2966: Harder Is Not Better — The Fitness Advice That Is Destroying Your Progress

If you want to pump your body and expand your mind, there's only one place to go. MindPump. MindPump. With your hosts, Sal DiStefano, Adam Schafer, and Justin Andrews. You just found the most downloaded health, fitness, and entertainment podcast in history. This is MindPump Today's episode. We had people call in who needed help with their health and fitness. We get to coach them live on air, but this was after the intro. Today's intro was 55 minutes long. Now, in this intro, we talk about the biggest lies in fitness that are holding you back, talk about nutrition, of course, exercise. We also talk about current events in family life. If you want to be on an episode like this where we can coach you on air, send your question to mplifecaller.com. Now, this episode is brought to you by some sponsors. The first one is Kion. Today, we talked about their essential amino acid supplement. So, both Adam and I have been trying to get leaner, so we're in a calorie deficit. We're both using their essential amino acids, and both of us are noticing we're holding on to more and more of them. more muscle than we normally would. Now, here's the deal with essential amino acids. It has to have a high amount of leucine, otherwise it doesn't work well. Well, Kion has four times the leucine you would find in other companies in their essential amino acids. Go check them out. Go to getkion.com. That's G-E-T-K-I-O-N.com slash mindpump. That link will get you 20% off. This episode is also brought to you by Superpatch. So, this is tactile technology that changes how your brain perceives things like pain, or sleep, or even athletic performance, backed by over a dozen peer-reviewed studies. It's weird, but it works. Today, I talked about their Victory Patch. Go to mindpump.superpatch.com. That link will get you $30 off. We also have something we've never done before, ever. So, you know we have workout programs, but we've never been able to customize a workout program for every person that comes in to buy one. Well, we can now. We now have the software. We now have the trainers. So, if you go to mindmapsprogram.com, you fill out the questionnaire. Within a week, you'll get on the phone with a real Mind Pump trainer who's going to deliver to you an individualized workout program. This is the first time we've ever been able to do this. This will be a workout program for you, your goals, the exercise equipment you have access to, how many days a week you can work out. This is the most individualized workout plan you'll ever follow from Mind Pump. Go to mindmapsprogram.com. That's mindmapsprogram.com. Here comes the show. T-shirt time! And it's T-shirt time. Ah, shit, Doug. You know it's my favorite time of the week. Two winners this week. One for Apple Podcasts, one for Facebook. The Apple Podcast winner is Kezi813. And for Facebook, we have Maple Cochran. Both of you are winners. Send the name I just read to iTunes at mindpumpmedia.com. Include your shirt size and your shipping address, and we'll get that shirt right out to you. All right, real quick. 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. You're trying to get in shape. You're trying to get lean or build muscle. You're trying to improve your fitness. Unfortunately, there are lies that are so prevalent in our space that they're probably holding you back. These are widely believed lies. Trust them. And if you're falling for these, you're losing gains, and you're not progressing. Here we go. Do you see the team? I don't know whose idea that was or not, Dylan. There's like five clips of you on the same kind of rant or discussion we had the other day. No. Oh, yeah. I didn't see it. Yeah, yeah. It was over the weekend. Oh, I didn't even check. And they did like five in a row of you. I think they probably did it because several of them are getting shared like crazy, and one of them is along these lines. I know you have walking up here, but it was one of the topics around that. Oh, I got to check it. By the way, for people watching, listening right now, Justin's not here because he's sick. So this will be just Adam and I, which means we're going to talk a lot of physique stuff. He quit. No. We fired him. He got a job at Planet Fitness. Yeah. No, he's not feeling good. All right. So I picked lies that are so prevalent or so destructive because they feel true, and there's some truth in them. The worst lies in any space, in any area, are the ones that have some truth in them, right? And that's these ones right here that we're going to discuss. And these ones right here are some of the ones that hold people back the most. And I'm referring mostly to people who are consistent. So if you're being held back from your fitness because you're not working out or because you're eating terribly and you're just not consistent, well, you know what the problem is. But if you're really consistent and you're frustrated and you're plateauing or you feel like you're going back. That is a really difficult place to be because you're putting the work in. You seem to be doing everything differently than you were before. And maybe you saw some initial progress, but now nothing's happening. And that's the most frustrating place in the world to be. There's nothing more frustrating in fitness than putting in hard work and seeing nothing in return. And oftentimes it's because one of these here. And I'll give you the first one, which is harder is better. Like when it comes to fitness, the harder you work out, the better results are going to be. This one's real. It's really difficult to combat because there's some truth with this, right? When you work out, when you train your body, there has to be a certain level of intensity that gets your body to adapt and change. Otherwise, it does nothing. Or should I say it doesn't do much because activity does something always. But it doesn't do much, right? If my body is going to build muscle and get stronger, if it's going to improve its endurance and stamina, if it's going to become more mobile or improve its flexibility, it's because it's been challenged to do so. There's a stress. And it needs to adapt to that stress. So intensity is definitely an important factor. But harder is not always better. And sometimes harder is worse. Sometimes this is exactly what keeps you back. I think one of the hardest parts about this is how each of us perceive hard. Because when you first start, everything is kind of hard. I mean, if you were on the couch and you weren't doing anything exercise-wise and you first start picking up the weights, I don't care how light they are. It's so foreign. Your body's trembling. You're trembling and shaking. You feel the burn. You probably get a little exhausted. Heart rate gets elevated. You haven't done – and so that's hard. And it feels hard. And so telling that person like, oh, harder is better. Well, it's like you haven't even perceived that hard yet. And everything you do is hard. And then you have other people who have been training pretty hard or relatively hard consistently for a hard time would say that's not that hard. I always go this hard or I push this or I feel – I see what you're saying. You know what I'm saying? So it's really – I think that's part of why – also why I like having this discussion on a platform like this where we can talk about the nuances of that because I think that a lot of people just don't understand what that looks like. I think there's a lot of clients – I mean, shoot, Corinne and I were talking this weekend. Her perception of a hard or a lot of volume or too much volume or too much intensity is really off. She's an incredibly consistent lifter. She's an incredibly consistent lifter and competitor at a high level and has been for many, many years. She has to readjust her gauge. Yeah. So even – and she's a very knowledgeable, experienced trainer. But even her – and even myself, the way the conversation started was I was sharing with her how wild it was, how much I was having to pull off the amount of volume and intensity I had currently doing just because the other stressors that I had introduced into my life, it was impacting my readiness to be able to lift again. And I'm also – there's other factors. I'm in a calorie deficit. I'm training relatively hard in comparison to where I was six months ago even though it feels insignificant compared to where I've been before. So there's – you know what I'm saying? This is a hard kind of target for a lot of people. It is. I remember when I first pieced this together because I've been doing this for a long time. I was a kid. I started working out at 14. And when you first get started, especially when you're a kid, as long as you don't hurt yourself, you kind of progress no matter what. It's just a fact. You'll get stronger no matter what and progress no matter what. But I started plateauing pretty hard right around 16 years old. And so it's like two years into it, right? And I just kind of plateaued real hard. My body wasn't changing anymore. I'm still a kid. You know, still changing, but it's just not changing like it was before. And I – somebody convinced me. And I had gone through at that point the gamut of different training styles. High volume, going to failure, crazy intensity. I thought you always had to go super hard. Otherwise, I'm wasting my time. That was my attitude. Yeah. And then I had a group of powerlifters work with me. And they rarely ever trained to failure. They practiced lifts often. And it was a totally different strategy. Now, that's not saying that powerlifters don't train hard. But powerlifting programming tends to be smarter than just going up – going out to the gym and beating yourself up. Because powerlifters have to compete. They have to lift more weight. So they're much more objective. I would say. Than, let's say, bodybuilders who are judging themselves by how they look, which is much more subjective. You can be overtrained and weak and still win on a bodybuilding show. You can't be overtrained and weak and go win a powerlifting show. And so I started practicing certain lifts like they taught me. So, hey, don't lift to failure. You know, stop a few reps short. Practice the lift. You know, just do, you know, five sets of three reps. And it's kind of heavy, but, you know, you can do something, maybe six reps with that. And I just started getting much stronger. And that's when I started to kind of – I realized that maybe the intensity I was applying before, it was just too much. too often. It didn't really sink in though, until I got into my mid twenties. Cause what would still happen is I'd still progress and it still pushed the intensity eventually plateau. And I would play that game back and forth. It wasn't until my mid to late twenties where I started training kind of full body. So instead of doing a body part split where I'm doing no chests, you know, back shoulders and just blitzing each body part, I started, I read this book called dinosaur training. And then I started researching, uh, what, you know, lifters did at the turn of the century. Before steroids, before protein powders, before creatine, and they were so strong and they all worked out full body. Now you can't beat the crap out of yourself, full body three days a week. You just can't. It's impossible. In fact, the first, that's what I first did. I said, Oh, I'm going to do full body, beat the crap out of myself. Monday come Wednesday. I'm so sore. This isn't working. Yeah. I had to naturally back off the intensity, made some of the best progress of my entire life. Uh, by the way, which is, this is funny. This is in trainers experiences. Meanwhile, I'm training clients and I'd already figured out for my clients. Oh, I saw it with my clients. I can't just blast you all the time cause you're not going to progress. So I knew this for clients for whatever reason. I thought my butt didn't apply to me. Well, you know why? Part of that is because you and I at that time are in our twenties. Yeah. At least that's what I think we probably thought. We got away with it. Right. Like I'm training, I'm training a mid forties, 50 year old. Maybe for them. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. They're not for me. I didn't think that. I mean, I had two situations. Uh, one was, uh, I played a lot of basketball while I was also lifting and I was lifting seven days a week, sometimes double days on top of playing basketball. Yeah. Yeah. I remember when I just cut my training like in half and it was really more cause I was more focused on basketball at time. I think I was getting ready to join a league and I'm like, Oh, I want to be more focused on this and lifting. So I want to get more games in. And I got stronger. I was like, well, this is weird. Cause I pulled back, but then I still wasn't, I didn't, the light bulb didn't fully go off. It wasn't until I had this annual trip that I always did. And it wasn't until probably a couple of times in a row that it happened that I really was like, Oh, this is strange is I would be in a rhythm because I'm getting ready to go on this vacation. Where we go to a lake, you know? So, uh, I always wanted to be in shape. So I trained really hard leading up to that, that time. And then for 10 days, I did nothing but eat crap and camp and no workouts whatsoever. And I would come back and your first workout strong. Oh, just so strong. Like, and I mean, like, this is so, how could I have like, I didn't eat good. I didn't train at all. And I, I came back stronger than when I was. And again, had to happen a few times before I realized like something's going on here. And then over the, and I, and by the way, I still feel like I learned this lesson. So even though we're talking about our twenties, like when the light bulb kind of went off, I still feel like I have to, I'm reminded of this, you know? And this is why my, one of my favorite, uh, studies that you've ever quoted on here is the study where it talks about how, how minimal volume is required to keep the muscle that you've built. Because I have to tell myself this, like, so I'm on a kick right now. The signs are there that, oh man, my body may be a little over-trained. I didn't get good night's sleep. I decided to pay two hour and a half, two and a half hours of pickleball. Like maybe I should take the next couple of days off. Oh God, I don't want to though. I'm doing so good. And then I, I literally like, dude, Adam, I could take the next four days off and be fine. You'd take a week off. Yeah. Be a week off and I'm not going to lose my gains. So what do I have to lose by taking tomorrow and the next day off? Like I have to have that conversation. Still today about that. And every time I listen, I, it pays off. That's right. And every time I don't, I pay for it. That's right. And by the way, that first one is like the second one, which is more is better. So harder is better. People also believe more is better. If some working out is good, more working out is even better. Um, and remember working out is not the same as activity, which we're going to get to here in just a second. It is good to be active. So, and this is where people get confused. You'll see lots of studies and data that comes around that says, you know, people who move more often are healthier. They live longer. They have better quality of life than people who move less. And so what people will equate that to is working out. Oh, this means I need to work out all the time. Not the same activity. Isn't a stress, uh, like a workout is a workout is a workout activities. I'm just moving. It's the opposite of not moving. So you have an office, uh, job, a desk job where you're sitting all day long. Well, yeah, your health is worse than somebody who gets up and walks every half hour, or let's say a male carrier who walks all day long. Right. But that's different than working out. And the more is better and the harder is better crowd. You know, that a lot of that gets promoted on fitness media because, well, there's a couple of reasons. One, the people who get, who tend to get the most attention in on social media are these kinds of fitness fanatic, genetic freak, obsessive people. Okay. The reason why they're getting the attention, a lot of it has to do with how they look and they look crazy. Part of the reason why they look so crazy is number one, they've got really good genetics and that's a hundred percent true. You guys genetics play a huge role, just like supermodels. If you ever look at the dimensions of a supermodel, the height, their hip waist ratio, the length of their limbs, it's like they're aliens compared to average people. This is true for every extreme sport, by the way, basketball players, football players, genetics play a huge role. That's not saying that these fitness fanatics don't work hard, but their genetics play a huge, a huge role. Also, they're also fanatics, meaning they've taken outside of healthy into obsession. Okay. So they're walking around at 7% body fat if they're a man or, you know, 15% body fat. If they're a woman, this is their life. By the way, that doesn't mean they're happier than you are. The data actually clearly shows they're less happy than a healthy person who has a balanced life. So, but they get all the attention. Yeah. And number three, when you're going to post a workout, I'm look, I work in fitness. We have a podcast, a little different, but we've been in fitness media for, you know, over a decade. If I post a workout, I'm probably going to post a workout that I want to post that you did good. Yeah. Like, Oh, cool. PR, you know, deadlift or check out this crazy, whatever. I'm not going to post 95% of my workouts where I'm kind of cruising because why would I post that? That's just, this is human nature. So when they post their workouts, they talk about fitness, they display whatever you're looking at a genetic freak. Who's also obsessed. Who's also going to promote or post the workouts that they're doing, that they want people to see. And so the image is, I got to be like that. If I want to be fit and healthy, if I want to look good, nothing is further from the truth. You guys, uh, what it typically looks like if you're consistent and you're doing this for life is about 80% of your workouts are going to feel more like cruising. That's not saying they're not hard, but they're more like cruising hard. And about 20%, you're challenging yourself. What tends to happen with people is 80%. They're going as hard as they can. And then they're forced to cruise 20% of the time because they finally burn out. That's the reverse of what needs to happen. Well, I mean, this is where the whole, you know, the goal is to do as little as possible to elicit the most change come from. It's just my, my goal. Obviously I want to progress everybody who's on this journey or this path of body composition, change, building muscle or losing body fat or getting in better shape or longevity is in, in, in pursuit of progressing and getting better. Um, and so, so long as I'm getting better incrementally every single week, like that's such a huge, huge difference. Yeah. And if I can do that with as little effort as possible, I'm winning. Totally. And, and so, and it's, and it's hard to do because you want the, there's a part of you when you're motivated and everything's in the, the time is right. The day, all the things are lined up. You feel like, oh, this is my chance to, to push harder, but pushing harder or doing more doesn't result necessarily in more results. Uh, and you know, you talked about walking in comparison to trying to do more. Training. Well, one of those is restorative and the other one is another stress. That's right. Now exercise is a good stress. It's a good stress because of the adaptation we get from it. And if you can recover and adapt to it, it's a good stress. That's right. Because it can become a bad stress. That's right. And that's the part I think that's important because we just assume that all exercise is this good stress. It's like not necessarily like if your body is beat up, wore down, you're under calored, you're underslept, then a workout is not a great stress. It's a bad stress. Because your, your bucket is already over spilling and you're just stressing it out more. You're, you're going to get little to about the only benefits you could argue that you can still get from that workout or the mental benefits, the fortitude, right. Of, uh, when I'm really down and out. And it's like, that makes sense. If you're going to war, it makes sense. If you're a professional athlete who like that, I mean, there's a, there's an advantage to that. The average person, you get up to go to work, bro. You're not going to have to, you're not going to go kill somebody on, on the battlefield. You're not going to have to go to war. You're not going to have to go face Michael Jordan on the court. Like you literally just got to show up to work that you do not need the mental fortitude to like, when your body is dying to push through that risk is too high. Yeah. And then to put it differently, your workouts should serve your life. Your life shouldn't serve your workouts. Now, if you're a fitness fanatic obsessed, what ends up happening is your life orders itself around your workouts and all the stress in your life is saved for your workout. So again, when you're looking at a fitness fanatic, everything they do is so that they could stress themselves. And the workouts, most people, most people listening right now, like you're like, look, I want to work out. So I have a better life. I don't want it to be my life. I'm not trying to work in this industry. I'm not trying to. And so it has to serve your life. But if your workouts are taken away from your life, if you're more tired at work, if you're, if you, if you're not feeling good because you beat yourself up in your workout, so you can't show up for your family, then you're doing it wrong. The next one is walking doesn't count. This was this, this one right here, man, this one changed for me so big as a young trainer, when I would ask people, you know, what do you do for for exercise and they'd say walking, in my head I'd chalk it off as, nothing you do nothing uh here's what's here's the truth like walking is a wonderful form of activity for a few reasons one everybody can walk with good technique still thankfully uh in other words it's something you can do often and you're probably not going to hurt yourself we can't say that for a lot of different forms of activity uh we're not in wally world yet remember the movie wally where everybody's cruising around on those scooters so people can still walk and do so and be restorative it's a great it's great for your health it doesn't stress you out you have to walk a lot to create a lot of stress on your body it feels good you don't need to change in a workout clothes um and the data on it is coming out and it's pretty clear you're taking eight to ten thousand steps a day uh just that by itself dramatically improves longevity and reduces risk of chronic health issues uh and you can break it up throughout the day you don't have to schedule it so walking does count everybody walk in fact you if if if nobody worked out okay and if nobody in modern society has worked out but everybody took 10 to 15 000 steps a day we would have huge health improvement not saying that they don't need to work out we're gonna be better to add to it but if that's all people did by the way when you look at like uh you look at neighborhoods where walking is necessary because it's an old you know design of a town where people have to walk everywhere naturally and look at the data on it they're healthier they're less ill why i mean when i would go visit family in sicily and my family's from sicily there's some old towns there some of the towns are so old they were made for horses and donkeys you can't even drive cars through some of these streets and so i had this i've told this story before but we had this aunt who lived uh in this really old town we went to visit to go say hi to her and we had to park the car down at the bottom of this hill and we had to walk up these like cobblestone roads to get to her place then we got there she buzzed us in we had to go up two flights of stairs to see her and she was at the time i want to say late 70s early 80s and she was like vibrant and spry and she's cooking us dinner she's got all this energy and man i'm now at the time i was a teenage boy and i'm walking up this thing i'm kind of getting tired out of breath especially when you get up the stairs and i remember my dad saying in the car on the way home he's like she's so energetic he goes every day she walks down those stairs walks down the cobblestone road and goes to the shop to get her you know the her food and then she walks all every day that's all she did she didn't work out and and and that's the walking part so walking everybody it does count if you're inactive right now and you're you can't get wrapped around your head that you need to work out and schedule a workout just start walking just start walking every single day it makes a big difference walking is one of my favorite for us to talk about and mainly because how wrong i was anytime that we have an opportunity i think on the show to share uh paradigm shattering moments in our career or times where we thought we knew it all or thought we had it right and then i completely have 180 on that the same thing i mean uh i literally i remember how crazy and ignorant uh i literally scoffed at people when they'd say like no no i mean work out you know like when they'd fill out that part and it'd be like what do you do for exercise and they'd say walking i would like no no no what it means is what exercise are you playing any sports do you lift weight like it was like how how ridiculous and naive uh of me at that time and then i then i fast forward say probably 10 10 12 years later the very first thing and i don't care who you are how young how old what your goals are the first thing i prescribe is walking yep same is it is the the perfect place to start everybody no matter what the goal is is getting getting them back into it because it is it's the most sustainable it's the easiest place you can you can you can start walking it's the easiest you can stack it on other habits like with meals yeah or things that you do with your spouse you're having a meeting yes you know you're in a zoom call you can you can do it it's connecting it's you just go outside it makes makes you go outside many times oh you know you touched on so many uh of the benefits and reasons to do it so i won't uh i won't just repeat all of them but one of the things that i noticed um a lot and this is also my my personal experience with just focusing on walking more and getting more steps you're uh and i use this a lot uh during the time that i was competing because i was hungry a lot and so when i get hungry i'll be like you know what i just i'm gonna go for a walk and just moving you're not eating yep so and instead of actually not eating instead of consuming calories i'm actually burning calories now it's not a ton of calories in comparison to hill sprints or lifting heavy weights and stuff like that but it is a moderate moderate burn and it's it's more than being sedentary way more than sitting and if i'm doing really well on the diet and i'm eating in a deficit then my body is just uh burning that much more body fat while i'm walking and so one of the things i did this is i had a treadmill in my house uh when during that time and man i'd be sitting there and i'd be like oh man i'm getting hungry but you know i'll just go and i would put it even on slow just just move just keep my feet moving and keep walking it's just it's so good it's so restorative recuperative for people it spurs uh creativity uh people you know i've heard of writer's block uh again it was like oh my god i could barely get up off the toilet oh my god i could barely get up off the toilet oh my god i could barely get up off the toilet oh i went i know i messed up i went too hard when they would say uh i kind of i think i feel something but i feel kind of good boom right intensity we did the right workout that's what i'm looking for you should you you should or shouldn't i hate saying should about soreness but you definitely shouldn't be super sore if you're super sore where it's affecting your movement and you're sort of the touch you went too hard you went too long period end of story that's what that tells you yeah a little bit of soreness is okay nor no soreness is also fine these days i barely ever get sore at all and i'm having some of the best workouts ever no this is an the way that the lifter who's been lifting for a while because this can be very difficult i mean it's difficult for anybody to gauge but really difficult for someone who's brand new who is just learning but again back to the advice that i always repeat which is goals to do as little as possible is to change you've done nothing then one set of squats is probably going to get you pretty sore one set of a movement especially a compound movement um is going to be enough it really is and and guess what next week go do two or wait two more weeks and then you're going to be fine and then you're going to be fine and then do two more weeks and then do two then like you and you're going to get change uh change from that but the the people that have been doing this for a really long time that's when i train and i'm like and there's always this moment in my workout where i'm like oh i'm feeling good it's like i should do another set and i'm i'm i'm always it just just happened the day i was squatting and i felt so good i refed i had more calories been in a good rhythm got had taken two days off hitting squats and i'm like oh man i could just i could tell at 275 where that's right now that i consider that a heavier weight for me the bar is just moving smooth and i'm like oh man i want to just i want to go 315 now and keep going and pushing the weight and it's like i'm in it i know i'm in a i've been in a calorie deficit for weeks i know that that this would this would that would be a pr right now it's not necessary for me to do it if i can just accomplish what i did in the previous work that's a huge win right now i'm trying to just hold muscle right now i know i'm not in a and i'm in a devil so the the conversation i'm sitting there having it's like and i didn't i didn't do it i didn't go and it's so difficult to do that and the next day my legs felt really good they didn't feel crazy sore i could feel that i worked them out and it's like that was the right amount for yeah yet if i and i know for a fact that i put that 315 on i would have felt great in the workout because guess what oh that i haven't seen that on the bar in a while and that would have mentally felt good in the moment but then i definitely would have paid for it the next day and for what for for that moment in the gym i'm not gonna get any better results from that i'm gonna get better results from now because then guess what i was able to do two days later i was able to deadlift that's right and i was deadlift good weight had i done that with this it would have hindered that and that's what people don't realize that 100 all right here's the last one uh that cardio is for fat loss uh let me that's just not true cardio is for endurance if you want endurance do cardio fat loss comes from a calorie deficit okay and that comes from diet now when we're talking about exercise what's the best form of exercise when you're in a calorie deficit well you want to pick the form of exercise that preserves muscle because that's the negative that's the number one negative effect of being in a calorie deficit when you're in a deficit your body tries to reduce muscle mass to meet the new caloric intake with a slower metabolic rate and so you want to do a form of exercise that preserves muscle which is strength training but cardio is for endurance strength training is for strength diet is for fat loss everybody so don't aim for cardio for this magic fat loss effect if anything combining too much cardio with the calorie deficit is a recipe for more muscle loss because endurance requires in many cases less muscle and more efficiency so don't go running for fat loss run for endurance if that's what you want that's crazy how much controversy we still get over this and how many people want to argue this this point because of the calorie burn that you get it's so wild you're so far better off creating a caloric deficit by not consuming an extra 250 calories than you are by trying to ramp up the intensity on the treadmill opposed to walking because if you took a one-hour walk on the treadmill versus a one-hour run on the treadmill the calorie difference in difference is maybe 250 calories okay maybe yeah maybe 300 if you're like oh really pushing it right yeah 250 300 it is so much easier for me to not to dip the chicken nuggets in barbecue sauce at dinner it's so much easier for me to not throw the tablespoon of butter on my sweet potato it's so much easier to not go downstairs and have you know one of the ice cream sandwiches it's just so much easier to not do that uh than it is to try and burn that off and to your point with the when you would do something at high intensity like cardio like that you aren't it is not a signal for the body to keep muscle and if i'm in a quote-unquote diet and i'm trying to lean out i'm in the game of trying to preserve as much muscle as i possibly can and i'm trying to preserve as much muscle as i possibly can and i'm trying to preserve as much walking doesn't do that walking does not go oh i i don't need this walking will not do that it's not intense enough for your body to go oh god we don't need this muscle it'll keep it with that you do something like running or endurance type of training anything like that that's high intensity elevates the heart the heart rate over into that cardio threshold the body does not want to keep muscle it's going to go oh this is not efficient for us to have this so why risk that why doing that when you're far better off unless your goal is to have more muscle have lots of endurance in which case different story totally but it is never it's always the fat loss people that we have to have this right now because none of us would argue that if you were yeah if you came to me and said you wanted endurance to stay yeah we're doing cardio yeah you play a sport you play a sport and you want to be good at that it's pure fat loss uh i'm like we're going to do everything we can to keep muscle while we put you in which is 80 of the people you talk to and that doesn't mean too that once i get you to your fat loss goal and aesthetic goal that i don't encourage us to do bouts of cardio of course it's good for you because you're going to want some stamina yeah because that's going to be and and by the way after i get you leaned out and the body fat percentage through walking and diet right i get you to where you want to be and you're happy we're lean and then we go hey now i want to introduce i'm going to do it in a calorie surplus yeah where i'm less likely to get more endurance yes you get more endurance from it you're less likely to pare down a muscle in that situation and you get the benefit to the cardio so there there is a time to do it and there's a right way to do it and you're going to want to do it in a calorie surplus way to do it uh doing it for fat loss while you're in a calorie deficit is a dumb idea yeah yeah all right speaking of fat loss and stuff dude these the the essential amino acids game changer clutch from key from keon so i've so for people listening so you and i have been in kind of a calorie deficit mode here for a little while i started mine off with the intent of just trying to eat when i was hungry and not like being so you know scheduled my diet then it turned into like let me get lean because i tend to be a little dysfunctional now i'm going to do it in a calorie deficit mode oh i'm like okay i'm trying to just like not chase it but i know i'm in a deficit because i know what it feels like to be in a deficit uh and uh and i think my body weight's still coming down but i've been using the key on essential amino acids consistently yeah it's bro uh the amount of muscle i'm keeping with how little i'm eating and i know that i know my body i've been doing this for long enough i know how much you know what it feels like to eat as little as i am right now it's keeping muscle on me like crazy i mean i i test it with the dexascan last year or the year before whatever it was and it blew it blew me away you know you bring those up um i i think i've ever i've always used the pills i actually started introducing the liquid to the powder tastes so good yeah so you just put in your water yeah yeah yeah i i prefer the pills because i i keep one by my bed i keep one in my training bag i've got one right here next to the pod when i'm podcasting so how many servings you're doing today two three okay three at seven seven pills same so and i try and do it in between meals um or first thing in the morning when i because i'm coming off being fasted and i normally prolong my first meal so i'll do one or pretty early and then i'll do one probably mid and then i'll do one later on um and i and i keep the pills all there because it's so convenient easy if i just have that i don't have to mix i don't do anything i really just take the pills but uh because i've been so consistent with it uh and using it uh the other day i was in here working out and it was between meals yeah we got it back there yeah and so i just can't i was like oh this is it tastes good yeah it tastes really good so the berry one yeah yeah so i'm messing with that now too so which is which i hadn't done that yet dude i gotta tell you bro i had this i had this hilarious uh up and down experience uh over the weekend so it was on uh i want to say saturday it was saturday morning uh we all get up and we're doing our thing jessica goes downstairs i go take a shower i come out and i grab like a pair of underwear from my underwear drawer right and i put them on and i i kind of made a mental note because they were kind of snug it's like why are these a little tight like okay like this feel whatever and i'm doing my thing and i'm in the mirror brushing my teeth and i look down and they looked like my underwear except they said haynes on them who's that hold on a second exactly said haynes so i'm like haynes i'm like i don't wear haynes i go i'm like i wear calvin klein so i go in my underwear drawer and i'm like yeah i do wear calvin klein none of these are like haynes and i'm like did i ever buy my i'm like no i have bought haynes underwear and i'm like did my wife and i know there's only one pair so so that so you start to get those little voices in your head like why is there another man's why is it a man's underwear or or did i put my wives on no no no no it wasn't hers hey only you could potentially mix up your underwear with your wife's now bro i don't wear you're the only person i know what's the little bow in the front yeah he's the only person i know they could possibly put on his wives and be like no no no i don't wear i haven't worn i haven't worn this is like the old the sicilian you know they're like bikini okay okay okay i've been wearing the like the brief so who's underwear so hold on a second okay so i'm like and i'm looking at them and you know there's like a little like a little stir inside of me like why is there a man's like is there another man's and i'm like it can't be it can't be she's home with the kids all so i got this like going through my head like but part of me is like there's a party that kind of gets a little like what the hell is going on so i go downstairs and i change out of them right they go downstairs and i hold them up i'm like what are these and she's like those are yours i'm like no they're not she's like yeah they are i said no and i show her mine like i wear these are so she's like that's weird what is that and so we're like going back and forth i'm like honey i gotta be honest with you i'm like i'm feeling like a little bad about this she's like what what do you mean i'm like have you ever had a guy she's like i can't believe you're asking so we're going back and forth and so now i have my niece that lives with us which that could also be bad i'm like did she have a guy over here without telling me yeah yeah like but she does her own laundry and i'm like wait a minute maybe it was our nanny we told her our nanny that she could do her laundry with ours so she's texting her while she's texting her and i still have that little voice in my head right that's like she's like another man in your house like what you know like there's a part of me i'm like holding it back yeah yeah so i'm holding up the underwear and then the nanny texts back and she goes wait what size are they so i look at the size and i'm like medium and then i start laughing i'm like there's no way in hell my wife be hooking up with the dude you Can't believe you got those on that's what i thought i put them on i'm like oh my god but it was so funny because in my head i was like yeah right dude you're bringing some little dude not even believable it was her it was the nanny's teenage son that she did her laundry and mixed it with ours oh my god we told her she could do laundry bro you know you just brought it i remember it was so funny too i'm like i'm trying to read the size you know because the nanny's like what size i'm looking i'm like immediate immediately i was like yeah right yeah you can bring some little dude oh my god that's how i know my wife that's not her type you know off air we were talking about uh like we were trying to guesstimate because neither one of us has has gone and done a dexa scan no i want to try and do one though so we don't know where our body fat by the way i'm most interested in the bone density that'll tell me i've never had a bone density test no yeah but i mean most interested just because you want to see how how much you're winning no i well let's be honest i'm just interested i want to because you're gonna have crazy good probably i don't remember what i know mine was in the upper percentile it was really good but i don't remember how how good it was in comparison i'm just very curious but someone like you or i is gonna be like i don't know i don't know i don't know i don't know i would imagine because especially since we've we've always been in a surplus and we lifted heavy weights like you're gonna have really really strong bones yeah i think most people that are our age that that that would um suffer from that would be people that were calorie deprived calorie deprived and super sedentary yeah yeah the two of those that typically nutrient efficiency it's not as common with men yeah yeah but i just want to see because i'm just curious yeah yeah i'll have to look and see mine because i imagine you're going to be as good or better than what mine is but i it's hard it's a little bit difficult for me to to tell on the body because my physique is really different right now uh due to all the injuries and stuff that i'm having to work around so like muscle groups that i normally would be a lot bigger and have more weight to them and so it's uh i hate to try and guess because i'm like i'm gonna be i i don't want to play that game where i like go into it going like oh i think i'm this and then i don't and then that i happen it's happened to me too many times where that really i don't mess with me like it does for me too yeah it's a it's a i'm i can you know it's great i did an underwater wave once that threw me way off dude i thought i was leaner than i was when i did the under and i'm like my breathing out enough air and the guy's like it doesn't make that big yeah he's like it's point he's like 0.5 yeah dude i was like really disappointed part of the reason is now there's areas so i know now myself like i'm better at it where i could tell the areas uh the way that they'll look when i'm a certain body fat in a range of a body fat percentage but my body's a little interesting because i have uh and this is a genetic thing some people's and you'll see this with bodybuilders some bodybuilders when they're on stage they're all shredded all of them some bodybuilders muscles look again the term they'll use is clean and other bodybuilders have really striated kind of like looking muscles yeah and mine always mine will look striated at higher body fat percentages which throws me off yeah it's like delts triceps biceps always have that striated look yeah yeah so i don't know dude i mean i think that's years of uh you building a lot of really good really good muscle i mean that's what i would i would attribute that to i think when you when you built a lot of really good muscle you can see a lot more definition even at a higher do you have any guesses for yourself what you think i mean i hate to do it because i don't want to be mad when it's not right and so i think conservatively i want to say in the nines yeah is uh is where i'm at and you know you brought up the funny underwear story one of the things that will tell me that is like i get the elastic on my underwear gets loose oh and that's i normally have the smallest waist i gotta be have you seen this guy's waist dog i have to be pretty lean to get the get that um and then also what we did the other day with the weight belt when i the fact that i could even i didn't try to put it on the fact that i could get it on to the second hole i was like oh that's like i don't i've never gotten lower that now what i have working against me right now is my back and my chest are really small compared to what it normally is i haven't i mean i haven't been able to push chest i haven't been able to do a barbell bench press in a year and a half what about back you can pull yeah but i'm not pulling real heavy because of the hamstring injury that i got the last time i went to the gym yeah i'm not pulling real heavy because of the hamstring injury yeah i deadlifted 315 315 is the heaviest i've gone okay so 315 is the heaviest i've gone on on deadlift and i've only gone to 285 on the squat have you ever have you ever done deadlifts like uh who did them that way flex wheeler bodybuilder style so it looks like a power lift deadlift but the difference is you're pick it up no you're when you come up you're squeezing the lats and when you come down it's like you're trying to activate the lats the whole time i mean kind of background already yeah because i'm thinking about my my lats uh a lot so you're making it feel heavier yeah yeah i've definitely oh i've definitely done it with both right so my squats are so i mean the the positive side of both uh of kind of the i guess the the positive spin on these injuries that i've been nursing um i mean i had the combination of the injuries right and then part of that are is less about that i can't do because i can lift i've been able to lift and they're not injured still but more so the lesson that i learned from those injuries of like be really careful how fast i ramp up so i just keep yeah i stay out of weight for a really long time until it gets real easy until it gets really really easy before i and as it gets even higher like i i mean i'm right now i'm i'm doing 90 pound dumbbells but i can easily rep them for 15 but i'm a i won't touch 100 so i just i keep i just keep it so i so now now that 15's gotten easy at 90 i just kind of slow them down and do kind of an isometric at the bottom and instead of like now the temptation when i'm repping 90s is like let's see i mean normally if i'm repping 90s that's like 110s 120s i can press for five but i don't want to mess with that with the chest injury that i've had and i'm so i'm doing a lot of stuff like that um and i think where it's hurt me the most i mean you're talking about chest and back those are big muscles so that part is going to and i can tell when i i look at my back that i'm missing some of that back thickness and so the combination of that with a my small waist would normally result in me being probably seven to nine percent right now but i don't think i'm i definitely don't think i'm seven if i had to guess i would say nine we have we have calipers here we could we could do calipers just to see what those look like how to get an idea to get an idea yeah also you know here's the thing too is and this is just again uh i've learned this before with clients body fat tests can be valuable but also don't get hung up on them dude no i've had so many people get hung up on the what the numbers say on the body fat test and oh my god it's not in the right you know direction whatever and it ruins their whole day it's like man 10 seconds ago you were so happy with your progress yeah and by the way that would mess with me like i could go do a dexa right now and i'm feeling pretty lean the dex is like you're 12 i'd be like i'd be crapped out or i feel like i know that's part of why i'm delaying how long as i know i'd rather i'd rather wait really long and be more certain than to be do it too early and then mess with my because i'm in a good rhythm i do know how i feel when i get below like eight and i'm not there yet but when i get below eight uh i am really and food becomes obsessed i start to think oh so you you think we're both pretty close then i i'm not that obsessive yet about food because it'll get there oh i'm starting to dream i'm starting to dream about it that's what i know yeah i had a dream that i forgot when i was dreaming what it was but it was like why is food in my food i think it was like tacos but still like food doesn't make its way in my dreams until something like that happens which is weird hey i won't but since i'm in my dreams until something like that happens which is weird hey i won't but since i'm in my dreams until something like that happens which is weird hey i won't but since i'm in my dreams until something like that happens which is weird hey i won't but since i'm in my dreams until something like that my dreams until something like that happens which is weird hey since we're talking about all this dieting and stuff like that i did have some stuff uh again i'm trying to share on this journey as much as possible because it um and i don't know how to explain the science and so maybe you can help me articulate what i'm feeling and i'm reminded of that might be of help for others that are trying to do this i notice that um first of all i need to be low calorie for at least a few days and and and again my calories don't matter to anybody who's listening because it's my body so with that but let's just say it's probably in an 800 to a thousand calorie deficit per day yeah so it takes about three days of a thousand calorie deficit let's say before i can see i'm depleted all the way out and at first the listener that doesn't understand what that means it's like our muscle bellies store glycogen store water yeah store glycogen in water right it's mostly fluid yeah yeah so it's it's mostly water and then basically carbohydrate glycogen that is stored in our muscle bellies and so i've got to wait a couple days before i can kind of like see it all deflate out and then after that it feels like every consistent day i stay in that deficit um i get a tiny bit leaner and it takes a week of that to to maybe even notice a difference and sometimes even see something on the scale yeah so the scale will hold hold the line like it did for a while there and then i'll slowly see myself uh lean out now from from a scientific level like am i am i burning body fat the entire time even when the first calorie the first thousand calories are down or do do our stores need to be completely depleted before my body really starts to utilize fat as its primary source of fuel yeah so technically so it's so we're going to really simplify the hell it is because uh human metabolism or mammalian uh metabolism is really complex okay so this is like a super oversimplification but yeah you have to be you have to have no more stored energy essentially before your uh uh you have to be eating so low enough that your body taps into stored energy and then it has to run out of stored energy in the form of glycogen before it starts to burn body fat essentially okay that's not entirely true uh it's far more complex than that but your stored glycogen uh your body's going to go into before it tries to go to its bank vault right of body fat right like so in other words if you've got uh you know you we have our food that we're eating that converts over into glucose and we utilize as fuel then we also have the fuel that are basically our reserve tanks our muscles are holding on to yeah and when we use up that food fuel it then would rather use that reserve fuel in store in your liver and in your muscles right first before it decides oh we got none of that now we have to use fat now that now this is again an oversimplification because uh you'll see in studies you'll see fat oxidation while you while you know glycogen is being utilized type of deal so it's definitely an oversimplification far more complex uh than that but what you're saying from an experience uh level is totally true because here's the deal you're saying you're saying you're saying you're saying you're saying uh and by the way the reason why i'm saying this why it's so important to understand is because this is why people then say low carb and no carb diets are superior because you have no glycogen yeah if you have no glycogen then you're going to burn body fat all the time that's not true because you'll have excessive calories you can still have excessive calories from a no carb diet still gain body fat or not get leaner um so the but through the process what you're experiencing is look here's the deal like when your calories are low enough to where you feel flat they're probably low enough to where you're tapping into fat stores right um and so that's probably and i experienced the same thing well and the other reason why i bring this up and again um this is a part of me that i i get annoyed by the the the science side that wants to pick apart the way you or i are explaining this because i feel like you do a disservice to the person who's trying to figure this out you can't figure this out especially somebody who's afraid of losing muscle because the person who's really overweight could care less if they feel flat or full or whatever like whatever but like a guy or like you or i who grew up you know feeling like we need to build muscle all the time and we're going to lose muscle all the time and we're going to lose muscle all the time and we're afraid to be skinny when you get flat it sucks you feel like you're losing all this muscle yeah but if you're trying to get really lean you got to go through the process of feeling flat right and feeling like you're smaller right uh and you're and because i used to fight that feeling dude well and i would fight that feeling not get leaner well and me too and here's and here's the other thing and even even someone maybe not like us who's afraid to lose muscle even just somebody who uh is using like the mirror as a judge then what happens is after i've been so i i was i was down and depleted for weeks straight so my body has this real kind of flat look i don't look good but i know i'm burning body fat i'm getting leaner it takes a week before i even see one pound come off the scale but i know i know i'm leaning out i'm leaning out and then uh you know a couple weeks of that psychologically i i will always do what's called a refeed where i intentionally load my body back up and part of this is you know there's your calories go up and you're eating more yes yeah so i'll go from like i was at like let's say 23 2500 calories is really low for me uh and then i'll jump all the way up to say 35 500 calories uh and i'll do that for a day or two and that will normally fill all that back up again and why i like to do this uh aside from some of the potential benefits of giving the diet break and then coming back and and everything is that i get to see like okay this is what i look like when i'm all filled up and it looks better than i'm i didn't lose all that muscle and i know i didn't and you can see the fat loss more muscles get filled up it's right and then the exact skin tightens up but even my abs are and so i look better and then it's like okay cool then i'm back down now here's where why i wanted to bring this up is because in the past what that would signal to me was that i was underfed so much i can't and i need to feed the body more and so i would stay at those high calories and i would and then eventually those high calories is not only enough to fill me all the way up but i'm probably getting a little bit of overspill and that overspill ends up getting stored and then i go back the other direction and so never getting super lean i was always afraid the leanest i could get before when i was afraid of being flat or you know that feeling and i hated it would be like 11 i'd never get below 11 10 11 always uh but but i finally was able to get down to like the single digits when i was like i was like okay i'm flat this is what it feels like it feels like i'm smaller this sucks yeah stay with it and then i'll get even leaner yeah before that was like 11 i'd get scared i that's scared is not the right word i was losing too much muscle and i'd go on and eat uh like crazy i do it for two reasons i one is the psychological effect uh by the way i will purposely bump my calories and bump my carbs and sodium for the exact reason you're saying yeah i want my muscles to be filled up with water yeah yeah so i'll have a higher calorie higher sodium yeah me too higher carbohydrate meal typically looks like french fries yep for me or something like that the second reason is the workout the day after feels amazing from us from a pump and so then i'm like yes it's this is great i love this and so i'll do the same thing and it's typically two days maybe three at most and then i'll go back to you know what that's the the real art to it is being able to do that and then go right back yeah right is and that's taking years of discipline of understanding what's what's going on in the body and and not to be fooled by what you see and stuff like that is that so i just did that the i had to it took me three days though this time to fill up which is so rare and i think that has to do with my motility being slowed down and i just can't eat a lot and so even though i was eating a lot relative to what i was eating the week before it still wasn't what i used to be able to do back in bodybuilding days bodybuilding days uh when i could i could eat five six thousand calories in a day no problem yeah no problem and so within a day i'd be filled back up i could see it i get to work out the next day where i was like i kept eating and i'm like god i'm still i could feel it within hours so this happened to me uh over the weekend so i was you know we're using bodybuilding terminology but i was depleted right felt flat uh and my wife uh is like hey let's let's order some you know some food from doordash or whatever so i'm like let's go with the five guys burger and fries i love their fries and they're hella salty i ate them within an hour or two i could i felt different i could see my veins coming out everything started to fill out like this is so funny well that's why i think you're i think you're leaner than you think because i i feel like when i'm really lean i i've made this comment years ago if you listened to the podcast long ago when i was like really really low man i i could i could eat anything and i would notice when you're that lean yeah yeah you could just like you could like it feels like you could see it go through your body which is such a such a trip i was gonna ask you have you tried uh the super patch uh patches which one is that it says victory on it and it's for athletic performance oh no i know justin has i haven't tried the that one for yeah dude so now okay better better performance so 10 increase in performance they studied from a stamina energy or from like a stability like which um so from uh overall performance so strength um endurance mostly so mostly endurance and stamina so in the studies they did some pretty well by the way this is why we got convinced to work with super patch because it sounds like magic the most placebo crap ever i'm gonna be straight up like when they approached us and i saw these things and it said you put this patch on and it helps produce this whatever i immediately thought oh it's transdermal there's some kind of supplement in this that gets absorbed through the skin and then i read it and there's nothing there's no medicine there's no herbs there's no supplements it's just the patch i'm not going to work with them and they kept contacting us and uh katrina who who helps manage that department essentially manages it i she said sal they're really interested i said if they show me really well done studies then i'll consider it and sure enough they sent it was like a dozen peer-reviewed uh placebo controlled studies yeah and they showed an effect uh the pain one was as effective as an nsad the performance one had a 10 increase in performance with the one college athletes the sleep one had a dramatic improvement in rem stage sleep and people fell asleep fast which by the way rivals all of your best supplements that are on the market for all those better better than most of them especially pain there's no supplement that's as effective as an nsad but there's their pain patch is as effective so i read the studies and i was really blown away obviously talked to the owner and i was convinced to try it and uh anyway the victory patch the they studied them on on d1 athletes and they saw in 10 percent by the way for people listening to improve a d1 athlete's performance by over five percent is pretty remarkable like to give people an idea of what would do that caffeine might do that creatine might do that so if you take an athlete that takes no caffeine and you give them an efficacious dose of caffeine so it's fresh you'll see close to 10 improvement uh in important in performance creatine is close and we didn't we know how much those work everybody uses them yeah their victory does this and so again how does it work uh it's uh it's a it's this they're tactile and basically they communicate through the skin through the ridges and it changes how the brain perceives certain things or how it operates um and there's this whole story behind how the the the founder came to this and the he's an engineer he's actually a british engineer and the science that went into it and just the trial and error but the victory patch is interesting i've been using it and so 10 percent is hard for me to tell but to buy just by subjective uh but i i'm i'm paying attention to how i'm you know like my actual numbers and uh i'll i'll get back to you i'll have to try that one i haven't tried that i mean i i the pain one is my go-to you could tell yeah my sister couldn't believe it yeah yeah she she took the whole thing from me because she heard her i mean the reason that's why that's my favorite is because i mean again you asked me i didn't know you read all the studies i don't read the studies uh and you asked me i was the first one to try it and i felt like the way i described it to you and then you were like you literally gave the numbers of exactly what they were saying and i was like i don't know what they were saying and i was like yeah and then said we'll take your pain if it's which i had no idea by the way i had no idea what that what what what they had if you have a nine or a ten it'll take you down to a six or seven this is what you take ibuprofen you take aspirin everybody knows that doesn't make it go away but it makes it better yeah that's what the the pain patch does the same thing exactly how that felt all right so for the first time in mind pump history we can now customize a workout program specifically for you look we have well over 20 maps workout programs and they're awesome they're some of the best we've sold hundreds of thousands of these programs but they're not individualized to the individual rewrite them for an avatar and hopefully it fits mostly the person who buys it but here's a problem they're just not as effective as a program designed specifically for you well check it out we now have the software and we have the training staff to be able to individualize a maps program for you so john if you're watching you get maps john susan you get map susan you get the idea so check this out this is what you do go to mymapsprogram.com fill out the questionnaire and within a week a trainer will get on the phone with you and deliver to you your own individualized workout program based on your goals your fitness history your injury history the workout equipment you have access to how many days a week you want to work out you get the picture it's an individualized maps program for you go to mymapsprogram.com here comes the show our first caller is ann from massachusetts hi ann how you doing hey you guys cheers from cape cod how's it going good how are you great great hey i just want to echo all the sentiments on the live callers on what they say about you um i do particularly like the fashion tips that adam shared with you sal and you really received it well so more content about that and uh and justin you look really good with glasses so just some feedback from me oh i haven't heard that yeah okay nice thank you how can we help you nerd out yeah so i don't really remember what i wrote but i'm 65 and um um i just started strength training recently but i've always been in the fitness world i've taught aerobics and spinning and i'm a yoga instructor um used to windsurf i snowboard and ski so i'm pretty active but i'm a cardio girl and uh so strength training is really not something i love but i've been doing it for a year now um i started a year ago with a group of women doing three days a week full body with some progressive overload um i should probably let you know my partner um is a bodybuilder non-competitive um he's got six to eight percent body fat on any given day and he's um pretty intense about it so i have that but he's no pressure with me he's really supportive but i don't really listen to him so i'm gonna listen to you guys and he knows that so um you know how that goes right yeah yeah so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so i'm going to listen to you guys and he knows that so um you know how that goes right yeah yeah yeah so so um i've had some significant dysmorphia since i was really little i grew up with the cosmopolitan culture of airbrushed models and diets every week um every monday i would diet even when i was 112 pounds now i'm um five to about 133 to 138 um i'm very attached to a pair of surf shorts that i've had for 26 years and if i can't wear them i'm very upset um that's sort of my weight gauge so there's a lot of um mental um connections to where i'm at i decided that i really want to focus in on the next part of my life being really healthy fit um build my muscle um deal with some sleep issues um try to get my osteoporosis up to osteopenia it's kind of gone back and forth and i'm committed to strength training so whatever you tell me to do today i'm going to do even though i think you're going to tell me to do reverse dieting adam um justin thanks for shaking your head yeah so i agree i agree i'll tell you that i i track my macros um i will be honest i used to hover around 90 for my protein but i'm consistently in the 130 range so that's where i need to be um i don't eat red meat so you know i do a lot of uh fish and protein on drinks and uh yogurts and things like that but um i do take hrt um testosterone injections six milligrams every 10 days estrogen progesterone um i take retta um three milligrams every week for food noise and it helps so helps me make choices around food and um i eat really well like my nighttime snack is a siggy's yogurt with some blueberries um you know i eat pizza once in a week um but i make really good healthy choices so there's no like binge eating or um i don't eat fried food and things like that typically um i guess what i'm trying to say is my calories have always been around 1200 to 1400 and um my partner seth wanted me to do reverse dieting get up to 22 and i said no because i just don't you know want to not fit into my shorts again um last but not least to give you a little bit more perspective i'm going to talk a little bit more about my i did a dexa a year ago and um the last time i had my calipers done was many years ago and it was in the mid-20s and the dexa a year ago came out 37 body fat so i freaked out and i had it done again after doing um i would say like six months of strength training and it was only down 36 so um i didn't talk to my partner for a week i was really mad and um so you know that dysmorphic kind of attitude is really prevalent um i guess my goal is to um have a healthy relationship with my body i'm sick of talking about my weight and my body um i want to understand a program that's sustainable um i also want to hear what you want me to do about a diet so i think that's enough for now yeah well thanks for calling hey man doug if you go back to her email because i have your email in front of me is it okay if i go through it a little bit yeah for sure so um it says you know obviously you've been in the fitness world for a long time and you've done a lot of uh activity a lot of cardio based activity and then you added strength training to the mix did you take anything away well i don't windsurf anymore and that's not ski season but i i power walk every day and i used to run marathons half marathons and 5ks so i'll start that up again a little bit but not as much as i used to so i'm still walking and strength training and i do yoga when you added the strength training did you take anything away no okay so that's part of the problem the other part of the problem is you're eating way too little yeah and so the osteoporosis osteopenia the fact that you eat so little work out so much and it's really hard for you to get leaner uh is precisely because you're underfed and over trained and you can keep pushing that button you could try exercising more and eating less but you won't getting the leaner by doing that you'll lose more muscle mass and bone density by doing that so uh if we want to if you really want to get out of this place you're gonna have to do the scary thing which is eat more and do less exercise okay so right now you're doing the you know it says power walking and sprinting two miles every day we got to cut that way back walking is okay no sprints no training for marathons no and then even walking like uh do you track your steps like how much are you doing it's not that much it's between eight and fourteen thousand okay okay so that's a big range yeah yeah i'd say eight to ten is good yep eight to ten is good with strength training and reverse dieting and we need to boost your metabolic rate and your metabolic health we need lean muscle mass to give us some room to help with the fat loss because we have no room someone as active as you are eating 1600 calories like where do we go if we go any low right now you're you're you're surviving is is what's happening with your caloric intake and your activity and and you're resilient because you've been doing it for so long so long uh but what you're experiencing is nothing's happening and the bone density issues even though you've been so active because here's what here's what typically would happen with somebody like yourself uh who's been who's been in the fitness industry for for years and years and years you would not see bone density issues you would actually see phenomenal bone density but the reason why your bone density is a problem is because you've under ate for so long and there's no amount of strength training that'll fix that if we don't feed you enough that's right so my question for you is i'm gonna tell you something man what i just said you know you've probably heard before maybe your partner's told you you've heard us talk about this easier said than done uh i i for someone like yourself who's done this for so long my hope and your success uh is significantly higher if you work with a coach because the reverse diet process the reduction of activity process is going to be the scariest thing you've ever done yep in fitness yep period and you may gain some weight to get out right oh you will but let me tell you what's positive about this is that you can gain weight on the scale and your body fat percentage go down and you're in a position right now where that should be the main focus is so if if i was coaching you uh and the scale did go up three or four pounds i really don't give a shit as long as we're building muscle that's the main focus for us because i can i can bring you back down but i gotta build you up first and we can't come back down and we can't come back down cut down from where you're at currently right just to give you just the brass tacks this is not a three-month process so this is not like 90 days fix my metabolism go back to what i was doing before you're looking at about a year so you're looking at a year of a reverse diet cut reverse diet cut you know coaching process build muscle but at the end of that year you'll have a body that responds like you've never seen before yep where you're like wow i'm eating all this food i'm exercising way less and i'm leaner and this feels crazy i'd this doesn't make any that's what it's going to feel like to you it's going to feel like it doesn't make any sense like how is this happening why is this happening how is this working but it's about a year process uh and i think uh with your background and what you've done and as long as you've done it if you really want to be like okay i'm going to do this and i want it to work having a coach work with you and change it along the way is your best bet so okay i have a lot of questions about this um i'm in and i again i came forward here today you know being vulnerable and wanting to talk about this and i'm i'm i don't want to get emotional but i'm tired of talking about my body you know i want to love my body i have my breasts i have my liver my kidney i really have gratitude you know i do red light therapy and i meditate i'm really grateful but this mental mindset like are my clothes gonna still fit or i'm gonna go up a clothes you may you may initially but at the end of this though is is the best feeling the best looking the strongest body you've ever had eating more than you ever have that's so it's you cannot and that's why the coach this is where the coaching piece is so paramount to it is it it will be hard and there'll be there there's going to be a week when you lean out to your coach and you're like oh my god i'm so frustrated or i feel this way or i noticed this or and you're and they're going to talk you off the ledge and say we're doing great this is exactly exactly what is supposed to happen and it's a process and i got you don't worry i expect and so that so expect that expect it to be more challenging before it gets easier and better. That's part of the-- This is why it's not as easy as us going do X, Y, and Z and then sending you off and being like, go do it. Because we know the challenges that are ahead and having somebody step you through that is crucial. There's two parts of this that are going to feel freeing to you. The first part's the hardest. Because what it sounds like you're saying is I want to break free from these shackles. Yeah. Okay. So the first part's the hardest is to give it away. And so with a coach, you just go, you're in control. Tell me what to do and I'll just do it. I don't care what happens. That's literally the attitude you're going to have to have in the beginning. You do it. I'm going to let go. If you can do that, you're going to feel very free from doing it. Now, the second part is much easier. Once you start to see your body work, which will take a little while, once you start to see things work, then you're going to feel very free. Because now it's confirmation. Wow, this is working. This feels amazing. This is so different. So it's a two-step process, but it's probably going to take between nine months to a year. How long am I on a reverse diet and then when do I start a cut? So that's the part that's so hard to map out for you because this is where the coach in you will have to determine that. So if I'm coaching you through a process like this, I may say, okay, the next four weeks, I'm going to slowly, incrementally move your calories up. Now, my goal is to take you all the way through that four weeks, watch strength, watch how we feel. Watch all these things. Now, you may get to a point on week two or three where you're like, you break down, I can't handle it, and I have to give you a diet break. And I go, okay, let's pull back for a week, and then I'll push you again. So that's what the process looks like. There's not like this perfect formula of this many weeks you're going to do this and this many weeks. It's like our goal, my goal is to get you up to eating 2,600 calories one day. What? Yes. No problem. No problem. That's like Thanksgiving for me. You are an active woman. Yeah, no problem. You're an athletic, active woman. 26 on the low end, girl. That's right. 26 on the low end. If you told me you were stepping 2,000 to 4,000 steps, you're walking 8,000 to 14,000 steps, and you're an athletic person that does sports and stuff? You probably never miss a workout. Are you kidding me? Like, yeah, 26 bare minimum we're going to get. But that takes time. And what it might look like is we go up to- It's like a step up and down. 1,900 for a while, then we come back a little bit. Then we go up to 2,100 for a while, then we come back for a little bit. And so it's this stair-step process. And that's why Sal says to expect it to take a year, because during that time, we're going to have these times where I push you forward, pull you back, push you forward, pull you back. And then at the end of the year, we look back and we went, holy shit, I'm eating more food than I've ever ate in my life. My body is tighter than it's ever been. I'm stronger than what I was in my 20s. Like, that's what starts to happen. And then you're bought in. Then you're like, I'm all in. But it takes that time. Yeah, we ask you to trust us, but then we won't have to ask you again once you see it. So, all right, that's the diet part. All right. All right. All right. All right. So, I've been listening to you for a year now, and, you know, there's the push and pull, and there's – Adam, I'm really into this everyday 15 minutes. I have a home gym, and I have up to 50 pounds of dumbbells, but I also belong to a really crappy chain gym where my partner is. I love his gym, and I go once a week with him. So, I have my home gym once a week, and I can go to my crappy gym, and I can go to his. So, that's three days. But is it full body? It depends on what the coach says. Right out the gates, I think we – you know, MAPS anabolic might be good. MAPS 15 might be good. They're going to customize it to you, though, Adam. It'll be much more customized if you work with a coach. Just make sure you really emphasize the rest periods. And I know that tendencies for a lot of people that do a lot of cardio is to kind of, you know, blaze through the workouts just like they would to get, like, that calorie burn and to really emphasize the fact that we're building strength, we're taking the rest of the time to build up. You know, the muscle mass. Okay. I love that you have a partner that's a bodybuilder, because I have a feeling he probably pushes you a lot in this direction. He's going to see what you're doing and be encouraging, because if he's a bodybuilder, he knows what it looks like to go through that process and the different phases of what it looks like. Well, I've seen him go through it. In fact, you know, our relationship suffered when he was on cuts. Well, extreme cuts are like that. You guys need to talk about that. Talk about an intimacy killer. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, I don't know how far back you've gone, but when I went and competed and went pro, we documented it on the podcast, so I would come on. Oh, no. Oh, yeah, yeah. So, you can go far enough back, and you can see Adam's journey to pro, and I talk about it on the podcast. And one of the things I talk about, my sex drive going down and just I'm a crab. And, yeah, no, it's a very selfish sport, for sure. It is. It really is. And I'm glad you're talking about it, because, you know, there needs to be a support group for us. Oh, yeah. Yeah. No, it takes a very. It takes a very. It takes a very special woman to stay by a guy who competes at that level, so. I'll quote you on that. No, he appreciates me, and he's really supportive, but I don't listen to him. You know, he tried to teach me how to snowboard, and I'm like, no, I'm going to go to somebody else. Don't talk to me about it, but I'm going to listen to you guys. I swear I am. I just, I still feel confused, but I understand the underlying concept. Here's what I'm going to do. I'm going to have one of our coaches call you, and they'll talk to you a little more in depth of what that looks like. Worst case scenario, we'll send you a program. So, at the end of the day. The worst case scenario, we'll send you one of our workout programs. But they'll customize all this for you, Ann. They'll customize everything, and they'll take you. You'll be in good hands. They'll hold your hand through this whole process. Yeah, and I'm not attached to my scale. I'm going to take those shorts and put them somewhere. Good girl. God bless you. Good girl. Very good. Good girl. Thank you. You're all ready. You are ready. Yeah, good. And I'll see you. If you end up working with our coaches, I'll see you in there. I like to pop in here and there and talk to our clients, so. All right, great. Thank you so much. All right, Ann. You got this. She's going to have. She sounds like she's going to do it. She's going to have such a crazy experience. Yeah. Because she's been doing this for so long. Oh, yeah. So it's my favorite. Now, they're the most challenging, too, because it's really scary. Yeah, yeah. It's completely different than what they normally do. I love that she's got all the hormone stuff taken care of first. Yeah. Because that would be a big step. Yeah. We'd have to probably, because especially coming from. But you take someone like Ann, who's been doing this for that long, who's been doing it that way for that long. Yeah. And you completely shatter their old paradigm. It's a life-changing experience. It's like, what is going on? If she can get over that hump, it's huge. It's magic. Transformative. Yeah. No, I'm excited. I'm excited to see. I mean, she sounds ready. I mean, she came on admitting that I came here to be vulnerable. I said, I'm going to take the advice and do the things. And so if she commits to the coaching and stuff like that, I think that she'll be incredibly successful. Our next caller is Aaron from Tennessee. What's up, Aaron? What's up, buddy? Hey, how's it going, guys? Good, man. How can we help you? Yeah. So a little bit of backstory, I'm just going to read from the email that I sent to keep me on track. I need some direction on how to balance my training load as a high-level athlete. So my current state is I'm 6'2", probably 183, 184 pounds. I am a high-level athlete playing Ultimate Frisbee at the elite level, going to different national tournaments. That's something I've been doing for about 10 years now. Cool. I get really good sleep, you know, seven and a half hours of sleep. I eat about 30 or 3,000, 3,200 calories with about 230 grams of protein and then filling out the rest with mostly carbs and about 75 grams of fat. I'm really active. I get about 12,000 to 14,000 steps a day, not including, you know, me playing in practice or pickup or anything like that. I track my HRV and my resting heart rate. I have a whoop, so I'm pretty dialed into that. But some more backstories. Over most of my life, I was overweight, just kind of was always the chubby kid. Got up to about like 235 pounds in high school. And then I was still pretty active in like college, walking, biking, skateboarding, stuff like that. But around COVID, I had the realization that like, I just didn't like how I felt. I didn't like how I looked and it was just having a real impact on my mental health. So I somehow found out about calorie deficits and tracking, and that was my saving grace at the time. I stuck to a pretty major deficit, eating around 1,600 calories, ended up going down to a really low body fat percentage. I mean, it was probably 540. It was probably 5% or maybe a little bit lower. And then strength training about five times a week, I felt terrible, as you could probably guess, and just did not perform well on the field. Over the next couple of years, I had increased my calories to about 2,500 to 2,700 after some gentle encouragement from teammates who were, you know, I would complain to that I was sore all the time. And they're like, hey, you probably need to eat a little bit more. And so I tried that out, but still wasn't a ton. I was extremely lean, constantly thought about food. My hormones were trashed. I'm actually on TRT as of March of last year. But leading into that, I had one of my best seasons as a player, just like performed at a really high level. But I just started to have a few nagging injuries or two that made me stop playing for a few, months after that, I hired a personal trainer just because I was interested in putting on more muscle and, you know, applying that to the field and everything. Um, and with her training guidance, um, she reversed dieted me from about 2,500 calories up to 3,600. Um, and with her programming everything, I think what I suspect was like hidden gains from not having adequate nutrition over the past few years, even though I was strength training, like I wasn't building any muscle or anything. Um, but I ended up gaining, uh, a lot of muscle, like probably 15 pounds within like three or four months. Um, which was really crazy. Um, and we didn't do DEXA scans or anything, but we had an in-body scan. And at the beginning of it, it had me at 3% body fat, which I was like, I kind of take that with a grain of salt. Um, but that percentage didn't change over the next, um, nine months or so, even though I was going up in weight. Um, and then during that time, I was having some nagging hamstring pain and irritation, but I was just kind of ignoring it or using, you know, inflammation aids and medicine until I finally tore it in May. So after that, I mostly just stuck to upper body and low impact cardio. For whatever I could do, whether that was like fartlek intervals on a stationary bike or, um, you know, like an hour of zone two on the elliptical or something, um, about after a year of this, I was starting to gain some body fat. Um, but at this time I had stopped seeing my personal trainer just due to financial reasons and, um, didn't have access to an in-body machine. So I don't know for sure, but I could just feel that I wasn't as lean. Um, finally got to the point where I started, working back into sports, strength training my legs. Um, but then shortly after that, I went to a tryout and, um, laid out, landed kind of on my armpit, my left shoulder and my shoulder, uh, popped out. Um, so then, uh, after that, I let it be for about three months to just see if it would go away on its own, even doing physical therapy and stuff. I ended up seeing a surgeon, and he said that I had torn my labrum and rotator cuff. So I had surgery in April to repair both of it. So that brings me to now where I'm five months post-surgery and it's still getting better. I had like one of my last PT appointments this morning. Um, I started running about three months ago and playing ultimate about two months ago with some limitations, obviously trying not to land outstretched on the ground or anything. Um, uh, staying with the program has been pretty difficult for me since my shoulder has been limited. So I had thought about doing like, uh, like mass performance or mass 15 performance or something like that. But it's, it was in my head. It's just kind of difficult to figure out what I should, how I should program it since I'm limited with how much I could do with my shoulders and, you know, upper body. Um, so I just tried substituting what I could, um, for example, instead of, um, barbell back squats, doing Bulgarian split squats with dumbbells, uh, V squat, good mornings instead of barbell RDLs, things like that. Um, I had run map symmetry before I tore my hamstring, but that was also when I just, I was eating like 2,500 calories a day. So I didn't really see any changes, um, for the most part. Um, but my first question is, um, my calories since after the surgery, I've just kind of gone down to 30, about 30, 200, 3000 for maintenance. Um, and as an act, as an athlete, that's actively returning to sport and is five months after surgery. Is that okay? Um, I had gone on the small cut last month, actually, before I sent this question in, um, just so I could feel a little bit lighter on my feet and see if that affected my field performance at all. So I lost about six pounds in four weeks or so. Um, but I feel like I don't look as muscular. Um, so I, I guess, yeah, starting there. Okay. So the first question is about cutting calories, right? Yeah. Yeah. It's like a, yeah. Cutting calories and, um, ultimate is like a, a weird balance of like strength and endurance where you have to be able to accelerate decelerate ton of times during the game. One of the, yeah. One of the biggest mistakes athletes will make with diet is they'll eat for aesthetics and not for performance. So listen, forget the mirror and focus on how you feel, uh, while you play. If you start to focus on aesthetics with diet, uh, then what tends to happen is, is performance is compromised, uh, because you want to look better. So, you know, this, this in, in the sport of S in the, um, in the, in the, in the world of athletics, it's performance that matters really doesn't matter what you look like. So don't worry so much about that. Now, that being said, you're obviously gonna look pretty good because you're an athlete, uh, but don't chase the look. So listen to your body, um, and eat to fuel performance. Not to mention, we're also still in recovery mode. And so we want to be, we want to be eating adequate calories to fully recover, repair, and get back to your normal form. We don't want to be doing that in a maintenance or deficit. That's right. So typically with sports, when an athlete is trying to cut weight, it's typically for a, a weight class. Okay. Other, other than that sports without weight classes, you focus on performance and what happens naturally is the body weight moves where it needs to, to improve performance. The only time where it's like, I got to lose weight is for weight class, uh, style sports. In which case it's typically a combination of diet and activity, but it's usually activity. So it's typically a combination of diet and activity, not so much like cut the calories. Cause that'll mess you up. Right. Cause who cares how much you weigh if you suck and you can't perform, you know, type of deal. So just focus on that and don't worry about body fat percentage and how ripped you look or whatever. Just like, Oh man, I'm playing better. This is the direction I need to go. By the way, overeating too much would make you play worse too. So there isn't, there is a limit to how much you can feed yourself to perform more, but I would play with that and see how you feel eating a higher amounts of calories. Yeah. As an athlete, there shouldn't be times where you are not eating and you're hungry. I mean, that's just, if you're, if you're hungry, feel that body, like you shouldn't be restricting cause you're like, Oh, I'm at 3,200 calories, but I'm still hungry. It's like, if you're still hungry, feed, just make good choices. That's right. It's the good choices part. Yeah. Yeah. I see Aaron and your other question, uh, is about your injuries. Do you mind if I read that or go over that with you? Yeah, definitely. So your question is like, you're, you're getting more, more kind of nagging, non-can, non-contact, injuries, uh, and irritations. And you're wondering if it has to do with the weight gain, uh, or the, and the muscle gain. Um, and the answer is, uh, maybe. So just to, just to kind of, and you'll totally get this. Okay. You gained 15 pounds of lean body mass in three months. Okay. So here's the deal. All your recruitment patterns. Totally, bro. So here's the deal. If I wanted to make you play terribly, I would just change your body right now. Even if I gave you a bunch more muscle. Now you're a different body. Like the way you throw the Frisbee, the way you move, the way you block, uh, it's very technical. I don't need to tell you that, but it's very, very technical. If I change your, your weight, if I change this, the length of your arms, the width of your shoulders, if I give you more muscle, less muscle, yeah, suddenly your technique now has to adjust. And so quite possibly the rapid gain of muscle played a role. Um, quite possibly, although one of the injuries was falling. So that's kind of hard to, hard to judge. So the question then becomes, well, how do I temper that? And the way you temper it is you focus on performance on the field. So strength in the gym is great, but if it doesn't translate to better performance, I don't care. So what I would do with an athlete, and it's very rare, by the way, to see someone gain that much muscle so fast, which is kind of cool, but also kind of rare, uh, is what I would do with you as a coach is I would slow down. On the progressive overload. And we focus on balance or stability control. I'm like, let me get you used to the five pounds you just gained before we go for another five pounds. Does that make sense? Yeah, definitely. And that's something that I think I'm focusing more on now, at least within the past, uh, few months has been, um, I'm working with a more sports specific, like focused physical therapist, um, over the past few months. And a lot of it has been, I mean, it's like a lot of like really lightweight stuff, but it's all exactly like recruitment patterns and making sure that I'm activating certain things. And I feel like that's, that's helped a lot with nagging injuries. So continue with that. Yeah. A hundred percent, dude. So you're, you're moving in the right direction, dude, for sure. Yeah. Um, kind of going back to what you're saying about adequately fueling. Um, so like I mentioned before, I had worked up to and that was while I was playing and also lifting and stuff in the gym. Um, I noticed that even when I try to eat to support my activity level, um especially like during the season i just get um i don't really have good gut health and it's a decent amount of gastric distress um i've tried supplementing with like digestive enzymes to help a little bit but it's usually difficult to get in enough calories that i feel like i should be getting and not feeling like really bloated um i do like what you guys say i eat mainly whole foods um a variety of vegetables each day um so yeah i was worrying like do i still try to like like i feel like i get full before i get the calories i should be getting if that makes sense so the types of foods you eat can make a difference with that so generally speaking um gluten and dairy uh and legumes can be an issue vegetables can also be an issue uh if they're not very well cooked so like raw vegetables can cause issues when you start to push calories but if you boil the hell out of them it typically helps uh with digestion uh so like white rice is typically really good beef is typically good fish is really good um you know dairy can sometimes be problematic gluten is almost always problematic when pushing calories in my experience how many times per day are you eating right now uh usually four times so once like breakfast lunch dinner and then um i'll have like a snack in the evening yeah my suggestion would also be to to increase the amount of meals and smaller portions that's another way so so instead of like so don't worry about if you're like okay i'm full but i'm still low calories i'm gonna push the calories no just shut it down but then eat again in an hour and a half you know just just a small just a small portion that'll help are there foods that you've identified that you really digest well um i mean there's certain foods that i notice like i don't yeah like i don't get super like full with um like potatoes white rice definitely yep yeah um that's your staple right there ground beef is probably good yeah ground beef is is pretty good as well um so that one of the one of the uh the the one of the games you have to play when you push calories is it becomes much more important consistency on on digestibility so like you know you're eating 2500 calories it's not as much it can always be an issue right it's not as much when you start to push calories ease of digestion plays a much bigger role and so i hate to tell you this but you're at a high level of athlete of athletics so you gotta eat at a high level you gotta eat at a high level and so what that might look like is the same kind of foods all the time yep it might be boring but if that's the recipe where it's like you know this isn't going to create gastro distress like you repeat that as much i mean i think you should be eating five six times a day that's why five six times a day and whatever that portion size to hit your calorie and it's like potato sweet potato white rice ground beef chicken that's right you know prep it and then just you know and if you throw vegetables in there they're really really well cooked uh not raw that tends to bother no gluten maybe no dairy some people are okay with dairy some people are not um legumes some people are not good some people are okay with when they're pushing calories in my experience pushing calories with beans tends to cause uh gastrointestinal problems and i think that's a good uh gastric distress uh and then and the meals will look very similar because you know like these are the five things i can eat that don't bother my gut i'm eating 3600 calories or whatever let's go okay definitely um and then uh going to your point about uh or my other question was um just like as an athlete preparing for like different points during the season like i'm trying to manage my like chronic stress load and also my acute stress load um especially as i mean i'm still like two months in returning to sport um so i was just wondering like how like i think i'm increasing my chronic load at a good pace um but like i mentioned like different injuries or irritations would pop up that i probably wouldn't have if like you know i had kept playing like if my chronic stress load would increase my chronic stress load would increase my chronic stress load would increase my chronic stress load would increase my chronic stress load would increase my chronic stress load would increase my chronic stress load but like i mentioned like different injuries or irritations would pop up that i probably wouldn't have if like you know i had kept playing like if my chronic stress load would increase my chronic stress load chronic workload like matched what i was doing um it's just difficult to manage like figuring out what i need to train for in terms of like speed and endurance um you know i just finished a tournament this past weekend and i mean the amount of like distance i cover is close to like marathon or so um but yeah i was just wondering like during different points of the season whether it's in season off season pre-season like what should my programming look like in season a lot of your program looks like injury prevention off season is when you're trying to increase uh performance and explosivity yeah uh you sound like you've got a lot of it down though dude i mean i don't feel like and it's always a game when you're at that level of kind of teetering over like doing too much and not enough or you know what's adequate you sound pretty smart the way that you're communicating i i think you're you're on track you got your eyes on it if you want to improve your resilience the the thing you could do that'll have the biggest impact with the least effort is to add a half hour to your sleep it sounds stupid but like another 30 minutes would make a huge more of a difference than any well that and the calories yeah that and the calories will be there's no like two biggest recovery thing i could tell you that would even come close to that so it could look like this it could look like a nap in the middle of the day or it could look like an extra 30 minutes at night okay gotcha yeah yeah that's that's something i've been trying to like increase lately is just like how much like like you said like literally trying to add on half an hour of sleep or so um and i think adam's advice about the frequency of meal times would um help out a lot those are the two biggest levers talking to you i mean you've like sal said like we listened to your whole breakdown like you you're you're doing really good dude you're doing you're recovering you know you're you're getting back you're not like we got to give it some time to be get back to normal self and and the one thing that athletes tend to do in this situation is try and rush it do too much trying to get back too fast it's like give your body some time to get back to how it used to be and take care of it feed it rest and that will probably be the fastest path don't get caught in the aesthetics game either because really rapid muscle gain while playing and then you're like oh my god i'm so tired i'm so tired i'm so tired i'm so playing high level uh sports can definitely increase risk of injury so and then trying to get lean yeah worrying looking while you're playing uh your sport can also uh increase risk of injury so basically it's like what's making me better and then however i look is how i look that might mean less muscle and more body fat by the way definitely um a couple of other questions i had was um when i worked with the personal trainer last year um she corrected a lot of like form with exercises that i had you know been doing for a while but then she was just teaching me how to like connect to certain muscles like mentally better and things like that um like i mentioned before i don't really have the luxury of having a trainer right now um the sports focus pp is kind of like my pseudo trainer but that's more for you know physical therapy but i just like want to know if you have any questions about that if my form is correct while i'm doing something um and i know that working with the trainers really exposed different like form cues that helped a lot but i you know i it's hard to do that like on my own so i didn't have any advice on that yeah how often were you working with your trainer before uh before it was just uh once a week okay there's nothing wrong with working with a trainer once a month yeah yeah check in you just go in do some exercises watch my form videos literally just for the technical stuff that's it like here's the here's the three four movements that i want to really perfect and like that's all and like you know that's what i want you here for that's it yeah okay perfect yeah um and then another question i had was um with sport obviously it's there's definitely like some like hypertrophy training if like i'm lacking muscle in certain areas or whatnot but most of it is just like power and speed um uh you know trying not to like get really like technical devices that measure like speed or like bar speed or whatever um how should i measure like progressive overload in terms of like power just because it's not as linear as like hypertrophy where it's like oh i'm moving up on this weight each time but it's it's hard to tell like in the moment if i'm moving away faster than i was you know that's right yeah i think that's a good question i think that's a good question i think that's a really really great question that's a once a month trainer who has experience with training athletes could help with that there are apps out there i don't know one off the top of my head that can measure uh bar speed and they're pretty good um and then your your height like how high you could jump is always a test of you know i really want to send you mass performance advanced uh just because your off-season training sounds like this would be the perfect match for that because it's not quite as much volume as you would think it's not as much as you would think it's more like centered around the skill training which i think for you uh specifically if you can build up your explosivity your power your strength uh you know the endurance part i think a lot of times too with like your type of a sport you know it gets good convoluted a lot because a lot of athletes like they focus too much on that in the off season uh versus you know you doing these intervals of sprints you know really doing the field work that's specific to you know multi-directional multi-planar type movement but with the explosive power uh is going to serve you the best and then you can kind of work your way in towards um you know that that endurance training towards you know the final end up into your season so that's something that i would suggest that would really match you well also keep this in mind too aaron like let's say we don't have an app or tool or can have a coach or a trainer with this it's like the real measure for me is like how how how do you feel in the field after you you've been training like this way so like i'm applying i'm applying the speed or power type training for you know x amount of weeks and it's like do when i get on the field do i feel more explosive do i am i you know am i more responsive like that like that at the end of the day like that's that's the real measure a lot of times translate right a lot of times too yeah you got to just pay attention to that fatigue and every time you perform you know one of these drills these movements you know these exercises can you like get composed can you recover quickly and you know that's that's something i'm always gauging where that fatigue lies because it's gonna it's gonna interrupt your progress in terms of strength and power output yeah definitely um yeah it's i i wish i had like the the financial means to just like outsource this to to somebody um but uh to your point adam like like yeah i i'm an athlete and like i've been doing this for long enough to where like i i know my body like pretty well like i know what it's like to like be at a hundred percent and it's just like you know difficult kind of like managing to see like where i'm at day to day and how that should influence what i'm doing each day and stuff yeah it is it is dude it's like uh you know when you're at that level uh you know we're measuring uh improvements uh in seconds you know not in minutes so it's a little bit more difficult uh but kind of trust the process aaron i'm gonna have doug put you in our private forum if you're not in there already in our mind pump private forum on facebook or school uh no oh no no no no sorry sorry and and then uh i'll just say you know keep us updated let us know uh check in with us uh whether you have a coach or not and let us know what you're seeing what you're noticing what you're feeling and the boys and i'll try and help guide you through yeah that would be awesome um i really appreciate that you got it man thanks for calling in dude appreciate you yeah um yeah i also want to say like really appreciate everything you guys are doing um when i first started getting into like fitness and stuff i was listening to different fitness podcasts and stuff and then i came upon um mind pump and i'm not gonna lie like i didn't realize the first part was you guys just talking about your lives and different events and stuff and i was like i don't really want to listen to this like i'd rather just get some information but i stuck with it and honestly it's probably my favorite part about the the show and everything's just hearing you guys talk about your lives and what you're going through laughing it up talking about your families and being dads it's it's really awesome to see so appreciate that feedback aaron appreciate that thank you brother we'll see you in the forum man all righty thank you you got it that was a fun question answer actually yeah i have to have kind of the nuance of all the different ways because you know you talk to the average person um it's totally different totally different but this is it's actually i'm glad he asked those questions because you see this with that we have them call in all the time and they're like hey i play the sport and i want to get leaner or want to look this way and it's like you got to choose yeah because you can get leaner and perform worse yeah in the the further up you go you know in the professional world the more specific you have to be it's totally the nature of the beast and his question about his injuries yeah can i can building muscle increase my risk of injury yeah when you gain 15 pounds in three months yeah that affected and you're playing at a high level well and a guy who's been doing it for 10 years 10 years of being uh your body a certain way and then 15 in three months it drastically drastically changes oh yeah our next caller is christina from missouri hey welcome back hey christina how's it going see you guys you too how are you doing oh i'm i'm doing good um the last time we talked uh well i'm 51 and and um i was pre-osteoporosis broke some bones in the past and uh since listening to you guys uh i started increasing my uh calories and you guys sent me the maps 15 back in may okay i ran that and i will admit that i did not think it was enough um but after i finished it i couldn't wait to get more and so then i bought strong 15 i bought muscle mommy 15 and i bought symmetry 15 and so i'm on phase two i believe of uh strong 15 and i tell you what uh my calories are at 2300 i'm not sure if that's where i should be um i just had another scan done this morning and uh i think last time i told you the name of it and you you guys i don't know if you were familiar with it it's called the styq s-t-y-k-u okay and i i'm extremely disappointed i went from uh 32 and a half percent body fat to 33.8 i lost a pound and uh my lean muscle instead went from 64 to 62.8 i don't know i was not expecting those numbers because i'll tell you what my energy has skyrocketed i'm lifting weights that i've never lifted before i feel great i'm so i'm i don't i don't look the way i feel inside i feel like i'm you know i feel like i'm about 20 years younger and i mean i i don't know i don't know i don't know i don't know what's the problem yeah exactly well this is uh i mean this is exactly what happened with corinne did you hear have you heard the journey i have i have exact same thing happened to us body fat yep and all and she's she's talking just like you i'm i'm i'm hitting prs yeah i feel my energy all the all the marker you can hear all those markers but body fat percentage went up we didn't build any muscle coordinate but every other marker is been amazing when you've been so low calorie and been training hard for so long the it it takes a while before the body says okay we're going to reward you with this and start packing on the muscle and losing the body fat and doing all you got it it takes a while to do that and there's two things here too number one you're well within the margin of error by saying it's like a one percent difference like well within the margin of error so that's number one i would take that with a grain of salt yep number two uh you what you're saying is i feel amazing and i'm pissed off because i got because i got a report because i got a piece of paper that says what yeah yeah it's like well i was i was gonna come on here and tell you man i can't do it it's like it's very deflating well here let me put it to you this way let me let me tell you this okay uh when we look at i can feel it i can feel my legs i can feel my arms yeah that's my butt feels harder than it ever has that's real and so i'm like i don't understand you're gonna let that scan tell you that you're a liar yeah you can burn that paper christina i i i understand and i feel you because i've been working with with corinne for a year now we've been together for a year and i i it was discouraging for me because i we have been celebrating the prs and i thought she looked amazing and as a coach i failed her by letting her go take that test she went took that test and it spun her out the same way she got so discouraged and so frustrated and i was like man why did i do that why did i let her go take that test when all the other signs were great i should have just delayed that shit we didn't need it because just like you're saying right now her body looks better it feels better we're hitting prs energies like maybe i just shouldn't do them anymore you shouldn't you shouldn't and that's why i haven't that's why i didn't allow her to answer for you so you need to just well i i did want to go over a few of uh what you think um my barbell squats i used to only do the bar yeah bar is 45 pounds and i was doing like 15 reps with just the bar and so saturday i i did uh i have now put 20 pounds on the bar at five reps yeah so yes it's not a lot you know but it's the most i've ever done yes that's a 50 increase yeah that's a lot that's a lot in my barbell deadlift um i started off at doing i had 30 to 35 pounds on the bar and this morning i was at uh i had 50 pounds on the bar yeah and shoulder press i only used to do shoulder press with dumbbell you know 10 pound dumbbells well now i do have a 25 pound bell uh barbell also and i'm putting um 10 pounds on the 25 pound bar and incredible standing and then uh with this these programs of yours i'm doing things i've never done before like a z press you know which is new to me um what else there's a uh front squats never done that before so that that's something new that i'm doing awesome and i had to start off with just you know a dumbbell when i first started doing that that's a lot tougher it is tough a lot tougher yeah and then there's another cosec squat yeah i don't know yeah yeah saying that right cosec squat i'm doing that in this phase two i believe of strong 15 and i'm just doing body weight on that because just learning yeah it is it's very tough but uh christina you're killing it you're doing so good christina so good you're killing it for us i i was doing uh i had 45 pounds on the bar now i have uh six no i'm looking at the wrong thing i think i got 70 pounds on the bar for hip thrust now i've got a 45 pound bar i've got our next goal for us okay we're not we're we're we're definitely not testing in any in the next six months at all so the next six months that which means two more of these max 15 programs you follow straight through i'd actually like you because you asked early when you first started the conversation about calories keep pushing the calories i'm at 23 yeah i would i would love to see 25 now 25 get up to 25 run it run another run another program through and keep pushing strength the extra calories i got a this was a question i wanted to ask you i i make these uh homemade peanut butter i love peanut butter yeah the peanut butter that's only nuts and salt it comes in a glass jar yeah then i add a little honey some oats some pistachios almonds i mix them up and i flatten them in a pan and i cut them up into like two ounce little snacks oh i i just love them well each one has like 400 calories in it yeah uh it's hard not to eat them yeah but if i need a little extra calories can i eat more of those so i i do that almost that exact same recipe only i mix that with whey protein yeah there you go oh so you can take like a vanilla whey protein and mix it in and then now those those become uh protein balls so they're not just because right now they're kind of like high calorie a lot of calories and it's coming from fat and sugar only not a lot of protein and so that's the only drawback of that that'll be the only drawback i say i want you to make sure if we're bumping our calories you're still hitting adequate protein we want to make sure you know you're you're pushing that 120 to 130 grams of protein every day today yeah sometimes more hey if you're doing that then i don't give a shit if you have some more peanut butter balls that's where yeah if that's where your extra 200 calories come from go for it do i still need to take calcium supplements if i'm hitting calories and protein i don't think so i think you're okay especially if you take a multivitamin do you take a multivitamin well that's something that i'm going to take a multivitamin and i'm going to take a multivitamin now um because you guys i started taking legion protein powder and now i'm taking uh their multivitamin and uh the creatine good and i and i bought their magnesium so i've been switching everything to your all's uh yeah i think you're okay if you take the multivitamin uh yeah calcium deficiency is not as common as people think and for a long time we were telling people just up their calcium for bone density yeah really the issue was that they needed to do weight bearing exercise yeah plus i think i wouldn't i was at my smallest i'm 5 10 5 11 and i was 112 pounds and i was eating like a thousand to 1200 calories a day and then i started breaking bones yeah yeah well anyway uh i also been taking uh your i've been trying the paleo valley beef sticks which are yeah that's great good right aren't they good they're very good and then the latest thing i started buying was uh they're uh they have these snack bars they're called i don't know one's an apple cinnamon yeah yeah i know what you're talking about awesome those are awesome um so do you after i finish the strong 15 do i go to muscle mommy or yes keep rotating through the 15 program you you have enough right now to just rotate through the mm-hmm rotate through those just keep rotating through those bump the calories like we said don't don't be testing anytime soon you're doing super good you're doing so good so good yep all right just just christina be patient okay be patient it takes it takes time um i mean for a long time you probably under eight and over trained and so it's going to take a minute to reset but but you're you are kicking ass right now 100 yep all right well thank you guys i i really i watch all your episodes thank you and i've learned so much and i tell you what i i wish i would have learned this years ago i'd probably be in a much different spot right now but well i appreciate we got you we got you now we'll look at you now yeah got you now you're doing it yeah thank you christina all right thank you all right thank you so much i remember when i first experienced that with a client where they were like man i feel great i can't believe it my friends are saying i lost weight i look so good that step on the scale it went up a pound ruined their day deflated yeah they're like whoa you're telling me how awesome you felt and then i seen the reverse where i had a client who uh it was just was just would not change their diet would not eat more was over training on top of my training felt like crap i could see their energy was low they'd weigh themselves i lost three pounds i feel great it's like oh no i get it though because it's her and corinne they have a very specific goal because they they need to build muscle they need to build bone and you see all these you feel great your butt feels tight your legs feel great your pr and stuff exactly so you're like i've got to be building muscle and bone and you just your body's not yeah and so it's a little bit different than just the average person who just wants to look good or feel better or wants to lose body fat percentage for aesthetic reasons because then it's like who gives a fuck you said you like the way you look but they have very specific goals because they know they need to for health reasons they need to build bone they need to build muscle and they have all these other markers that are telling them they're kicking ass but then they get this test back that says oh you haven't built that much yet and then that just just i get it so but she's doing great man and it just it's going to follow later and it's just a testament of when you have eaten that low of calorie and you've over trained for such a long time it takes a while the body doesn't trust you yet that's the best way i've been able to describe that it's like when with corinne and when someone out it's like listen your your body is going like i don't i don't trust this bitch she's gonna she's gonna course correct again and start cutting calories and overtraining before i start to show her what she wants it just takes time before it says okay this is what i'm gonna do and i'm gonna do it again and i'm gonna do it again and i'm gonna our next caller is kayleen from new york hi kayleen hello hi welcome nice to see you again how we doing i'm doing really well oh that's good that's good to hear let's hear it let us let us know um so as i don't know if you guys remember or not but i was the one on the on the show a few months ago that had the cannabinoid hyperemesis syndrome yeah um and i'm happy to report that i'm fully healed from that all right wow excellent yeah um it was quite the ride um i had a lot of setbacks from it um i had to really scale back on my fitness um i'm still working with uh my trainer nico who has been uh nothing short of incredible and uh we we scaled back on the workouts quite a bit um we switched from doing like three full body workouts to more like uh four or five like mini workouts um and that's really been proven to be beneficial for me um so i guess now my questions are still kind of in regards to bulking um the bulking has been going well um i went from when i talked to you guys i was probably only eating about like 13 to now i'm up to probably anywhere from like 1600 to 1900 per day all right good um progress but i'm realizing that my mind and body are very connected when i when i'm stressed i don't eat um so my question is like at what point does inconsistent eating actually become like a detriment to uh muscle growth versus something i shouldn't overthink that's a great question because what we don't want to do is overthink and create more stress but at the other end uh you know we want to eat more to fuel and feed uh our body and so really it's going to be around how you frame uh the whole situation okay so with stress and anxiety and some of the things that you had discussed last time there are things you're going to have to do that you don't want to do because the way that anxiety can affect us so like one of the best things to do for example when you're anxious and depressed is to go outside be with people and work out the last thing you want to do when you're stressed and anxious is go outside, be with people and work out. You just want to stay frozen in place. So you literally have to do the thing that you don't want to do to get rid of the thing that you don't want to have. And so what can help is you writing down on a list, uh, the things that help when I feel stressed and anxious and you make a list. And then when you feel stressed and anxious, you can look at the list and go, I don't want to do that, but I know that'll help. So I'm going to do it. So I'm going to force myself to do it. And so part of that might be eating part of that might be like, okay, I know I need to eat. I don't want to eat. Uh, but I know how it makes me feel after I know it's going to help me. Yeah. So I'm going to go eat. Yeah. And it doesn't have to be much. It could, it could just be something by the way, this, uh, you strengthen this like a muscle. So over time, you're going to be able to do it. You're going to be able to do it. You get better at doing the thing you don't want to do when you feel that way. That's right. But at the beginning, it literally feels like force. It's like, yeah, like I don't want to get out of bed or I don't want to go be with people. Like that's the last thing I want to do right now, or I don't want to work out or I don't want to whatever. And that's the last thing I want to do. I just want to sit here and just like, wait till this goes away or hide or distract myself. Don't distract yourself. That's the worst thing you could do. Uh, so you just make that list. I've actually done this with people. I've done this with people. Where they look at the list and they go, all right, do this. I'm going to go do this. All right. Do that. I'm going to go do that. And then once you practice it and it starts to work and it's like, you know what to do. Which by the way, the there's a, there's a good reason why that the maps 15 type of protocol, which is pretty much what you're doing. These mini workouts is, is really suits you better for that exact reason of if you had a day where you weren't as consistent or you didn't eat and you were a little bit lower calories, that it's less stress. You're dividing that stress up over five days. And then you're like, Oh, I'm going to do this. I'm going to do these micro stress workouts versus a big, long, hard one is a big, long, hard one that was following a day that you were under fed is just ends up overstressing the body instead of a nice moderate balance. It's getting the same amount of volume in, but you're just now dispersing it over five, six days. So much better for someone that's working on what you're working on right now. So great strategy where that was your call or the trainer's call. That was, that was a brilliant move. Thank you. And yeah, it was something we kind of worked on together, um, because the, the CHS really was, uh, such a detriment to my body. Um, and I, I had to like work within my limitations, but I obviously I didn't want to stop working out. Um, but I just also wanted to let you guys know that I really took your advice, uh, very seriously. The last episode you said, um, um, in regards to stress and anxiety, that it's, it's really, uh, helpful if you bring it to light and bring it to other people. Um, so this past summer I did 30 days of, uh, residential mental health treatment. And then now I'm on phase two of the program, which is intensive outpatient. Um, and I'm really just grinding on this. Phenomenal. You could see it on YouTube, by the way. Yeah. You look different. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you. It's good to hear. Yeah. And then, uh, another question I have would be, was, um, that, uh, discipline is not my problem. Uh, I, as you know, like if I want something, I go and get it. Um, but what I struggle with is routine. Um, doing like the same things over and over again can feel like really boring to me. Um, so what advice would you have for someone like me to build routines without feeling, uh, trapped by them or feeling like I'm on autopilot? Uh, are you in, is this in regards to workout routines? Uh, yes. Yeah. Workout and just, I guess life in general. Okay. So you can, so with workout routines, you could leave room for any random fun thing you want to do. Yeah. Adding some creative stuff. So you'd have your workout and let's say, uh, you know, there's, let's, let's just say for example, there's six exercises. Let's just say I'm going to let you do four and I'm going to leave room at the end for whatever I want to do in the gym, whatever sounds, whatever sounds fun. Okay. So it gives you a little bit of that freedom to just go and do whatever. Uh, you could do this with diet as well. So you could have your meals plan. And then one of the meals is I'm going to go and make something, uh, and have whatever I want. You could do this for your day where you're like every day, I'm going to do one spontaneous thing. And it could be anything. It'd be a read a book. It could be, you know, watch a show. It could be draw a picture. I don't care what it is, but it's something that like, okay, it's five o'clock. It's time for my thing. What am I going to do? And what that does is inject a little bit of that spontaneity and that freedom. We, we express in the podcast, the value of like, you know, sticking with the squat and progressive overload and getting better at this applies when I have a client who's very focused on getting stronger and building muscle and losing, but when we have goals, very specific, like you do, I don't give a shit what the exercises say you show up and we can do something. You don't feel like doing that. Let's do this exercise instead. Like you come into the gym and doing it goes out the window of like it needing to be this every week. And then let's make sure we add Tim. It's like, I want you to enjoy the workout. And so if that means you want to do a different movement today, we're doing it a hundred percent. So don't like the, if you need like some creative new stuff to do and you want to insert that, have fun with it. Absolutely. Have fun with it. Yes. Okay. Thank you. That's really good advice. Yeah. Yeah. Kayleen, this is great. I feel really good. This is awesome. Yeah. Yeah. I love for you to check back in with us. Just send us an email, let us know an update as you go through. I love hearing it. Yeah, absolutely. And thank you so much. I, um, you guys continue to inspire me every single day and I just, I love everything about your podcast and your social media. I think all three of you guys are absolutely hysterical. Thank you. Um, and it just, it really keeps me going. I appreciate that so much. Thank you so much. What a great call. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you can see it on her. Oh yeah. You can see it on her. She's radiant. Oh yeah. I mean, it's just wonderful. Huge. I mean, I remember the first call, uh, she almost had this look of defeat and total opposite look right now. Total opposite. Never heard of that condition either. That was crazy. It's nasty. Yeah. If you look it up, but you know, what's, what's craziest was that 60 days later, I think she's at the tip of the iceberg for how good she's going to feel. I think, I think she knows that. I think she can, she went from being totally discouraged to like, you could just see the optimism and excitement that she has on her face because of what she's accomplished in such a short period of time that it's just going to keep getting better. Look, if you like the show, come find us on Instagram. It's mind pump media. Thank you for listening to mind pump. If your goal is to build and shape your body, dramatically improve your health and energy and maximize your overall performance, check out our discounted RGB super bundle at mind pump media.com. The RGB super bundle includes maps, anabolic maps, performance, and maps, aesthetic nine months of phased expert exercise programming designed by Sal, Adam, and Justin to systematically transform the way your body looks, feels, and performs with detailed workout blueprints and over 200 videos. The RGB super bundle is like having Sal, Adam, and Justin as your own personal trainers, but at a fraction of the price, the RGB super bundle has a full 30 day money back guarantee. And you can get it now plus other valuable free resources at mindpumpmedia.com. If you enjoy this show, please share the love by leaving us a five star rating and review on iTunes. And by introducing mind pump to your friends and family. We thank you for your support. And until next time, this is mind pump.