

They say artist on it and puts it on the girl. And the girl was even like, whoa, like that was it was too much. I was showing so much access. And also several times, there's one girl I had a crush on and I knew this guy who's a celebrity who was at a nightclub one night and I just go introduce her and she's just like blown away by the fact that I had this level of access.

And of course the biggest one is, I get this from women all the time, it's like, that's your ex? Like they'll see pictures of my ex-girlfriends and they'll be like, you dated her? That girl's fucking gorgeous. Like that kind of thing. What is that? That's women all the time. It's like, that's your ex? Like they'll see pictures of my ex-girlfriends and they'll be like, you dated her? That girl's fucking gorgeous. Like that kind of thing. What is that?

That's pre-selection, make choice, copying in humans, right? So what we can do is we can work. There's the ones we can't fix when we talk about height, right, facial structure, unless you go to Turkey, there's these fucking plastic surgeons in Turkey who do incredible work now on, man, they make ugly dudes look incredibly handsome. No shit.

Dude, I got a guy telling me that there's a height surgery. Have you heard about this? Yeah, of course. I mean, it's all over the place. It's really funny. I was listening to this one girl. So basically they put a metal rod in your femur and they consistently lengthen your femur over a course of, and it takes about two years

of physical therapy before you can actually walk normal again, but you can gain like, I've seen people five, six inches, they get taller. And I was watching this one girl, she was responding to it. She was reacting to it and she was like, these men would do anything rather than go to therapy. And I'm like, how dare you? Like you aren't interested in short men acting as if these men who are paranoid about their height are somehow need to go to therapy. And I'm like, how dare you? Like, you aren't interested in short men, acting as if these men who are paranoid about their height are somehow need to go to therapy.

No, the only reason they need to go to therapy is because of you and your ridiculous preferences for men. And I'm saying this as a guy who's 6'1". These ridiculous preferences that women have, where it's like fewer than 20% of women are interested in men who are 5'9", but the average guy in the United States is 5'9. It's just, it's madness. It's ridiculous. So- Didn't you break this down in one of your reels to like, it shows a fraction of a percent or something?

Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. So this is like a 17% of men in the US are, make over a hundred thousand a year, 14% of men in the US are six feet tall. So it's a 17, it's 0.17 times 0.14, which is like 2.3% of men. So when women say I want a man who's six feet tall makes a hundred thousand dollars a year,

that's only 2.3% of men in the whole country. And it's like, they're like, wait, what? No, I met a bunch of guys like that. I'm like, I know you've met a bunch of guys like that. And they had sex with you and did not lock you down because those men have infinite options. When will you finally hear what I'm saying?" And they don't hear it. Oh, I've been engaged five times. You have not been

engaged at all. What happened was there were several rich men trying to smash and not wanting you to hook up with other guys. So they gave you an engagement ring. There's women right now who are probably coming to the realization, oh, damn, that's right. I've been engaged four or five times. No, nobody wanted to marry you. They just wanted to procure you from not sleeping with other men. So they gave you this ring to try to kind of hold off the competition.

That's all that was happening, but they didn't take you seriously sexually because these men that you chase after have too many options. I just told you, over six feet tall makes $100,000 a year. That's 2.3% of men. Well, you said-

When you started counting in things like- You forgot the punchline. Cause you said it's even smaller when you factor in. No, you said- Unmarried and not obese? Yes, that one, yeah. Unmarried and not obese? Yeah.

It was like 0.3% of men, not obese, not married, over 100K a year and six feet tall. It was like 0.3% of men. And it was just, or 0.2 or 0.3. And it was just like these women were just completely apoplectic. They were just in total denial when I told them this. And they were like, no, I meet guys like this all the time.

And I was like, cool, are you currently in a committed relationship with any of them? And they're like, no, but I could have been. I'm like, you couldn't have been. But I was engaged to one. I was engaged to a billionaire. It's like you weren't engaged to a billionaire. You were a side chick to a billionaire who was married,

who told you he was engaged to you by giving you a cubic zirconium ring. And also he wasn't a billionaire. Like it's just madness. These women just want this fairy tale so badly that they're willing to just get screwed over by men because they think that these men are high status. So the thing is I say use it in your favor as a man.

I have found that me just coming off as higher status and I don't mean faking, like I don't have a fake watch or I don't rent a Lamborghini. I'm just talking about my behavior. Yeah, my behavior, if you talk to me, like if a woman, if I'm having a conversation with a woman and she starts becoming flaky or difficult or whatever, I don't react, I don't yell, I'm totally unreactive.

And I just move on. It's like, okay, cool. And I might not call her back or, basically the opposite of what almost every other guy would do in communication with an attractive woman. And that projects to her that I have, you know, more options in my life. And because of that, I get way more attention

from women, really attractive women, because they're used to the guy calling back and be like, baby, let's go out again. I had one girl, we'd been hooking up for like several years and one time she didn't call me back on time, whatever. She didn't call me, she came into town, she didn't tell me. And I just didn't message her. She messaged me again for like six months.

I didn't message her one time. I didn't message her back. And this girl is like a world-class, world-class fitness model. And she's just stunned. She's like, how is this guy not messaging me back? Every guy I talk to will kiss my ass and do absolutely anything I want.

There's no man I can't manipulate. But for some reason, if I do anything that Michael doesn't like, he just won't talk to me. And I didn't cuss her out, by the manipulate. But for some reason, if I do anything that Michael doesn't like, he just won't talk to me. And I didn't cuss her out. By the way, I didn't go fuck you. I can't believe you did this. I was just like, OK, you don't have time to talk to me. I don't have time to talk to you. That was just a an unspoken thing. And because of that, now now she messages me all the

time. She wants to get back to talk to me. It's wildest thing I've ever seen. Or the girl who she so desperately wants to get married. She meets this rich guy. He says, okay, I want to marry you. She believes him. Obviously I know it's ridiculous nonsense. She goes out with this guy for a little while. And then, you know, obviously something happens

where either she catches him cheating or she realizes that he's a complete pushover and a simp. She doesn't end up getting married to him and immediately comes back to me and wants to go out with me again. And it's just one of these things, like I just see this happen over and over again. And why is it that happened?

Because I didn't beg for her to come back, like 99% of men do. I don't subscribe to her OnlyFans, like millions of men do. I don't, I don't placate to her. I don't supplicate to her. I don't take women on dates who didn't earn the date. And when I say earn it, meaning like show me some level of interest or compliance. I will show you interest, but you have to show me interest first. I don't show intent to women when I first

meet them. I don't hit on women when I meet them. In public, I don't even touch women. They can touch me, but I don't touch them. This is so counter to what women are used to. And so because of that, what does it project? It telegraphs to these women, this guy has options. Wow, this guy must have a ton of, look at his ex-girlfriend, every time he shows up somewhere, he's like with 10 or 12 girls, this guy must have a ton of options. I know that my behavior has to be different

when I'm around a guy like this. He probably has a lot less time to spare. Plus I'm running an eight figure business. It's like his time is probably more valuable. So it's like they don't waste my time and they're way more direct with me. And I tend to have a much easier time getting women to say yes, whenever I ask them to go out with me,

go to a club, go to dinner, whatever. It's much easier because it's very well known to them and to the women that they associate with that it's not possible to manipulate me. And so that's it. And it's not because I'm special. I'm not there's nothing special about me. I'm not a special snowflake. The difference is because I have enough abundance, I know what I can get away with. Because I have an abundance, I also know

you can't manipulate me. So that's that's, that's basically outwards. Like what kind of abuse would you take from your boss if you had a billion dollars in the bank? What kind of, you go on a date with a girl, what kind of abuse and nonsense would you list, sit there and listen to? I've had multiple girls, some of the most beautiful women I've ever met in my life

started explaining to me about aliens building the pyramids and the earth being flat. And it's like, what would you be willing to tolerate from, I have one woman, one of the most beautiful women I've ever seen tell me that space is fake. What would you be willing to tolerate from a woman if you had three women waiting for you at home, all waiting to jump on you as soon as you got home?

You'd tolerate less. You just like, if you had a billion dollars in the bank, you would tolerate less from your loss. This is what I mean by an abundance mentality. And so I think it's pretty apparent for my clients and myself when other people, it's not just women, experience my abundance mentality, I get treated differently because of it. And wouldn't you say the same applies in business? I mean, of course, I mean, what's the worst time to go look for a house,

right? When you when you're homeless, what's the best time to look for a house when you have a beautiful house and you're like, you go check out houses when you have no interest in buying another house, it's just, a house has to be perfect. It has to completely speak to you, but you're not trying to buy a house out of desperation. What's the worst time to get married? When you're like, I need to get married this year. You are going to end up in a terrible relationship.

What's the best time to get married? When you're like, I want to be single, hot girl summer. I'm never getting married. And then you meet a guy or you meet a girl who just knocks you off your feet and is in his consistent whose actions match their words. And they do this for a number of years. That's the person you want to marry. Not when you're looking to get married, but when you're looking to be happy. And then someone comes around where you realize this person would add to my life

instead of subtract from it. That's when you find the person that you're going to be a partner with. And I actually, I don't really suggest traditional marriage. So partnership, long-term pair bonding or whatever you want to call it, marriage, but not including the state, whatever secular marriage, whatever, or a religious marriage, whatever, whatever term you want to call it. I recommend that as opposed to like traditional marriage in general. I'm not saying there aren't exceptions, but you know,

I think looking for marriage first is the problem. Looking for a house before first is the problem. Coming from a place of lack really is a bad, bad position when you're trying to negotiate. Yeah, I would say that's a good universal piece of advice there for something as, you know, miniscule as maybe buying a car or something like what you said getting married. You've had success in business, you've had success in your dating life, and you've described this collection of behaviors that plays into

that because that's what you're really kind of trying to get at. So I think the main takeaway that I'm getting from it is that the common mistake that people make is a focus, it's one dimensional thinking, essentially, is what I'm gonna refer to it as. They focus on one variable because somebody either possesses that variable or engaged in some sort of behavior

and has a certain result. What you're describing is a collection of behaviors that's built off a foundation. So when you're saying that Girl doesn't have time for you. You don't have time for her. That's coming from a foundation, right? You're not you're not having to exert a ton of willpower to engage in that behavior because I find that a lot of guys You have to because they see they hear that you did that they're like Well Mike said just ignore him so I'm gonna force myself to ignore and it's coming from a place of, I just heard the other guy do it. Yeah, it's inauthentic.

So sometimes a woman doesn't have time for you and it's okay, like it just move on to the next one. Sometimes a woman doesn't have enough time for you and then when she sees you're willing to move on, magically she all of a sudden has time for you. It's just one of these things where when you can maintain boundaries, not be manipulated and like understand what you're worth,

what your value is as a man, because it was one of the biggest problems I see. I know a lot of people disagree with me on this, but it's so true. Men feel they're worthless now. I'm not talking about all men. There's obviously the men at the top don't think they're worthless.

I would say the majority of men, probably the bottom 60% of men, feel worthless and they act worthless. They might not use the word worthless, but when they're subscribing, when they're writing a girl on OnlyFans thinking she's writing them back, looking for a connection that way, that is a sign to me of worthlessness. That's what worthlessness looks like. When a guy is sitting there spending all of his money on a stripper who has no intention of going home with him, that to me is a sign of worthlessness. When a guy is constantly on dating apps, swipe, swipe, swipe, swipe, swipe, and all he messes, matches up with are catfishes and sex workers,

that to me, and he actually pays extra money to Tinder so that he can boost his, his, uh, his profile. That to me is a sign of internal worthlessness. When a man continually takes abuse from his boss and he's just one of many cows led to slaughter, but he just sees all the other cows going into the slaughter house so he just does the same thing everyone else does, that to me is a sign of an internal worthlessness. I believe most men right now feel and act as if they are worthless

and I know that they are not. These men, all of society was built off the backs, the labors of these men. All of the safety that we have, the freedoms that we have only exist because extremely violent men were willing to do violence on our behalf so that we could have a First Amendment freedom of speech, second amendment, fourth amendment, fifth amendment, 10th amendment, these things happen because men were willing to be violent on our behalf. And so, you know, what that, so because of that,

I understand men have a certain internal value and worth. The problem is this, Robert, no matter what I say, or no matter how special I think someone is, the main issue is this, Robert, no matter what I say or no matter how special I think someone is, the main issue is this, as a man, your value to society, not to me, not to your family, not to your mom, okay, not to your best friends in high school,

but to society in general, your value to society is solely based on your utility. That's a hard thing for a lot of people to hear. Therapists really don't like this. They hate it. You as a man always have a burden of performance. They hate this idea, but it's undeniably true. Your value to society is totally based on your utility.

Now, here's the problem. Your therapist comes around and says, you know what? You don't need to listen to Michael Sartain and this utility stuff. You're enough, you're good enough. Just internally know that you're enough. Close your eyes. Oh, I'm enough.

Look in the mirror, say, I'm mantra. I am enough, I am enough. Okay, while you're saying you're enough, another guy is taking your girlfriend by the hand and leading her into a unisex bathroom to have sex with her. While you're saying you're enough. While you're saying you're enough,

there's a repo guy coming and repossessing your car and taking it away. While you're telling yourself you're enough. While you're saying that you're enough, there's guys coming from other firms stealing your clients away from you. While you're saying you're enough, there are people talking shit about you behind your back

and you have to outperform them. While you believe you're enough, there's no you're enough. None of you are enough. You all have a burden of performance. Any therapist who does not immediately lead with a burden of performance, any therapist who, by the way, the first question they should ask is, what's your diet and exercise routine like?

Anyone who's suffering from depression, if you are a therapist and you are not asking about diet and exercise, you should lose your license and not be allowed to conduct therapy, period, okay? Well, I second that. So much of depression is based on physical fitness. And so you should understand that concept.

So while you're being told you're enough, you're getting fatter and your wife is now ready to fuck other men. That's what's going on. Maybe I'm the first person to tell you this. And maybe you think that this belief system is unhealthy, but you can call me all kinds of names. You can say what I'm saying is toxic

and you can say what I'm saying is unhealthy, but you can't call me a liar because what I'm saying is true, but you can't call me a liar. Because what I'm saying is true. Women have the luxury of being the passenger or the captain. Men can only be the captain. Men always have a burden of performance. Some women have a burden of performance. Women can have a burden of performance.

Like I said, I had a female squadron commander. Condoleezza Rice, when she was secretary of state, she definitely had a burden of performance for sure. That you can have a burden of performance as a woman, but you don't have to have a burden of performance. You don't. The rich man's wife doesn't have to have a burden of performance, but a man always has to have a burden of performance because if he doesn't, his girl leaves him. Then that's just the truth. And that is a gender role not perpetuated on men by men. That is a gender role perpetuated on men by women. If men do not make more money than women in general, women leave.

This is not because of men or patriarchy. This is a function of genetics. And we see it in every society. Even more egalitarian societies like Scandinavian countries, when men make less money than women, the women leave. Men always have a burden of performance. You can continue to believe that you're enough and that's fine, but if you believe you're enough,

I wanna know, tell me that you're enough because I am the first guy to go steal your clients. I'm the first guy to take your business. I'm the first guy to come out there and do that. As soon as you tell me you think you're enough, I'm a tiger, I'm a first guy to come out there and do that. As soon as you tell me you think you're enough, I'm a tiger, I'm a hungry tiger. As soon as I, I'm a rabid dog coming to take your clients. Cause that's what's happening to me every week.

There's some new people trying to take my clients. There's people writing articles about me, people making videos about me. There's people trying to take my girl. There's people talking shit to my girl, all this kind of stuff. And it doesn't bother me. I get to compete, but I also don't think I'm enough.

I also know that I have a burden of performance. Seems rather practical. So let's bring it back to lifting. In all these various attributes that you've described, where does lifting fit in? How did you get started with it? Probably should have asked this earlier. Yeah, this is a great question.

So where does lifting come from? It comes from your ancestors. Your ancestors would have been rewarded, the ones who continued to build fortifications, that's lifting. The ones who procured the meat, got the meat, got the deer on our shoulders, that's lifting.

Ready? This is an exercise right here. I'm pulling the arrow back. I'm throwing the object overhand. I'm running to where the prey is. These are aerobic and anaerobic exercises that you did to protect and provide for your tribe ancestrally.

I don't have anything to throw a spear at today, Robert. There's nothing I got to throw a spear at today. You know what I can do? I could throw a spear at today, Robert. There's nothing I got to throw a spear at today. Right. But you know what I can do? I could throw a football, throw a football, but I can't throw a spear, but I can throw a football. And you know what happens when I throw a football? I feel good.

It feels good. Right. Why is that? Again, it's so obvious. The answer always comes back to natural selection in evolutionary psychology. It's just, you come. Why is it me? Look up the concepts of behavioral activation therapy. It's just when you accomplish men accomplishing goals

and accomplishing goals with other people, that gives you a dopamine rush, a serotonin rush. Oh, you feel connected to these other people, all the guys that I serve with in my unit, I feel a connection to them, even though I don't really know that much about some of them. I'm connected to them. Why is I don't really know that much about some of them, I'm connected to them. Why is it?

Because I accomplished goals with them. We flew missions together. And it's just like, so you're asking the question about lifting. Lifting is just another one of those things where it's like, what did my ancestors do? They built the fortification. What is that?

I'm lifting the logs to build the fence. Okay. What is that? I'm bailing the hay to feed the livestock. What did my ancestors do? They lifted. Does that make sense? Yes.

Here's the chin up. I climbed on the roof to go fix the shelter. These are the things I did as a man. I lifted and pulled and pushed and drug different things. I'm lifting. As I'm doing that, my mind, my brain rewards me because I'm providing and protecting my tribe. So now I have no tribe to protect.

I have no, I may provide for my wife or whatever, but like, I don't have anything to kill. I don't have to kill game to feed my family. So what do I do instead? I go to the gym or I go do combat sports or I play basketball or whatever. And now that I have a release and my body is getting that same kind of dopamine,

serotonin, norepinephrine release that I would have gotten from the activity of providing and protecting my tribe 70,000 years ago. Based on that, then you would argue that lifting and you're including aerobic too, which I'm a big proponent of as well. A good solid workout is going to influence your behavior, but you don't have to be an elite power lifter or an elite bodybuilder or super ripped like a movie star on a bunch of steroids to derive that benefit.

Okay. Yes. This is something that I'm always hammering because I think you've mentioned before, you get a lot of clients that are neurotic. You used that word before, neuroses. You know what I'm talking about? Yeah. Yeah.

And I get a lot of them, men and women alike, it manifests differently. But with the men, there's a lot of neuroses around, and this is usually with the skinny fat guys, around having any body fat on them. And I think from what I'm hearing from you, and you know, you've talked to thousands upon, tens of thousands of women at this point probably, what I'm hearing from you is that that's not the most important thing, that it's a piece.

So how would you advise these guys? You know, because you're saying, you know, you didn't, that nobody's a piece. So how would you advise these guys? Because you're saying that nobody gives a fuck about a 300 bench, you're right. And you're saying that you kind of stick to your 225 for reps, understand the guys that are hiring personal trainers, the guys that are coming to me, they're benching like 115, doing sets of 10, and won't put the, they will not put the size on

to get it to a respectable place. And while I don't think that everybody needs to bench three or 400, I think if you're sitting there benching a hundred pounds, you're leaving a lot on the table, assuming you have just decent genetics. Some guys, you know, they aren't built for this. I understand that. But there are guys that are suppressing their growth and there's a lot of it because they're worried about that. I think that, to your point earlier, you said sometimes money is a limiting factor. You can do things there.

Sometimes lifting is a limiting factor. You can do things there. Diet might be the limiting factor. Social skills, you mentioned all these things, right? In a lot of cases, when I interact with these guys, strength is the limiting factor. And the limiting factor to their strength is that they are not eating enough and they won't put on enough size because they're worried about how the opposite sex is going to perceive them, not realizing that the status quo is not good

either. Yeah. What exactly is the question? So the question was, how would you advise these guys? Cause I don't know if, I don't know if you get these types of questions because we do different things, we coach different things, but this is the kind of stuff that I'm dealing with. And I think your experiences are valuable here because I know you deal with similar types of personalities,

but you've talked to tens of thousands of women and that's who they're concerned about. And yeah, so I want your opinion. If somebody came to you. Okay, so the way it works is right now, women have reported pretty consistently that they want men who are not super muscular, but they're more muscular than average.

Okay. So that's generally what you're looking for. So, and also women, again, I guys, I know everybody wants this bro science answer. I'm not gonna give you the bro science answer. There's actual data on this. Look at, use chaggbtrproplexia. You can find the data on this.

One of the greatest pieces of variance in attractiveness. So when people look at facial symmetry or they look at height or look at, you know, all these different things, the number one thing that caused the most attractiveness was upper body muscle. It's true. Guys, I know they like to say,

hey, don't skip leg day or whatever. Yeah, that's what I was thinking about. The reality is most guys, when they're wearing shorts, women can't see the thickness of their quads. They don't know. And I'm not saying you should skip leg day. You should not skip leg day. You're gonna end up with back problems

and all kinds of weird stuff with your core if you don't do legs. You need to do legs. Well, your back and core are your upper body too. Let's remember that. Correct. Yeah, go ahead. But the main thing,

like the guys who don't ever do hamstrings, you see like they walk weird or whatever. Yeah. So you definitely need to do all that, but what I'm telling you is your upper body muscle is a thing that women will notice the most. They're going, because again, they're looking, just like you notice boobs really quickly,

you're not looking at a woman and be like, wow, she has a nice spleen. Oh my God, I wonder what her trachea looks like. Like you don't, that's not what you think. Like you see quick, boobs, you just see the boobs. Like she turns around, ass, you just see ass. It's very quick, very quick computation. Ass, boobs, face, very quick computation.

So on a man, what do we have? Biceps, trapezius muscles, right? Deltoids, pectoral, abdominal, latimus dorsi, like quickly, obliques, quick, like just see she sees boobs. She looks at you and she sees lats, traps, like that's what she sees. So that's why upper body muscle is such a cheat code.

The other thing is it makes your waist smaller. Your shoulders look wider, which is a more attractive, the V shaped torso is more attractive. Also it's the reason why suit jackets are so attractive to women, because what they do, they square off your shoulders, make them wider, and then you wear the button here, it makes your waist look smaller,

it makes your arms look bigger. That's the reason why suit jackets are attractive to women. Women report frequently that they like guys in suit jackets or when men wear suits. You notice the suits back in the 18th century, they look very similar to suits do now specifically for the reasons that I mentioned before. Interesting. So they don't have to be 250 pounds and lean. Yeah. I mean, again, like I've just seen a lot of, I've had a lot of women tell me before that I, they've seen me before get too lean.

They're like, I want something to grab onto. That's not a dad bod though. That's just what they, they don't want too much muscle. And there's another thing, it's like, okay, I'm just gonna, it's a little inside baseball. It's like, if you're too much bigger than your girl and you're on top of her when you're having sex, like there can be some complications.

Like, you know what I'm saying? You know what I'm coming for. Oh yeah, of course. You know, you got 150. Oh, I'm 250, all muscle and you've got like a 115 pound girl. I'm not saying, and I'm not talking about, oh, I fucked her really good.

I'm talking about just like, you dislocated her hip because she just like, you know what I'm saying? Nobody thinks about this shit. You know what I'm saying? Like her shoulder came out of socket, like that kind of shit, cause you're so much bigger than her. I'm not saying don't be bigger than her.

I'm saying it's just not a necessity to weigh 150 pounds more than your girlfriend. You know, one argument that we call them rip, and Mark Ripito, so one comment that Rip always makes on the other end of it, you'll get guys that they want to weigh their, you know, normal height, five, eight, five, nine, five, 10. And they want to weigh 165 and have like super low body fat. And he raises this point.

And I'm curious to see what your thought is on it. That we spend 95% of the day clothed and 165 in clothing. That's lean. It doesn't look much different than 165 in clothing that's not lean and not trained. He uses the word trained. Yeah, 165 and trained looks no different to the average to the naked eye than 165 and untrained. Yeah. So where so where are shirts that flatter your upper body? That's why I'm really big on these ASOS like a top men t-shirts because they flatter your upper body. It's exactly right. You can't see what myOS, like a top men t-shirts, because they flatter your upper body.

It's exactly right. You can't see what my abs look like, but like, you know, that's the reason why you do that. So, but you can see the width of my shoulders. You can kind of make out the shape of my deltoids and the difference, the little split there between my deltoid and my trapezius muscle or my tricep muscle.

You can kind of make out that I have, you know, I have some kind of trapezius muscle, whatever I don't have, there's not like rolls of neck fat here. So you look at that and you can say, you can see from that, okay, I can tell to some extent that this guy has some muscularity, but she can't see definition of my abs because I'm wearing a t-shirt. Right. Like to a certain extent that is case. Yeah. I would agree with that too. Having gone down that low, I guess just some quick tips, easy stuff for these guys that want to use lifting

to be more attractive. Yeah, I'm gonna go for symmetry. So this is where I'm gonna disagree with a lot of people. If you're like me and you grew up with your family as Colombian and they all have gigantic legs and wide hips and they all have narrow shoulders and T-Rex arms, it's okay to skip leg day every once in a while. If you are genetically built like that,

then like for me, as one of the things I talked to Jay Cutler and he said this, he goes, I've always had insanely strong legs. You know, he's, you know, greatest legs and bodybuilding is Jay Cutler. People just generally believe that to be the case. I still think it's Tom Platts. Okay, for sure.

Yeah, and that's what Tom Platts is who inspired Jay Culler. Yeah, yeah. And Jay was telling me, he goes, my legs were so much bigger than my body when I was playing high school football that I didn't train legs for three years to let my upper body catch up. For some, and I wouldn't say that,

but I would say for those of you who are like the string arms, but you have pretty normal size legs, it might be okay to do five day splits, but you do four day splits and five day splits and every other week you do legs. That could be fine too, along with basketball. I think that's okay. If you're a guy who has, I have some friends that are like Egyptian, like just big massive legs.

Some friends of mine that are South American just naturally have just big wide hips and massive legs. If that's just how you're built naturally, it might be okay to not work as much on lower body and work more on your upper body to catch up. So for me, I'm very much tricep dominant and bicep recessive. So I do have to do more with biceps.

I'm very much lat dominant. Yes, I'm extremely, I'm very much lat dominant and very much pectoral recessive. So I have to do workouts twice as much here to make myself look balanced. And I naturally have just big full calf muscles and pretty decently defined quadriceps. And so I don't have to work on them as much.

So you might see lighter weight, more reps with my lower body and with my upper body. On upper body days, I might consume more protein and do twice as many reps on the recessive muscles or the weaker, not weaker, but the stronger muscles. And my biceps are stronger than fucking shit. My biceps are strong. Do y'all take 270 pound dudes and I'll beat them in arm wrestling? My biceps just don't have that much definition. It's just genetics, right? Because of that whole thing, I work out more biceps and more pectoral to balance out shoulders, back,

and triceps. And so that's what I would say. That's why it's called body building and you can shape your body. If I gave an even workout to my whole body, I would have big legs, massive calves, big triceps, big lats, tiny chest, tiny biceps. That's what I would look like

if I just did a regular thing. But because of the fact that I give more weight, again, those of you guys are out there, you're calf deficient, you have no calf muscles, and you're not who I'm talking to. You might wanna do more calves, for sure. You might be that person. But I've just seen a lot of guys,

especially from my family being from South America, a lot of soccer players, big, thick, strong, muscular, veiny legs, big old fat, thick, hairy legs, you know, kind of a mid-shape, like kind of a thicker waist and then arms that look like T-Rex. And that's just a very common look, the distance runner look. So while I understand that look,

I think it's probably a great distance runner look with a little bit of upper body muscle might be a lot more attractive to women. Some symmetry, some balance. So all those, you mentioned all these weak points and people try to run into rabbit holes when they hear this. You discovered that through the process of training, correct?

Yes, yes. And the part that's crazy is that like, I will put my bicep workout against most, I mean, maybe not like tremolone filled bodybuilders, like they're gonna do better, or like NFL players will probably do better than me. But like I see guys like maybe like Wes Watson, his bicep workout, I can do that easily. I over train my biceps.

I do them like crazy because I just genetically don't have big biceps. I do them like, because I just genetically don't have big biceps. And so it's because I've done so the tendons and ligaments have gotten very thick and strong. And I've just like, so I have very, very strong biceps, even though they just don't look that big. My triceps are strong, but they're not as look, I'm obviously my triceps are stronger than my biceps because it's a bigger muscle group. But, but in general, I don't have to work it as much as what I try to do with my chest.

So my chest is not that big, but it's very strong. Same thing with my biceps because genetically, I'm just not, because of my rib cage and my bone structure, I'm just not built that way to have a ton of definition there. So that's why I do those kinds of things. But the reason why I do it is because of balance. And for me, it's a supply and demand thing.

If I was doing this wrong, then I wouldn't have a 23-year-old girl, my ex-girlfriend being 20, the other girl I'm seeing 25, and then I'm also seeing a 29-year-old, I wouldn't have them all wanting me to take my clothes off if it wasn't working. That's the ultimate, I know for a lot of people, they're like, oh, I do this for me.

And I don't mind if you do this for you, do it for you. There's nothing wrong with that. But if you wanna know whether or not it's working, it's when the 25 year old who didn't notice you before, all of a sudden wants you to take your clothes off so she can have sex with you, that's a good sign what you're doing is working. I know that comes off as shallow to a lot of people.

And I'm sorry that you live in that world. I'm sorry you feel that way, but that is how the world works. I mean, it's a dimension that we all see whether we want to or not, you know, it's there, you know. Tell me about your training. We haven't really gotten there. Okay.

Yeah, like how? I do five day splits. What do you do? We're big. We train movements here, so we focus on those five to six major lifts. And as people advance, then other things become useful. But a lot of my audience, they're big on minimalism.

They're not that strong, don't have a lot of time. A lot of them have kids. And, you know, they try to stick to the basics. And it has been my experience. You can get quite a bit out of that. Like, to your point, though, I don't get my biceps will not grow unless I do arm curls. Some guys can do chin ups and rows and they're fine, you can get quite a bit out of that. Like to your point though, I don't get, my biceps will not grow unless I do arm curls. Some guys can do chin ups and rows and they're fine, you know? So, and like you said with calves,

some guys have to do calves. So, you know, those things pop up as you go on. And I want to hit that point because some of these guys hearing you, they're like, well, Mike says, you know, he's got this lat to pec deficiency. So I got to like focus on my lats and it's like, dude, you can't do a chin up, you know? So like we talk, I can't do a chin up, you know, so like we talk about,

I forgot what book you recommended, but I think it was, uh, the one thing where he talks about prioritizing, deprioritizing. Um, when somebody starts lifting weights, when a guy starts lifting weights and he's bone weak, I'm not talking about the guy that walks in the gym and pulls 400 pounds the first day. Not that guy. I'm talking about the guy who's dead lifting 135 the first day. The entire body is weak at that point. So we try to tell people stick to these basics. You're going to gain plenty of muscle, squatting and dead lifting and bench pressing, overhead pressing, and doing

chin ups for a period of time. And as you go on, and I think that's why I asked you that question earlier, as you go on and continue training, you start to uncover things like, shit man, my arms stopped growing, my calves aren't growing, you know, whatever. And then you add other things. So when you say bodybuilding, obviously you're not doing bodybuilding shows. You're talking about training

just purely to build muscle, right? But the point that I try to hammer home is it's always a function of strength because a muscle doesn't grow and not get stronger. Um, you're trying to, you're trying to progress in a direction. So with all that said, I want to hear how you've approached it after all these years. Not really the main reason I wanted to get you on. I wanted to get all that stuff you've been kind of hitting on now,

but since it is a lifting show, I want to know what the hell you're doing and, you know, where you started and how you got to where you're at now with your workouts. Okay. Cool. Okay, cool. And I know some people may disagree with this mentality or find this unhealthy, but I'm gonna tell you the reason why I lift. I lift because I'm 47 and I date women in their 20s

and I wanna be attractive to them so that they find me sexually attractive and sexually desire me. I know that I'm saying the quiet part loud and there's a lot of guys right now who agree totally with what I'm saying, but apparently we can't say this out loud anymore. That's why I lift. I lift to have a symmetrical body

that women find appealing when I take my shirt off. That's number one. Number two, I wanna be able to score and defend in basketball. I still play basketball on a regular basis. So there's a lot of stuff I do with my abductor and adductor muscles, a lot of stuff I do with my abductor and adductor muscles.

A lot of stuff I do with my calves, stretching, et cetera. And my core, just try to still be able to play defense and play some semblance of basketball. I don't do jujitsu anymore. I get hurt all the time. I tear this cartilage in my rib cage several times. So I, but I do play a lot of basketball. And then three, I like to be able to throw a football

with my friends and run routes. And I, so not care. So I used to weigh 235 pounds or whatever and I'm like 235 pounds is not good for me playing defensive basketball I weigh too much. It's bad for my joints. So I wanted to get to a lower weight around 215 That's about what I do And then I also want I want to have a low enough body fat to where women can see some definition of abdominal muscles and enough Upper-body muscle to where I look more muscular than average. That's enough for me. Those are the three reasons I lift. Here's how I lift. I got this from Jay Cutler. I had Jay

Cutler on my podcast and he sort of motivated me or inspired me to come up with this workout. Day one is bench press. It's chest and triceps, okay? I do, like sometimes I'll do less, sometimes I'll do three sets of 15, so it'll be 45 instead of 30, or I'll do three sets of 10, and I'll do six workouts. So it's 180 reps, and then depending on like, whether or not this is a weaker group that I wanna work on, I'll do another one,

so I'll do seven, so it's generally generally 210 reps of just bench press triceps, the chest to triceps. It makes sense? Yeah. It's a brutal workout, man. Yes. The day two is going to be biceps. And I do, I will do 210 reps of just biceps. I will tear the shit out of my biceps. And then I do abs.

So generally 150 crunches, and then I'll do planks. That's generally on day two, okay? That's what I'll do. Day three is gonna be shoulders. This is the hardest one for me to do because I said I have an impingement in my right rotator cuff and I have a slight impingement in my left one. And so I'll do, well, again,

this is usually about 180 reps of different things. So it's gonna be, you know, military press, you know, fly. It's gonna be the ones where I go all the way up, all the way down, the rows up in the front, and then I'll do shrugs with 95 pounds, and I'll do, you know, sets of 30 like that. So I'll do, again, 210 reps of that with shoulders. And then on the fourth day, it's back.

Back is easy for me. With no warmup at all, I can take, just genetically, I'm just a strong back guy. I can go in there, the there, go into the little cable thing and put the whole rack on there to go to the bottom thing, stick the little pin in the very bottom, take the whole thing and just yank it down like it didn't shit, the whole fucking rack

will come off of its hinges. I'll pull that whole bitch down, do sets of 15, like back, I'm just super back. I have super back and super calves. I have, but I don't have super chest and I don't have super biceps, but I have super backs, calves back, I have an NFL back, just no problem, back all day, right, easy.

So for me, for back, I do just mat, it's a heavy weight, I'll do the whole rack, you know, the whole thing with the pull-down machine, I'll put the whole thing, 250 pounds and just, just no problem. But I can't do that with bench press. Like my, I have to warm up with bench press. Bench press is a much harder workout for me. And then day five is legs.

So it's going to be leg press. And the thing is with legs is the reason why I don't do and not a lot of standing squats or dead lifts is because of my joints. So for me, it's a combination for leg day of basketball. There's some basketball drills I do along with leg press and then it's extensions, it's the hamstring contractions, then it's abductor adductor muscles.

So in with the knees, out with the knees, and then kettlebell. So that's day five. So those are my five day splits. We're cutting out the yes, no machine. Yeah. That's one we like to make fun of on this show. Yeah, I don't know what the yes, no machine is. Adductor, abductor, yes, no, open your legs.

So just so we're clear, I have sciatica. My number one, if you wanna know my number one problem in life. Well, number one thing I wish I could fix, it's my sciatica, so doing those muscle groups is very important, yeah. Have you ever gotten instruction on how to squat or deadlift, I'm just curious.

I have, yeah, I mean definitely in high school and college, I definitely have before. Would you be open to receiving it again when I'm up there? Maybe, maybe, yeah, when you're up here, you have, this is something we could try. We have free weights in the Tower One. I have a feeling, no guarantees,

I think you're gonna learn some things. Of course. So I'd like to show you how to do it the way we teach it, but you should also read starting strength. I think you'll get a lot out of it. Okay. Especially the way your brain works and what you're into. That's the thing, I get all sorts of broken people, man.

I have a 78-year year old woman who probably has, I think she has that and several other fucking things. And she comes in here, deadlifts 110, 115 pounds, does a couple sets of five, goes home. She just, we use the leg press to get her strong enough to squat. So she's now squatting to full depth. I've had people with pins and needles, you know,

you name it, like we're working around aches and pains all the time. But I think once you if you take the time to read that or consume some of that content, you'll understand a little bit where I'm coming from, because we're just kind of looking at it. No, I deal with all sorts of broken people. And the value of this system is that we can get most people to do it safely. And occasionally I get guys where I'm like, OK, you're going to like press. You just can't fucking squat. you of this system is that we can get most people to do it safely. You know, occasionally I get guys where I'm like, okay, you're going to like press.

You just can't fucking squat, you know, so I'm not going to say it doesn't exist. I don't, like you said, I like to under promise over deliver on this stuff. Um, but, uh, yeah, we'll get some guys that, you know, I got another guy. He just has to deadlift off blocks. Cause if he goes all the way to the floor, his back hurts, you know, there's, you know, we run into these things, you know, but we always try to teach everybody how to do this because you said you learned it in high school. One of the things that we always talk about is how high school football players learn it from senior high school football players who learned it from senior high school football players who

learned it from senior high school football players. The coaches are sport coaches. They're not strength coaches, so they're not looking at it coaches are sport coaches. They're not strength coaches. So they're not looking at it quite in this way. You go into power lifting, it's about moving weight from point A to point B. So you can manipulate the lift in various different ways as long as you're within the rules of the competition. So where you're losing there is,

you're not really thinking about health, longevity, overall strength. So to bring that point home, the three criteria by which we teach the squat and the deadlift and the bench press and the press are we want the most muscle mass in the movement throughout the longest effective range of motion that allows you to lift the most weight,

assuming all three of those things are met. And that tends to work for most people of all ages, with some exceptions. So I highly recommend that read. And if I come see you, I'd love to teach you how to do that because I think you'll get a lot out of it. Perfect. Cool. We talked about a lot more topics than I anticipated.

I don't know how much of that we're gonna use. We're up to like two hours here. But I learned a lot and I'd like to have you back on sometime. So, we'll talk about that. And yeah, I think I think there's a good time to close out. So let the audience know where they can find you at. And yeah, you should be able to,

you should be able to find me at Michael Sartain on Instagram is probably the easiest place to find me. And you can find me as Michael Sartain on YouTube as well. And if you're interested in the men of action program that we teach, you guys can go to mlamentoring.com and you can see all the fun stuff we have to offer there. So how would you describe that? Cause you never really gave any type of name

or moniker for what that is. So some people might be listening to you and thinking, oh, he's a dating coach. He's one of those guys. Yeah, I'm a performance coach. I teach networking, communication, leadership and dating. A little bit of fitness and diet, but mostly networking, communication, leadership, and dating. A little bit of fitness and diet, but mostly networking, communication, and leadership.

And then dating. Most guys come to me for dating because they see the lifestyle, the pictures, all that kind of stuff. But the point I'm trying to make to most guys is if you get these other parts of your life in order, you have so much abundance that the dating part becomes easy.

Yeah, the social networking was the big thing that got me following you because it was a, not really a new concept, it just wasn't something you really read about, when you were consuming, even basic mainstream content, not necessarily like obscure corners of the internet content, it's just not something that was talked about. Yep.

So very cool stuff. Well, thank you for tuning in to the Weights and Plates podcast. You can find me at weights and plates.com or on Instagram at the underscore Robert underscore Santana. If you are in Metro Phoenix, you can come by weights and plates gym just south of Sky Harbor Airport, where we offer one on one personal training and gym memberships. Thank you for tuning in and we'll see you next week.