2854: The Optimal Sets & Reps at Every Intensity ! Soviet Science Explains

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For decades, the Soviet Union produced the most incredible strength athletes ever. They crushed everybody. And today we're going to talk about six training secrets that the Soviet Union scientists discovered. Some of these you may know, some you may not know, but we're going to break them down. If you want to train like the best, D-Ball, listen up. Yes, not in a ball exterior. It was not, D-Ball was American. Was that true? Yeah, D-Ball was the American steroid that the American lifters were using. Oh, so what did they use first? They used their own, I don't know, they used their own anabolics, but the perception, what people thought that the Soviets were doing, or the East Germans were doing, was using most steroids. And when the Soviet Union collapsed, the Berlin Wall fell, the Wall came down, and their scientists started coming over here, their coaches started coming over here, and we started learning about what they were doing. It wasn't the drugs. It was their training techniques that were superior. So for people who aren't familiar, right? So the Soviet Union, this is back when they were, obviously it was a communist country, it was massive. And they devoted so much time, energy, and resources on producing the best athletes. Because the goal was during the Olympics to showcase their superiority. So you had this huge debate at the time, which is now largely, everybody knows which is better. But back then it was like, what's better? Communism or capitalism? And when the Olympics came around, it was like, let's see who wins, right? And you had the Cold War going on, nobody wanted to go to war, because everybody had nukes. So the way that you bragged was, we got the best athletes. And the Soviets took their money, time and energy, they took scientists, and they were the first ones really to view training, diet, sleep, all of it, through a scientific lens. And of course it didn't hurt that they told athletes, you're mine now, you live with us. So we gotta study it. Yeah, they had full commitment. Yeah, so, and they came out, I mean, some of the training modalities and techniques and things that we now kind of understand or take for granted, came from the Soviet Union, which is pretty cool. Them and China both start this at a really young age with their kids too, right? A lot of the stuff that's built in public schools. So I was watching a video the other day, I wish I would have shared it with you guys. It was kids that were, I wanna say they were only maybe first or second grade. And the stability training and coordination stuff that they had the whole classroom doing was like, to think you got a whole classroom of kids able to do that as well. You would never see that in you. No way you would get a whole classroom of kids. Yeah, everybody doing the same movements and seeing kids is like uniform, tight. Now these days, we produce the best athletes, generally speaking, unless you talked about specific sport, but the US tends to win the most gold medals. But at that time, strength training was never, was it viewed, cause you had Olympic lifting, it's the Olympic sport, right? You have other sports that rely on strength, but Olympic lifting is like, this is strength sport. And strength training didn't have a lot of science behind it. Like the understanding around strength training was like, well, this is what I do. This is how I train and I'm the best. So therefore here's what I think. And so nobody really took this scientific approach until the Soviet Union did. And they discovered some pretty interesting things. So I'll go over one of them. One of them was their high volume, moderate intensity lifting. So they performed a majority of their lifts. Oftentimes between 50 to 85% range of one rep max. And they emphasized volume over maximal effort. And athletes back then, our strength athletes, like the way they trained was very linear. It's like, let's go see how strong we are. Let's keep trying to get stronger. The Soviets said, no, let's get you practicing these lifts and keep the intensity. They perfect movement over, yeah, really overloading their athletes. And what it did is it built incredible strength adaptations, work capacity, minimize burnout. Were they measuring back then how much the athlete could tap into their strength? Meaning like we have studies that show like, the Olympic lifter that can utilize, 90 something percent of their strength capacity. The average person's only like 65 or 70%. I think that came later. Did that come later? Yeah, I think that came later. But what they did is they just, they treated it like a study. And they said, let's take these athletes, let's train them this way. Let's train them this way. What are the things we have to consider? Let's start messing with some variables. And when you look at like, when you're doing things from a scientific lens, here's what happens when you don't do that, is you'll have your outliers and your tendencies to look at the outlier and say, oh, that's the way to train. They were treating it like a study. You take a sample size, what works the best? Cool, now it's applied to some of our best athletes and see how that works. And what they found was training at super high intensities often wasn't the best. The best thing to do was to practice lifts at kind of this moderate intensity. And this is why we communicate this on the shows. Show's the importance of recovery. Totally. It's funny that, I mean, this is, you're talking about like the 80s right now, right? Oh no, I mean, they started doing this way early, the 50s, 60s, 70s really started to take off. By the 80s, they started to, when did the Berlin Wallfall, 89? 89, yeah, yeah. So it was early 80s. Yeah, yeah, 70s, 80s. Yeah, late 70s, early 80s, that we understood the science, yet it's so common to see somebody training to failure all the time and pushing the intensity and volume in their workouts. Yes. Why? Why if we saw this for now for 40 years, we've understood the science, yet we still tend to go about it the wrong way? We don't, the best strength coaches know this. Yeah. Find a strength coach. Strength conditioning world knows this. And they know this. The problem is the most jacked looking person gets on a magazine or communicates on social media. And so we listen to that guy or that girl when the science says something totally different. The other problem is that the studies that we have are these short studies, 16 weeks. Soviets were studying these people for years. How do we keep improving over long periods of time? You guys know this as trainers. I could train someone, if they're well rested and well fed, we could do failure training and see some pretty cool results in like six weeks, maybe 12 weeks. Train someone for a year, two years, three years. The person who practices the lifts maximizes technique, trains at like 60 to 80% intensity all the time, most of the time. They're the ones that make the best game. Yeah, this only really resonated with athletes. I think that's probably why our culture didn't really adopt it quite as frequently. Two of these like gym influencer, bodybuilder type have a totally different approach, which I think just totally took over. Yeah, I mean, cause there's obviously studies that support failure training in hypertrophy. Sure. And but we've always communicated that on the show of like, that's in the context of this short window. Yeah. And it's like, at one point that trick doesn't keep working. That's right. what it looks like is like, okay, so you have the group that, you know, is going to just consistently trade the intensity for volume and practice. That's gonna be this like slow gradual climb. You see the, in the short four, six weeks, you know, you're gonna see that failure training spike here. But then it's gonna have a hard fall off and then plateau where they're just gonna keep, they're gonna keep going. So you extend that out. They're gonna train a positive. Yeah, you're gonna extend that out six, eight months a year. And it's not even close. The person that was constantly, you know, tilting into overtraining and training and failure all the time. When I learned about this stuff, I applied it to my own training. This is when I got strength gains I'd never seen before. And it was because I went from training, you know, failure intensity to practice these lifts, practice them often. Don't train at that super high intensity. And also be smart about when you add weight. So that's another thing too. When a scientist is training you or a coach who's a scientist or strength coach is training you, here's what often happens with the athlete. I feel good. Let me push it. And the strength coach says, nope. Nope. This is, you got three more weeks of cruising before we push it up. But I feel great. I want to push it. No, no, no. We got three more weeks of training at this. Well, it's like you can only pull that lever one time. That's right. You know, once you pull that, I'm, you know, going to failure or max intensity, it's like, it's done. Like that's where my whole, you know, the goals to do as little as possible to elicit the most change from is like, I want to do as little as possible so I can save these levers that I can pull as I reach these little plateaus throughout this. If I go all out right out the gates and I pull all the levers at once, it's like, sure, I might see this great, you know, 30 days, you know, but then after that it's like done. And you know, it's by the way, here's your more evidence. So obviously we have a fitness podcast. When people call in, there's a bit of a self-selection bias of people who work out and our fitness fanatics. Okay. Nine out of 10 times. Okay. If you listen to our show, nine out of 10 times our advice is to reduce volume, reduce intensity. Everybody comes back with better results. Why? Because they're doing exactly what you're saying. They've been pushing, pushing, pushing. Overload. And so we bring them back, boom. The body. Intensify. Not to mention too, the other variable that I think we just, we need to collect to pay attention to is that a lot of these studies that we're done are done on these athletes that are like full-time athletes too. You know, and that's all they did was eat, train, sleep and, you know, and play with these levers where it's like the average person goes to work, has a kid crying into a bathroom. It's even more with like competing variables. Kids identify with their husband, their wife the day before. Like there's so many other stress factors that the average person is constantly trying to balance while also stretching their capacity to train and push towards these goals. And you have to factor that in. Yeah. They see, you know, when you do this right, your workouts are not competition. Most people train, train, treat their workouts like it's the competition. And this is what the Soviets understood. They're like, no, we're training for the competition on this date. The training is not going to be like the competition. The next one, I was not familiar with this. Maybe you are, Justin. Have you ever heard of Prolepen's chart? Have you ever heard of this? Prolepen's chart? So this is by coach Alexander Prolepen. He analyzed thousands of elite lifters logs. And I had to go deeper. So I'm like, what is this? So what he did, I'm going to read here because I was not familiar with this. So it's a foundational guideline from Soviet sports science for determining optimal sets reps and total volume based on training intensity. So he, he developed this in 1975. He analyzed all these training logs and he produced the best strength and power gains while presuming technique, bar speed and recovery. This is what it looks like. This is crazy. 55 to 60% of one rep max. You did three to six reps per set. The optimal total reps 24. So in other words, if you did 55 to 65% and you did six reps, once you got to 24 reps, you were done. If you did three reps. So basically four sets of six or eight sets at three. So the total reps is what he looked at. He does the four seed total. That's so low of volume. Another one. And at 55 to 65%. Yeah. Look at this one. 70 to 80% of one rep max, three to six reps, 18, 18 optimal total reps. Doug has a range there between 12 to 24. But I have the exact number. 80 to 90% of one rep max, two to four reps per set, 15 optimal total reps, 90 plus. Like you're really pushing it. One to two reps per set, seven total reps. Only. Seven total reps. Wow. So this is a chart that they used based off of all these training logs and analyzing them to discover like what was the optimal, what was the optimal amount? And what do you think, what do you think the average gym goer is messing with? Like when you look at that. How do they go by, like how much they can do? They're, they're, they're, they, most of them are probably moving in the 70 to 80 minimum. This is so much more skill driven. Let me, I'm going to paint the picture. If you're a lifter and you're working out with a weight that's let's say 60% of your one rep max. Yeah. Okay. So let's say your max is a hundred pounds. So you're working out with 60 pounds just to make the numbers easy. Yeah. And you're doing sets of three to six reps. Yeah. Okay. Once you hit about 24 reps total, you're done. Most people will be like, I didn't even feel like I worked out. Yeah. Yes. I didn't feel like I worked out. Yeah. That barely will feel like a warm up for a lot of people. Yeah. They'll be like, this is easy. I could do way more. Like I should be able to push myself more. Yeah. So this is why it's so wild. Yeah. How it kind of breaks down. That's cool. I've never seen that before. Yeah. Next up, now one thing that the, that the Soviets did was really cool. If you, if you do any kind of plyometric training or you try to improve explosive power, you got to give the credit to the Soviets. They're the ones that really figure this out. And they, they are the ones that figured out what's called the shock method or depth jump jumps. Yep. So a plyometric, what you do- It's all super training that book. Yes. Yeah. It's perfect. Yeah. So what you do with plyometrics is you're trying to maximize the speed at which your muscles can contract with maximal effort. Okay. By the way, power is what makes you dangerous in any sport. Strength is cool. Power kills. Right. If you, you got strength, cool. If you can move quick with strength, you're a killer. It's really this acceleration. Yes. Yeah. On command. And the way plyometrics looks is you're trying to train what you want. So like a simple example of plyometric would be like, I'm going to try and jump as high as I can at one time. Then I'm going to wait as long as I need to until I believe or feel, this is usually minutes. I'm fully recovered. I can tell, I feel like I can, I can either, I can beat what I did last time. That's the idea. I want to be able to beat what I just did last time. Yeah. When fatigue sets in, you're done. You're no longer training for this. So they did the, the depth jump where they figured if someone jumped, if someone dropped off of a high surface, went down and then did the explosive jump, they were going to get higher and got more power, which is now you see some plyometrics all the time. Yeah. He's adding that, that depth jump, which is kind of cool. Oh yeah. That's totally used all the time in strength conditioning. Totally. I came from. So training and it's a trainer was training a kid, young athlete on jump boxes. And it took everything of me not to say something. Oh, you saw him? Yeah. They're just doing it for fatigue. Yes, dude. Just like sloppy back and forth. Like, I just get tired. And then right into that, into some knee tucks and something else. And just like this, you're like not helping this kid at all. When you're doing that, people understand when you're doing it like that, it doesn't matter what you do. No, you are not, you are not helping that kid at all. At all. And then you're like, if you're doing that in your workouts and you're picking different exercises to do to fatigue, like I'm doing ice skaters and I'm jumping over the bench back and forth and I'm jumping on a box. I'm getting super tired. If that's what you're doing, it actually doesn't matter what you do. Cause you're just trying to build endurance. You can just jump in place. Yeah. Or run on a treadmill or jump rope or do, yeah. Yeah. Do jumping jacks. So it's going to get you the same place. That's right. It's certainly not helping their vertical. It's not doing that or their speed. It's like terrible. One thing I want to communicate about plyometrics, cause there's obviously like strength training. There's varying degrees of skill required for how you apply it, right? Plyometrics has often communicated that like, this is just for athletes, but the truth is if you lose your ability to move fast, to move quickly, you lose it. So the average person should practice some form of plyometrics, however basic, because you will lose your ability. You're going to encounter it. Yeah. You'll still encounter it even into, yeah, your sixties, your seventies, your eighties, you know, just to have the ability to stabilize even. Yeah. Or like, yeah, decelerate. But yeah, I mean, for the most part, the intention is everything with plyometrics. So if you, you know, the approach, like what your outcome is, like even for that depth jump, like the real reason for it's not to just try and, you know, jump and explode. It's how quickly can I get back off the ground once I touch? Yes. And so that intention and that focus in there is really what helps to trigger a more instant response, you know, from your muscles to, to then produce force. Everyone's, It's pretty wild how quickly you lose that. That's a skill. I mean, I, I mean, we're all familiar with like, they talk about how a boxer, his speed is first to go and then his powers to lie like he'll keep his power for a really long time. It's, it's another thing when you actually see that happen to yourself, like I've shared the story of the jumping out of the truck and it was like such a weird. I tore my hair because I wanted to go race my daughter in Hawaii. It wasn't even a competition or anything. I just took off. Yeah. Boom. Tore hamstring. And you think cause you're this fit, strong guy. I could deadlift 600 pounds. And you've done that before many times in your life. You just go like, Oh yeah, I haven't lost a skill. And you're like, Oh, I did. Yeah. I did lose it. Cause my knees always exploded. Like holy shit. Your potential is insane. Right. And you know that eccentric, that, that decelerating component is not there. Uh, yeah. You're going to have problems. It's a skill. Uh, all right. So next up is undulating. Periodization. So periodization. Is where you're going through. Deload weeks or times when you're training at lower intensity. They started that. They're the ones that started that. It always looked like in the past. Like if you looked at our strength athletes in the sixties and seventies, it was linear. It was like, keep going and keep pushing. Oh, oh, you need a break. Cause you're burnt out. I take a couple of days off, come back. They had structured periodization. I don't care how good you feel for the next three weeks. We're, you know, planned out. Like, it's like, this is the schedule. This is what we're doing. Doesn't matter to me. I don't care if you think you can go hard. That's fine, but we're going to do it this way. And the results were just, and I think this is so important for people to understand. If you wait until you feel like you need a break, it's too late. Yeah, you're already past. It's too late. You want to take the break way before you get to the point where you feel like you're starting to. I mean, this is a great, it's a great point to talk about how some of the science that goes into maps, like we often get asked about, uh, why are the phases three weeks or four weeks? Like when a lot of the research shows that you up to like six or eight weeks that people will see results. You can squeeze more potential. Right. And so the idea is that we are forcing you to change that. Before you hit that plateau. Yeah, before you hit that plateau. It's like, we're aware you could squeeze out maybe another week or two. One, here's one way you could feel this out if you don't want to get all technical because I get it. Like people just want to work out. If you hit a PR and a lift, the following week should be a deal. It's so hard to do that. Which is so hard to do. Psychologically, but super hard. Yeah. When you're, you're so high on that, like PR, the last thing, the last thing I want to do is to take a deal. That's the last thing I want to do. I mean, I'd rather, I'd rather punch myself. You have to admit that every time that happens, there is a party that's just like, I kind of want to see what next week. Yeah. You're like, oh, I definitely had. Ten more pounds. Especially if the weight moved up and I'm like, I could have done a little more. Yes. Yeah. It wasn't a grind to get it out. It was like, oh, wow, that came up nice. I'm going to be a hundred percent honest. 99.9% of the time if I hit a PR, I'm trying another PR the following week. Yeah. 99.9% of the time. Knowing that that's not what you do. Yes. Yes, dude, because you go into the gym, you feel good. You just hit a PR. Let's just want to see what I can do. Literally you hit a PR the next week, go de-load. Yeah. It's one of the best things you could do. I think that 352 was a lot. The first time I actually did a de-load. I got one under the belt. Yeah, dude. I've had part of that one. You know what, that was probably, wouldn't you say too though, one of the best systematic approaches to a PR you'd ever done? Yep, absolutely. So I mean, like you were ready for it. Planned. Yeah. That was more planned. I think before that it was the training that led up to, oh, the feeling of like, well, I'm going to really get after it because I feel like I can, you know, my strength is there. Yeah. Yeah. To defend you and us in that, because that's kind of how that normally happens, right? The way it happens now until what you're talking about is, you know, I'm in my lifting, man, I'm feeling good lately. It's just like, I'm going to run some singles or triple. Let's see. Oh, whoa. Yeah. That feels so good. And then you're like, hmm, maybe next week I'll do it. That's me. Next up, submaximal reps. So they, you know, they were the ones that were doing like well short of failure, 70%, 70%. And they'd focus on bar speed and technique, bar speed and technique, bar speed and technique. This is really hard. 70% feels easy. So if you're, if you're listening right now and you do 70% of what you can do, you're going to leave your workout feeling like you waste your time. This is how they would train most of the time. And what it allowed for was more volume, no burnout, more frequency. It allowed for more work to be able to be done. And they broke records, you know, training this way. So it's pretty cool. And then lastly, uh, you have the, uh, complex contrast contrast methods. This is where they would pair heavy strength movements with explosive movements. I think we know this now is called, um, post activation, potentiation. Yeah, which also is a pre activation. There's a pit, but yeah, but yeah, let's, I know. I actually was teaching some kid this the other day. Yeah. He was trying to, to test out. Yeah. This is pretty cool. So like you do, you do like a heavy single and then you go jump right afterwards, you'll get higher. Mm-hmm. Because to me, the, the, the coolest ever is to do like a really heavy dead left and go do a pull up or something. You feel it. Oh yeah. It's why up the bar. Yeah. It's a weird, like it's a, it's a weird feeling the first time you ever, you ever do it. Like you can see that for a vertical jump, uh, tassel, I did like a heavy squat and then went over and like just crushed it. Oh, that's awesome. Awesome. Speaking of feeling good. So I was looking up, so we work with ketone IQ and you guys know I'm consistent. Like I'll use them two or three times in a day. I just love the focus that I get with them. Yeah. And so I went online and I'm like, do they do exogenous ketones affect neuro transmitters? And the reason why I looked this up was because I'm, you know, I'm, I'm ADD. I could be labeled ADD. I have been labeled ADD by a doctor, but, uh, it does, it raises dopamine, uh, in the brain. Oh, so it increases dopamine in the brain. So for people who have trouble focusing, uh, maintaining focus or feeling scatter brain, it's, uh, it's not caffeine. It's not a stimulant. You can take it before bed and go right back to go right to sleep. But the ketones, uh, the exogenous ketones do put you in ketosis. You get more dopamine and you get that focus. Now, is that consistently or does the body eventually adapt to that? It, it doesn't. Well, it's consistent. Wow. It's not a stimulant response. I know, right? I know. I know. I understand that it's not like just the way that the brain operates. It doesn't affect your CNS. Right. So I know it's not like that, but typically when you have something that has a, like an effect like that on the body where it kicks something like dopamine up, the body then starts to adapt to that and it no longer responds the same way. But in this case, it will continue. Wow. That's right. The dopamine that's part of that focus feeling. Yes. Yeah. No wonder, no wonder, no wonder why you like it multiple times in a day and you feel an effect multiple times. Yeah. And it's interesting because it's not, I know what it feels like to raise my dopamine with stimulants. Uh, it's very different. This feels different. No, it's not like I take it and I'm like, Oh, I'm awake cause I just had, it just feels like clean fuel. No, it's just like, I don't know. I just focus better. And there's no crash. No, there's no crash. Yeah. It's the dopamine. So, and it's cool cause I get this feeling from being a ketogenic diet. Obviously with ketone IQ, you don't have to be in a ketogenic diet. You just, you can eat carbs. You just take it, boom, you know, within 15, 30 minutes you're in ketosis and you get that, that effect, which is kind of cool. Seems like the stuff that tastes the worst works the best. Oh, it tastes good. It's not bad. They've got better. There is huge difference. You know, key difference on the original formula they have is the second. Have you ever had any other key just like jet fuel before that? Yes. No, I'm not going around tasting. So I've tried a lot of different ketones. The ketone taster. Yeah. No, I like your breath. Keto bars. Is there keto bars? Listen, I've tried a lot of different ketone supplements for years. They all taste like you're drinking gasoline. Yeah. Like it's not even a little like bad, like really bad. Yeah. Their ketone IQ is like, I mean, I felt like the first engineered. I felt like the first formula was kind of like that. That's kind of what kept me from doing. I'm like, you know me, I'm like, oh, their first. This is gonna make you feel really good. You didn't want to keep that. Yeah. They kind of perforated. Their first formula was better than everybody else. But now it's like it's not bad at all. Yeah. But their first formula was still better. There is something to say though about like a like a supplement that really works. I didn't like it not tasting very good. That makes you feel like, okay. It's working. Well, yeah, because it's like, because everybody knows the hack is to make something taste really good. And so then like, just like, what happened with all the, uh, the creating gummies? Like 90% of those out there are just worthless. Oh yeah. Yeah. It's just gummy gummy bears that you're like toddlers. Yeah. Everybody's just eating a bunch of gummy bears. Yeah. But no, but dude, the study, they take these creating gummies and they analyze them like 90% of them have nothing. Nothing. Yeah. Everybody's out there. Everybody's out there. How embarrassing. How embarrassing. Gummy bears. Still dextrous. And that's it. Dude, how embarrassing your fitness person. Yeah. You're eating gummy bears. Did you think you'd take a cretin? Yeah. It's just. Well, you remember when what's, hey, speaking of that, we haven't talked about that guy in forever. Where's he at? Who? Well, who's that? Well, Dr. integrity. Oh, no. Oh, he's still around. Is he? Yeah, he's still around. He's still around. What's he look like? He still looks the same. He's still in the bodybuilding forums. I haven't seen him in a long time. Never mind. He was the first one to really promote the gummy bears post workout. Right. Yes. Yeah. He's still, he's still a lover of the place. People love. Is he still, is he still sell supplements and stuff? Is he still with? Oh yeah. He probably has his own. Oh, there he is. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Super cool. Old pictures. Old school listeners will know exactly who we're talking about. Yeah. Yeah. I'm talking about Dr. integrity. Is that, is that, is that new stuff of him right there? Is that like, can you tell if this, he looks thicker on that left, that left picture when he's in his lab coat. I love my family. He's got a supplement coming. I love doctors that love, and there are the photos that wear the lab coats for stuff like this. I know, I know. Just put it. That's a step. Yeah, yeah. You know I'm a doctor, right? Yeah. Yeah. Come here. Yeah. Oh yeah. You got your stethoscope on. Anyway, talking to my stethoscope. I read a cool study that I sent my daughter. You guys want to hear it? Hmm. Yeah. Immediately sent it to my daughter. I was like, why her? I was like, you're welcome. So here's what the study shows. The father's handsomeness. Hey, I should have tagged her mother. I should have sent it to mother and mother. The father's handsomeness influences the daughter's beauty more than the mother's handsomeness or beauty does. Is the reverse? Furthermore, our daughters of attractive fathers tend to have more feminine facial features. Weird. They say that again. So a girl's take on the masculine. No. From the father, huh? If a father's good looking, his or let's say mother and father are both whatever, good looking or whatever. One's not good. The father, his looks influences his daughter's looks more than the mother and she looks more feminine. So it's not like she gets a masculine face. She has a more feminine and rated as more beautiful based on the attractiveness of her father. Now does the reverse work for boys with moms? No idea. I didn't read that far. So if I had a daughter, she was more attractive. How did you? I can't imagine any of your features being feminine. That's hard for me. Not saying you're not good looking. You're a good looking guy, but I don't know how that would make anything look feminine. Yeah, I don't know what that would look like. I thought we were weird. Remember that app? I would hope it just take my wife. I feel like Sal and I have more feminine looking traits for sure. But don't include me. You're more feminine than I am. Cheeks really. I'll take the high cheek bones. I don't have high. I'm fat. I mean, I got a fat face. You have no high cheek bones. It's a little prettiness to it. There's a little bit of that. Yeah, a little bit. Remember that app that you, you take a picture yourself and then it would take your face. Yes. And it would make it into a girl or if you could take me in a new guy. Remember that app? I never tried that. I should have done that. And then everybody's like, oh, that's Russia capturing our facial. That was like that in the old one where they turned into like this old. Dude, that would. So let me tell you why that app creeped me out so bad, bro. I might, we did my family was like circulating my family. I remember when it was like four years ago, five years ago. Look, just like your sister. I remember that. So weird. I remember that. I remember the picture. How awkward. Bro, it was spot on spot on to your sister. It was my sister. It's, and I don't think I looked that much like her. He looked just like her. And then she did hers and she looked just like me. I mean, it just shows you how good that software was. Yeah. I mean, that's, you know, that was like so popular. Then went away. What happened to that? I think that it was capturing people's like, it was people's data. Yeah. Like facial recognition and stuff like that. I mean, people were still, even when that came out, people knew that they were still stealing identity is the only place. I think it was the same one as the old man one. Wasn't it that one? Cause we all did that. I mean, that probably same company I would imagine. I did that one. I was, I just looked the same. Make him old. There it is. Looks like a picture from last year. Looks like a picture from last year. You're right backwards. What the hell? What's going on? Hey, speaking of like facial recognition, you guys hear about the latest conspiracy theory. Oh, let's hear it. That grocery stores are putting little mini cameras under their products. So, so you'll see paper price tags under things, but they're replacing with these new tags and in them is a little tiny camera. And what it's doing is it's capturing your picture and using facial recognition technology to start identifying you and then communicate. We buy this. They communicate with Amazon and other companies selling you out to a company. Have you guys been, you guys see what Amazon has been doing on it's all, it's streaming. No. Oh, so now, um, so on Amazon, like a, a watch a lot of sports on Amazon, right? Yeah. So when the commercials come up now, okay. So say it's like a, a dove commercial or something like for soap or something like that, and then I can, uh, I can add it right to my shopping cart from there. Yeah. I can go, Oh, Amazon, Amazon add, add to cart and it'll just add to your shop. So what? Take advantage of impulsive. Yes. While you're watching, watching the, watching the commercial live, why it's happening, you literally just right then and there, add it to your, your shopping cart. Wow. As soon as you just think of a product and then it shows up. Well, or even next, this type of stuff is soon, very soon, or this is coming. If it isn't already happening is the commercials will start to change. It'll, for me to you, like, so we'll both be watching basketball playoffs on Amazon, but I'll get ads that have caught my grocery store stuff. When you can compile, when, when AI can compile all the data from all your social media searches, hovers, clicks, comments, plus data that's, that's with wearables that's measuring your, where are we with augmented reality? Well, I'm just going to say, like the ads are going to be weird, bro. It is so like, you know, like that's exactly what I wanted. Just thinking about that. Yeah. But I mean VR too, it was like, people are pulling, uh, back from producing more VR content and stuff and it's because it makes people nauseous, dude. I think I don't think it's, it's just not hitting. It's, it's funny because I don't know. I guess you see like movies where they tried to make them 3D forever, you know, and then it just never, and they kept trying and it just never happened. I've never seen 80s movies that were 3D. Like they're so dumb. They will include scenes to try to make it more 3D. Like, hey, have this cookie and they're like, put it in the street. Yeah. They meet them to try to do all that stuff. Yeah. Yeah. No VR completely fell out like that. Then the surprise metaverse and all of a sudden I tried it was like, oh, it's cool. But yeah, my algorithm, I bought my wife, uh, which she's like, don't do this anymore. So I'm like, whatever I bought, I want to try to, I love buying gifts. This is like one of my love. It's maybe not hers, but it's my love language. So whatever I like to buy things, right? Yeah. And so I bought her this dress and I don't think she liked it. So I bought her a dress and, uh, and I want to be able to do that. Like I want to be able to buy things that, you know, and she's like, don't do that. She's like, I got to pick it out. I got to try it on the whole thing. But now my algorithm is a bunch of women's clothing. You have to go in there. Like every ad, every ad is just some new, something else. So I got to go in there and like, I do the whole thing where I click on it. Don't want to see this ad. It's taking me like 10 times for the stupid algorithms to pick up. Yeah. I've had a problem. So I do that a lot, right? So, uh, for Katrina and there's so many companies now online and a lot of them are like, uh, scam sites. I've had to go back and get like refunds. I got, in fact, I got something. Now, what do you mean? I bought, oh yeah. Like, so there's a lot. You buy something. You don't get it. So a lot of these sites are just like fronts. They did like the out. So, like algorithms figured me out the type of outfits that I'm buying for Katrina. And so now I'm getting like bombarded with all these. And a lot of them are like, great. I'm like, oh man, this is, that's a great fit. I'm going to get that. But it's like all these off brands have never heard of, but it's like, I know, and a lot of, and I've learned now to go and read all the reviews. Then I go online and I actually search about the company. And so, but I had to learn the hard way of like, I'd buy some. I just had something recently that I bought. I bought it for her back in January. I still haven't received it. Yeah. And I'm like, I emailed them and stuff. I got one of the two items, but not the other one. I'm like, I bought this back in January. Oh yeah. That's how I'm back. I'm like, I want my money back at this point. It's like six months. And you have to remember that you bought it. Oh, totally. And that's another thing too. It was like, there's been times where I'm like, because I don't even remember. Yeah. Well, I know. Yeah. I try to trace it back and get that like item number and all that kind of stuff. I bought Courtney. I was so excited about it too, because it was like so random. I saw she's like, she has like chimp tendencies, you know, or she just like wants to poke on my, oh, my pimples. Yeah. That's girls, dude. Yeah. So I was like, this is a good distraction. It was like some head of this guy that you put like goo in, in black heads. And you actually like can physically pop these just about this. And I'm like, this will be great. You know, distract her from trying to do this to me and the kids. Yeah. And yeah, it never came. It was, it was like a total front. Yeah. Like, yeah. If I, if I squeeze a pimple and Jessica knows that I did it without telling her, she actually gets angry. Yeah. Courtney does too. No, no, she actually gets angry. She's like, there's a little bit of inside of her like, and I think she realized like, this is something to fight. It's rare. But there's like a 15 seconds where I'm looking at, and I know like she's actually irritated that I didn't let her squeeze this. Yeah. I mean, it's weird. Does Katrina do that for you? No, she doesn't. She actually thinks it's disgusting, which is, I know that's a very common thing with women. Yeah. Remember, right? She's kind of like a dude. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. She watches sports. Like she's not like, she's not like the. She played video games with you? I don't play video games, but if I did, maybe she would. She, I don't know. I don't think so. When we first dated, I was still playing video games. So when we first met was 17 years ago. You guys played video games back then? Not together. I did. I still played on her own. No, no, no. So when we, so, you know, her, my best friend, Justin, is, uh, her and her, his wife is really close. Her and Katrina are really close. When we first started dating, we had my condo and Justin lived with me and he was a, he was a physical therapist assistant, right? Hit. Uh, and the girls would come over on like, this is how lame we are Friday nights. And the two of us would play video games. Why are our girlfriends went out and danced and went to clubs and shit like that. It's just, just, just here like, yeah, go hit the. We're going to stay, we're going to stay. The level of security is amazing. I know I'm not like a normal person like that. We're guys like, we have no idea. Oh yeah. You guys go to the club and go hang out and get drunk and we'll do something totally unattractive. Pass me the fun. Wow. Yeah. I mean, if you asked me, I'm sure that was probably one of the things that she, the fact that I would, I don't, I didn't care about that stuff when I was secure and so yeah, but yeah, we want to do and stuff like that when we first, when we first met, but I only lasted a little while. And then after that, it was like, I don't think I ever looked back. They don't want to play anymore. Uh, study came out on, uh, another study on what women consider to be the most attractive and men physically. Um, and they actually came out with some data. I'm going to pull it up here. Their bank account. That's nice. No, no, no, they have a body fat percentage and a, in a, a shoulder to hip rate, uh, shoulder to hip ratio that they found to be most attractive. So body fat percentage, 13 to 14%. Okay. Which is fit. Hey, by the way, everybody listening, it's achievable. That's achievable. Are you kidding me? That's not even abs. Yeah. No, that's no abs. You don't get a flat stomach. You don't have a beer belly. You look like you lift weights, but you don't look like you. You live in a gym. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. 13 to 14%. And then the shoulder to waist ratio is about 1.5. So shoulders to waist. So whatever the waist is 1.5 of that to the shoulders. I don't know what that, what that would look like on a man with that, but that's a pretty good V taper. Yeah. That's a pretty good V taper. Uh, so I don't know. Maybe Doug, you could type in some numbers and see what's up. Yeah, I'd be talking. Tigerty has it. Yep. I want to stop. Uh, I wonder if there's like an app for you to, uh, well, you can measure your waist, I guess, then measure your shoulders and see if you, if you match this, you know, type of deal. Yo, I think I'm, I think my, you know what your suit, so I'm 46. I don't know. My suit says I have no idea. I think I'm a 46 on shoulders. Yeah. I have no, I have no idea. My waist is 30. So whatever SpongeBob is, I think that's those measurements apply to me. He's a refrigerator. You, you make a water. Hey, you make up, you make up, you make up, you make up. So where, where are you losing taper? You make up in square. It's stable. It's very stable. That's what 1.6 to one. Yeah. Well, that guy's as lean. He's really, really lean. Yeah. You know, so you have to be less than that. I always have the best V taper and I got a picture of a body. But is he like in that pose? Yeah. I'm just like, that's how Adam is. It's how I pose. Remember Adam's posing when he was on stage? I think that was a, I was like, I like the way he used to like, flare up your hand. Yeah. What was that all about? Stop it. I didn't do that. Yeah, you did. I didn't flare my hand like that. You did something with your hand. Just to like, you did this thing with your hands. Yeah. Yeah. Shake out. It's like you're getting all the feathers out or something. You're doing good? Dude, oh my God. That's so awesome. It's great. It's great because I saw how uncomfortable you were with the posing part. The worst part about it is how much I really hated that part. Yeah. How to do all of it. So of course I'm going to get roasted by all my partners. Yeah. So, yeah. Doug, you're great. We have to. You're so genuine. And you know what's funny when I talked about that world for a minute was the guys that actually thought that was cool. Yeah, that's where there's a massive disconnect. Yeah, we are not. This is, we are not alike here. I know I'm doing it with you. I know I'm getting out. You guys, we're not cool. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, this is not cool at all. No. My niece is working with the abs. My niece is working at the gym right now. You know, Doug, you can find an example. If you just look up Mind Pump Adam, it'll pull up. Oh, don't do it, dude. Don't do it. You'll pull up a nice V-tavor for you. No, I gotta tell you. Check it out. My niece is working at a gym and so she's never been in that gym culture. By the way, it's a great place. Gym culture has got its own problems, right? Working in gyms has got its own issues, but I think it's a great atmosphere. I really do. I think it's generally speaking, people are coming in to bed of themselves. Staff is high energy. People work out together. If you've got a good manager, good culture in a gym, it's like a great atmosphere. I'm so happy that she's working there. But she told me, she's like, there were some guys in the aerobics room and they took their shirts off. And she's like, and they were like, she hasn't seen that before. And she was like, they were posing in front of me. I'm like, you mean they were flexing? She goes, no, they were posing. It's a straight show. Me. I was like, oh, is it physique? Is it physique? Vids physique. Yeah, dude. Totally. That's what I mean. Like I wrote, like the gym I went to right back then was very popular for like men's physique and bodybuilders. And like that was like a thing. Like after your workout, go post. Yeah. And like I just was not like, no, I don't want to do this here. Like I'll do it in my house. I'll do it in my house. I don't even want to do that. If I'll do it in my house, I do not want to do this here. But there's like a lot of sense. You know, it is the guys get all aired up. You know, say I want to look at them. So they're all aired up. But hey, it's for my sport. I got to do this. They think there's all these girls watching and really just dudes like. Yeah. It's 100%. There's no chicks. No chicks were ever. Other dudes. It's always other dudes. And in a little bit. Which I think I think that's the thing that every guy thinks is going to happen. Right. What is going to happen when you get looking like that? But it doesn't. It's not chicks that are there. It's other dudes that are way more respect, lifting heavy. That's just the period. It's still probably from guys. Oh, yeah. I don't think girls care about that either. I don't have you ever had a girl walk over and be like, oh, that's nice. Squat. No, no serious weight. No, they're intimidated. I mean, they'll make fun of you if it's small weights. So, so. I feel like that's something you would or I would do. Right. If you if I saw when I see a girl squat in like two plates plus, like, I'll come. I'll compliment. I'll be like, oh, my God, it's a great squad or when you're strong. Like, I'll say something, but girls don't do that the other way. There's this. There's this. You guys, you guys know, I go to several gyms and one of the ones I go to is more like a country club. And so the crowd is a little older. And when I go in the morning, there's definitely a group of people who are in there like 60s, 70s, maybe even 80s, because that's the time they like to work out. Yeah. And there's this little, there's this little Asian woman and she's got to be 80. And I see every time and I see her in there. She's working out. She's on the machines. She always makes eye contact with me. She gives me a smile. If I grunt a little too hard, she gives me a thumbs up. I don't think she speaks any English whatsoever, but I so bad want to give her a hug. But I'm for sure going to be creepy if I do. But she's so I love her. She's like four things. You guys are in the same age category. You're doing a good job for. How did you do that? I see you guys. She's like four 10. She's probably four 10. She's like this little tiny thing. Oh, I love watching that. So great. That's so funny. Study came out on the happiest men. What group of men are the happiest and it's married men with kids? Yeah, of course. Married men with kids are the happiest. The least happy single man. No kids. Peter Pan did. Dude. And you know what's why I'm saying this? I wonder if income plays a role. And what? We in that the guy like you the guys that are single. Obviously we know the difference between. Yeah. But a guy that is single and is struggling to get by versus a guy who's single and is is. Well, now also like, you know, the window of time in terms of it being like, are they older or the younger like, I don't know, I would assume I'd have a different perspective as a younger guy. Yeah. Yeah. I'm sure they're not interviewing, you know, 18 year olds. Yeah. That kind of stuff. So these are like within what you would consider married kind of father age. So probably late twenties and between whatever. But the difference is pretty, pretty big. It's like, it's what's interesting about that Sal is that the single guy. Oh, 22 to 35. Oh, between 2235. It's pretty young. So percentage of dads age 22 to 35 who are very happy. Okay. Married dads 37% unmarried childless 14%. That's a big difference. More than double. Yeah. Or consider happy. And this is important because the media would have you believe other one. Well, yeah, what's interesting about that is that that would include the early 30 guy who is making good money, who like, he's also admitting that he's not as happy. Yeah. Like a lot of the, would you think that a lot of people like that would admit that? Yeah. You think so? They're on that they're unhappy. Yeah. They're unhappy. I don't think they would. I feel like I feel like most of them would put on the front that like, I'm killing it. Yeah. I'm flying all over the world, hanging, hooking up chips all the time. Like, you know that that's true. Yeah. But see, Adam, you just said right now is what the media portrays. How many 34 year old dudes with no kids are traveling the world hooking up a whole country? That's fair. That's a fair, that's a fair point. That's a fair point. That's how you're talking about the 0.5%. You're right. You're right. Yeah. So that makes more sense. Most of them are lonely. You know what? A lot of those guys are the thought that that's what it was going to look like. You know, they're like, man, I thought I'd be flying all over hooking up with hot chicks and I'm just sitting in my apartment playing video games. Yeah. I mean, at the high school level when I was coaching, it was such a culture shock for me, like to see what these kids are like into and like, and, you know, like what your most popular kid, what they did on the weekends and all that. And they were like starting Dungeons & Dragons. Yeah. They had like all these like little sub clubs that they're a part of and all the stuff. And I was like, that's so interesting. The popular kid was. The popular kid, the quarterback, the handsome kid that's like, you know, should be out there. D&G. Yeah. Wow. Yeah. D&D. Whatever it is. D&G. What's D&G? D&G. Dungeons & Dragons. Yeah. So it's funny to say that. Survey of 2000 Americans of Gen Zers found that 39% of Gen Zers are choose social media over sex, at least sometimes 21% do so often. One in eight Gen Zers believe scrolling is more pleasurable than sex. Whoa. 23% see no difference between the two. That's sad. What? Huh? Is going on. It's a bad sex. That's what you say. Well, I mean, you're a bad sex. You're not doing it right. Yeah. You're not doing it right. It's right. It's right. I mean, this is just. So what does that mean? Okay. Yeah. Let's break it down. Yeah. Cause does that, that means. Cause that sounds crazy. It does sound crazy. So you're saying that there's, uh, how do they get that where, uh, I have this option to have sex with my girlfriend. But I just said, you know, honey, I'd rather scroll on Instagram. Right now. I don't want to, I don't want to do that. Is that what you're, I mean, yeah. What? Yeah. That's what the, that's what they're showing. It's young boys, young men, 2000, 2000, uh, both, both men and women. So here's what I think is happening. Um, by the way, according to this, another survey, 44% spend six or more hours a day on the phone, 92% sacrifice, sleep to scroll, 20% ignore basic bodily needs to get more screen time. You do notice, you do notice how that has continued every time you read one of those go up. Yeah. I still think it's underreported. Right. So what I think is what you have is a generation, uh, a significant percentage of a generation, the largest percentage of any generation where they've just been on this since they were kids. And so their brains are wired this way, which is different than the mechanism, like comfort thing. I could get stuck on my phone for sure. Cause it's addictive, but I wasn't raised with it. So my brain didn't, didn't model itself. Well, right. Well, yeah, it's not normal for you. So even you, you can get caught doing it, but you recognize right away how not normal it is versus someone who's been, who's been raised with it. And their brain is wired that way. That is their media. That's, that's the medium. That's their normal. So that's like, uh, it doesn't feel weird. Yeah. Which is crazy because, uh, we're talking about sex, but I think if they asked another study, what the really doing is sex, okay, take sex aside, what's probably worse or what this is downstream of is these kids are happier doing that than just having relationships and even interacting with real people. That's the real one. That's bad is that that's that they prefer to do that over being with regular people. Well, I mean, I think that's an obvious because I think this, what the study highlights is like they're willing to pass up even sex, which everybody knows it's so pleasurable. It's like, if you're passing up something that is that pleasurable, you're of course passing up something as mundane as just a conversation or connection. That's why I think when they, when we look at the data, I really feel strongly about this. When you look at the data at people that use the most social media and it's correlation to depression, anxiety, what are we looking at right now? I think it's less, well, I think it's less to do with the social media and more to do that they're not getting real relationship. What are you showing us? That yeah, I just wanted to see the age range for Gen Z. What is it? It's a 13 through 28 currently. So hopefully it's not 13 year old saying that. Yeah. Well, I'm sure they're probably eight. They're looking at 18 up, but we're glad they're passing them up. Yeah. So, um, yeah. So I think, I think that's what the data is showing. When you look at social media and it's relationship to depression. You're officially a boomer, huh? No, no, no, no. You're not a boomer. 1965. Oh, you just don't drop me in that group. I feel like I'm going to boomer you. You're, are you a millennial? Uh, yeah, technically I'm 81. He's so I'm right on the way. Yeah, right at the cut off this year. Wait a minute, bro. You're a millennial. Yeah. No, yeah. Wonder. Yeah. I don't know. Wonder. There's not a millennial ounce of me. Huh? Not the tiny, I mean, if there's any difference, he just tried to call me a boomer. So yeah, I think it's fair game. Millennial. You know, eight people get pissed off on the project. I get DMs all the time with people like, you know, you're a millennial, right? When we talk, when we just talk about millennial and stuff all the time, people always. Wait, what's above baby boomer? What is that called? Silent generation. The silent generation. Is it like because of talkie films? Because they're dead. That's why. Oh, that's harsh. That's cold, bro. My mom's part of that generation, by the way. I actually never knew that's what that was called. Yeah. Did you know that? No, I had no idea. Have you ever heard of that? I never heard of silent generation. What's the deal with silent generation? What are their characteristics? They didn't say much, I guess. I mean, that's probably World War one. That's why it seems logical. Like deduced just down. Your powers of the talk. That's why I get paid the big dollars. So I saw our kids are Jen Alpha Alpha. Yeah, Jen Alpha is your is our little ones. Okay. Anyway, so our crisp power is so popular. Our new trainers we're talking about. Did you hear that? Oh, yeah. Jesus. Yes. There we go. We should. Huh? That's what you get for coming through and getting trained. We like the cheddar, which is, I don't like competitions. The cheese one is the very little. Of all the things that we get sent to us, of all of our partners, that one is gone the fastest. Yeah. Gone. Yeah. Everybody just eating those. It used to be the beef jerky. It's been coming out of the crisp power. It is. Yeah, it used to be the beef jerky, but now everybody's on. Now you said this before, I want to ask this again. Because who eats it consistently? Doug, you'll have it. Yeah. Justin, you do for sure. Yeah. It's a snack processed, but it's high protein. Does it still hit satiety better than it does? Okay. I have brought this up before where. Because it's what, 27 grams protein? I think it's over a bag. 25 to 28. 25. I've, I've, I, maybe, maybe three times. I've ate two bags. Um, just to see, I was kind of curious to like, but one bag is satisfying. Okay. And I would not be the case. Oh God, if you gave me, if you gave me a bag of pretzels that size, I would want an extra large bag. Yeah. And, and the fact that I know that it's high in protein and it's a healthier choice for me, there's, there's a, the barrier to go to the, another one isn't very high. Like, right. Cause you're like, cool. Another 25 protein. Yeah. I would totally do that, but it totally satiates. I'm like, I don't, after one, I'm good. It's like a perfect, perfect driving snack. That's cool. They should be in every gas station. Yeah. There's always a lot of options, you know, they have to be, right? They definitely should. No, I mean, that's such a, it would be so smart. I don't know if they've even tried to do. I mean, they're in Costco now. They're in Costco. Yeah. I think I don't know if they made target yet. I know they're in Costco. Um, and they, and they're, there's, they're in another big, big, big, formula, dude. If you can create a really tasty high protein, like not for a high protein snack. Cause when I say tasty high protein, people put in the context of things that are high protein, it just tastes good. Oh, and by the way, it's high protein. You're going to crush. You're going to crush right now. And they were able to figure that out. Yeah. So our place makes cookware that lasts a long time, but more importantly, no forever chemicals. Look, if you like non-stick cookware, because it's easy to clean after cooking certain things, the problem is the forever chemicals. These are chemicals that stay in your body and they actually have hormone like effects. They've been tied to things like diseases and cancers. This is what the studies show. So it really sucks, but how do I get something that's non-stick that lasts a long time without the chemicals? Well, here's what you do. Go to from our place.com and then use this code, mind pump. You'll get 10% off site wide back to the show. Our first color is Josh from Vermont. What's up, Josh? How you doing, Josh? How's it going? Thanks for having me on. You got it, dude. How can we help you? Oh, well, so I'm just kind of, I started doing CrossFit back four years ago. And it's honestly, it's changed my life very dramatically. I've lost about a hundred pounds and I gained a lot of good skills, but the part of it that I really have enjoyed is doing the powerlifting portions that we do. And I'm kind of trying to transition out of going, you know, I go five, six days a week sometimes and I'm trying to switch my focus to doing more, do CrossFit because I enjoy the community. I enjoy the people like I enjoy 70% of the workouts, but I really like the powerlifting portion of it. And I'm trying to figure out what kind of like, what kind of routine I should kind of get into to continue building my lifts up, which are, they're decent. I know they can get better, but I just thought maybe I'd ask you guys what you might suggest. Yeah, that's powerlifting. Here's a good question and there's more in your email. So in your email, it says you're trying to transition from CrossFit about five days a week or six days a week to a weight training routine while doing CrossFit a few days a week. Right. Yes. Okay. Yes. Yes. Okay. So, so, okay, ready? Check this out. The appropriate amount of CrossFit per week. If you love CrossFit is a few days a week. Okay. And then nothing else. Okay. So if you do CrossFit three days a week, that's it. You actually get better results with CrossFit, by the way. Yeah. You'll get better results with CrossFit doing a three days a week, but you can't add any more. Okay. If you want to do CrossFit and powerlift, you might get away with one day a week at CrossFit and maybe it may be two days a week of traditional powerlifting. Okay. Yeah. All right. That makes sense. I mean, I have a, it's a big mental thing for me. Like I kind of have to be there. Yeah. Sometimes it feels like it's kind of saved me from alcohol, alcoholism. I'm like, I have five years sober and six years sober on Christmas. And that's kind of when I started thinking like I was up to 300 pounds at that point. And I just jumped into it because I was wasting money at gyms everywhere else trying to figure my own shit. I just walk around in circles for an hour and then I believe basically. And all right. Well, okay. That makes sense. I got to, I guess I'd have to figure out how I could incorporate other things that kind of satisfy the mental need for the throw, throw on the podcast and go for an hour hike or walk on the other days. I do a lot of like disc golfing too. So that's pretty good. Or that. Yeah. I love that. Like fine. Fine. You don't have to like, so a lot of people think when we talk about this, they go like, man, I like the five days a week of working out, like still keep that routine of five days. You have this hour block that you go do something active and fit like fit. It's just going to be lower intensity. That's right. It's going to be lower intensity. So let it be disc golf, let it be a hike, let it be, you know, something like that. Okay. Uh, on those other days and start to schedule it. So like, like literally if you like disc golf, like start playing two days a week. Yeah. Try to do like three or four. Yeah. Yeah. Like make, make that a part of your lifestyle. Well, let me ask a few more questions, Josh, because I don't want to discount, uh, a few things that you said. You said it helped you with your sobriety. You mentioned the community. How close are you with the community there at CrossFit with the people that go there? Oh, very close. I'm like, uh, I'm not trying to talk to my own horn. I'm like a staple of that at our group. Like I'm very voice stress and I'm very personable. So, so here, so look, I don't want to downplay that bro. Yeah. So that's very valuable. I think that's the most valuable thing here. I think it's more valuable than you lifting more with your powerlifting. Yeah. Now the challenge is, uh, can we keep you from overtraining or beating yourself up or causing injury? Cause that's a lot of intensity. Yeah. But I think what you're saying with the value that you're getting from community and what it's done for you, I don't want to discount that. That's the most important thing. In fact, of all the things you said, that's the way more valuable than getting your deadlift and your squat higher. It's way more valuable than hiking and listening to mind pump in your ears. It's way more valuable than that. It's the most valuable thing of all the things we talked about. So what I would actually recommend to someone like you is keep doing what you're doing and lower the intensity when appropriate. Yeah. Just crank it down. So when you go in there, I'd say two or three days a week, go hard like you normally do the other two, the other two days a week, go easy. Yeah. And you'll feel better. You'll feel better and you'll still be in the community. Yeah. I feel like sometimes I, um, I, I go into it thinking that today was a perfect example. We had a shoulder overhead day and we had another shoulder overhead during the workout and you're supposed to build up heavy. And I was going to build up heavy during the strength training, but during the workout, I'm going to go, you know, 115 instead of 155. And I got into the workout and I, after doing 195, the first, I was like, oh, 155, this is fine. So I didn't, I feel great, but I just, I don't, a lot of times I have a hard time allowing myself to lower the intensity down because like, I don't know, it's addiction. It's, it's wild. So here's what you do. I got this, this is what you do. You got to involve your community. So tell, uh, the coaches there and the people that you work out with and literally tell them, Hey guys, listen, I got a problem. Two days a week. Yeah. I got a problem with overdoing it. I today I need to go easy. If you, if you see me going too hard, I want you to come and I'm going to do 115 on overhead press. If you see me adding more weight, I want you to come slap me in the face. Like involve your, involve your community, bro. Seriously. Yeah. They've already helped you so much. So let them know. So, Hey man, I got to go easy two or three days a week here. I can't keep going hard. So I need your help. Today's my easy day. So here's the weights I'm going to go with. You see me go over that once you call me out and then that'll make it awesome for you, dude. All right, cool. Cool. That sounds good. They, I mean, they've, they've, they've tried, but I guess the slap in the head might work probably the best. Yeah, dude. Well, there's so valuable to you, bro. That I think that that's, that's what's going to help you the most. Okay. Cool. Yeah. That sounds great. That's it. Sounds like that. That's it, bro. Do you do mobility work too? I have funny you mentioned that. I just, I'm, my mobility is pretty horrible. And I just started, um, one of the trainers there got me on to, uh, I think it's go, WOD, something like that. And you, um, kind of, you do a test and then it kind of builds you a mobility thing that you do 20 minutes a day to help with your, like with my lack of my, I'm more of like my, my hips are super tight. And, um, so I've been starting, I started that, I started that yesterday. So I can't say I've been doing it, but I've done it two days. Is it, is it possible, uh, on the two days that we're talking about where you focus on that, where you can back off the intensity. Can you, will they let you on the side of the class kind of do your mobility routine? Cause that's what I would tell you to do is like, since it's probably hard for you to discipline yourself to do that outside of your classes, like make that a part of your class is on the days that you're supposed to back off intensity. Also do the first 20 minutes of your, you know, hour at the, at the box, do your mobility stuff. That would really serve you. Yeah. I'll say, yeah. I'm going to send you prime pro. That's our mobility kind of program. Okay. So you'll have another thing to reference. Uh, that'll help you out. Cool. Yeah. Yeah. I've, I've got an open gym pass there too. So like I can sign up and just do the open gym those days as well. And, um, I have been trying to, I've been, it's really hard for me, but I've, I've been trying to make a schedule where I'm like, all right, Wednesdays, I'm going to just do mobility. I'm going to maybe ride a bike and just kind of not sweat too much and just take kind of an off day. Um, I'm still working on it. I'm going to try harder. So that Josh, that would be the ideal. So this is, to me, this is the compromise I would make. I know Sal already said to you that they're, you know, obviously the community value is so huge. And I'm going to say something else to you that you, I think you're kind of aware of, uh, you have, at one point you will be forced to be a come aware of. Cause a lot of times, uh, we trade one addiction for another addiction. And it's easy to get caught in the fitness addiction because it serves us so much. Right. It's so much healthier and everybody's going to pat you in the back and say, but you still have that addictive personality towards something. And I think you recognize that in yourself. And so it will eventually lead to injury and all this other stuff that will make you learn this lesson. And so, but yet at the same time too, I agree with Sal that there's such tremendous value in the community and I wouldn't want to pull you from that. So the, you just told me there's a way that I could still let you go to that CrossFit box five days a week, but we can modify it to what I think would be better. So what it would look like is three days a week, you're doing those classes. The other two days you're doing open gym. An open gym looks like your mobility routine and then getting on like the elliptical or a bike and just cruise. Yeah. And you still get to be a part of the community. You're still in there five days a week, but you're starting to scale back the intensity and the kind of beating yourself up five days a week. And two of the days are very recoupative. And then I think you get the best of both worlds. I'm going to tell you the two things that'll protect you from, uh, taking fitness and going too far with it. Okay. Yeah. One, one is to involve the community and let them know it's a challenge for you because you value it so much. You've got great connections there. That's the best thing you could do. That's number one. Yeah. Uh, number two, um, when you, uh, what do you do for a living? Let me ask you that first. I unfortunately drive a truck, which is really hard sometimes. That's fine. Okay. Here, this will also help you a lot. Get yourself a client or two and work, train them for free. Okay. Start working with some, maybe someone in the class. Hey, let me train you for free. I'm going to take that'll actually help you with yourself. Okay. I actually, um, I just started shadowing to coach there as well. Good. So you coaching some, you coaching someone else is going to really help you a lot. It's really, it's so much easier to do the right thing for another person. Like you're going to be good at telling someone else you're overdoing it, but it's real hard for you to do it. And it'll help, it'll help you a lot. So coach somebody for free and then just involve, let your, let your people know there, man, let's say I overdo it. You guys, I need help. Like today's my light day. Make sure I go easy that. And even if you don't listen to them, whatever they're aware. And it's, it's, uh, it's so valuable for someone like you to do that. Okay. Cool. Yeah. That sounds, that sounds great. All things I've like kind of milled over from time to time and I just keep going back to the same routines, but I'm definitely going to, uh, put in some work and try to lighten the load a little bit. I guess. Keep us posted, Josh. I'd like to hear back from you when you've been doing this for like three months. Cause I think you'll, you'll see a difference in your performance too. You'll feel better. You'll look better. You'll see strength go up. Like you'll, you'll be benefited by doing this. I know mentally it's difficult, but you'll definitely see the benefits when you stick with it. Yeah. And off for sure. I'd love to get back in touch with you guys about it. All right, man. Thanks. All right, brother. Thanks guys. Yeah. When he said, uh, it helped us sobriety, uh, and he mentioned the community. I was like, ooh, let's keep them. Yeah. Let's keep them with these people. Uh, because I mean, I tell you, dude, uh, that makes such a big difference for some people, especially people. What he's doing right now, like you said it, Adam, right? You go from one drug to another. Uh, what he's doing is he's, he's self-medicating, uh, differently. Yep. Now, uh, fitness can go real bad, but it can also go real good. Right? Uh, it can go real good. Whereas with drugs and stuff, not necessarily, it's almost always bad. But with, with fitness, he could go, it could go pretty good and it could be a decent way to medicate, uh, things like anxiety and depression. Um, now you can overdo it. It's a tipping point. But let me tell you, for anxiety and depression, fitness done right is the best thing according to the data, um, community throw that in there. He's got himself a winning formula. So long as he doesn't beat himself. I mean, I feel like the answer is right there. I think when he said that he has a, the open gym pass where he can come in two days and do what he wants, that's like, if I'm coaching him, it's, cause you're right, I agree, like pulling him away from this community that has literally probably saved his life is not something I'd want to do. Even if I knew there's better programming for him to be doing, I get this where you're going. And so to me, the, the middle ground here is, Oh, this is easy. He's got an open gym pass. So it's like two days a week, you do that mobility routine that you've already know you need to do. And now it forces you to, cause you show up to an hour and there versus trying to do it at home and then adding it all by yourself. Yeah. Yeah. No, like that becomes your, your two days a week, two or five days a week now is 20 minutes of mobility and low intensity cardio and that you're still there. And then you get to see everybody. You're part of the community still. Like that to me, that's the, the answer is that, and boy, I mean, that's a way healthier balance and relationship with exercise. And if he can get to there, he's going to see a ton of benefits from it. Our next caller is Kelly from Massachusetts. Hi Kelly. How you doing Kelly? All right. Good. How are you guys? Good. How can we help you? So I reached out because I am dealing with relative energy deficiency. I'm 21. I work out a lot. Um, and I have been dealing with it for like three years now and I just can't seem to find a solution for that. And you, and who diagnosed you with this? Um, I have a sports physician. Um, I see her, uh, her name is Dr. Schley. I see her and she diagnosed me a while back because my energy intake was really low. Um, and I had all the, the red flags were, were shining bright. Yeah. So you were under eating and over training essentially is what was happened. Yeah. So I was training like six days a week and I think my intake was roughly 1200 calories per day, which is not enough. Um, so I've tried, I see a nutritionist now. I've tried increasing my, my calories, but I just haven't, it's been a while and I haven't really seen any positive change. So I just kind of am stuck and I'm not sure what to do. When you say you've tried increasing your calories, tell me what this looks like. So I tried it slowly increasing. So I would add like 200 calories every few days. I could try, um, but it was just so uncomfortable and like bloating and I couldn't really keep up with it. Uh, what, what number did you end up getting up to? I want to say 18, um, but I didn't stay very long because it was so uncomfortable. Yeah. That's why it didn't work. What feels comfortable for you is actually what's unhealthy. And eating an appropriate amount for you is going to feel like you're stuffing yourself. You're going to feel like it's too much. So we often say on the podcast, uh, listen to your body, but that's not a good strategy for someone who doesn't know how to listen to their body, whose signals are off, which, which would be like someone like you listening to your body is under eating and over training. Okay. So it's going to feel uncomfortable for a while, hun. And you're going to have to stay in it for a while to fix some of these issues. So you're going to kind of have to get through that discomfort. And there's things that we advise, like stay away from the mirror, stay away from the scale, like you can focus on getting stronger in the gym. Let's, let's, let's talk about strength. I think that's a great metric for you to focus on. Yeah. Right. Um, that's kind of, it was confusing for me because I was gaining strength. I was getting stronger when it first started. Like I had cut my calories and I was super lean and I was gaining all this strength and I was doing really good. And then I think it caught up to me. Yep. Now I'm like plateaued. Yep. I have like, I have a good training program for myself. I think I'm a personal trainer too. So like, I know, I think I know what I'm doing with how I'm making myself lift, but I think it's just not doing anything. You gotta eat more. Yeah. Well, I, let's talk about five days a week training too though. That's what's, what's the training routine look like? Cause if you're training five days a week, uh, with me, you'd only be doing two exercises. Yeah. So I, initially I cut down now because I realized it was way too much. I'm doing like probably four now. Um, but I do work a very like physical job. Um, I work in a hospital. So I'm like always on my feet and moving people and lifting people. So I'm doing four days actually lifting and it's like a push, pull, legs, and then a full body thing. So to do that, be active, your age plus strength training. Uh, yeah, like your calories would, would, with me would probably get you up to around 24, 2500. Dang. Easy. But you, we have, we have to ease our way there obviously. And it would, and you would get, and you would just have body comp change. Yeah. I mean, I'm, and that's me trying to sell it to you, but that's what you gotta do. Huh? And you gotta bump your calories. Oh, I do, I do want to, uh, to warn you though, that what this, what this journey kind of looks like, I'm going through this with Corinne right now as I'm coaching her through a reverse diet. And when you've been low calorie and over trained for such a long period of time, it will take the body a little while before it responds the way you want it to. It's not as, it's not this like beautiful linear progress. So it's like, Oh, I bumped calories and strength follows. And then I'll sudden I look better too. And then I bumped more. It won't look like that. What it will look like is I'm going to feel uncomfortable. This doesn't feel right. This is, Oh, I feel bloated all the time. And it's like, I don't feel like I'm seeing much change or difference. The thing that you should notice though is energy and strength. Those are the two main things we want to focus on. Cause the, the body composition and all that's, and feeling comfortable will come down the road. Like that's, that's down the road after our body gets healthy. It first has to get healthy. And then it will start to give you the results that you want. And it's not, it's not this perfect. I start this and then right away, I feel that it'll be a while before you. And you just kind of trust that process. Kelly, how long would you say that you were over training under eating for? Um, honestly, definitely over a year. I would say maybe a year and a half. Okay. It took a while for me to like lose my menstrual cycle in that. Like I was doing good for a while and I was sticking on that routine and everything was good. And then maybe a year into it, I lost. How long did you lose it for? I haven't gotten it back. It's been three years. Oh wow. Okay. So, so it's going to probably, this is going to be about a year. Yeah. This is going to take you a year. You're going to go on a reverse diet ish kind of a protocol for about a year. There's like no cut. You're not going to go on a cut for a long time. And it's going to be reverse dieting slowly, pausing when you're too uncomfortable, not going down and then reversing again. And I'd like to see your calories at least for what you're doing at least around 2,500 calories. Okay. So do you suggest like adding 200 per week or like what protocol? You're going to add 200 and then you're going to stay there for a couple of weeks and then we're going to add another 200 and stay there. I mean, here's, I would also highly recommend outsourcing to a coach. I mean, this is why Corinne has me helping her. She's smarter than I am. She's very experienced. She's a great, she's an incredible coach, but she knows that this is challenging for her. And so outsourcing it to me, that like just going to listen to me regardless of what, because she's like, this doesn't feel right. I don't feel comfortable. I'm not seeing what it's like. Yeah. But I'm telling you to do this. You just need to listen to me. And so I would recommend even with your knowledge and experience, like I would recommend outsourcing that if you're open to it, because then it is just let a coach, let them handle that week to week with you. You know, and what it looks like with McCreary and I, sometimes I'll be increasing, increasing. And then I also am listening to her. That's right. And so I can give her a break. And so, cause I, and that's what a good coach will do. Like they'll listen to you and they'll feel you. And I'm like, and so I kind of push her, push her, push her where I want her to go. And then I can, I can hear it in her voice. I can see how she's responding to me. And I'm like, all right, we're going to take a little diet break for a little bit. And then I'll bring her down for a week or two. And I'm like, Hey, are you ready? We're going to go back up again. And so it is a little bit of push and pull. And there isn't like this mathematical formula of it's going to look exactly like this. It's like part of that is the coaching process is, is outsourcing to them, them hearing you out, knowing where they want to take you. And then together you guys head down this path for a year, like Sal saying. Okay. Yeah. Yeah, I would definitely be interested in that. Okay. Awesome. We'll have, we'll have somebody reach out to you, Kelly. You're going to do great, by the way. You're, you're so young. You've got a fitness background. Yeah. As long as you can get over the mental part, you're going to crush. And if you're open to outsourcing that, that's, you'll do well. You'll do great. If you, like just like her, if you just trust that you're in good hands and we'll take care of you and just like, focus on hitting the goals they give you. And then, and, and stay in the course and you're going to be all right. Okay. Thank you so much guys. I really appreciate it. You got it. Kelly. Meet you. Thank you. Yeah. Thank you. Hopefully we'll see you in person. Yeah, that's right. I'd love to circle back with you too, to see here it's going. Okay. Yeah, definitely. We will. All right, Kelly. Thank you. Bye. Bye. I mean, we said this off air, but it's funny how they give a clinical name to not eating enough and overtraining. Yeah. I haven't heard that term actually before. What it refers to is like losing your menstrual cycle. Female athletes could see this a lot. Yeah. They lose their menstrual cycle quite often. So common that oftentimes coaches are like, yeah, it's normal. You know, keep going type of deal. That's a sign. Not necessarily a good sign. Not a good one. But yeah, I mean, you know, here's, she's 21. Her body's going to respond for them. I mean, I'm very confident. It's not going to be as hard as it, as it can be sometimes with someone. Oh, yeah. But it's going to be a year of, of, of slowly increasing your calories. It just needs to be stressed. It is going to be uncomfortable. Well, it is. And the hard part about this is that, like I said, is you do the work that you're supposed to do and you don't necessarily see the results you want right away. Yeah. And so you have to accept that. Listen, you have been beating up or abusing your body for an extended period of time. It's going to take an extended period of time for your body to get healthy and then respond. Repair process. Right. Respond the way you want to. So really the focus is not related to scale, the way I look, any of those things. Right now it's, let's get our body healthy. Yep. And so a huge win is the period coming back. And in fact, I'm coaching someone like this and saying like, we, we shouldn't expect any great aesthetic results until, until we get that. So let's go get that. And we can fix that. I know we can fix that. I know what that looks like. And so let's get there first. Then that's a good sign. We're continuing to move direction. And then we'll start to look and see those things. Our next caller is Ted from Indiana. What's up, Ted? How you doing, Ted? Hey, what's up guys? So thanks for having me. Um, I'll just go ahead and read my question, even though it doesn't apply as much as it was going to. Okay. Um, my work schedule is about to change where I'm going to have very little sleep and time to work out. I'll have one, maybe two days. Um, I'm a little anxious about my work home sleep balance because of how wildly my days are going to fluctuate. I really just need some pointers on how to stay consistent, not just with exercise and sleep, but also with my family. Any advice would be greatly appreciated. So the schedule was going to be 35 hours on and then about a day off and 15 hours on then a day off and then another 35 hours on a day off. I'm a truck driver. I deliver. Okay. Um, and it's a cyclical sleep schedule on those three days. Um, I was really just wondering like the best way to kind of go about that. I'm not so much worried about exercise and stuff, but I really am worried about sleep. That's a, that's a really great question. And they go hand in hand though, just so you know, because like, um, sometimes when you have, when you have like a point at a time in your life like this, what, what healthy looks like strength training might be only one day a week or an exercise or two a day, just really. So it does, cause if you, if you do too much on the workout, it's going to impact sleep. And so the workouts need to be look like what, what compliments me getting better sleep versus, I know I can work out this many days. It's more like, okay, what allows me to get better sleep. And so it starts to look more like that for that type of a schedule. Ted, explain the cyclic, uh, sleep schedule. Give me some more details. So, um, you're sleeping in the bunk of the tractor while the other person drives. And then you wake up when you get to the stop and you deliver all the product. You're on a hand cart, loading the cart up, running down the ramp and to the store back up. And then that goes on for 45 minutes, maybe. And then you hop back in the tractor, you get back in the bunk and you take maybe an hour and a half, two hour naps here next stop. And you and the driver switch off, um, doing that throughout the day. Now, like I said, it doesn't apply to me so much now because my schedule changed twice since I sent the question in, but it could apply in the future. So I, I still appreciate it. Do you get, do you ever, do you get like a full eight hours at any point when you're doing that? No. Okay. No, it's, it's, um, yeah, it's, it's pretty, pretty rough whenever it comes to sleep on those days. I am able to make it up on my off days, but, um, yeah, no, not, not really. You don't get eight hours. And now when you wake up, uh, are you awake enough to be able to do your work or do you find yourself groggy? Um, well, honestly, I'm kind of used to it a little bit at this point. So I don't notice so much groggyness. Plus I kind of implemented a lot of the stuff that you guys have already talked about, like on the days that I do work, I take my 20 milligrams of creatine or my 20 grams of creatine, um, a few hours before I start my shift and then throughout the shift. And, uh, I try to get as much sunlight when I first wake up to try to help myself get to sleep whenever I am in the bunk. Um, I time caffeine so that it hits me harder when I am tired. So I don't really notice a whole lot of the groggyness, but I'm, I know that we're good at pushing through a lot of stuff. And I kind of know that I can push through a lot and I want to just be able to not age the way that I've seen a lot of the people that I do work with who's been there for 20 years, their back hurts. And you know, they've got like all of these problems and stuff. And I don't want to end up like that. Do you find it difficult to fall asleep when you got to get in the bunk? Yeah, I do have a sleep mask and I use the, uh, I use the sleep mask and brain FM. So when I get in there, that's what I first do. And then I try to wear blue light blocking glasses throughout the shift until I have to do my part to drive. That's what I was going to tell you. So, uh, so if groggyness is one thing, but following us hard, hard time, falling asleep is another thing. And I was going to tell you to wear really strong blue light blocking glasses when you get out of the bunk. And I mean the strong ones, the red ones. So yeah, not the clear ones, like the red ones that block everything. Cause that'll help you fall asleep when it's time to get back in. But you're kind of doing everything right. Uh, now here's the deal. It's brutal. So what we're doing is we're doing everything right, but this is like as good as it gets. Yeah. So that's a really brutal. Well, we didn't talk much about the working out. This is what I meant by they go hand in hand is like the one thing I would caution you is, is pushing your body in the gym really hard for multiple days during a, a like a, like a cycle like this. This is like the time where our, our training, like you're getting in there. You're doing movements, but it's not, I'm not trying to hit PRs while you're also being more concerned with strengthening your core and your posture and like, you know, really kind of reinforcing that to counter a lot of that, like for position and seated positions. Yeah. That'll be my focus in the gym and then everything else is like complimentary. Yeah. You know, you could do, you could put a suspension, you could bring a suspension trainer with you. And, um, when you, yeah, when you feel like you're, you're a little stiff or whatever, you do a couple movements on there, more for mobility than anything. Uh, I do carry a band with me. Vans works. Uh, I don't, I don't. Have a suspension trainer, but I do carry bands with me whenever I go. They're, they're both great. Uh, suspension trainer offers a little bit, uh, different. I actually prefer it. So if you can grab one, you need to hook onto something. You probably hook it onto the truck and do like W's and some rotation and just yeah, just to feel good. But otherwise you're doing everything. I mean, you honestly doing everything right, dude. Sounds good. Like I kind of thought that I might be doing everything. To what you guys would say, but I didn't know if there was something else that I should probably be doing that I'm not like my workouts are, I'm not really focused on them so much right now. Like I, if I can get two days in fine one day and it's usually like bench squat, deadlift one day or something like that. You're doing good, bro. I've been full up. You're doing good. No, that's perfect. So another supplement you could try is, uh, liposomal NAD. Uh, so we have a road. Nutrition is a company we work with. We'll send you a link. Uh, that'll help you with the energy part. It'll compliment the creating that you're taking. They're doing good though. Cause you are, you are depleting certain energies because you look, you look really healthy too. I'm assuming you have a pretty good diet then too. Yeah. Um, I don't, sorry, there's a tractor going by. Um, yeah, I don't really ever eat bad. Um, unless, you know, maybe once or twice a month when we go out to eat, like I don't really think about it because I mean, I'm with my family and stuff, so it's not really that big of a deal, but I'm pretty dialed in on my diet. I feel like I'm good, bro. Your peers aren't good examples of what you'll look like in 20 years. If you're still doing that. Yeah. If you're, if you're, if you're eating well, you're straight training. Once a week, you're doing all the things ahead of it. Yeah, bro, you're going to be good. You're doing good. Okay. Yeah. And what about eating real fast? This is just the last part. What about eating on my routes? Like, is it okay to maybe not go the whole 35 hours or whatever I'm out without eating, but like maybe most of the day, because it's hard to like focus on going in and heating up your food and then getting back in the bunk and eating and trying to go to sleep. But I'd rather just go. No, you're fine. Totally fine. Yeah, you're fine. I would drink, uh, and make sure you stay hydrated. So much better than probably what everybody else does, which is get the, the frozen breed out the truck stop and eat it while they're driving. No. Yeah. I like, I've seen the people that touch the truck stop. Yeah. Yeah. That's what I'm saying. Like that's, yeah. Like you, you're, you're way better off, uh, choosing to fast through that time and then eating when you can. And yeah, no, you're doing good, dude. You're doing all the things right. Sweet. Yeah. All right. Yeah. Well, I think that's about it. I appreciate everything guys and, uh, I'll have a, well, I'll have Doug send you a link to the suspension trainer and I'll also gift you the, the maps suspension program so that you have something that you can do off the truck, whatever you want to, which I think it's about the only advice I have for you that you can send them the row nutrition. Yeah. So we'll send that over to you. All right. Cool. I appreciate it guys. You got it on. All right. Y'all have a good one. You too. Man, it's funny. You, you're like, uh, man, people just, they have some hard work to do. That's, that's, that's a, that's a bitch, bro. Get up and like straight from asleep. Moving crap. And then, okay, get back to sleep. Your turn while they're driving. I mean, if anyone here, you're the only one that could have that gift to fall asleep. Yeah. But then getting up and moving after, I would be mad. You also train early. You, you would be able to do it. If anyone could do it out of us, it's you. Anger, I'd be all day long. I mean, talk about an exception to the rule right there. I mean, I could see he looks healthy. I could tell by his face and I could tell by, I mean, he looked like a healthy guy. Yeah. That profession with that, 15 years, unhealthy job. But he's, I mean, he's obviously cares in just trying everything and doing everything really, really well. But the people he works with are probably not a good example of what he'll look like or feel like. Like, I mean, they're drinking, they're smoking, they're eating. Well, yeah, I feel like crap. You're like, yeah, dude, just give me some french fries. It's an overall environment. Pretty sure I'd smoke cigarettes. Oh yeah, dude. Absolutely. Just to feel something. Our next caller is Alexandra from Washington. Hi Alexandra. Hello. How you doing? How are you guys? Good. How can we help you? Um, so I've got two questions. One is program related and the other is sort of career related, but I'll start with programming. Let's do it. Um, so I was a competitive athlete in high school and then after graduating in 2018, I kind of kept training in that same mindset when I was in college. And then in 2021, I had this really weird, I don't want to call it an injury, but I, something hurt. And then after a couple months of recovering from that, I realized it was related to my hypermobility and that's when the way that I trained really started to shift. And then since then I've just had a handful of things that don't really want to call them injuries again, but I don't have a better word for them. Um, and I don't know how much background you guys have with hypermobility, um, or hypermobile. Ellers-Danlos is another sort of part of it. Um, but it's like a connective tissue disorder. So there's a lot of like body wide effects, but from a training standpoint, the biggest issue for me is joint laxity. Um, my shoulders are the primary problem area. That's like the major instability. So sometimes sub-bloc stations, especially in certain positions. Um, so I just end up with a lot of like muscle guarding all in like my traps and my neck extensors, like it just all gets super locked up. Um, and when particularly activated or irritated causes like a lot of pain and a lot of restriction, and then my right hip is also a little bit less stable in my, in my left. And I think that kind of plays into some low back irritation as well. Um, and then the laxity also makes my internal cues unreliable. So it's really easy for me to overextend. I'm not really sure what I'm feeling. If it's the proper muscle working or if it's like a compensatory pattern that I developed, um, co-contraction is also like a really difficult thing for me to catch when it's happening. And then I don't realize I'm doing something wrong until I wake up the next day and I'm just like locked up. Um, and so, and like mirrors, they help sometimes, but it still is a little bit like it's good for external queuing, but internal queuing, it just is not helpful at all. Um, and I've got like training and aesthetic goals, but there's just like this big wall for me that every time I train, I just keep running into like, I'll feel good. And then I'm like out for like a couple of weeks and then it just totally sets me back. So I'm trying, I guess, to understand like from your experience, if you've worked with people with this, like how I know when my body is ready for more weight, because that's something I keep doing is ramping the weight. And then it's too much, even though I can move it. Um, and then how I know when movement patterns are solid enough in order to progress into higher weight or reps or something like that. And then how you're meant to approach strength training when your body can clearly move more weight than it can tolerate properly, especially when like, I don't have the clear signals to do so in the moment. I know that was kind of like a couple of questions in one, but generally. That's great. Have you worked with a trainer in person? No, I haven't. I had thought about it. Um, but I've been having a hard time finding somebody who specializes in it. Um, we don't necessarily specialize in this to have, we all have experience doing. It's another set of eyes. Yeah. Are you, uh, what's your education? And by the way, I know you're very, you're very versed in this for sure. Um, uh, I graduated with a nutrition degree. I went to Cal Poly in San Luis Obispo. Um, and then I came back up here because I, the path that it led me on was sort of like dietitian in the medical field and I didn't want to do that. And now I'm pursuing personal training after like four years of trying to figure out that's why you want to specialize. Yeah. Are you, uh, you said up here, are you near us? Are you up near San Jose area? No, uh, so I live in Seattle. Okay. Okay. I was going to say, I mean, yeah, way north. Okay. So you're so, so, okay. Here's what's interesting about this. When, when, when you have hypermobility, uh, some of the, a lot of the rules need to change. Opposite of what we coach most people, you know, you're going to, you know, what you would do really well with. Uh, first off, isometrics is your best friend. Isometrics is first. Isometrics is your best friend. Uh, and I mean like, not just like, uh, holding a weight, that's part of it, but also pressing or pulling or squatting. Coming, yielding. Yeah. So move, like you're trying to move something that's immovable. Right. So. Okay. An example. So, okay. So let's talk about a deadlift, right? So deadlift, you know, the traditional form, right? Off the floor, stand up all the way. Yeah. What it would look like with isometrics is I would do a set where I'm at the bottom, then I would do a set where I'm up more inches than I would do a set where I'm higher. So each, I would move through the range of motion, but each one is an isometric. And I would, I would pull against a bar that isn't going to move for 15 seconds. Does that make sense? So I'm breaking the movement up into segments and I'm doing isometric with each one and I'm using force. It's almost like you feel robotic now with like a lot of the movements you're going to do, but that's like, my gosh, it drives me crazy. Right. So like, like a shoulder press would look like this. I get under a bar, I'd put it on a rack, I'd load it or put it somewhere. So it's not going to move. And I'm going to push against the bar for 15 seconds. Then I'll make it go up a little higher. Now I'll do another set there. And so I'm doing the range of motion, but it's all isometrics. Okay. Number two, uh, machines are actually great for you. Really? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's true. Yeah. It's going to limit your, it's going to limit your range of motion, which is the opposite of what we tell everybody else. Everybody else were always encouraging full range of motion with someone with your case, you're actually going to train like a meathead. Yeah. This is where we typically will give opposite advice, which is shorten the range up, you know, you can go further. I actually want you to go shorter range of motion right now. You do the two of those things, the isometrics with short, short, short and ranged emotion on your movements and you'll stop feeling. And the reason why it's not the weight, by the way, too, that's making you feel that way. It's the weight in those in ranges that's resting on the joints. It's causing that. So it's like, you can still progressively overload the body and get stronger. That totally can happen. And what we just need to do it, and we need to do it in a shorter range of motion, which is the opposite of what we're trying. We've got to teach the body to respond and create tension in that muscle recruitment process is what we're training right now and all these different ranges of motion. So it responds, uh, more adequately. Yeah. Are you, how tall are you? Um, just under five, seven. Oh, you're perfect. Machines will be great for you. So get in a machine, set it up. You're going to do a shoulder press. This is as low as I'm going to go. I'm not going to go all the way down. This is the range of motion. Just like this kind of limited range of motion. That's your strength training. And then you're going to do isometrics and that's going to help with your stability and around your joints. And that's honestly it. You're going to train yourself very differently than you would train 99% of your clients. Yep. Yeah. Yeah. There was like, I had been trying to do a couple, like, uh, are you familiar with gosh, I'm forgetting his name, but he's known as the shirtless dude on Instagram. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Used to be part of move you. And I'm sure you used to be part of move you. Andrew, something and Kate is his wife and they have like a, they're both hypermobile and they have like a program, um, that I've been sort of working through. Um, I haven't gotten. Yes, but it also feels like, um, what, like immature, not immature, but sort of like I am starting too early in it. Like it feels like I can do all the stuff pretty easily. Like it's not as much progress as I would have expected. There are certain ones that, that do for sure. Um, I would say a lot of the isometrics and like the band work as well. It does progress like pretty quickly, but I do find sometimes like it just, like, I just haven't really found, like I have it. I feel like I still haven't gotten over this like hump that I'm like expecting to have like better strength in the, cause my whole idea and correct me if I'm wrong is like, because I have a large range of motion that I should strengthen it in those hyper extended. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, We're not the hyper extended, but the further ones to that, when I do get there. Not yet. No, no, no. You wouldn't even play with that until yeah, you got to start, start, start strengthening shorter ranges of motion. And then you can do some light, you can do some light isometrics in those positions. Cause that'll give you 15% North and South of that. So you're, so that's the benefit of doing the isometrics in those three stages that sounds about both sides. Yeah. So you're getting, you're getting strength benefits further on than where you're stopping at when you do isometrics. That's what's so great about them. And that's the way you build strength at that end is by an isometric right before what you would do, consider full range of motions. And then you still get 15 degrees more by holding that isometric there. Yeah. That's why that, then that's how you would get that. 99% of people, I'm trying to strengthen you in a full range of motion hyper mobility. We're staying away from your full range of motion cause that's where you get hurt. Yeah. That's where you don't, that's where you lack stability. You're lacking stability at the, at the end ranges. And that's what's happening. It's not the mid range. It's the end range. Yeah. So that would make me think that I would need to strengthen those end ranges, but you're saying strengthen. That's how you, that's how you get that strength. Yeah. We get real good. That's how that is. You come short of it and you create an isometric contraction there and you'll get 15 degrees, 15% more stability. That's right. That's right. Eventually here's the deal. If you do this aggressive overload in that direction, if you do this well enough over time, you will be able to train in a really full range of motion. But right now I wouldn't touch that. That's, that's, that's why you're getting hurt. So that's, that's, that's, that's down the line. So let's say we do this, right? Maybe a year or two from now, then you're able to go full range of motion and you're stable, but right now that's not, so you, here's what's happening. You have a range of motion that you don't own. And so, and you really don't own it. Uh, so we don't want to put it. That's right. So we don't want to play with that. Yeah. Yeah. Right now. Prime pro would be great. Yeah. I'm going to go through. Yeah. Prime pro would be good. Cause otherwise I'd be like, learn FRC. Uh, that would, that would benefit you a lot as well. But like, yeah, for, for what they're saying, it's, it's really, it's a gradual progressive process and to, to get those core movement patterns first where you generate the most force and kind of expand out is, is, you know, the, yeah. So are you familiar with yielding isometrics? No. So that's like where I, so that's where you're pushing or pulling, uh, or, or, again, something that's not moving. So really cool setup that you could do is you could put some anchor bolts into some concrete attached chains on them with callers. Then I can put a barbell in there and that's it. And I can pull against a great DIY little project. It's a deal. It's, it's a real simple. Now I can get a bench underneath it, get a long enough chain and I press up. I mean, this is probably one of the most valuable ways to use the Smith machine too. Yes. Yes. Smith machine would be good for this. This is why we've seen a couple of people sort of rig it that way. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You can use it. You can use a Smith machine to do that with, with bench overhead press with rowing with deadlifting. You could, a lot of these movements we're talking about. You can use, well, you can use the Smith machine for that. That's why that's actually, this would be a great use of it. Interesting. Okay. Do you find that the clients that you work with that are worked who had hypermobility, were you, were they able to make? Yes. Significant. Yes. Oh, yes. Yeah. Just this time. Yeah. But it was, it's like, you've got to approach it. Yeah. You approach it very differently. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Sweet. I appreciate that. And since you're going to become a trainer and you sound like you're really smart, research isometrics. Look at the data on isometrics. This is, this is going to fix you. Yeah. Isometric training is what's going to be the most valuable style of training for you. All right. Sweet. Yeah. I'll definitely look into that. I keep hearing that word bounce around. I haven't really gotten to it. I just have not really, I've been too afraid to do anything with like, um, like any of the big eight exercises because it just is so unapproachable. So I've just really stuck with like hand weights and Pilates sometimes, but even that I can like overextend it. Yeah. Yeah. No, no, no. But no, it's totally doable. It's just, it's different than what you would do with the traditional person. Right. Okay. That's good to hear. Um, my other question regarding personal training as a career, um, I found you guys a couple of months ago. It's so funny. I like for so long for literally four years, I'm like, I don't know what to do. Am I going to be a doctor? Am I going to be a nutritionist? It was always something in like the health field, but nothing really ever clicked. And then I watched or listened to like a 20 minute podcast where you guys spoke about like a couple of things to know before becoming a personal trainer and it was like done. Um, and so I started preparing for the exam. I'm sort of in a weird, um, space right now because I'm getting married in like a month. And so it's just like not a great time to be, um, wanting to, I'm just, I'm just busy really. Um, but after I passed the exam, I'm sort of thinking about, I mean, it seems like most people are doing like the path is like big box gym, sort of like get reps with clients and then progress forward. Um, and I was just wondering if that's like what you would recommend or like, can you apprentice with personal trainers or like shadow them? Like, is that something that's, I mean, if you got, if you, if you know some, for example, if you lived up here, like of course coming over and shadowing or, you know, some one of our coaches or trainers would be ideal, but I would, but who you shadow would make a big difference too though. So I would want to make two, you know, you'd want to make sure you got a elite level coach that you're following. The best bet is to go into the big box. That's going to give you that. The other thing that I would suggest, if this is the career path you're doing, so, um, like if in SCA is what you're going through or what do you, is that okay? Yeah. So it's great certification, uh, NCSF, NESM, those are all great courses and certifications. When the course that we created was to fill the gap in the need that we felt for coaches and trainers, it's more highly focused on building your business. And so what would compliment after you finish your NSEA would be going through our course because that's more, that's more, that's what I was planning. Yeah. So that, that'll really compliment that because you're going to, I can tell already, you're, just to make a career out of it, you're proficient enough and understanding anatomy, the body, stuff like that. And what you're going to get from it in, in SCA is going to be great. The next piece will be the business side. So, uh, our course plus getting some experience in a big box gym will set you up for a lot of success. That's great. Yeah. Yeah. Sorry, go ahead. No, as I said, are you going to, do you want to train people in person or virtually? Ideally in person. I mean, I suppose virtual, it seems like it's accessible to people when they need it. And it, I mean, I can see the benefit in like having more clients that way, but I'm definitely an in person kind of. Big box. That's better. Yeah. Go big box. Preferable. You'll be a better trader by going in person first anyways. Totally. Yeah. So we've got the gym that I go to right now is the LA fitness, which no shade. It's not my most favorite, but I don't know. I know that you guys mentioned, it was like a podcast a couple weeks ago, I think where you're talking about like the gyms that Mike, Mike Mastoff, I think owns. Yeah. But we don't have, I don't think we have a crunch in Seattle and I know that he just bought 24 hour or something like that, where he rejoined as the CEO. But, um, it doesn't seem like the one that's available to me is that established right now. So I don't know if you have a recommendation for LA fitness is fine. You want, okay. That's a good big box gym. They're, they're a big box gym. What you're looking for from a big box gym is a gym that's got 10 plus trainers. So you got peers. They can feed you clients. They're getting, they're getting a thousand plus workouts a day. So you want volume. Exactly. You're, it's less about how good of a gym it is and it's more about just practice for you. Yep. Like this is like, think of it more like this is more education for you than it is like, this is my career and I'm going to work here forever. It's like, I'm going, I'm going here to get the reps in. And so a high volume gym is more important than like, oh, it's the best company ever. It's like, I just want to get, I just want to get bodies in front of me to practice all the stuff that I've learned. And that, and that is what's going to sharpen your skills and get you to a place. And normally what we recommend to somebody is the goal should be get there, get your reps in and try and become the, one of the top trainers there. If you're one of the top trainers in a big box gym, you're ready to go build your own business or grow in that company or you'll be, you'll do great. And that would be like a, you're on your own kind of situation. If you want to, if you want to, you know, there's a lot of opportunities from there. What normally happens when you, when you move your way up into being the top personal trainer inside of LA fitness or UFC or 24 fitness is you'll also be presented with opportunity within the company too. So if you end up falling in love with the company, there's a good chance they'll offer you management positions and leadership roles. Think of it as a, think of it as a paid internship. I'm going to go here for a year. I'm going to do my best and then you're going to have a lot of opportunities and much more clear path of where you want to go from there. Yes. Okay. Cool. That's it. Well, thank you so much. I really appreciate you guys taking the call. I wasn't like expecting to be selected so quickly when after submitting a question, it's been awesome getting to know all the information that you guys provide for free. Um, and it's obviously changed the direction that I'm going. So awesome. Much, much love. Did you have you found, you know that we have Kyle, our head trainer, uh, actually holds a podcast too. So on our, on the YouTube channel, just for trainers, just for personal trainers. So it's okay. Yeah. And some of our coaches come on there with him and they discuss, uh, just personal training and growing your business called elite trainer academy. Yep. Oh yeah. Okay. I've seen, I've seen the name. That's cool. Yeah. Yeah. All right. I'll check it out. Thank you guys so much. You got it. Congratulations on your wedding coming up. Yep. Thanks. All right. Appreciate it. Yeah. She should do great. Oh, fine. Hyper mobility. It's a sharp. The first time I had a client with hyper mobility, I was like, what is this puzzle? It's the opposite. I was like, what's happening here? Opposite. I couldn't figure out, uh, but then once you figured out, it's like, oh, this is what I do. Okay. Yeah. And then you just progress great, but it's a totally different approach. Like shorten a range of motion. I never do that. Like with, I know, but it works. Look, if you like mine pump, come find us on Instagram. Mine pump media. Thank you for listening to mine pump. If your goal is to build and shape your body, dramatically improve your health and energy, and maximize your overall performance, check out our discounted RGB Super Bundle at minepumpmedia.com. The RGB Super Bundle includes maps, anabolic, maps, performance and maps aesthetic. Nine months of phased expert exercise programming designed by Sal Adam and Justin to systematically transform the way your body looks, feels and performs. With detailed workout blueprints and over 200 videos, the RGB Super Bundle is like having Sal Adam and Justin as your own personal trainers, but at a fraction of the price. The RGB Super Bundle has a full 30 day money back guarantee, and you can get it now, plus other valuable free resources at minepumpmedia.com. If you enjoy this show, please share the love by leaving us a five star rating and review on iTunes and by introducing mine pump to your friends and family. We thank you for your support, and until next time, this is mine pump.