2799: The Ultimate Showdown: Which Modality is BEST For Fat Loss and Muscle Gain?

If you want to pump your body and expand your mind, there's only one place to go. Mind Pump. Mind Pump. With your hosts, Sal DiStefano, Adam Schafer, and Justin Andrews. You just found the most downloaded fitness, health, and entertainment podcast in the world. This is Mind Pump. In today's episode, we had callers call in and we got to coach them live on air. But this was after the intro, today's intro, 55 minutes long. This is where we talk about fat loss, muscle gain, fitness, current events, family life, always a good time. If you want to be on an episode like this one, send your question to mplifecaller.com. This episode is brought to you by some sponsors. The first one is Organifi. Today we talked about their Happy Drops. They contain efficacious dosage of saffron, which has been shown to raise serotonin levels in your brain. That's why they're called Happy Drops. They make you feel happy. Go check them out. Go to Organifi.com forward slash Mind Pump. 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If you love us like we love you, why not show up by rocking one of our shirts, hats, mugs, or training gear over at mindpumpstore.com? I'm talking right now. Hit pause. Head on over to mindpumpstore.com. That's it. Enjoy the rest of the show. It's the ultimate showdown. free weights versus machines, slow reps versus fast reps, strict form versus looser form, full range of motion versus short range of motion, and HIIT cardio versus steady state cardio. If you always wondered which one was superior, just stay tuned. We're going to answer that for you. Let's go. The ultimate showdown. I wanted to pick the ones that tend to cause the most questions and controversy and debate and discussion and the ones that have a little bit of science to support each side yeah these are good these are good conversations i think uh i mean i i think the the common theme we'll find in all of them is they're all tools um but it does seem as though people get in camps with each of totally where it's like this is the way this is better and so that's what they do more of or only of and so i think that's so it makes for a good discussion and probably for us to make the case of why and how you use each other. Totally. All right, let's start with the first one, free weights versus machines. We've talked about this before. I think we have to frame this properly because the debate or the discussion, or should I say people will disagree when they don't have the proper framing. People typically look at strength training and just look at hypertrophy. Yeah. They just say what builds the muscle. Muscle activation and hypertrophy. That's their entire argument. That's it. And if it's just about building muscle, I can make the argument that free weights are better but there's data that says that they're kind of similar if not the same so you have that so I'll agree with that fine, let's just say they're the same is that all you get from strength training? no you also get strength and you need usable strength how does it work in the real world you also have individuality how does the exercise fit the person and then you have health and mobility, which one is going to, if done properly, is going to lead to healthier joints and healthier movement patterns. Now that I framed it that way, I think it's an easy knockout. I'd like to see the – Free weights. I'd like to even see the studies because I know we have some of our – we have some smart friends of ours that are big advocates for machines on hypertrophy. But I'd like to see those. Yeah. One, I'd like to see those done in extended- Long-term studies. Long-term, even just a year. I don't need super long-term, but a year worth of both. Yeah, you won't find a year-long study. And then I'd also like to see things more than just muscle activation stuff, because a lot of the argument comes from that, right? Because machines do a really good job. They don't isolate, but emphasizing a muscle- You have less to worry about. Yeah, because there's less stability involved. You're locked in a position. You can really focus on that muscle. And so when you use the machines that show like the lighting up of the muscle, it's like, oh, this is really lighting it up. But I would argue the stabilization part due to the free weights and skill and CNS piece and adaptation you get to that, the carryover to that for total muscle building long term, I would think that those studies would pretty much. And looking at like continual benefits that you gain. Yeah. Yeah. So like if, if you're continuously using this style, like if you were to draw this up even a year to two years and like you stayed in that, that camp, like I would be very interested to look at the difference between that person and their strength, uh, abilities. Yeah, I'll back you guys up. So when you're doing an exercise, there's a skill component, and then there's the adaptations that occur or that are induced from the exercise. There's a learning curve with the skills. So in the beginning, you have to get good enough at the exercise before you can do it well enough to induce the muscle growth adaptations. Okay, so you got to learn how to do it first. So there's a learning curve. In other words, if you gave me 50 random people and 25 of them did the leg press for 30 days and then 25 of them did the barbell squat for 30 days you're going to see more strength gains in the leg press group why because a leg press leg press requires very little skill i can take the average person having leg press the average person is probably going to take me 60 days to get them good enough at a squat to be able to do it in a way to when now we're starting to build oh yeah so so when studies are short, it doesn't tell the whole story. Now I agree with you, Adam, because of the skill involved, because it's more of a technical exercise, the gains continue far longer than they would in leg press. Whereas the leg press will cause a faster plateau. That's based on my experience. We don't have studies to support that because you're right. There are no studies that are a year long. At best are 16 weeks. Also, the limitation you have by just with machines, like that doesn't translate into other exercises very well at all. Or any just movement in general doesn't translate. Well, what are you lifting? You're lifting in the real world. You're always lifting something that is free. You're never lifting something on a track or in some kind of controlled manner where it's controlled for you. If I have to move this table or a couch or my kids or anything, it's free. So the transfer of strength to the real world is isolated. Most of these studies are what? at best 10 to 16 weeks long. Yeah, typically. So, I mean- At least the ones you want to pay attention to. And what I would guess, what we would see on a graph is relatively close as far as muscle gain in those, say, 16 weeks. But if we were to extend that out for an entire year, what I think you would see is that you'd see the machines start to plateau and you would see the free weights continue. And the gap would increase. The more time, the more that gap would increase. That's right. So if we took somebody and we literally said, you only can do two exercises. You can do a leg press or a hack squat. And this person learned barbell back squat and two years. Yeah. Only those two movements. Oh yeah. Extended all the way out competition. Well, not to mention the dysfunction that's going to create that strong for that long, doing the same thing. And it's not in combination with a movement pattern that is beneficial. Like you're going to end up being too strong in one specific area, which the other, if you're not in combination supplementing. I think what you're saying is not argued. I think no functional person would make the argument that the machine is better. The argument that I think Sal's alluding to the most is the hypertrophy one. There's a hypertrophy camp that will really push the machine argument more. And that one's more fun to debate to me because I think yours is like a layup. That's how my brain goes. I know. That's what I mean. That's like your argument is like, yeah, find me a functional person that would argue that what you're saying isn't true. Or find me even a muscle building person that would try and argue against you what you're saying because that's obvious to me. But there's a lot of people that will in the muscle building hypertrophy community that will say machines are as good or better at hypertrophy than free weights are. And I like that argument. That's more fun to me because what we see in these studies, they're so short. That's right. And it doesn't tell the whole story about free weights. And if you just were to take two simple movements, like a leg presser or a hack squat from the machine camp, pick either one of those or both, I don't care, and then just put it against a barbell back squat, but extend it for two years, and the groups could only do those things. Oh, God. The barbell back squat is going to smoke that person. Yeah, now, again. From a hypertrophy point. And now, just to kind of mix both of them together, let's just say, for argument's sake, they're equivalent for muscle growth. they're the same what if i could throw in some extra you're stronger in the real world you've got better function well that's longer yes like cool like okay so now we have a a winner but i argue the same thing you say adam and we train people for years and we train ourselves for years but mainly clients for years uh machines are there's value in machines but when you're comparing with free weights they're limited here's the other thing machines don't work well for everybody free weights i can adapt to anyone right free weight move adapts to your body your machine your body has to adapt to the machine there's many times a guy like me and i'm not huge i'm only six foot tall but i'm taller than the average where i have to get in the machine and angle my body differently so that it works properly because a machine is designed for a five foot nine man yeah that's what the so if you're a short girl if you're a tall guy if you've got a movement that is it at somewhat outside of whatever then machines can be kind of weird whereas a free weight follows your body and it fits everybody now now just to play devil devil's advocate and so we like because this i know how quickly this can turn into like the the you know get clipped and it's like we're making this argument for throw machines away like there's plenty of times where i i'm using machines with a client and not using a free barbell back squat or something like that we're not saying don't use machines especially if you're talking risk factors yeah There is a lot of times where I'm going to use a machine over the free weights with a client for a very specific reason. But if we're talking in general and we're trying to compare somebody who's looking for the max amount of muscle they want to build, there is arguments that it's been tried to be made on the hypertrophy side for machines. And I disagree. I think that free weights is better. All right. Now reps. Slow reps versus fast reps. or I'll say slow rep would be a tempo. What's the traditional tempo? Is it a 2-1-4? Is that what it is? For what? For slow? For like bodybuilding. 4-2-2. 4-2-2, sorry. 4-2-2. So that's a four-second negative, two-second positive, two-second pause versus faster reps. These are reps that are- 1-1-1. Yeah, 1-1-1, okay? For most people, by the way, from a muscle building standpoint, okay? So we'll start there because everybody's interested in that. they're pretty similar they're probably identical one one one versus a four two two you're going to build probably the same amount of muscle and it's going to look the same uh now there's a very big difference in risk risk is yeah and there's also a very big difference in athletic performance risk way lower with a four two two way lower with slow reps fast reps the risk goes through the roof in comparison for athletic performance, fast reps are going to translate better to the field than slow reps. So here you got to kind of pick which one works best for you. But I can tell you this, 90% of the people listening right now are going to be better off doing the slower reps than the faster reps. Yeah, I would make the argument they would even build more muscle if we had to extend, again, extend something out for a one year period of time and one group only did fast reps, one group did 4-2-2. i would make the case that you would you would build more why are you throwing in uh that you're gonna hurt yourself or that'll stop the no not even that let's just let's assume uh you have you have great technique in both oh really yeah great technique in both and let's assume it's novel for both like those although all things being equal i know this would be very hard to put a study together like this where you'd have you know equal skill sets and and novelty for both these but let's just pretend that i i would argue the 422 for for building muscle because with a 111 there's uh there's more maybe functional hypertrophy wise yeah yeah hypertrophy yeah hypertrophy wise you would uh you could you would get maybe stronger off of 111 yeah i think so so i think you would get stronger but i think you would build more muscle on a 422 your capacity to generate force that's right like so so in other words fast reps what would end up happening we would end up is you would look, again, this is generalizing, but the one who goes 1-1-1-1 would be stronger like an Olympic lifter, and the 4-2-2 would be weaker. It's like CNS versus muscle hyper. Exactly. That would be my argument. So for athletic performance, 1-1-1, that's a silly argument. Duh. That's going to translate to athletic performance way better because that's sports. Sports moves quick. The slower reps, here's what the data shows. The data shows that they're pretty similar when it comes to building muscle. However, I'll agree with you guys. Why? When you look at the strength sports, when you look at all the sports that use weights, the ones that tend to build the most muscle are the ones that tend to have athletes that look the most muscular. And this isn't the best way to measure things, but bodybuilders and powerlifters tend to train with slower reps. Olympic lifters definitely train with the faster reps. And you'll see a difference in the way they look, generally speaking. Now, yes, I know that there's some genetic polymorphisms that tend to make you better at one or the other, but there's definitely been crossovers. There's definitely been athletes. Sergio Oliva is an example of that. Sergio Oliva, bodybuilder in the 60s and 70s, was an Olympic lifter before he became a bodybuilder. And his style of training changed, and so did his physique as he changed. So my favorite argument- I think Marinovich is pretty muscular, but it was all fast twitch. So my favorite argument to make with this in regards to building muscle is that the one that's more novel will build the most muscle for you. Yeah. So if you are somebody who typically only trains in the slow rep range, and we're making that 4-2-2, right? So you train like a bodybuilder, and you always train that way, you'll see tremendous muscle gains by going to a 1-1-1. Oh, I agree. Let me caution people right now. if you've been strength training for years and you built a lot of muscle and you decide next week i'm going to start going one one one real careful yikes go real light yeah because you got a lot of muscle you got a lot of strength you're not used to moving quickly and this is injury city uh for for people tendons and joints yeah yeah or muscle tear yeah muscles so it's a skill that you got to slowly build yourself up to and there's also a reason why personal trainers almost never train one one one the risk factor is just very high strength training especially as you're pushing intensity you know is there's always a risk fact a risk of injury if you want to multiply that times 10 just do the same thing faster yeah so that's the big reason why but if you're an athlete like this is how you this is how you make your strength explosive this is explosive strength and explosive strength counts more than any other type of strength the best thing i ever did as a you know someone who identifies as like the bodybuilder type was moving away from the 4-2-2 train i trained that way for so long what'd you do is it just just uh high cleans or i mean i did a bunch of stuff if it's just even like a bench press explosive there's stuff that i would never have done in the past i was so the opposite at that all movements done in an explosive type of fashion you know my push presses i didn't do push presses till i hung out with just like i didn't do movements like that because you know that bodybuilders didn't train that way i didn't think that and i again i fell for the trap of hypertrophy training is four to two you know so like why would i ever i'm not trying to be an olympic lifter what do i care if i get but but simply moving out of that box and going oh what if i did train like a olympic lifter or power lifter for a while and see what happens i mean i saw some of the greatest muscle gains i've ever seen and so you just give me some ideas cool if you are a hypertrophy guy and you've never just experimented with some of your movements done in that and again i caution you but if you're an advanced lifter like i trust that you would be able to do that no problem like move to some of these you know explosive type movement and watch the gains come on yeah all right full range of motion this is probably the easiest one versus short range of motion uh there's no no comparison There are applications for short range of motion. High level competitive athletes. What I mean by high level is like the higher ages in high school and up. Like why LeBron James does quarter squats and it went viral. Yeah, that's right. That's right. But early athletes, full range of motion. But as you get more specialized, short range of motion is more applicable to athletics. Short range of motion can also be good if you're targeting a range of motion that you need help in. so if it's like at the bottom or if it's lockout or whatever otherwise it's always full range of motion the strength that you build uh really translates or comes from the range of motion you train so it'd be stupid for most people to try to build strength in anything other than the full range of motion uh and then the data does show full range of motion uh produces the most muscle growth so aesthetically speaking it's what you want it's almost always that right it's almost So it's almost always a very specific, whenever there's a case for short range of motion, it has to be a very specific athletic application or sticking point type application, right? I mean, I can't ever see- You'll see bodybuilders. Bodybuilders will do it sometimes where they're doing like the pumping reps and the kind of stretch position. Yeah, for sticking points. Yeah, well, no, bodybuilders, I think, do it because they pump that it does. It's novelty too, though. I mean, for the most part, they like to interrupt their normal training and do these shortened reps. But yeah, to your point, athletics, it actually can make a solid argument for that just because of the amount. If you look specifically of where we need to focus on generating the most force most effectively, why steer beyond that? Because this is where all the gold is. Let's stay there and emphasize it. And it's not just that, Justin, although that's a big part. The other part of it is when you're training a high-level athlete, what you don't want to do- Preservation. you also don't want to mess up their skill yep so if so some a basketball player has to kind of do a partial squat to jump and there's a risk of training full range of motion squats to where it starts to mess with their technique yeah so the so you're always strengthening their technique rather than giving them general strength otherwise things can kind of it's like we'd throw it off it's like taking a pro basketball player who has uh you know you movement patterns and i'm going to correct your movement patterns don't correct the movement patterns because they're so good with the movement patterns that if you correct them now you've changed everything it's the same thing like you know stretching and making sure you're super loose like you know it's like you need that tightness you need that rigidity to really create and and optimize your force direction by the way you know who has what bodybuilder has some of the best technique and range of motion i've ever seen chris bumstead have you seen his workouts his full he's got the fullest like a full range of motion a squeeze his technique is like flawless yeah it's like he's a personal trainer except he's a bodybuilder um all right last high intensity interval training this is hit cardio versus steady state uh it depends on what you know you bring up chris homestead and then you go right into that did you see it what happened to him though when he tried to incorporate sprints did he hurt himself yeah yeah of course pulled by a hammy like right away oh yeah of course it's a new skill yeah you're trying to develop yeah hit cardio uh burns more fat it burns more calories in a shorter period of time studies will show it preserves more muscle because it's explosive there's better athletic performance benefits yada yada yada here's the problem with hit cardio it's it doesn't most for most people yeah it's inappropriate yeah it requires its prerequisites are required that's right yes it's just too intense it burns them out risk factors you know that's how you really weigh this one out steady state works for everybody Yeah, I mean, this really depends on, in my opinion, what the client is seeking, right? Like, what's great about HIIT is that in a very short period of time, I can reap some solid cardiovascular benefits. So if I had a client who's just like, hey, I want to build a little bit of endurance, stamina, cardiovascular health, 12 minutes of HIIT cardio is a short window to do something like that. So it makes sense and that it would win for something. If we're talking about hypertrophies, body sculpting that direction, then steady state cardio all day long. It's a lower intensity, more, more overall movement. Also easier to implement throughout your day too. Instead of it doesn't have to be. It's recuperative as well. It gives you that muscle. Yes. So like these versus each other really to me, it has a lot to do with like, okay, what are you trying to accomplish here? because I could make an argument for hit for that, for specific things. And I can also obviously make an argument for that. But if we're talking about general get ripped, get in shaped aesthetics, like, yeah, steady state all day long. Yeah, totally. I got to tell you guys a funny thing my son did out to dinner the other day, which is just, you know, when little kids will do something that you want to get mad, but you kind of hide your face and laugh first. Yeah. Especially if it's super honest. Yes. Yeah, and you're like, ugh. Yeah, like you shouldn't have done that, but you got to hide your face. So we were at a restaurant. We're all eating out. And my wife bought these, like, they're like coloring books. But you don't color them with, like, crayons or markers. They come with these, like, brushes that you add water to. They're awesome. Do you use them? Yeah, yeah. Okay. And then when you paint with them, it's just water comes out. And then when the water touches the paper. Yeah. So when it touches the paper. It's the most brilliant thing they made for kids. The paper changes color. Okay. So they use the brush, and the paper itself changes color. It's really cool. Wow. So she bought these. And it's easy at a restaurant because you can just fill it up with the water from your cup and so my kids are coloring with this right and so my wife my son you know my my son Aurelius is walking around and he's coming back and painting and he walks over and gets some water and he walks over and I'm looking at him and I could tell he's like he's got the you know cheeks like like what's he doing and he looks at down his page and just spits a bunch of water it just spits all over the table hell of water and I knew his what I know was mentality he He wants to see what would happen. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. He's figuring out how this thing works. Dude, he just spit all over the table. Like, we're all eating, or trying to eat dinner. He just spit water all over the table. You know, it's like full restaurant, people around us. Exactly what we do. Like, Jessica and I picked up the menus. We're just cracking up real quick before we scold him for spitting on the table. He's just smearing it. Oh, yeah. But I know his head, you know. He's like, oh, I wonder, that's water? Trying to figure it out. Let me just spit on this. He's trying to figure it out. He's obviously pieced it together on how it works. He's a modern artist. You also got to be like, because I remember what it was like to be a little boy. So you got to make sure that you don't do this. You think to yourself, I shouldn't have to tell him to throw a napkin in the fire that's at the restaurant because I have a fire outside to be warm. But I'm like, no, you need to tell your five-year-old that. You actually have to say that. If you have a five-year-old, especially a little boy, you got to tell him, hey, don't throw any napkins or anything in that fire. because for sure he sees the fire. First thing that you're going to do. And it's what I did. I would have been like, let me throw a straw in there. Let me see. Oh, yeah. I was trying to find insects. You know, they make the Crayola markers like that too, right? Oh, you add water? No, they're actually built in. So they like all the colors and they white tips but it be red and then they come with certain books Yeah yeah yeah Yeah I mean I think it was one of the most brilliant Like that didn exist when we were kids And I remember as a kid marking up tables and marking things up. And I won't. Yeah, it doesn't mark anything. Have you seen the one where you take the markers, you put them in this device, you close it, and then it blows air through and it becomes like an airbrush? No. It's also Crayola. So you'll airbrush with a regular marker. You put a regular marker in there. All this innovation I missed. there's a lot of really there's a really cool i saw i showed you guys too like the the leapfrog one for reading way back when where you you push the pen down and as it goes over the words it reads it to him so you were let's see you were probably probably i bet you doug and justin were big coloring book guys oh yeah i was i colored everything huge all you guys were my my buddy did a thing for the 80s 80s starter pack for when you were sick his said uh gatorade saltine crackers Price is Right and all of that bro so mine was almost like that so mine was 7 Up Saltine Crackers Price is Right and Coloring Book my mom always brought me a coloring book whenever I was sick like literally Saltine Crackers 7 Up and then I would color and watch Price is Right at home from school wow that is the recipe add a little tussin in there yeah that's an 80's that's an 80's kid like home from school Price is Right this is how you know I'm ethnic right because mine was ginger ale but I think some people have ginger ale here yeah pastina So pastina is these tiny little pastas. Oh, yeah, yeah. The little- That Italians give- Like a saltine cracker. Kids whenever they're sick. Yeah. And then she would just let me watch TV all day, which is cool. Yeah. Which was Price is Right. Price is Right was on at that time. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So all you guys were big. I never- I was not a big color. I would color, but- I still like color. I would turn it into a war, you know? So like there would just be body parts and whatever flying on fire and then- What was in your head, bro? What was going on? You know, if you were a kid today, they would have sent you to therapy. Yeah, they would. They would have been really concerned. What movie is that? Super bad? Is it super bad? What movie is it where the kids are like, yeah. Well, that's where he draws all the dicks. Yeah, yeah. It's so awesome. That came later. That was like when I was a teenager and I was just bored. I was like in the DMV class, especially it was Driver's Ed. You're in there and I'm like, oh, my God. This is so boring. You're probably really good at drawing those. Oh, yeah. Yeah, just all the little details. I still like the color when Max has projects where he has to color I always do it with him I hate it my wife will color with the kids all the time it's like satisfying it's meditative for sure for me that's why my wife does it I used to draw when I was a little too did you guys ever draw I used to read stories I was better at drawing I wrote all kinds of crazy stories I was good I'm not anymore yeah so i so my mom has like a whole bunch of stuff when i was like in you know elementary junior high even all the way to high school or where i drew a lot of really good pictures and i've tried to sit down and draw again i just i'd not know where like i was better as a kid than i am now it's because of the drugs speaking of speaking of which you're bro i'm telling you right now dude i i this is like i don't even know if this is a condition can we say the moodies can We just say being moody is a condition. Can we say that, Doug? I would say that's a condition. Because Organifi's happy drops have cured Adam's moody. It's the new tagline. Organifi's happy drops cures moody. Just balanced you out. Gets rid of the moody. If you come in and eat that, he's still going to get mad. It's like candy. That's why. It tastes like candy. It's nostalgic for me. Well, hey, all joking aside. Try it with your wife. If you look up, Doug, you can look this up. Saffron as an SSRI. It's like one of the most studied ones. It is a natural SSRI. It will naturally raise serotonin in your system by inhibiting to a extent the reuptake of serotonin. So when your body releases serotonin, it'll absorb a certain amount of it back up. And so SSRIs are drugs, right? And what they do is they reduce the reuptake of increasing circulating serotonin, which gives you the calming effects, the mood lifting effects, all that stuff. Saffron is a, let's see, it's a, well, potential SSRI alternative, although it does increase serotonin levels, so they're calling it a natural SSRI. I wonder if I sneak this in my youngest breakfast. Is he moody? Yeah, he's so angry in the morning. Really? What is, like, serotonin, melatonin, like, what's the, is there an inverse relationship? Are they connected? Like, if you have low levels of one, does it tend to affect you? Wow, what a great question. What made you ask that? Well, I was just thinking about, like, what I've been working on with my supplementation at night, getting better sleep, all those things. If there's some sort of inverse or... Too much melatonin can cause a depressive effect. Yeah, and so I was wondering if it would... I think there's a connection. You should look that up, a connection or relationship. I think super high, if you were to take a bunch... A direct precursor product relationship where the brain's... The pineal gland converts serotonin into melanoma, melatonin, especially in the dark. All right. What a great question. Third eye. Look at this car. You're reading stuff, not even talking. No, I'm not. You hide it in your car magazine. All these supplements are kicking in. But if it's not knowing much, you don't say you got a lot of questions. Shut up. Shut up, dude. Hey, hey, listen, I got it. I got it. So, you know, we did the whole thing with Scott. Yes. That was, it's been so good for our staff and our families. so the newest one for me uh i bought the three jars we actually haven't even oh i haven't done that yeah so i bought the three jars i haven't implemented explain that again well so it's uh save uh invest and um a give so those are the three jars it's like so what i asked him was because some of the the money stuff like his like gigs that he teaches is kind of more towards i'd say your guys's kids age it's like max isn't quite at the age yet where he can understand for jobs Yeah, paying for jobs. So I'm like, so how can I start to introduce it? And he told me, he's like, three jars. There's save, there's invest, and then there's give. And then as you get him to do little things, or he gets gifted money, you can teach him how to separate all that stuff. Well, he's accumulated quite a bit of money over the last four or five years or whatever, just from like tooth fairy, birthdays, things like that. And so he's up to like 100 and something bucks. And we're like, OK, we're trying to start this. And so we're at the gate. He's just like, I want to buy this Lego. And Katrina and I are part of this is like, okay, hey, what we need to do to help him start to learn this relationship is just when he wants to buy something like this, like let's help teach him how he needs to save for it and use his money or work, whatever. And so unless it's not his birthday, right? So there's no reason. It's just a, it's like just a hundred dollar Lego. And so Katrina is like, okay, well, let's, let's see how much money you have. And you know, so he's got like, he had like 110 or something in the Lego was like 105 or something. something like that and so he's like awesome i have enough like let's go buy it you know and i'm like oh i'm like okay i said well if you do that then it's gonna be a really long time till you can get another one he's like i'll just figure i'll figure out how to make more money you know i'm like okay so this is our first i have no idea how this is gonna go because we literally just spent all of his money already that he had already kind of saved up on his first lego so i'm really interested to see oh i'll predict i'll predict your kid is not impulsive i think he'll be perfectly fine yeah it'll be really good at like waiting and working and you've told me you've put things up and said yeah yeah yeah whereas my so my my daughter will if she sees a toy she's supposed to get by getting so many stars yeah i mean every day she's gonna cry for it even though she knows she only has got three stars so some kids are a little bit more yeah it was funny like go through this with because i told you guys a long time ago with everett like he had this monster goal of trying to get a pinball machine, you know, when he was young and I was just like, those are really expensive buddy. Like, I mean, I love that you have like a lofty goal, but like, let's do like smaller, but I was like, you know, if you want to start saving and we kind of went through that whole process and he got pretty far to the point where it was like a quarter of the way there. And I was like, Oh, but I'm like, once you get to half, you know, I'll start kind of matching. but we never got past that quarter. And so he learned that process. And now it's like, okay, I'm going to start. Everything now is like a smaller goal, and he's like an achievable thing, and then he's going to build off of that. But he had to kind of go through the pain of that. That's why I'm letting it go this way because I'm like, it's going to be a long time before he can save $100 again. I'm like, maybe we should get a small. No, I want that one. I'm like, okay. Maybe one of his uncles in here will give him $100. Yeah. when we first were starting to try and teach him how to like make money like he was a little bit younger and all he could do was color and so and he's all the family's such a sucker so he colored 20 bucks i sold 10 bucks 20 bucks sold all the grandparent that's how part of how you got that so my wife and i are we're aligned on a lot of things but one of the things that we can work on is when it comes to giving the kids money for jobs we're so ridiculous bro they'll do a job and it'll be like 50 bucks. What? Yeah, dude. You go to the trash, it's like $50. For the teenagers. It's for the teenagers. Well, we had a... But it's like, they'll do something like, like my daughter will cook dinner for us one night and this includes prep, cooking, you know, cleaning up or my niece will like break down boxes and do something else. So it's like a job that'll take like two to three hours. Oh, hey, that's not, I mean, cook. It's like 50 bucks. Hey, cook, clean and prep, all that. That's a... You think 50 bucks is okay for that? I mean, it's a little high for a kid just because it sets the barcode out, but that's not crazy. Okay. All right, I feel better. It's not like taking out the trash for 50 bucks. That's ridiculous. I feel better, though. Because, I mean, just the hourly on that alone, you figure minimum wage would be almost that. Okay, so I did that math in my head. Yeah. But I'm also like, you're not getting a real job, though. No, no. This is your dad. No, no. I mean, you should have done it a little cheaper, but I don't think that's so crazy egregious. You know what I thought was egregious that we did that we got screwed in? And it was like, we had a, we, we, Max went through this phase just like a month ago where we like lost hella teeth. And I just don't have cash on me all the time like that. And so like, you know, we had some couple of dollar bills laying around for the first few. Well, no, it was a 20, but it was just like, yeah, it was like a one. The first one was like a $1 bill or a couple of dollars. We, you know, we had laying around and then we had like no singles. I'm like, I have no, we have nothing. I had 20s and hundreds at the house. That was all I had. And like, and it was late at night. It was like 8 o'clock at night. I'm like, how am I going to go get any small bills? And so, yeah, so you did get one tooth for $20. I remember the first time I got paid by my parents. We're old school, right? So you just did work with her. But when I was maybe 13 or 12, I think it was 13, I used to go to work with my dad all the time, probably since the age of 8, where he would take me in the summers to work. But I didn't really work. He was just – now looking back, by the way, this gets me choked up because I'm doing that Better Man thing at the church and we're talking about our dads and I'm having all these realizations. My dad, he, the way he connects, cause he didn't really connect with his dad, but the way he connected was the way he learned how to connect, which was through work. Okay. Now as a kid, I just thought my dad was taking me to work. Now as an adult, while I was talking about like, this was my dad's way or attempt at connecting with his son. He would just take me to work. So eight years old, you know, every summer I'd go to work with him. And as a kid, you know, really doing things, grab me the hammer, grab me this. Yeah, yeah. And I'd go play outside or something like that. But right around 13, I could actually do some work. And there was this first summer when my cousin and I went to go work for my dad and my uncle. And we were legit, like, mixing cement, you know, carrying the buckets of sand in, you know, cleaning the tools or whatever. I remember that towards the end of that summer, I'm in the work van with my dad. And, you know, by this time I'm working, so I'm exhausted. I'm sitting there. And my dad, you know, he looks at me and goes, so what do you do? I'm like, yeah. And he goes, he gave me a cat. and I didn't know what to do. He gave me this wad of cash. I'm like, no, I can't take it. He's like, no, no, you earn it. And I took this money. And I bought a bike. I bought like a BMX bike. Oh, yeah? Yeah. But I'll never forget, like he gave me this. I didn't expect it. Yeah, yeah. And I wanted to give it back to my dad. I'm like, I can't accept this or whatever. Oh, wow. I took it. Yeah, I don't think I, I don't, I'm trying to remember. I think one summer, but most, all the times that I went to work with my dad, I didn't get paid. It was like, that was just like coming to work type of deal. You're telling me. Yeah, I didn't start getting paid. Until you had your own job. Yeah, until we figured it out. I figured out the lawnmowing gig. I used to have to mow our own lawn at home. That was part of chores. And I wasn't like I got paid for it. How old were you when you started doing that? Were you 13? 14. 14. And you were just doing the neighborhoods? Yeah, we went to the... My buddy and I both did it together. We made flyers and our moms... Like photocopied flyers? Yeah, yeah. Oh, wow. A&J Lawnmowing Service. Oh, you had a company name? Of course you did. I didn't have an LLC, but we had a name. You know what I'm saying? You know the irony of that? Do you have a logo? Yeah, of course. Of course you do. And you know the logic was that even though we never made the yellow pages, it was like A and J would be on the first in the yellow pages. Oh, my God, bro. You were like that back then already. Yeah, yeah. So we thought that out, and we literally just had our moms drop us off in the rich neighborhoods on the other side of town. My mom had a minivan, so we just had to take out the backseat, put the lawnmowers and all the edgers inside the lawnmower. we would unload them down the block and then we would push them down the street, walk up to the doors, knock on door to door and then hand them their flyer and say hey we will mow, edge your front, back lawn, whatever you want to do and we would just, we'd get customers that way and then eventually that turned into like hey I need my fence stained would you guys do that and would you so we did all these kind of odd jobs but it was 10 bucks a lawn and you know I mean for a kid on the weekends like I made good money in high school until i got like a real job where i was then once i got my license then i worked a factory job that was really early in the morning so i'd do that and that was assembly line stuff i've told you guys about before and then uh eventually the dairy and then the dairy was my first real doug how old were you with your when you had your first job were you young too uh 16 was actually my first real job what'd you do i went to boston and i worked for my uncle has a had an automobile repair shop. Oh, wow. You had a legit job. Yeah, I was out there. For like the summer? Like for the summer. And you know, if Boston is super humid, and I'd be outside because they didn't have enough room inside, so I'd be taking off like pulling out spark plugs and... Do you remember what you got paid back then? Oh, maybe two something an hour? Yeah. I was four and a quarter, so you had to be way less. But I will say, after that summer, I knew I didn't want to do that. And so the next summer, my brother and i we started a business it was 17 at 17 so we had a friend that had purchased a pressure washer and a van and a ladder and he was going around to the neighbors and uh cleaning their roofs because there's you know seattle right yeah and there's moss that builds up on these cedar shake roofs and so we went out we bought a van 1966 dodge you were 17 you bought a van my brother and i did so my brother's six years older than i am so we bought this 1966 dodge van that like was a death trap the steering was super loose it was horrible we bought a ladder we bought a pressure washer and we went around knocked on doors all summer got jobs but the beautiful thing is we got paid like sometimes two three hundred dollars a job wow yeah for some back then yeah so that's how i paid for college is doing that in the summertime you paid for all your college by washing roofs yeah wow that was my first entrepreneurial endeavor i mean that's a bit of a home run right out of the gates it was it was yeah yeah it spoiled me for life yeah you know there was something about like uh i bet justin can relate to this because i think you're you still are like some of this like i when i was working the dairy and i mean i was like talk about a shit job i mean literally i had to get i had rubber boots and full jumpsuit coveralls that were just covered this is before school yes before at like four o'clock in the morning right but i i loved it there was something about like something that was getting my hands dirty and hard work and like that i had to get out of a full jumpsuit of shit you know i mean it was just something about i hated yeah there was something about that that i i enjoyed and i felt like i earned every penny of what i did for the day i think that's what it was more bragging rights and like to like I prided myself in doing stuff that most people wouldn't do you know maybe that's what it was how old were you Justin what's your first one well so I mean I was like 10 when I started like dog walking business but it was like I I walked all the neighbor's dogs and then I fed all their animals and so I was just saying yeah was that your idea or your did your dad's it was well yeah this this lady approached me I was at like the post office and we were down there and she was like hey you know because she recognized me from the neighborhood and was asking me if i could ever like walk her dogs for her and so i just started doing that and she paid me like a 50 cent piece and i thought it was so cool i was like oh i want to get a bunch of these ended up getting like 300 worth wow 50 cent pieces every time i made 50 cents and then like somebody else heard about it and then they recommended me and then i honestly like my neighborhood i was like the whipping boy like everybody like i was pulling weeds for everybody i was washing cars like you name it like i did everything you know what's crazy if a 10 year old was randomly walking dogs right now somebody would call authorities from the parent if you just saw a random 10 year old doing a bunch of work by themselves nobody does that anymore so stupid yeah yeah so i started out doing that and then i was like eventually started working for my dad and he was in like the wind wood window business and uh so i would go on jobs uh reglazing windows and replacing doors and then was responsible for the warehouse and like unloading and offloading trucks from yeah 4 a.m till like 5 p.m and i was just exhausted you know and get home and just would crash uh but then i from there it was all construction jobs like literally like i my dad had me shadow a few guys who would just like i told you that one story where i was like this guy was like rebuilding this whole house and like i was underneath the house and he's teaching me about plumbing and i had to replace a pipe and uh immediately it was the sewer line and i had just old just sludgy shit just fall on my arm and it was like i i literally got out and i left the job. I'm like, I'm never doing this again. So plumbing was out, but yeah, I was, I learned, yeah, like electrical, I learned roofing and learn framing. Uh, I mean, you name it, dude, I pretty much stemmed a stern, but again, like I, I built a deck for my, for my dad, he used to hire me to do things around the house for that kind of stuff in a shed and, and then yeah, got busy with football. That's awesome. I did. I was washing dishes 15. My, my grandfather's old italian buddy who owned a restaurant angelo's restaurant san jose it doesn't it's not there anymore and i'd be in the back hustling washing dishes and eavesdropping on you guys both were like connected to family something like that or you and i were like outside like doing something like my family didn't my family did although i did my my uncle i painted for my uncle so i did do one summer i worked as we're talking about something like oh that's right i forgot i did that i built fences i did i did painting i would i would take anything i could oh yeah once i got to a place where i was making money yeah i wouldn't say no like i would like if any anybody who had jobs or anything like that and i remember always begging my my boss for overtime like i'll come on the weekend and i'll work you should hear the conversation i won't say who they are because i don't want to but like teenagers in my and like that i know okay yeah and we'll talk about getting work oh well i don't want to do that it's too early and i don't really want to do that i don't want to work in that kind of environment and i just like i don't want to pull my hair out like are you kidding me yeah when i was a kid you just offered me a job i would take i would take anything that you would pay i'll do it what do you i don't even know what you're offering yet i'll just do it yeah but you hear these complaints it's like well i think the common denominator is all of our parents didn't have a lot of money that's true that was the only way that's the only way we could get money yeah you know to the construction site uh as far as construction sites are concerned for like a teenage boy boy you become a man real quick you learn a lot you learn a lot you see a lot you hear a lot the joke they treat you like you're a grown man like as a 14 year old boy on the construction site i am a grown man now that's how i'm treating i have a good story so um uh my dad allowed this and he was like um i went out on a job that was like far i had to stay like in a hotel like the the guy i was working with um you know drove the van and like we had to go to the sites and like replace the windows and all that stuff so like you know we're going to get something to eat and he's like i just want to make a stop real quick and so he leaves me in the van he's like you got to stay in here though like you can't and i i was like waiting in the van and it was he was in like a like a titty bar what he made you wait so i had to wait there the whole time while he's in there throwing dollar bills wow i told my dad was so mad when i got back and i told him but yeah it was just so funny but that's Again, I was like, what are you doing? I was having this conversation with my wife because she's like, you don't care what bathroom we're near. You can just use the bathroom. She needs a clean, like, certain bathroom. And in fact, I'll wait until I get home. And I don't care. She's like, why don't you care? I'm like, I worked construction as a kid. Like, the port-a-potties, you learn how to use a port-a-potty? I don't care. You can put me anywhere. I don't care. Those were the worst. Those were the worst, dude. You go in there after the big construction guy had his, what do they call it, the DoorDash burrito? Oh, yeah. DoorDash burrito. That's where I learned that, too. People don't even know what we're talking about. They think it's you order DoorDash. DoorDash burrito is you buy a frozen burrito in the summer. Put it on the dash of the car. Put it on the dashboard. By the time it's time, it's time. The cheese melted. Yeah, wrapped in foil. They heat up right through that glass. Built-in microwave. Or the concrete, the 50-pound concrete bag over your head. Can you hold it for 10 seconds? Oh, bro. Yeah, yeah. That's the thing everybody had to do. Yeah, yeah. Can you hold this for 10 seconds over your head? Yeah, I could do that. Hey, look, I'll say- With an exacto knife. Yeah. All over you. Oh. Everybody. Initiated. Initiated. That happened to everybody. I think that's like a universal thing in construction. Yeah, dude. If you were a young kid, you did that. They got me with that. I had to work the rest of the day with the dry concrete all over my hair. That's a good time. I was going to ask you, Justin, because before the show started, I know, was it last week when you were starting to get a cold? Yeah, it was all around, and my son had it and brought it into the house. And I was feeling a little scratchiness. And usually we'll just do hot water and lemon, and then sometimes some honey in there. And I was like, oh, we have that Manuka honey. The Manukora. The Manukora. Manuka is the name of the type of honey that's in there. Manukora is the brand. that we work with yeah so i i i was like oh i'll use it this time and um it was it was great i mean totally coated my throat i felt like it felt great but at the same time like the next day is when i i noticed like it was pretty much gone it was weird so the the compound that's uh very high in the type of honey amanucora i can't remember the name of it doug's gonna have to look it up mgo there you go mgo it's antimicrobial very powerfully antimicrobial yeah to the point where they've used it in studies for wounds. Yeah, it heals wounds. I read that. Yes. So better for colds than just like your standard honey then. So here's, yes. So honey in general has got antimicrobial, but this compound is super antimicrobial. So lots of viruses replicate in the throat or in the nasal passage. And so that's why like zinc lozenges will work in studies. It's not that zinc. Now, yes, if your zinc is low and you take zinc, that's better for immune system. but what zinc does when it coats your throat is it prevents the replication of the virus yeah so the the monocora honey blocks it monocora honey antimicrobial so it goes in your throat must have been that yeah because i mean yeah i probably it was all around in and everybody else was still like complaining i'll add that to my my stack because i noticed a huge difference on the zinc lozenges like that's that's something you got me on a long time ago and i always if i'm on it right away i always noticed you putting the monocora in your yogurt i put it in my yogurt i just this weekend i did a post for them um because i used it for my baby back ribs so my baby back ribs you coat it and then you know so when i so part of the my recipe is like i do my rub i smoke for uh three hours after that i wrap in foil and when i wrap in foil i do uh brown sugar butter and drizzle honey and then you wrap it seal it and then i i basically cook it for another two hours in the foil and then I peel out and then I smoke for one more hour after that and then then oh that awesome yeah yeah it was really good i have a i don know if he a bodybuilder or whatever he like a muscle building influencer andreas may have can you look him up for me i've heard that name because i've sent you some videos okay yeah i don't know if i've seen i haven't seen a mutant like this in a long time bro and when i mean mutant i mean in every category you think of he looks like a mutant muscle wise he has strength like a mutant this guy does things that i've never seen before he's like a 300 something pound six-pack abs jack dude that does one-arm pull-ups oh my yeah he does one-arm pull-ups i don't know if i've seen he'll bench press for reps over 600 pounds he's this russian dude in his 20s that's him look at it look at Is he not AI enhanced? No, he's real, dude. Really? Yes, bro. Larry Wheels went to go hang out with him. And Larry Wheels is like, I've never seen anybody as big and wild. One of those guys that looks as strong as they are. Yeah, like he literally looks. You should see. Is that real? Yes, bro. There's pictures of him when he was a teenager. And he's crazy looking. What is 65 centimeters? How many? 65 centimeter arms. What is that? I don't know. What is 65 centimeters? 20-something, what does that say, 58-centimeter forearms? Wow. And even his hands are big. Look at his hands. Yeah. That's 25.59 inches. 25-inch arms. Yeah, and what's his forearms? That's more impressive to me. 58 centimeters. How big are his forearms? What is that? 22.83. He's got 22-inch forearms, bro. That's crazy. So if you go on his Instagram, because typically you'll see a freak that either looks like a freak or can do freak-like feats of strength. I mean, he's got a- This guy does it all. He has a small waist for how big he is, too. Look at him next to Larry Wheels doing arm wrestling. He was way bigger. Look at him. Oh, he's gigantic. And he's like 20-something years old, dude. Huge hands, crazy build. He's only 20-something? He's like in his 20s, dude. I wonder if he has like giantism or something. Well, I think he's on a lot of drugs, too, but he's got crazy- Well, I mean, yeah. He's 6'5". he's 6'5"? 350 pounds. I wonder if he has giant teeth. Bro, 6'5"? 350 pounds? I've always wondered what Tony Robbins would look like if he was a power player. You know what I'm saying? Can you find him doing one-arm pull-ups? Just type his name, one-arm pull-up. Tony Robbins just sounds like enormous. Yeah. Imagine if he trained a guy like this and took a bunch of... How bad do you think Tony Robbins snores? I bet he snores so bad when he sleeps. He probably has overcome that somehow. Yeah. His personality. He's not going to let anything go. Well, you use CPAP or whatever. No, dude, there's videos of this guy doing things that I have, like squats, bench press, like curls. Yeah, I have not seen this guy. I've seen him do good, like nice-looking 130-pound dumbbell curls. Like, he's insane. He lives in Russia. He doesn't go anywhere else, I think, from what I've seen. Yeah. He's 20-something. He's already- Yeah, we should look up his age just to double-check. but it's the most impressive, crazy thing I've ever seen. 26. Yeah, he's 26 years old. I don't know if he has his own Instagram. Yeah, I was going to say, he looks... It's Larry Wheels. We're not finding an Instagram for him. It's all right. Yeah, if you go through his Instagram... He's 26. I found it. He literally looks like he's mid to late 40s. Yeah, dude. Yeah, he's a little old and old. A little jacked. But, I mean, that's terrifying. You know what's crazy? Someone that big and that freakish and that insane strength, Like, he could just kill you so fused. Yeah, he was pulverizing. Look at that bench press. 310 kilogram bench press, bro. What is that? With a pause? 30 something or 30, yeah. Oh, it's a clean bench press. Look at that pull up that he's doing vertically, like a gymnast. With a plate on his lap. That's so crazy. Oh, there's a plate on his lap? Yeah, he's got a plate on his lap. He could do like crazy calisthenic stuff too, which is like not typical. No, dude. That's what I'm saying. 120. 120 pound or 140 pound preacher curl yeah yeah dude that's crazy yeah unreal i've never seen this guy you've never seen him no i've never seen him yeah dude yeah we have different algorithms hey 30 reps curls 190 have you noticed hey have you noticed how much that's changed what do you mean like so not just maybe three years ago uh it would be less likely that someone this big this famous one uh that we all wouldn't have seen just because everyone would see it but the way the the algorithms become more and more specific to you that this has not made my algorithm at all i have not and so it's like there's we that's how much the algorithm has changed just in the last couple years is even someone like this who's uber famous probably but because that's not the content i really watch and fall i don't i've never came across him whatsoever whenever i see uh like a crazy feat of strength i tend to watch because that to me is just yeah it's looking like a bodybuilder like whatever but if you're doing some kind of crit so i saw this guy doing one-arm pull-ups i'm like listen typically a guy that does one-arm pull-ups when you look like that yeah doesn't look like yeah i don't i don't watch this stuff because it makes me depressed it just makes me feel type of 0.001 i don't know why you watch this it's like this is like hey this is like you for you this is like us telling the bikini competitor girl like stop following all these other supermodel chicks and stuff like shots fired yeah bro it's like that's what that is for What are you doing? Fire, bro. You got to see when he, what does that say? He was a rapidly growing teenager? Yeah, but he has giantism, bro. Oh, look. Look at what he, oh, bro. He was 17 years old. Look at that video right there. On the left, 17. Yeah. He must have giantism, right? He's got something. He's got something, dude. He was really muscular even back then. Well, there you go, guys. Genetics. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Try as hard as you want. Good luck to you. Element is an electrolyte powder that has enough sodium to actually make a difference. Here's the deal. Electrolyte powders typically don't have enough sodium. In other words, you're wasting your time. Element, 1,000 milligrams per serving. Why do you need that? Well, if you don't eat a lot of heavily processed foods, if you like to work out a lot, if you eat a low-carb diet especially, you'll need that for muscle contractions, athletic performance, mental clarity. Here's some of the symptoms of not having enough electrolytes. Headaches, muscle cramps, fatigue, sleeplessness, and lots of other symptoms that can cause things like injuries and inflammation. Element, the best electrolyte powder in the world. No sugar, no artificial sweeteners, no calories. Go to drinklmnt.com forward slash mind pump. That link, you'll get a free sample pack of the most popular drink mixed flavors with any purchase. Go check it out. Our first caller is Jesse from Alberta. What's up, Jesse? How you doing, Jesse? Hey, guys. How are you? Good. Good, dude. What's happening? No, first I just want to say thanks, guys. I've listened to you for years. I think you do a great job and you give great advice and I appreciate your transparency and what you guys relay. So that's, that's really positive. My question is, so kind of in COVID it started, you know, I've always worked out, but I've kind of got some is better than more has got to be better. And I've kind of transitioned in that way where I've got to the point now where I lift about five to six days a week, structured cardio, at least half an hour a day type thing, if not more. And I tack on about 30,000 steps a day for the past couple of years. on average. So just wanting to scale back a bit. And also too, I eat a lot, you know, four to 5,000 calories a day, but I do like to eat. So I'm kind of in one of those mindsets where if I scale back the exercise and walking, then I have to scale back the eating. But I feel I could show up a bit better for life if I tailored it back a little bit, but just kind of stuck in that mindset a little bit. One of your guys' advice on that. Yeah. Good question, Jesse. So what's, So explain a little bit as to why you're considering scaling back. You said you might be able to show up to life better. What do you mean by that? Sometimes I can get, I think, a little bit fatigued, a little bit more than, especially once I get to the evening. I'm a little more tired than I otherwise would be. Probably could show up a little bit better for work sometimes if I wasn't doing quite as much. So it's one of those things where I do want to scale back a little bit, not crazy, but get rid of a few aches and pains and stuff like that. What do you, what do you, uh, just curious, 25 to 30,000 steps is a lot. The only few people I had that were doing that were like refs or had jobs or they were moving like crazy. What do you, what do you do to get 30,000 steps? Um, well, I work part time. I'm an accountant. So I just, I walk a lot. Um, a lot of my cardio, like elliptical, some running stair master get steps too. And then just walk a lot. Wait, as an accountant? No, no. As an accountant, I sit at a desk, but outside of that, I walk a lot. So you make a lot of time to walk. Yeah, you have to be. Okay. Yeah, that's a lot. And so I'll just paraphrase or kind of put it in different words. Let me know if you agree. You're thinking you might get better life quality if you scale back a little bit or you're considering that. Exactly, yeah. Okay. And your fear is if you reduce that, what's the fear? That he ought to change his diet a lot. Yeah, exactly. It's kind of a reward. Like I'm a hard work kind of discipline type of guy. So if I put in the hard work and kind of earn it, then there's that dopamine reward, so to speak, in terms of the food that I get as a reward. So then I have to scale that back. And it's, you know, sometimes it's a little bit daunting to think of it that way. Gotcha. And growing up, were you overweight, underweight, athletic? No, pretty athletic. I've kind of just maintained my weight. I mean, I was a little bit 180 at the tops. Now I'm about 160. So nothing too crazy in terms of fluctuations. All right. So what you're saying is, I mean, it's a great question. Very valid. You're very disciplined. So I'll paint a worst case scenario for you. All right. Worst case scenario, you cut your training way down into what would be considered appropriate and effective, which would probably look like four days a week of strength training and cutting out the cardio. And if you want to keep the steps up, that's fine. But I'd probably cut that too. But let's just say you cut out the cardio, maintain your steps, and you're only strength training four days a week. and let's paint a worst case scenario. Yeah. Worst case scenario, you gain, you know, eight pounds of body fat. Yeah. Do you think, now I know the answer to this because you seem pretty disciplined, but do you think you'd be able to just go back to what you were doing before to lose the eight pounds? Yeah. Okay. So that's worst case scenario. Now let me tell you what will probably happen. You'll build more muscle, get a faster metabolism, and have no problem eating as much as you are now. Yeah. So you'll do less work and get the same result. Yeah. in terms of body fat percentage-wise, but you'll actually have more muscle strength and energy. Yeah, you're burning so much with your activity that you're not allowing some of those calories to get partitioned over to building you some more muscle, so you'll probably build some muscle. Yeah. So if you were to lay off, and I mean, I'm assuming you hit protein intake, you're good with that, and then you just enjoy occasional things on top of that. And I think if you make sure you hit your protein intake in a more appropriate strength training program and reduce the cardio-like salzang, you'll probably, I think at the worst-case scenario, you go up maybe a couple percent in body fat, maybe. But you build muscle. I think you go up to like 170. Yeah, I was just going to say that. I think a guy like you following a good, appropriate strength training program, reducing some of the activity, keep your food the same, I'd say I would probably predict that you gain eight to 10 pounds of muscle pretty quickly. yeah okay but if i'm wrong uh then you just go back to what you were doing before and it's all good and you experienced it and now you know i don't think that'll happen though i think i think what's happening right now is you're you're kind of uh pushing the limits of what you can do yeah uh which is okay uh you seem okay uh but the thing that's nagging at you is am i doing more than i need to and is it actually a detriment which i understand and the only way to know that for sure is a try it yeah yeah gotta experiment with it for a while see how it works yeah so i i would put you on a different strength training program uh and i would have you cut the cardio out keep everything else the same let's see what happens i think what'll happen you're just gonna gain muscle yeah it'd probably be a good idea um i don't know how if you got like a place where you can go get a hydrostatic way or dexa scan or get a body fat test um so you have because what what might happen is the weight gain may mess with your head, like make you think that you're putting on fat when maybe you're not. And so you have like something that's non-biased that you can look at and just say, hey, you know what? I'm going to stick to this plan. Guys gave me a MAPS program to follow. I'm going to cut out my cardio, change nothing else, see what happens in two months, and then literally just test again in two months. And like Sal said, you know, make peace with the worst that could happen. You put on eight pounds of body fat, which you know you can ramp right back up and get off if you want. or maybe what happens is you put 10 pounds of muscle on, which is what I think will happen. And you're pretty confident with the amount of calories you're eating. That's the number you've tracked before. Oh, yeah, I tracked it, and I'm very diligent in tracking. And it was between 4,000 and 5,000, and that's being really strict with my tracking. So when I don't, I'm not as strict with tracking. It's a little bit more than that because I eat the same thing every day pretty much. Okay. By the way, like 10% body fat looks great. Most people feel better. most men feel better closer to 12 yeah stronger less joint pain testosterone levels tend to respond better not everybody uh but just so you know that i see your age is 43 yeah you probably would feel more energy higher libido less pain at a slightly higher body but just to give an example jesse okay so you're doing 30 000 steps a day yeah 30 minutes of cardio day six days a week of strength training i'll use my i'll use myself as an example not because we're the same person just give you an idea. I do, and I'm by the way, I'm not ideal. I need to do more of some of the other stuff that you're doing. Uh, but I do zero cardio. My steps are probably 4,000 a day because we sit here all day long. If I'm lucky, I strength train about four days a week and I eat as much as you do. And I sit, yeah. And I sit right around, I don't know if I had to guess, I'm probably around 10% body fat. Okay. So, uh, there's just different ways to do it. Uh, now I'd probably be healthier if I included, and I know this, if I include a worker, so I'm not saying that what I'm doing is idea just give an idea that that's the other extreme right you're on one extreme he's on the other extreme of eating that many calories but you can both be 10 body fat one looks like somebody who is very lean because they do a lot of cardio the other one looks very muscular because they do no cardio you probably want to land somewhere in the middle yeah yeah and be in a really good place i tell you what i could send you a program uh where you'd be in the gym about three days a week yeah uh so and then you do no cardio keep everything else the same and give it i don't Give it like a month or two and see what happens. My prediction is your strength is going to go through the roof. You're going to get real strong, get good pumps, and you'll start to build muscle. My struggle with no cardio is so my dad and grandpa both died early from Alzheimer's. So the cardio aspect, it's kind of tough to give that away because I do believe there's some independent benefits with cardio and brain health. Do you guys find that? Do it once a week. Do it once a week too. Hold on a second. So here's the deal. So look at the data on lots of activity. and chronic health conditions. And you'll actually see, so there's a curve here. So on this end, you have like no activity, bad diet, Alzheimer's, obesity, it's all up here. You're on the other extreme. Then you get, then you start to, restorative. Yeah, you start to hit those nice longevity amounts. Everything goes way down. Then at the other end, when it gets too high, you actually get higher rates of other things because of the damage, the constant oxidative damage on the body. Do you have any mobility practice or anything you're including with that? No, but that's a good idea to include the mobility because then I can still get to the gym, feel I'm doing something, but it's not as stressful. That's my concern is just like you're a busy person, you're disciplined. There's no need for you to cut out all disciplines. We just need to reprioritize it and also make it more restorative so you actually recover fully. And as far as Alzheimer's is concerned, you're doing more than enough. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, and strength training is actually in the data is actually the best thing you could do. All activity is good, but strength training is actually the only thing that's been shown to stop the progression of Alzheimer's. They call it type 3 diabetes because it's probably an insulin resistance component. Building muscles, like, that fixes that. So here's what we could do. Are you okay with functional type strength training or do you like bodybuilding style? I like it all. Oh, okay, mass performance. Mass performance will have you in the gym five days a week. but three days a week is strength training two days a week is mobility and by the way that program actually scales you up into kind of like endurance training towards it so yeah you'll like it yeah so follow it the way it's laid out do the mobility days and and my my goal for you would be get a body fat test right now and then do it in two months and then just watch what happens yeah yeah i'll send that to you dude and just keep eating the same thing yeah same thing same thing we just cut out the cardio and remember now you're gonna be you're in the gym still five days a week right so you're going to be lifting like traditional lifting three days a week two days are going to be mobility and on those mobility days i'm okay with you getting on the treadmill and going for a walk or really or low intensity elliptical like real low like just to where you could have cardio just no like high no no hard cardio right now heart rate like yeah and and stick to that and watch what happens yeah awesome yep okay guys thanks i really appreciate it yeah you got it you think we can have you back on in a few months i'd love to see the before and after Yeah, I'd love to hear too. Yeah, you know what? I think that would keep me accountable then and not trail back into what I'm used to. All right. And I'll predict the five to eight pound difference in lean body mass. I think so too. I think you'll see at least that. That'd be sick. We'll send that to you and let's have you back on 90 days. Awesome. Thanks very much, guys. I appreciate it. You got it, dude. That was a good question. And it's a really good question because so many people are like, hey, if I stop doing all this exercise, am I just going to get really fat? Here's what happens with burning calories through activity. does it burn calories it does but the body adapts to it so well let me put you this way a highly trained athlete or a highly trained runner will burn less calories running than they did uh when they were intermediate they get way more efficient with your body learns it learns how to become efficient at what it does so the calorie burn isn't as much as you think he's doing so much activity uh it's insane uh but but if he scales that down and transitions to building muscle he'll have it's like making money yeah i could work more hours what if i had an investment that made money for me just being busy to be busy that's right yeah it makes it really hard too to add muscle when you're you're burning that much manually and you're telling your body to not yeah and then and you're lifting that many days too it's just like it's he's constant his body's just trying to recover all the time it's never it's you talk about this all the time right the he gets stuck in this recovery trap. That's right. So he's doing all these things. His body's just doing what it can just to recover. It doesn't ever adapt and get stronger and keeps him in good shape, keeps him at 10% body fat and able to eat four or five thousand calories. But he could do way less and be as healthier, if not healthier. Our next caller is Matthew from Nebraska. Matthew, what's happening? How you doing, Matthew? What's up, man? Hello, guys. Thanks a lot for having me. I know time's a precious commodity, and I appreciate you guys sharing a little bit of yours today. Thank you. You got it, man. Of course. How can we help you? So real quick, before I get to my question, the other day you guys mentioned on the podcast about people recording themselves at the gym when they're doing lifts. Yeah. And Adam, you had said about doing that to check your form. That's right. And I've been having my wife record me on a couple of lifts at the gym, and I sent it off to some of my friends and and they really helped me with making some corrections because they're all out of state so i had your back then i had your back then brother if i see a guy like you with his wife recording is different setting up a tripod and filming every damn exercise making duck face i just i got a bunch of boomer hosts that don't know anything about what's going on these days uh people i'm so cool he's so hip i got you all right i got you i got you how can we help you? So I'm 45 years old and I haven't done much structured lifting since high school. About 12 years ago, I started working on being healthier and in better shape. For a while, I did a lot of 5k runs and cardio workouts. And then I found you a couple of years ago through the Dr. John Deloney show. Nice. And I've learned a lot from your podcast. My wife got me maps to anabolic shortly after and we started working on it together. I then hurt my elbow and took most of last year off from lifting. The diagnosis was tennis elbow. We started the program towards the end of last year again, and we're almost complete with it. I have to keep some of the lifts lighter than I like because of the elbow, but I'm feeling stronger and noticing changes in my body. Today, I did my second EVOLT scan, and I was ecstatic about the results. Even though my weight had only changed by one pound since the first scan 23 days ago, I dropped almost 7% body fat and my visceral fat by 1.6%. I couldn't believe it. I'm energized to finish this program and excited to move on to the next. One of my fitness goals for the year is to be able to bench 275 or more. I should mention that last time we did the anabolic, I was able to match my high school bench, which just put me through the roof. I've considered MAPS 15 or MAPS symmetry, but wanted your thoughts. What programs would you recommend for an inexperienced lifter of my age who wants to get healthier and stronger? They're both great. I like symmetry because you've been doing MAPS anabolic. and just a comment on the how's the elbow now do you still feel it yeah i still feel it i'm doing uh um some physical therapy exercises every day and i'm just slowly moving up on the weight on that but a really good um correctional massage therapist that'll work on your forearms okay that oftentimes takes care of it i wonder too if uh getting some rotational stuff for like wrist and shoulder for him would probably benefit so maybe even like a performance um that a lot of times that's what the elbow stuff will be caused from is just a lack of mobility and instability in the shoulder and in the wrist and address i mean i'm i'm dealing with forearm stuff right now and i know that's exactly what it is is i've been pushing pushing the weights and getting stronger and i'm like i haven't been addressing my wrist cars and shoulder stuff that i should be doing and so that also could do you really well. So like a performance type of program would actually be really beneficial also. Yeah, I like that. Yeah, symmetry, performance, those will be really good. And this is what, your second round of MAPS Anabolic? Yes, sir. Yeah, let's go MAPS symmetry. Let's do MAPS symmetry. I think MAPS symmetry will be good for you. Get the deep tissue massage on the forearms and then see how you feel. But I think you'll like the way MAPS symmetry feels. And you're doing great, bro. You're progressing, I mean, incredibly. You look good, too. I can tell you got some muscle on you. This is great. It's a good, so now that you're in this rhythm, kind of a general rule of thumb that we tell all of our clients that are consistent, once a year, make sure you do either symmetry or MAPS performance. That'll do a good job of kind of addressing imbalances, lateral work, some rotational stuff. MAPS anabolic is so great for building muscle, building metabolism, laying a solid foundation, but all of it's bilateral. It's all in the sagittal plane. And so getting some rotational stuff involved in there, unilateral work in there, that'll help challenge a lot of stability, rotational work, and that'll keep you healthy a lot of times. And so just be mindful that once a year running through either symmetry or performance, at least one of those programs every year, and that'll keep you pretty good. And then you can cycle back to anabolic and some of the other ones that you really enjoy. Awesome. Yep. You're doing good, though, bro. Yeah, man. We'll send that to you. Yeah, yeah. All right, thanks. And Sal, real quick, I appreciate hearing about your faith journey. Thank you. Keep it up, man. Thank you. I appreciate the encouragement. Appreciate that, man. Thanks, Matthew. Yeah, appreciate it, dude. Thanks. Take it easy. What percentage of people filming themselves in the gym is for form, do you think? I think it's more than you think because this is how you tell, okay? Okay. When you prop it up on the floor of a deadlift or you prop it up to show you squatting versus the person who's walking around with an extension arm or have the – to me, it's very obvious the two. The wannabe influencer kid has got way more recording going on. The person who props it up only when they do exercise, you see it a lot. You see it all the time now in goals. I mean nine times out of ten So you think over half No nine times out of ten it for him Yes Really Yes I think you Really Yes I mean unless you guys are talking about Bradley Martin gym totally different Yeah. That's a total different. Right. That does factor in. I'll give you that. So, yeah, so his one gym could bring that average down to 50. But if you go down to Gold's over here, where all the bodybuilders and powerlifters and everyone's lifting, you'll always see somebody by the squat or deadlift who's propping up to watch. You'll see me do that, propping it up and watching my mechanics. But then you go down to somewhere where he allows people to take their shirts off and you got people talking to the phone while they're working out. Like totally different. Well, I see it not as frequent as probably around here. Like the one I go to in Santa Cruz, it's not that existent, but when it is, it's definitely for social media. And so it's pretty much 90%, but it's not as prevalent as I thought it was going to be. Yeah, I think to me it's pretty obvious to tell. You can tell by how they're shooting it, in my opinion, to tell what you're doing. Someone who's shooting it for likes and attention, the angle they're shooting at. If it's right behind them and they're squatting. It's zoomed in. It's so close you can't even see ankles in it. Dude, bicep curls, but it's all zoomed on the butt. I mean, I'll get filmed sometimes in the gym, and Dylan's followed me around and it always feels so like, I feel like the biggest douchebag. Well, you got a fucking guy who's carrying me. That's like a shreds move. Bro, I'm like getting filmed and I apologize to people around me. That looks way more social media like. Well, it is. You got a guy who's following you around. It's self-physique. And I'm ready to defend it any moment. I make money. I make money. It's my job. I'm teaching people something. Long before we were even like a thing, I would video my squat and deadlift. I was also working on that, right? So, like, I would video a session and then go back, and then I could see, like, what's going on with my ankles. Yeah. Yeah, so it wasn't to pose. And the videos you sent me weren't exercise. Those are different. Those are different. I saved them. Spicy. Our next caller is Brian from Minnesota. What's up, Brian? What's up, dude? Hey, guys. How are you? Good, man. How can we help you? Long time. Yeah, I'll just jump right into my question here. You got it. So, first off, thank you guys for the opportunity to ask my question. I was on with you about three years ago. You gave some great advice. Since then, I bought several of your programs, hit PRs and squad bench and deadlift. So it's been a really awesome experience over the last handful of years. So to get into my question a little bit more, about a year ago, I started having some pain in my right shoulder. I'd managed through it with some massage, extra stretching, occasional mobility work, just kind of pushed through it. But about a month ago, I was five weeks into the old time strength program. And I really started noticing a difference between my right and left shoulder. So I figured I better probably go get it checked out. So I went to a sports medicine clinic, had imaging done. And the doctor said I had some bicep tendonitis and some minor AC joint degeneration in the right shoulder. So he recommended physical therapy. I started that about four weeks ago. since then it's definitely improving I'm getting more range of motion back and the pain is slowly starting to go away right now besides the PT I'm lifting very lightweight but with limitations they have me doing no push moves or any kind of overhead work I did just start doing bench pressing with the bar only really focusing on my shoulder and placement and just real good form so my question is how should i approach training right now what program or approach would you recommend i focus on i'd like to try to minimize muscle and strength loss while i rehab so i can transition back to normal training as smoothly as possible well first you got to finish rehab and and when you're done i think map symmetry would be a good program for you here's the deal uh here's why why you experienced what you what you did strength is amazing thing to chase but if you keep chasing strength at some point, you'll start to develop issues if you don't balance it out with mobility and stability. And I think that's what you experience. You were hitting PRs and you keep pushing it, maybe staying in low rep ranges for too long, staying with the same kind of exercises for too long. Same plane in motion. And at some point, the joint stuff starts to pop up. AC joint and bicep tendon tendonitis are easy to... Super common. Yeah, you're good. I have AC joint wear and tear and bicep tendonitis is like inflammation in there and that's like due to what they're saying right now you eat super solvable but a lot of this is like a shoulder this so we just had another caller where i recommended the shoulder and wrist uh mobility type stuff so is is is maps performance and symmetry are the two programs that you want to rotate through i just gave this to the last caller and i'll say it to you also a really good rule of thumb is every year never let yourself go for a full year and not run through at least maps performance and symmetry and or one of them every year at least once they'll hold them they do a good job of addressing unilateral mobility rotational stuff like and that'll help keep that keep you good if you stay in like a maps anabolic maps aesthetic type of program power lift like you'll get strong but then all sudden you'll start feeling that wear and tear on the joint because you gotta reinforce the frame Yes, yes. We've got to make sure everything is accounted for, and so you can keep loading the joint. And so to maintain that function, we've got to take it through those ranges of motion with minimal load, with tension. So right now, even just going through a lot of the types of cars and things in our prime programs, really adopting, incorporating that as ritual before your workouts and taking it through, really connecting back again to those ranges of motion is going to be everything. The challenge is this. So you'll do your rehab and then you'll feel good and then you'll want to get back to pushing it. So there's, there's degeneration that causes pain. And once you get rid of the pain, that doesn't mean you're all the way back to where you need to be. Sure. Okay. So, so you, so I want you to just keep that in mind because you're going to feel good and be like, I'm strong. I can push it, but don't go through map symmetry a couple of times. Go through the first phase. Don't skip that, but skip the last phase. skip to five by five stay in the unilateral for a couple cycles and then go back to the other stuff and you should be okay okay that that makes sense it is tough when you start hitting these numbers especially i'm in my mid 40s and it it's uh it's kind of a major ego boost and it's like man i really like this and i feel stronger in my normal life but yeah when it started talking it started talking real aggressive hey and just so you know this you'll get back i'm dealing with this right now so as much as we sit here and give this advice we're still just as guilty of the same thing it's easy to get caught up in the excitement of the the prs the gaining the strength gaining the muscle uh i'm in it right now i've been on a nice run for like two and a half three months getting stronger feeling good feeling good and now my forearm is talking my forearm and elbow is talking to me and i know it's because i'm not i'm not taking my own advice i'm giving you right now sure it's gonna allocate that effort to reinforce that's right that's right okay i do have uh performance and symmetry would you it's probably been i haven't done symmetry for the longest of those two would you recommend just uh jumping into symmetry when i can when you're when you're clear go to symmetry skip the last phase and i would do that maybe a couple times before you start playing with the the heavy bilateral stuff okay i will definitely do that you got it man All right, Brian. All right. I just wanted to say one more thing. I think I speak for a lot of your listeners when I say it's kind of odd to view you four almost as friends, even though you've never met a lot of us face to face. And I will just say outside my closest friends, I've never prayed or wished success for more than I have for you four. What you guys do is absolutely awesome. I truly appreciate the advice. I listen to your podcast all the time. And like I said, I'm lucky enough to been able to ask you guys two questions. And I just really appreciate it. So keep up what you guys are doing. I appreciate the prayers a lot, Brian. I appreciate that. Thank you, brother. Thank you. Thank you, guys. You got it, man. Yeah, it's funny, right? Because we communicate getting stronger so much on the show. Yeah. But it's important to communicate the other end of that. And a lot of people don't get to this place because they have a difficulty staying consistent. That's the reason why we preach that so much. Yes, yes. But this will get away from you too. You'll do this for a couple years, and you'll be like, oh, my God, I'm just going to keep getting strong. And at some point, the imbalances kick up and things start to hurt. And what you don't want to do is ignore them or put Band-Aids on them, which look like pain relievers or icy hot or wraps. Exactly, wraps. Wraps or changing my warm-up and just sticking to the same thing. The reason why we hammer the strength part and just focus on that first so much is because that's so hard to get so many people just to adopt that. That's right. Getting him to do what we just told him, super easy. Yeah, yeah, he'll do it. He's already so bought in. What he's done has changed his life. He's gotten so much benefit from it. Now we're just like, oh, let's just. It caught fire. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Now it's like, hey, now we need to do some of these little things, and then he'll do it. He's done the hard part. That's right. And so that's the reason why we don't over-communicate this early on is because a lot of people never make it to here. That's right. And so if we can just get you focusing on getting strong and lifting weights consistently, you'll build crazy amounts of muscle and you'll hit PRs. And then you might start to have some aching joints because you've been doing it so much. And then we can tell you how to fix that. Our next caller is Abigail from South Carolina. Hi, Abigail. Hey, how are you guys doing? We're great. How are you? Yeah, good. Good. Thank you. Thank you guys so much for your time today. I am going to jump right into my email, if that's all right. Yeah, let's go. Okay. All right. So I am a longtime listener, first time caller. I'm a 29-year-old female, around 5'5", and weigh around 140 pounds. But I do fluctuate between 135 and 145, but feel my best with some severe lower inflammation around 135. I did grow up playing sports, lacrosse, volleyball. I've been lifting since 2014, but more seriously with plans and I've had coaches since around 2020. I'm going on a trip end of February, and I wanted to figure out the best eight to 10-week plan, but now kind of updates. There's been some updates since the last census. The trip's in about two weeks. So we can kind of pivot away from that. But current overview is when I sent this in, I was not tracking any macros. I have before, but I stopped for about a year and I was just intuitively eating. And I did maintain my weight throughout that whole year without having to weigh any of my food or anything like that. This is part and due because I've worked with coaches in the past, learned about portion control, listening to my body and things like that. Oh, and I lost my email. But long story short is that I'm looking to figure out how to best proceed with some of these issues that I'm having. I started to track my macros again, and I've been dealing with SIBO on and off for about three years. I did heal my SIBO one time in 2023, and it came back with absolute vengeance in 2025, last October. after I took an anti-inflammatory pill for a swollen ankle, it came back within 48 hours. So I'm basically trying to figure out how to proceed while I'm in this like healing phase. I've been trying to build and work on my body comp and physique, but I know when I'm in this healing phase, I can't really do that. And I have to do a little bit less, but then I go back and forth on wondering if I'm just kind of making excuses when I'm not getting my 10,000 steps or going to the gym five days a week and trying to figure out a best plan. So I have started to track macros again. I go to the gym three days a week right now. When I wrote this email, I was doing muscle mommy. I did stop that or finished it. I've done anabolic and muscle mommy. And then because of this timeframe I had with my vacation, I started this kind of random six week program, just because the timing lined up. It's three days in the gym, two days of Pilates. That is coming to an end as I head to a trip in two weeks. And when I get back from this trip, I just want to figure out the best way to move forward. I've been listening to like four years. I do have my NASM certification that I got several years ago. I don't do too much with it right now, but I'm very into the health wellness world. And I've done the antimicrobials, the antibiotic. I've done the elemental diet, which has been the hardest thing I've ever had to do. If you've ever known anyone that's had to do that. And we're trying to find the main source, which could be mold. Hence why I'm outside getting my apartment literally tested today as we speak. Yeah. Okay. So what are your symptoms inflammation SIBO what else yeah so I wake up a lot of times the descended stomach doesn't go away no matter what I eat so it's not really a food trigger I haven't been able to kneel that down chronic fatigue when it's really bad I literally can't keep my eyes open by 3 p.m but that's gotten a lot better um hair loss acne uh brain fog but the most frustrating part is the body not responding to anything I do. I eat and train like a bodybuilder for years. And like my body doesn't budge. The scale doesn't budge, even though I know that's not super important. It's just nice to see the results and I'm getting none of it. And I'm kind of stuck in this cycle and this loop. Have you been tested for, so you're testing for mold, which is great. And by the way, it's a thorough test. Yes. He's been there for three hours right now doing, doing more than just the air spores because i've had that done and those came back negative and he just got into my hvac system and it's covered in mold so that's okay okay so uh so mold can cause a lot of that um do you ever find yourself feeling better when you spend the night at other places for like a week or two not really and i've thought about that but no not really sometimes that'll happen sometimes it doesn't sometimes it takes longer have you been tested for heavy metals um i know the only one i've done is a the urine toxin toxicology test for mold the three tests i would recommend is uh mold uh and by the way you could do a urine mold test too to help confirm mold heavy metals and parasites have you been tested for parasites yes no parasites okay just the overgrowth for bacteria no fungal anything um sebo has been the biggest one and now mold toxin The thing with SIBO, which is really difficult, is people who get SIBO tend to get it again. By the way, you could test negative for a parasite and still have one because they can sometimes hide and be difficult to find. So if it comes back, mold negative, all that stuff's negative, a functional medicine practitioner or a doctor sometimes will just treat you for a parasite, and that can be life-changing. It does sound like your autoimmune system is kind of reactive. So I think you're going in the right direction. I really do. But it's hard to do anything until we know what the culprit is. Now, once you figure that out, then you work on that. Everything else is to support that. So trying to push your body with strength or fat loss or stamina or endurance, if you're dealing with like mold or parasites or heavy metal, it's just going to feel like you're running in place. In fact, it might make things feel worse. So I think you're moving in the right direction. I dealt with mold. I should say my wife and kids dealt with mold. I didn't have any symptoms or symptoms like they did. They had a bunch of mysterious symptoms and we couldn't figure out what it was. And it wasn't until we had someone come in, fully test the place and we saw, oh, there's mold. We moved out and it took like two or three months before we saw a reduction in some of those symptoms. And there was also a protocol. So like my kids are on this kind of mold detox protocol. In fact, they're still on it now because we have to be very gentle with little ones. My wife went on when that was real aggressive and it did make a really big difference. So I'd love to hear back to see if that was the case for you. Well, so I did do the mold test. And so I did test like off the charts for two very high mold toxins. And we're trying to figure out the source of it. So that's why I'm doing the apartment testing today. So it has been confirmed though that I have very high levels of two specific ones, which I think I can pull up if you wanted that one too. It's the okra toxin and citrinin. Yeah, I'm not super privy to the different types of mold. But if you did measure high, that's what you're dealing with. everything should be used to support that and i would look into encouraging the body's detox systems so like sauna uh is really helpful uh you don't want to eat foods that can be inflammatory because that can make things a lot worse and of course get out of wherever it is that you're getting uh this exposure to and typically it's home or work is it worth it for her to invest in like one of those like portable filters in her bedroom for at least now that'll help uh it's Better than until you can treat it. Was it Dr. Becky Campbell that really was dealing with this? Yeah. We had an episode we did with her talking about. And I'll tell you this, just so you know. Let's say you find all this mold in your apartment. You're like, okay, this is where it's at. I'm going to move. You take your furniture. You take your bedding. You take your whatever, stuffed animals, if you got any. My kids had them. And you take them to the new house. Guess what you took with you? Yes. Mold spores. That's the thing. It falls you all over the place. You got to throw everything away. and clean everything with anti-mold stuff. It's the biggest pain in the ass ever. Brutal. But I've heard so many horror stories of people that would move, and then a year and a half later, same problem. And it's because they brought the mold over. I mean, it was the biggest pain in the ass ever, and I hate when people have to go through it because I went through it, and it was such a nightmare. I definitely would consider getting one of those air docks in your room for now. We put them in the new house because I'm like, just in case we brought any extra filter there. Okay. Okay. Yeah, that's definitely a daunting thought. I did ask the guy that's here. I was like, what you're seeing right now, is this enough for me to have to leave where I'm living? It's just a one bedroom apartment. He said no, but we haven't sent out the full report. It'll take a few days to get the actual results back. But in regards to training and nutrition, how should I be supporting my body through this? I'm definitely a gym rat. I go 530 every morning. Mild, mild and moderate, Mild and moderate. Yeah, you push your body too hard with any kind of stress, and you're going to crash. So that could be like, I stay up really late, or I went out drinking, or I'm just training. By the way, hard for you, you might think to yourself, like, this isn't that hard. Your body's just already fighting something. So you add too much to that, and it's going to crash. So it's going to be mild to moderate at best. So you're probably going to be strength training, moderate intensity, less volume than you used to walking. Yeah. I did cut muscle mommy when I was doing it down a little bit to two sets instead of three. Um, just cause I thought that that worked better for me, but right now I'm just going Monday, Wednesday, Fridays and Pilates on Tuesday, Thursdays. Would you recommend anything different from that? Or am I on the right path for that? If you start to feel like you're getting stronger and you're feeling better, good yeah if you don't scale it down yeah you got to scale it down okay okay are you like maybe two times a week or yeah more consistent no i'd go two days a week and i'd cut down the pilates the once and then walk are you i know that's so disheartening to hear uh but you'll feel better are you using a sauna i just started to yes there is a regular sauna and then like an infrared sauna at this local sauna house here so i've been doing that yeah sauna can speed up the process a little bit so if you go to the gym if you're spending time anywhere do that at least three times yeah i would go in the sauna at least three times a week yeah that'll help okay and i think i do i might have one of the maps 15 programs oh yeah would that be better than going yes yes yes totally absolutely okay would it be okay to take some because i know it's seven days a week right no uh six days i think it's six with an alternate six days but you can pair you compare two of the days if you had to so if like some days you can't make you can't make six days to the gym you can pair some of the days yeah okay that's gonna be my question because i definitely on the weekends fully rest and only walk so i was gonna see if i could pair some throughout the week to bring it down you can okay you can also follow it as a five-day split and just start back up where you left off that's right you got to be really ginger with uh with how you apply things at the moment so and give your body a little bit of a break take the weekend off yeah and you know once you get out of this you're gonna be like whoa my body is i mean i the difference in my wife and kids was pretty remarkable yeah it's just super frustrating because it's been literally 16 months of this like healing phase i've been in i'm like yeah when can i start to actually see results again from the effort i put in at the gym and in the kitchen so i'm just kind of like spinning my wheels on how to speed up this process and by the way like people have an individual variance to how sensitive they are to mold so some people are more sensitive than others um like i said, I was in the same house with my wife and kids and I didn't really have any symptoms, but they did. So there's a difference. So, you know, your HVAC guy might be like, I've seen this before. It doesn't seem to cause a problem. You might be really sensitive to it. And I know people like that. Dr. Becky Campbell has been on our pocket, very sensitive to mold. So she's exposed to a little bit and she causes a pretty big reaction. Okay. Okay. All right. Well, kind of, I guess, keep things status quo, cut down the volume overall a little bit and just try to find the actual culprit of why I have recurring SIBO. That's right. When did you move into your apartment, by the way? How long have you been there? Four years ago. Okay. Yeah. Okay. Well, that's when I first was diagnosed with SIBO. Really? Three years ago. Yeah. I think we might've found the smoking gun. I know, but I've had all these GI issues before. I just didn't know it was SIBO back then. So I'm just kind of now wondering if I've had it this whole time and just only knew the name to call it the past three years. But yes, it's definitely been worse the last three years. Just so you know, one thing makes the other thing harder. So if you have SIBO, you're not going to be more sensitive to mold. If you have mold, you're more sensitive to heavy metals. If you have heavy metals, you're more sensitive to say it all contributes. So yeah, you could have very well had gut issues. And then those gut issues plus exposure to mold. Now you're just the tipping point. and when i did heal it the first time i was eating around 2500 calories losing weight losing inflammation should i try to work myself back up to there i'm sitting around 22 23 or should i not really push the calories and protein right now if you know if you're pushing it and you're like whoa i'm getting bloated and this is causing digestive issues and back down yep yeah okay all right awesome well thank you guys so much i really appreciate it you got it good luck all right Thank you. Bye. Bye. That's such a sucky, crappy. Obviously, until we dealt with it. You don't want to tell somebody to move, but I'm like. Well, you guys remember what we went through. Yeah. Like, we found it, and I'm like, oh, we got to leave, dude. And we left, and literally, we threw away. Yeah, everything. Everything, bro. And then everything else, we washed, like, ridiculous. We went to the new house, got that tested. It was such. And I remember being like, this, it can't be that bad. I was, like, in denial. You know, like, no way. There's no way, dude. and then I've talked to all these other people. Oh my God, it sucks. You got all those air docks in the room too. I do now. Yeah. Yeah, everywhere. Just in case, you know. Yeah. I mean, I feel like that would be like, I mean, obviously it doesn't prevent it completely, but it would make a difference. I would imagine it'd make a big difference. Right. Look, if you like the show, come find us on Instagram. It's Mind Pump Media. We'll see you then. 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